Customizing Sanity Studio beyond the schema

27 Sep 2021 🔖 jamstack web development 💬 EN

Wow, it’s hard to figure out how to customize Sanity Studio’s look and feel, beyond playing with schema definitions, if you’re not a front-end developer and things don’t really make sense to you to begin with. One of those “understand what to Google in the first place” issues, for sure.

But WHY do you need a database?

24 Sep 2021 🔖 architecture databases 💬 EN

I’m so excited – a non-desk-job, real-world acquaintance just asked over social media if they knew anyone who could “talk to them about database stuff.” And they picked me! While I waited to see if they’d reach out, I came up with 21 questions to guide the conversation.

If you’re the person who’s been told you need a database, this is a non-technical list, so read on! You might be able to take your own notes and have a really production conversation with a friend in tech. But I know it’s a lot, and you don’t have to – a good database professional will have questions like these floating in the back of their head but be able to just ask you more unstructured questions like, “Tell me what’s on your mind” and ask you these kinds of questions without letting you realize you’re even being asked them.

Jekyll doesn't do components? Liar!

09 Sep 2021 🔖 web development jamstack 💬 EN

Hot take: anyone who tells you that Jekyll doesn’t support component-based design, and that you need a React- or Vue-based static site generator, is wrong.

Naomi Kritzer will be blogging some Minnesota 2021 candidates again

08 Sep 2021 🔖 questions 💬 EN

Non-tech post: For anyone living in Minneapolis or St. Paul, Minnesota: Naomi Kritzer has announced that she intends to blog about canidates for 2021. It looks like there’s also some coverage of outstate Minnesota 2021 races on another site.

Learn static site generation with Stackbit

28 Aug 2021 🔖 web development jamstack 💬 EN

Stackbit does it again: their blog is kicking out articles that are amazing resources for web developers picking up new technologies. Their latest series is called the Jamstack Journey, and it’s a really great deep dive into the concepts I was trying to explain with “What is static web hosting?” and “What is a static site generator?.”

A dumb Python mistake

25 Aug 2021 🔖 python 💬 EN

Read on for how I went to bed angry over a mysterious API error that turned out to be a Python version error.

Next.js Minimum Viable Build

23 Aug 2021 🔖 architecture jamstack web development minimum viable build 💬 EN

Like with Gatsby for novices and dabblers, I need to work my way through Next.js, because I find it intimidating.

ETL QA is interpersonal communication

23 Aug 2021 🔖 architecture integration databases 💬 EN

I’ve spent a week writing e-mails and calling people after enabling a new primary-database-to-secondary-database feed.

I think one of the hardest parts about troubleshooting whether unexpected issues are “garbage in, garbage out” data-quality issues or whether they’re “I wrote bad code” issues is getting clarity about the input data quality from people who do the data entry without making them feel like I’m accusing them of failing to do their jobs.

Next.js for novices and dabblers

22 Aug 2021 🔖 architecture jamstack tips web development 💬 EN

Like I did with Gatsby, I want to make sure it’s easy for novice web developers to explore if Next.js is right for them.

I aim to lower the bar by bringing you along as I learn it myself.

I also hope to abstract core Next.js concepts away from the command-line tools often used to implement them so you can keep your computer clean while you dip a toe into Next.js’s waters.

Database fiscal year in review: 2020/2021

19 Jul 2021 💬 EN

Time for a performance check-in, and I realized I might as well brag publicly about some things I did in my database work this past year.