More work on getting blog looking good

config/plugins/markdown.js

@@ -12,6 +12,7 @@ const markdownitAbbr = require('markdown-it-abbr');
 const markdownItEleventyImg = require('markdown-it-eleventy-img');
 const icons = require('./icons.json');
 const { slugifyString } = require('../utils');
+
 const markdownLib = markdownIt({
 	html: true,
 	breaks: true,
@@ -70,5 +71,6 @@ const markdownLib = markdownIt({
 	};
   
   module.exports = function(eleventyConfig) {
+	eleventyConfig.addFilter('md', content => content ? markdownLib.render(content) : "");
 	eleventyConfig.setLibrary('md', markdownLib);
   };

package.json

@@ -7,7 +7,7 @@
     "serve": "run-p \"serve:*\"",
     "serve:props": "node scripts/custom-props.js",
     "serve:css": "postcss src/css/styles.css --base src --dir _site/assets -w",
-    "serve:eleventy": "eleventy --serve",
+    "serve:eleventy": "eleventy --serve --incremental",
     "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
   },
   "author": "",

src/_data/metadata.json

@@ -1,6 +1,7 @@
 {
 	"author": {
-		"name": "Lewis Dale"
+		"name": "Lewis Dale",
+		"avatar": "src/images/me.jpg"
 	},
 	"site": {
 		"name": "LewisDale.dev",

src/_includes/post.njk

@@ -5,4 +5,8 @@ layout: base.njk
 <article class="wrapper-lg stack-md">
     <h1><a href="{{ post.url }}">{{ title }}</a></h1>
     {{ content | safe }}
-</article>
+</article>
+
+<author class="wrapper-lg">
+    {% image metadata.author.avatar, "My face", "box circle", "150px", [150] %}
+</author>

src/blog/index.html

@@ -3,21 +3,28 @@ title: Blog
 layout: base.njk
 pagination:
     data: collections.posts
-    size: 10
+    size: 5
     reverse: true
 ---
 <main class="wrapper-lg stack-lg">
-<h1>Blog posts</h1>
+    <h1>Blog posts</h1>
 
-<ol class="stack-md">
-    {% for item in pagination.items %}
-    <li>
-        <h2><a href="{{ item.url }}">{{ item.data.title }}</a></h2>
-        <p>
-            {% set excerpt = item.page.excerpt %}
-            {% renderFile "./src/_includes/components/excerpt.md", item.page %}
-        </p>
-    </li>
-    {% endfor %}
-</ol>
+    <ol class="stack-xl">
+        {% for item in pagination.items %}
+        <li class="stack-xs">
+            <h2><a href="{{ item.url }}">{{ item.data.title }}</a></h2>
+            <time class="block">{{ item.date | dateDisplay }}</time>
+            {{ item.page.excerpt | md | safe }}
+            <a href="{{ item.url }}" class="inline-block">Read more</a>
+        </li>
+        {% endfor %}
+    </ol>
+    <nav class="blog-nav row" data-spacing="between">
+        {% if pagination.href.next %}
+            <a href="{{ pagination.href.next }}">Older</a>
+        {% endif %}
+        {% if pagination.href.previous %}
+            <a href="{{ pagination.href.previous }}">Newer</a>
+        {% endif %}
+    </nav>
 </main>

src/blog/posts/microblogging-with-eleventy.md

@@ -0,0 +1,61 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: Microblogging with Eleventy
+date: 2022-12-30T21:24:54.088Z
+tags:
+  - posts
+  - eleventy
+---
+Given the drive to move all of my content into one place and syndicate it to other networks, I decided that I'd also try out doing microblog-style posts with Eleventy. Before I could do that, I needed to add a CMS (there's no way I'm manually adding Markdown files everytime I want to post a status).
+
+---
+
+Once that was done, I added a new collection for Microblog posts, which are just text fields with a posting datetime - no title, or any of the other frontmatter data that I'd normally add to a full blog post.
+
+
+I also modified Netlify CMS to enable a max length on textarea fields - Mastodon Toots are 500 characters, so that's where I drew the line.
+
+Finally, I created a new [RSS feed](https://lewisdale.dev/micro/feed.xml) for my microblog posts - this will also be important later when I want to publish to other platforms.
+
+## Syndicating
+
+I've already added [Webmentions](https://indieweb.org/Webmention) to my website, which allow me to send and receive certain types of interactions from other websites. These map pretty nicely to certain social media interactions, like replies, reblogs, and likes.
+
+To start with, I need to be able to send out Webmentions when they're included. To do this, I use [Webmention.io](https://webmention.io), which provides me a webhook I can call. Then, I use [IFTTT](https://ifttt.com) to trigger the webhook when it detects a new RSS feed item. 
+
+The final step is to use [Bridgy](https://brid.gy) to handle cross-posting. This is done by including the webmention syndication URL in the post body as an invisible anchor. For cross-posting to work, I need to markup my post using [Microformats](https://indieweb.org/microformats)
+
+For blog posts, this means adding `h-entry` with `e-content` and `p-name` tags. Bridgy will detect these, determine that it's an article, and cross-post just the article title and a link.
+
+```twig
+<article class="h-entry">
+  <h1 class="p-name">{{ title }}</h1>
+  <div class="e-content">
+    {{ content | safe }}
+  </div>
+  <div class="syndication">
+    <a href="https://brid.gy/publish/mastodon"></a>
+  </div>
+</article>
+```
+
+For microblog posts, this is slightly different. Bridgy assumes that a post is an article if it contains a `p-name` tag, so I omit that. In it's place I include the timestamp, which is slightly more important for these:
+
+{% raw %}
+```twig
+<article class="h-entry">
+	<time class="dt-published">{{ date | microDate }}</time> 
+    <div class="flow e-content">
+        {{ content | safe }}
+    </div>
+    <div class="syndication">
+      <a href="https://brid.gy/publish/mastodon"></a>
+    </div>
+</article>
+```
+{% endraw %}
+## Next steps
+
+This works reasonably well - there's a fairly large delay between publishing on my site and syndicating across to different platforms. That's mostly because there are several different intermediaries that have to be triggered in turn (IFTTT -> Webhooks -> Webmention -> Brid.gy -> Mastodon). In fairly short order I'd like to replace at least some of this with my own code. I already use post-deploy Netlify functions to send ActivityPub messages, so I may as well use it for other syndication too.
+
+I also want to improve some of the markup on my microblog posts, and add a proper feed to my home page. But that'll also come with a bit of a site redesign, because I'm getting bored of this one.

src/blog/posts/new-blog.md

@@ -0,0 +1,32 @@
+---
+title: A new blog
+description: I've just finished redesigning a new blog, after not having one for a long time
+date: 2021-12-17
+---
+
+It's been a long time since I've had an actively-maintained personal website/blog, but I got a spurt of inspiration after seeing a few other recently-revamped blogs. What better way to celebrate the end of the year than with... a blog?
+
+My intention is to try and write a post on here relatively frequently, but we'll see how that goes as I'm quite out of practice.
+
+## Tech stack
+
+I wanted this website to achieve three things: be of my own design, be easy to update, and be accessible. To that end, I chose a relatively simple tech stack:
+
+- [Eleventy](https://11ty.dev)
+- HTML
+- CSS
+
+And that's... just about it. Eleventy gives me more than enough functionality to write simple blog posts in Markdown, convert them to HTML, and display them on a page.
+
+I did start out using [Tailwind](https://tailwindcss.com), but after a little while and seeing some of the recent discourse around it, I decided I wanted to write all the styles myself from scratch. It was pretty easy to remove Tailwind from the stack, as I hadn't done too much work on it to begin with. Plus, it meant that I could get rid of PostCSS, which was giving me a headache when trying to serve both PostCSS and Eleventy at the same time.
+
+I deployed the site using [Netlify](https://netlify.app). It was my first time using it, and to be honest I'm pretty impressed by how quickly I was able to get things up and running. It took maybe 3 minutes from signing up to getting a version of the site deployed (pointing the domain took longer thanks to pesky DNS propagation times).
+
+## Accessibility and Performance
+
+I wanted some assurance that my website would be accessible, so I regularly tested my pages with [axe DevTools](https://www.deque.com/axe/devtools/) and Lighthouse in Chrome.
+
+At the time of writing, there are no accessibility issues reported by Axe or Lighthouse, so that's a win!
+
+
+If anybody reading this does in fact spot or experience an accessibility issue, [please send me a DM or tweet on Twitter](https://twitter.com/LewisDaleUK).

src/blog/posts/soliving-2048-with-a*-search.md

@@ -0,0 +1,48 @@
+---
+title: Solving 2048 Using A* Search
+description: One of my recent project has been to attempt to solve the game 2048 using A* Search
+date: 2014-05-23
+tags:
+    - algorithms
+    - archive
+---
+
+One of my recent projects has been to attempt to solve the game 2048 using A* Search - it all started from a bet with my girlfriend about who could get the highest score, and I decided I’d “cheat” and just get my computer to do it for me. It didn’t work, she still managed to get to the 2048 tile first.
+
+To start with, I wrote a command-line version of the 2048 game in Java - it was fairly simple, if a little unncessary, and worked well - I even had a little play of it before implementing the A* algorithm, and it was fairly fun to play. There were no real issues here, just a small amount of confusion about how to implement the “gravity” style of tile movement, but a little thought sorted that one out.
+
+Then it came to actually writing the A* Search. I was lucky, in that I had a template from a previous University assignment to work from. All there really was to do was swap a few classes and methods, and change the heuristics.
+
+## The Heuristic
+
+The heuristic I am using at the minute is a less-than-optimal one, but it was the first one I tried. I was actually quite surprised at how effective it was.
+
+```
+(0 - sum of tiles) + solution depth
+```
+
+Like I say, this is not optimal, and certainly does not provide the highest-scoring solutions. But it does give fairly high scores, and certainly finds the 2048 tile - and even the 4096 tile.
+
+Oher possible heuristics include:
+* (0 - score) + solution depth
+* Difference between largest tile and 2048 tile
+* Mean value of tiles
+
+There are a lot of options, and I have seen some impressive implementations. I look forward to improving this further.
+
+## The Pseudocode
+Here’s a snippet of pseudocode for the A* algorithm:
+
+```
+While queue is not empty
+   if game is solved
+      print current state
+      end running
+   else
+      get next state from queue
+      add children of current state to queue
+endwhile
+```
+
+## Screenshots
+

src/blog/posts/the-web-is-exhausting.md

@@ -0,0 +1,15 @@
+---
+title: The web is exhausting
+description: Some thoughts about using - and developing for - the web
+date: 2022-08-31
+tags:
+    - meta
+---
+
+I've been using the web in some form for over 20 years - granted, the early parts of that were heavily monitored because I was about 5 years old when we got dialup. But, a large part of my formative years were spent online, and it was such a different place compared to how it is today.
+
+I remember spending hours on different websites, which were mostly forums dedicated to a single topic, speaking with a variety of people (although the same few names were usually present). The web felt _huge_ back then, a vast array of small communities. It feels like the total commercialisation of the web has taken that from us, though. I now visit maybe 3 websites regularly, and just endlessly, mindlessly doomscroll. I can honestly say that using the web these days is so much less exciting and fun compared to what it used to be.
+
+It's not just become exhausting as a consumer, though. A lot of the modern tooling available to web developers is overwhelmingly complicated. This post came about because I considered building a small web app using WebGL and Javascript - I decided I wanted a bit of type safety, and to use one library, (Three.js). Then I looked at the number of steps required just to get Typescript working nicely with ThreeJS and gave up. It shouldn't be this hard to build web applications, I shouldn't have a development directory that regularly exceeds 1gb per project because there are thousands of dependencies.
+
+It's not all doom and gloom, thankfully. There are tons of people making interesting, fun, and exciting content for the web. They're just harder to find these days. And there _are_ simple tools for building web applications (this blog is <a href="https://11ty.dev">built using one</a>), and I don't _need_ the libraries or Typescript to build apps, they're just nice to have.

src/blog/posts/thinking-about-the-web.md

@@ -0,0 +1,13 @@
+---
+title: Thinking about the web
+description: Mulling over how best to use this website
+date: 2022-12-28
+tags:
+    - personal
+---
+
+I've been seeing some good posts recently, like these ones from [Andy Bell](https://andy-bell.co.uk/bring-back-blogging/), [Chris Coyier](https://chriscoyier.net/2022/12/26/bring-back-blogging/), and [Sophie Koonin](https://localghost.dev/blog/building-a-website-like-it-s-1999-in-2022/), about using a blog as a real "base" for your place on the web, and then following the [POSSE principle](https://indieweb.org/POSSE) for everywhere else.
+
+I like that idea - this is the one part of the web I have the most control over. It's already partially-federated (with some improvements coming this way in the near future). I just need to set up some more syndication tools using IFTTT, and then I think I'll be good to go.
+
+I'd like to add a second post format too, for shorter-form posts that I'd normally have written for Twitter - as well as making it a bit easier to publish content. But that means getting a CMS of some description, so might take me a little while.

src/css/compositions/row.css

@@ -4,3 +4,7 @@
   gap: var(--vertical-spacing, 1rem);
   flex-wrap: wrap;
 }
+
+.row[data-spacing="between"] {
+  justify-content: space-between;
+}

src/css/exceptions/blog-nav.css

@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
+.blog-nav {
+    border-top: 1px solid var(--color-neutral-200);
+    padding-top: var(--space-size-2xs);
+}

src/css/exceptions/home.css

@@ -28,4 +28,8 @@
     font-style: italic;
     font-weight: 300;
   }
+
+  p {
+    max-width: 50ch;
+  }
 }

src/css/globals.css

@@ -19,7 +19,7 @@ h5 {
 h1 {
   font-size: var(--text-size-xl);
   word-wrap: normal;
-  text-underline-offset: var(--space-size-2xs);
+  text-underline-offset: var(--space-size-3xs);
 }
 
 h2 {
@@ -61,7 +61,7 @@ header {
 
 p {
   line-height: 1.6;
-  max-width: 50ch;
+  max-width: 60ch;
 }
 
 footer {

src/index.html

@@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ layout: base.njk
 			I'm a software engineer who loves building things for the web. I consider myself a generalist, but on a given day I'll probably be working with Typescript, HTML and CSS, and on occasion a touch of .NET. I work for <a href="https://triptease.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">Triptease</a> as a Senior Software Engineer, and on the side I'm learning Rust by building a <a href="/blog/category/basic">Sinclair BASIC Interpreter</a>.
 		</p>
 
-		{% image "src/images/me.jpg", "My face", "box circle", "300px", [300] %}
+		{% image metadata.author.avatar, "My face", "box circle", "300px", [300] %}
 
 		<p>
 			When I'm not working I love cycling, reading fiction (mostly sci-fi and ghost stories), and spending time with my family & our border collie.