Worked through the notes page today: on desktop, the header and page navigation now live together in the sidebar, while the individual notes got more breathing room, their own surfaces, and a clearer reading rhythm.

The sidebar now also highlights the note currently in view while scrolling. A small detail, but it makes the page feel less like one long post and more like a proper stream of notes.

Also kept tuning the outer frame: the whole website now sits inside a soft frame with worn-down, almost melted corners, and the navigation is cast right into it. Exactly the kind of detail that is better to have than to need.

Published my first own npm package today: @altner/astro-justified-gallery-layout. A lean justified-layout gallery for Astro, meant as a replacement for Flickr’s dusty classic.

Two posts to go with it (in English and German) are out too. It feels odd to install your own thing with npm install.

First cup, then editor. My brain works best in that order.

Got lucky this morning: yesterday’s bug was fixed in three lines. Sometimes it really is just the break.

One hour, no screen, no earbuds. First nervous, then calm.

The best ideas show up when I don’t force them. A notebook in my pocket is enough.

Reminded again today: subgrid is finally everywhere and I use it far too rarely.

grid-template-rows: subgrid makes layout problems trivial that I would have worked around with display: contents before.

Finally finished it. John Ousterhout writes about complexity like someone who has seen a lot of it.

My takeaway: deep modules beat many small ones. That contradicts a lot of what’s common practice in JavaScript projects.

Hours of steady rain. Tea, blanket, a long article about ship diesels.

Not every day has to be productive.

Server swapped, DNS cutover in under a minute. Caddy makes TLS so easy you almost forget how annoying Let’s Encrypt with Apache used to be.

Migration as backup drill: every time you find out where the backup script lies.

Three minutes of work, six months of quiet. Some maintenance is so undramatic that you keep forgetting about it.

Reminder to self: don’t wait for the squeak.

Reset my CV — this time in Typst instead of LaTeX. Compiles in milliseconds, the syntax feels like a modern language.

For complex scientific documents I’ll stay with LaTeX, but for anything below that, Typst is the more honest choice now.