After some good work this summer, I have finally migrated my site from a Wordpress site to a Django site that has all the same features.
This gives me control over a bunch of things, including how I send and receive webmentions, post elsewhere automatically, and how I display comments and likes.
It is also nice to be writing in HTML and using HTML templates for the pages.
Granted, I am definitely going to run into every flaw I wrote in, but I like the process of working on it over time.
I a… Read more
tl;dr:This is a long-winded ask that you become a recurring monthly donor to Code for Philly, an all-volunteer non-profit building tech to improve the lives of Philadelphians.My experience as a volunteerI have been volunteering with Code for Philly for nearly six years. I started in August 2020 pretty soon after finishing the coding boot camp I had done that summer.I joined the team building what would become PAX: The PA Expunger, an expungement petition generating web app being developed in pa… Read more
This month (January 2026) marks my second anniversary at Community Legal Services and, weirdly, many other anniversaries as well! It is a funny thing to reflect back on that ten years ago, my life looked entirely different.Ten years ago, I left working as an after-school teacher to go work as a beginner bike mechanic (mostly working the service counter for small repairs and ringing up people's purchases). This was at a shop called Bicycle Revolutions where the work largely focused on commuting … Read more
My boot camp loan is fully paid as of today. 5 years ago, I finished a software engineering immersive and began volunteering with Code for Philly while job searching and closing down Cycles PHL.The choice to take that on and switch careers dramatically changed my and Ruby's life. But it was not a decision made lightly. Ruby and I planned for me to start that in early April 2020 after a devastating (second) rejection for a salaried job at a nonprofit.I was working as a courier at the time, and w… Read more
This was my talk for the HOPE_16 conference:Planning a Project with No BudgetTravis Southard (he/him)For HOPE_16Notes:Hello! My name is Travis Southard and today I will be talking about planning a project without a budgetSometimes this looks like having a contract for a specific set of money with a maximum amount. So it is up to the development team to spend time on the most vital parts, and plan accordingly. There’s a lot of shapes of this, but they all come to:How much time do I want to spend… Read more
It seems like it's calmed down now, but I had two weird spam interactions this past weekend on my personal site.The first seemed pretty benign, three comments from webmentions on recent posts saying very nice things. The comments felt believable as people individually, but when I saw a third with the same shape of comment from the same IP as the other two, I knew. The language in the comments felt more genuine because of some typos weirdly enough.There were no links or anything in the comments … Read more
Had a fantastic time at #hope_16 this weekend! Watched cool talks, met cool people, and got to give a talk myself that went well!Will post a blog post about my takeaways and the slides and recording from my talk, but first: I must sleep! Read more
Currently reading Karen Hao's Empire of AI while also needing to advise more at work about responsible use and data safety around AI. I have largely been a curmudgeon about generative AI in general, being concerned about environmental impacts, data leaks, and it genuinely just having underwhelming products.But my grumpiness shouldn't stop me from continuing to keep up on the topic and learning how the tech works. After being frustrated by a lot of reporting that is obviously booster hype or jus… Read more
Votes for the Tiny Awards are open! These are awards for the "best of the small, poetic, creative, handmade [websites]" that were created in the past 12 months. They are all impressive and powerful in their own ways.The websites featured (this year and the previous two) are great sources of inspiration for building websites. I find they are especially good for breaking me out of the patterns and habits I fall into when designing.I won't say who I voted for here until the voting is closed becaus… Read more
I am delighted to be speaking at the Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE_16) conference in Queens in a few weeks! I'll be talking about "Planning a Project with No Budget" based on my experiences at CLS and Code for Philly.Been a 2600 Magazine reader and Off the Hook listener for years and am excited to share some of what I've learned. Even more excited to attend some of the rad sessions they have planned! Especially the ones on open source development, art, and community building. Read more
I'm old enough to remember when it was both illegal and inappropriate that the President of the United States would forgive $10,000 of federal student debt for borrowers and $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients.That would have hindered the income of the hard-working Americans who own student loan servicing companies. These entrepreneurs following the American Dream paid $7,000 for a $30,000 loan and thus EARNED the $50,000 borrowers will pay over 20 years.How unpresidential and overreaching! Read more
Andrew Dana Hudson looks back on "On the Political Dimensions of Solarpunk" after 10 years. When I was first learning about Solarpunk in 2021 (and getting my eyeballs on every piece of media about it that I could), this piece resonated with me strongly and I refer back to it often. And today, Andrew looks back on that with both wonder at how it's taken hold and want for it to be more realized in the material world.We’ve spent over ten years imagining better futures. When I wrote “Dimensions,” t… Read more
I saw a post come through my RSS about an IndieWeb Movie Club. dead.garden chose Mary Poppins as the movie for June 2025. Ruby and I watched it together a few nights back.Ruby said she didn't remember it all besides the "Spoonful of Sugar" scene. I thought I remembered it, and certainly remembered most scenes, but for a lot of songs I was surprised at stuff that went much longer than I remembered. Also there were so many more songs than I remembered. They are (at least listed from the soundtrac… Read more
Phenomenal essay from Molly White."When we throw up our hands and say none of it matters, we’re doing the fascists’ work for them. They don’t need to hide their corruption if they can convince us it’s pointless to look. They don’t need to silence truth-tellers if we’ve already decided truth is meaningless."https://www.citationneeded.news/it-matters-i-careI'm very happy to have so many people around me who care like my queer and anarchist friends, my civic tech peers, and my justice-focused coll… Read more
The SOLARPUNKS blog published a short little post about an IGA grocery store in Montreal that has a 25,000 sq ft (over half an acre) garden on the roof!https://solarpunks.net/post/785808510802935808This is a great model! I hope they do that with the parking lot next! You can even see it in satellite imagery! Read more
If you feel like you have to put "Reader Caution Advised: This post was written by AI and has a bunch of errors" on a blog post, just... Just don't press the publish button then? Read more
We have just installed the window units for the summer before it gets too hot to do it without being frustrated (Though our second floor is warm already) Read more
Nominations are open for the Tiny Awards, "[celebrating] the best of the small, poetic, creative, handmade web".If you came across a delightful website made in the last year, you should nominate it!More info here: https://tinyawards.net/faqs/ #indieweb #webdev #webdesignAlso the Tiny Awards website is an absolute delight and you should check it out! Read more
Photo by Jessi MelcerLast week was Philly Tech Week and I was asked to appear "on stage" at two events. For the Technical.ly Developers Conference, I got to host a series of presentations about technical obstacles and their solutions in three Code for Philly projects: Balancer, PAX, and Clean & Green. Later that same day I was asked to judge a Philly CHI design slam working on ideas for the frontend of another Code for Philly project, the Benefit Decision Toolkit. It was certainly a long da… Read more
I have been maintaining this website for over ten years now. I love having my little space on the web to do whatever I want with it. For most of that time I was stuck on making it "professional" (read: acceptable to bosses). I have used colors I liked at the time and mostly very basic rectangles and images. This has even been true in the years since becoming a web developer.Over the past year or so, I have found a lot of joy in the Indieweb, and its various principles that make the web better. … Read more
I started a new role at CLS at the beginning of the year. My previous supervisor, Nate, moved on to work at a new workplace, and now I am the sole developer at CLS. In fact, I am now a Senior Developer & Data Analyst. It's certainly been an adjustment to be managing our projects, administering our case management system, and being my own project manager. But I am making it happen and have finally gotten into a groove.I don't think I'll be comfortable with managing all these projects until s… Read more
Last week, I was listening to Spotify for the last time. Already I was planning a breakup and starting to collect more physical and digital albums, but this particular session was genuinely the proverbial last straw. I had queued up a few albums while I was working. I had planned that when they ended I would wrap up what I was working on and go take a walk. But after the last album ended and the queue was over, Spotify had already loaded another album I did not choose into the "Next Up" section… Read more
I have made a blogroll! This feels important to me as I try (along with many others) to build a better web. This was a project I have been meaning to take on for some time. I did start with a basic set of links to friends in the footer of my website, but I wanted to use it more to show the web I usually interact with.I would still like to add a little flair and some organization to the blogroll page, but I am trying to build this website without delivering any JavaScript, if possible. I do thin… Read more
After reading a blog post from Andrew Dana Hudson about thermochauvinism, I have begun referring to July as "Hot Winter," a time of year when I spend most of my time indoors because it is uncomfortable and even dangerous to be outside. I tend to spend my free time similarly to actual winter: video games, home DIY, reading, taking care of house plants, and wishing I could ride my bike or work in my garden.As soon as the heat broke last week I went out and went on a longer mountain bike ride than… Read more
Maintenance and repair are essential to a more sustainable, and frankly pleasant world. Well-maintained bikes feel, sound, and ride better. Well-maintained roads are easier and safer for everyone to navigate.n Well-maintained gardens look and smell better and are more productive. Maintenance is boring and tedious though compared to starting fresh. Repairing a broken thing is harder than repairing something regularly maintained.What I particularly find difficult is perceiving that something that… Read more
Recently returned from a ten day vacation in Lisbon, Portugal to celebrate my mother-in-law's birthday. This is the longest trip I've taken since Ruby and I spent three weeks in Ireland for our honeymoon in 2022. Wen stayed in a cute apartment with a garden and walking proximity to the city center. In and around Lisbon, wen were able to walk and ride trains and busses to most of the places we wanted to visit and that was such an great way to get to know the city. Any time we took a cab or ride … Read more
Over the past few years, I have been taking in a lot of Solarpunk influences. Solarpunk is a movement/genre/aesthetic/practice based around ultra-sustainability, averting climate climate catastrophe, and community-centric social organization that has been growing and evolving over the past 15 years, largely starting in Latin America, and I first came across it with Andrew Sage's "What is Solarpunk" video and got such a craving for more things like this.Already, I had been looking for more art a… Read more
I have been sketching lately. Mostly sitting in a place and drawing a building or plant within view. Some of these sketches are better than others, but these sketches are mental exercise more than making final pieces. In have been wanting to get back into making more art, whether pixel art like I have on this site already or more algorithmically made works. So sketching in this case is to help me understand what shapes I am seeing and thinking about them and what details to include and not incl… Read more
Despite a very full schedule leading up to the Social Justice Hackathon, I have been really enjoying springtime this year. Some warm days where we were lucky enough to be able to clear out a lot near my house that had previously invited dumping.n But also some last cold days that threatened this year's early cherry and magnolia blossoms, but was gentle enough to leave them alone.Part of enjoying spring has been trying to change some habits this year. The tl:dr; is that I severely cut down on ph… Read more
Coming through feeling sick and just in time for day light savings, which snuck up on me this year. Usually I am watching for it like a hawk, but this winter I was very focused on trying to enjoy what wintriness we got. With less than two weeks from the spring equinox, I am hoping we get a few weeks of actual spring weather before then heat of summer sets in.I was grateful we got some snow this year, even if we got much more rain and warm weather overall. For a bunch of years of my adulthood (a… Read more
Excited to see that the sunlight is just starting to stick around after 6pm lately. A few hours of extra sunlight really makes a difference to my mood. Weirdly enough the snow in Philadelphia the past few weeks has had a similar effect. Ruby and I have been taking the time to go hiking or walking on some good local trails and walking over snow and seeing the snowdrops peeking out of the ground has been a big boost against our winter dreading. (Also I recently found out are poisonous if ingested… Read more
After a few weeks working at my new job and settling into new habits, there's a part of me that feels like I'm waking up from something. I really did not enjoy my last job. While I knew it was temporary, I still resented the forty hours a week spent working with no benefits on a project that I found equally interesting and frustrating to work on.My therapist mentioned back in December that I had been stressed about work for about a year at that point since it had just been announced that Azavea… Read more
New year. I am newly 35 years old and just came through a tough but still good year. Many years have been tough for me, but in the grand scheme of tough years, 2023 was pretty easy on me. This year In was laid off from a dream job, joined the leadership at Code for Philly, didn't ride my bike enough, worked in a large corporate environment that I dislike, but ended the year by securing a job that fits my values. Ruby and I also have some travel plans that I will talk about more once we're back … Read more
Earlier this year I built a project that came from a personal need. I have three student loans from my time at University of the Arts, my time at Temple University, and my coding bootcamp. My spouse Ruby has her own loans from undergraduate and graduate school. We also share a mortgage on our home. I have been exploring different options to ideally pay down these debts early and save both money on interest and time for ourselves in the future with less debt payment burden.As part of my research… Read more
Autumn is in full show here in Philadelphia, at least up in the Northwest of Philly where I now live. The colors are a great time to reflect on the passage of time. It being the weekend daylight savings ends is also a big hint that time is always changing, even if only arbitrarily.I am grateful to see the leaves change like this and for consistent access to more trees in general than I had experienced in South Philly. Despite being much closer to the Wissahickon park, I still don't go there oft… Read more
Over the past few weeks I have released a tutorial to make the classic video game, Minesweeper, from scratch using native web tools (being HTML, CSS, and Javascript). (Check out parts 1, 2, & 3!) I was motivated to write tutorials in general to help new developers bridge the gap between what they currently know and what they need to know to get a job developing code. The other half of that motivation is to help me become a better developer by teaching.I chose to write tutorials about native… Read more
n How to make Minesweeper part 3This is the final part of this 3-part series! I recommend starting with part 1 and also working through part 2 before moving on to this one. If you have already worked through parts 1 and 2, welcome back! In the previous parts, we built a board of 100 squares with variable amount of bombs depending on the difficulty, randomized them around the board, and gave the player ways to find those bombs. In this part we will finish the gameplay, including adding the win c… Read more
n n n n How to make Minesweeper part 2n This is part 2 of 3 and I recommend starting with Refactor click handler to own functionn To help keep our createBoard function from getting too cluttered, we can start refactoring out somen functionality into its own function.n Note: Refactoring is a specific action in which the functionality of our code stays the same, but we change then code to (ideally) be more readable or more efficient. At the end of an… Read more
n n nOverviewnLet’s make minesweeper with just native web tools! Using only native web components we can build this classic video game using some loops, array methods, and recursion. Specifically we'll be using HTML5, CSS3 with Flexbox, and ES6 JavaScript.nPrerequisitesnTo make this project you will need:nnA code editor (I’ll be using VS Code)nA web browsernA basic understanding of HTML, JavaScript, and CSSnnHow to make Minesweeper part 1:nMake your filesnStart a project folder called… Read more
I have some updates from the past week and a content schedule for the next month!Firstly I am honored that last Monday I was named one of Technical.ly's RealLIST Engineers of Philadephia for 2023! It always feels nice to be recognized for work and this is the first professional recognition I've received since transitioning into tech. I am especially honored that my work with Code for Philly was specifically mentioned because I am incredibly proud of the work that I've done there over the past t… Read more
I have been working on personal projects in my spare time for a few weeks: stepping into a leadership role at Code for Philly, writing tutorials for upcoming streaming I'll be doing, and working with Ruby to improve our house.The PLSE Expungement team at Code for Philly has been putting in a ton of work lately and In am thrilled to work with such stellar volunteers. I recently wrote a new update for our project page talking about the progress we've made over the past year. We're actively accept… Read more
I have been arguing with myself for a while now about getting back into content creation for then past few years. I have started and abandoned moved on from so many projects over the years. None of them necessarily "gained traction", but I also never gave things enough time to really find their audience. I've been consistently thinking for a year now that I did enjoy making those things at the time and probably would again.Theoretically this is the "right reason" to be creating content: Just fe… Read more
I have been trying to keep this portfolio and its parts pretty simple and lightweight. Part of this is wanting ton use free services as much as possible, but part of it is to keep my vanilla Javascript skills up to snuff. It also may be my recent interest in permacomputing as well as a great disdain for overcomplicated (and data-sucking) big tech products.Sometimes though it means I miss out on some features that come a little more "out of the box." I met up with an former colleague last week a… Read more
I am still very much on the job search. I am actively seeking a full-time (though ideally 32-hours-a-week) software engineering position in civic technology with geospatial work. I have had some great conversations and opportunities so far and In hope I can find something I love very soon.While I have been home, I was hoping to establish a new routine that honors my physical, emotional, and interpersonal needs. Ruby recently prompted me to imagine my ideal life and I struggled to even begin. In… Read more
I am currently volunteering on a project as part of Code for Philly's Launchpad 2023. I am working with a small team of developers and UXers to develop a project that will seek to connect Philadelphians to comfortable public spaces, with the focus being on finding places spontaneously.Jump to code solution.We got started at the end of March this year and the launchpad demos will be on May 10 as part of Philly Tech Week 2023. Come see our presentation!n For the past few weeks we have been simult… Read more
Note: This was originally published on the Azavea blog, but I wanted to put this here in case that blog disappeared.A specific odd exampleAs said above, documentation is more than just README.md and /docs pages. One of the bits we do well at Azavea, especially on the Civic Applications team, is using commit messages as documentation. This may seem odd to some developers, since many do not consider this to be documentation.When looking at what may read at first as an odd piece of code, we check … Read more