'Tis a fine barn, but sure 'tis no pool, English *
* Okay, I cannot guarantee that this will be the last article with a title that is a quote from The Simpsons, but I'll try! ... <Narrator's voice> He won't!
I haven't been able to dedicate much time to improving the website this year as I have been studying for back-to-back certifications. I just passed the AWS SysOps Administrator exam in July, and it will likely be the last certification I study for until the second half of 2024. Therefore, recently, I was finally able to review my task list and determine what things I wanted to prioritize working on over the next couple of months.
I've organized my tasks under various categories on this Google Sheet so that anyone who is interested can track what I have done and what I still want to do. It'll also help convey a sense of improvement, both to myself and to others. The link to the task list was also added to the about page to make it a little more prominent for visitors to the site and easier to find again. Most of the improvements I plan to make relate to improving load performance, making the site layout look good on smaller screen sizes and devices, and adding new features. I really want to add a separate contact page to the navigation menu with a form that folks can fill out if they want to get in touch, as opposed to just a "mailto" link on the resume page. Because of the nature of how I host the site and my desire to keep it as low-maintenance as possible, I'm trying to avoid server-side solutions and researching a client-side option. Maybe something written in Javascript?
On a random evening a week or two ago, I had an impromptu coding session where I went through and consolidated all of the individual CSS files into one file. I didn't really mean to do it all at once, but once I got started, I kind of just wanted to finish the task at hand. It was sort of fun, actually, and I felt a nice sense of accomplishment afterwards. I was able to remove some redundancies and apply some additional consistency to the styling. There probably wasn't much that visibly changed on the site as a result of my efforts, but you've got to take the little victories!
Although I've given a little insight into how the site is hosted and the design choices I've made in the "About the site" blurb on the about page, I wanted to write a little more about some of the tools and processes that I use to publish the site. I write all of the HTML and CSS in the Sublime Text text editor, which I like because it's lightweight and easy to use. As I'm working on the files, I'll usually preview the changes I've made in my browser. I generally prefer Mozilla Firefox as my day-to-day browser of choice. I really like their web developer tools, which have been getting better and better since I first started using them. They are especially useful for getting a sense of layout because things can start to get confusing when you're working on margins, padding, and grids.
When it comes time to write a new article, I will usually just manually copy an existing article's HTML file and edit the title, content, and links as necessary. I write all of the content myself, but I use a tool called QuillBot AI to double-check sentence structure and punctuation because I'll usually miss a comma where one should be or make a grammatical mistake or two. I guess that I have some perfectionist tendencies! That, and I don't want to look a fool on the internet!
Once I am happy with the new content, I'll run an S3 sync tool from the command line on my computer, which pushes any new files (and any changes to existing files) up to the AWS S3 bucket that the site is served from. The site costs me about 60 cents (USD) a month to host, excluding the yearly domain name registration renewal (currently $12). To help me improve the site's load performance, I've been using Google's PageSpeed Insights, which gives me some suggestions on changes I can make to shave milliseconds off the render time of a page.
And that's about it! I'm happy to receive any feedback anyone has about anything on the site. Until I get that contact page up and running, you can contact me at peter@pcmclaughlin.com
La Música
Please note: All song links shared below will bring you to Spotify. You'll need to create an account to listen.
Slim Harpo - Baby Scratch My Back
An artist on my "to explore more" list. It's just a super cool, laidback song that you could imagine driving on the open highway to. I love the harmonica, and the little guitar sequence (I think it's the "chicken scratch" referred to in the vocals) that first appears at 1:33 and continues throughout is a nice little addition.
Sam Cooke - Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen
I think that I prefer Sam Cooke to some of his peers that I listen to, like Al Green or Otis Redding. I was already familiar with this song, but recently I bought a pair of Beats headphones, and wanting to test them out, I found this "Songs to Test Headphones With" playlist on Spotify. This Sam Cooke song was on it, and it really sounded fantastic over the headphones. If you have some decent headphones or a good stereo system, give this song a try!
Count Alert, Lynn Tait, The Baba Brooks Band - Hard Time
According to Spotify, this song has been my #1 most-listened-to song this month! I've been on a real Mento and Calypso fix lately (more on that in a later article), and this song just puts me in a good mood. The trumpet (I think it's a trumpet!) solo that starts at 1:44 and goes until the song fades out is just the cherry on top!
Fruit Bats - My Sweet Midwest
I cannot remember how I discovered this band (I say band, when really it's one guy with a rotating lineup) last year, whether it was a Spotify suggestion or if it was a saved Shazam upon hearing one of their songs playing in a bar. But I really like them, and this song is one of my favorites.
Fred Neil - Dolphins
This song plays over one of my favorite scenes in the television show The Sopranos. In the episode "The Ride" in season 6, Christoper is high on heroin during the Feast of Elzéar, and the night's events play out to the beautiful, tragic vocals of Fred Neil. Whoever chose this song for this scene made a superb choice; my hat goes off to you!
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - Swingin'
Tom Petty is one artist that I really regret not having seen play live before he passed away. The album "Full Moon Fever" is one that I listened to constantly in those formative teenage years. It's hard to pick out one Tom Petty song, but I just really, really love this song.
The Hollies - The Air That I Breathe
I think I first remember hearing this song (maybe a cover version) on a television advertisement for menthol lozenges or chewing gum when I was a kid. That heavy drumming at 1:40 that repeats throughout, the strings, and the guitar solo at 2:10 just help make this song spectacular.