Small-form factor 9800x3d and DDR5 RAM upgrade
My Small-Form Factor Dan A4-H20 build with a 4090 has been running great, but for whatever reason it felt like it was time for an upgrade. Since I don't think I'll be buying a 5090 anytime soon (the Founders Edition would be the only choice at this size and they are in short supply) it seemed like a new CPU was the next logical step.
Bumping up the font-size... but not too much
Back in the day body text font-size on the internet used to clock in around an average of 12-14px. Then there was a big push to bump it up to 16px. Eventually Apple essentially codified this by making an annoying feature/bug where Safari on iOS zooms if you click on an input that is less than 16px big. Since I was so often working on mobile web apps that kind of cemented my font-sizing around 16px ever since which is why this site has always had a base font size of 16px. But now I am old, and my eyesight is getting worse so it's time for a change... So I'll bump it up a little, but not too much.
Meet my new Astro blog, same as the old Nuxt blog
This blog was created with Nuxt 2 seven years ago and served me well but in that time I have been working professionally with vanilla Javascript/Typescript, Vue, and now React. I have also been playing around with Svelte and Solid.js. Given my desire to constantly be learning and experimenting with new technologies it seemed time to use a static-site generator that would accommodate all of the above... Enter Astro! So welcome to my mostly-the-same-looking site that is now completely different!
Prepping for the CKA
As I said in a recent blog post I was planning on taking the CKA. I felt like it was a good way to demonstrate my kubernetes skills given that I don't have a lot of professional history with it. Well, I'm happy to say that yesterday I took my first whack at it and I passed the exam, I'm now a Certified Kubernetes Administrator! Here's a few exam prep tips for anyone interested in taking the exam.
How to build a web application
I have had many debates on the best ways to build web applications and I have some strong opinions about it. However, some smart people have already come up with some guidelines that I think mirror my opinions pretty closely so I'm noting them here for future reference.
A new résumé for new opportunities
Unfortunately all good things must come to an end and so has my time working at Rakuten on our SSP. Our team and our product were impacted by the war in Ukraine and it seems our platform never recovered enough to prevent it from being sold to one of our customers. It sucks for us but in the end there is definitely worse things happening in the world with that war. However, it does leave me and my team looking for new opportunities. I've added a link to my résumé on the navigation menu. Feel free to click, take a look, and let me know if I have the skills you need!
Stuffing a RTX 4090 in an Dan Lian-li A4 H2O
In continuing with the evolution of my small form factor PC I recently took to upgrading the GPU to an RTX 4090. Given that it was a bit challenging compared to my 3080ti both size wise as well as highlighting some issues I didn't even realized I had with the included pci-e 4.0 riser cable I thought I'd share my experience.
New PWA Tools Section with Offline Support!
I've been working on a new section of the site for a bit and it's now ready to go. In the past I've received numerous requests to support offline capabilities with some of the tools I've created (specifically, the Lazy Portfolio Rebalancer so I've created a new Tools section of the site to support standalone Progressive Web Apps that have offline support. To install using a Chrome-based browser (including Edge) visit the tool's page you're interested in and click the install button in the address bar.
Small form factor PC refresh
The "small, but powerful, gaming machine" has seen a few new parts over the years but one of these parts (a new nvidia RTX 3080 ti founders edition) eventually pushed it beyond its cooling capabilities. My slim case was not well designed for handling the new flow through airflow design adopted by the newer RTX cards and any heavy usage caused the entire thing to fill with heat until eventually the PSU would call it quits. Ripping the top off of the case and adding a few extra USB fans helped to cool things off a bit but it was not a pretty sight, and the temperatures were still uncomfortably high...
Was the "all-in" spread trade a success?
In episode 54 of the All-In podcast, Chamath brought up the idea of initiating a spread trade within big tech stocks as a way of protecting against a market downturn. It has been three months since the episode aired and we've already had a pretty good market correction with the possibility of some more to go. So, how did the spread trade do? If you had entered the trade when the episode aired would you have made money? Let's take a look.
Rebalancing your lazy portfolio
Lazy portfolios are a simple and safe way I've been using for some time to successfully invest in the market. The general idea is to allocate your investments into a few broad funds (usually index funds) proportionally to your desired risk profile and let them sit and grow over time. Once you've purchased your funds at your desired allocations the only action required is to occasionally rebalance them and bring them back to your desired allocations as they change over time. These rebalances can happen at set time intervals (6 months to a year) or at specific triggers based on some other strategy. If your only criteria is that your risk profile adjusts as you get closer to retirement age then you can invest entirely in a target date fund, but if you want more control over when/why/how you rebalance then a lazy portfolio might be for you.
The reduce ({...spread}) anti-pattern
Performance is a common topic in computing, but it is especially common in the frontend world as the latest Javascript technologies battle for the frontend throne. Some may say React has already won (and the usage numbers seem to agree) so in this blog post I wanted to talk about a piece of problematic code I'm seeing more frequently in the frontend world as Javascript syntax is evolving and components are taking over.
CenturyLink is blocking its customers' internet while saying Utah legislators told them to
We've all experienced frustration with the internet going down. Now imagine how frustrated you'd be if you found out that your ISP intentionally blocked your internet access for the purpose of advertising their software; and better yet, your ISP claimed that state legislators required them to do it! Well that's exactly what is happening to CenturyLink customers in Utah right now.
Unmangle your javascript variables
There are many tools you can find for unminifying javascript code. However, most of these tools just add proper formatting and call it a day. Considering many minifiers mangle local identifiers to one or two characters and reuse those identifiers frequently, this can result in some code that is still quite painful to read. I think we can do better.
Building a small, but powerful, gaming machine
Have you ever wanted a computer that is fast and powerful but also small, sleek, and sexy? Surely such a combination cannot exist! Well, prepare to feast your eyes upon this beautiful build I recently completed.
How to add search to your static website
One of the most important features that a website can have is a method to effectively search its content. There's no denying that there's such an overload of information on websites these days that helping people find what they need can be a monumental task. That's where a well designed site searching functionality can swoop in to save the day and today I'm going to show you how to deploy this superhero feature on your very own static website, no backend required.
Houston, we have a blog!
One of my goals with this new year has been to start writing more frequently, be it technical articles or just my thoughts and ramblings. I've considered Medium in the past (and still might duplicate some of my writing there), but felt the platform just isn't quite there yet for the purpose of writing technical articles. I have read many well-written technical articles there that I felt were held back by the limitations of the platform. I'm of the strong opinion that learning is doing, and limiting educational writing to text and graphics isn't the best medium for doing.