One Year Later: what have I been up to

It has been more than one year since my last post, on which I decided to stop making excuses and start writing more. One year later it seems like I wasn’t really capable of meeting my original goal, but it’s better to be late than to be sorry, right?

So now, after so much time has passed, I feel that it is right to reflect on what happened on this last year and maybe, who knows, get some ideas to choose where to go next. And what better way to start than to talk about the new website layout?

I’ve abandoned the idea to run an website on someone elses theme. Even though it can be easier to start, in the long run, it is much harder to maintain… at least on my own experience. So I choose to start a new theme from scratch.

Well… kinda. This is still based on a pre-made theme. But one made with the purpose to be just an skeleton (or a template, if you will) for a complete theme.

I choose to go with Dirk Olbrich’s hugo-tailwindcss-starter-theme. It’s a fairly minimal Hugo theme, that also pre-configures Tailwind as the default styling method. The main reason on wich I choose this route is because CSS is really the worst part to maintain on your website. Maybe that’s why some people choose to get rid of it all together!

But I still want to have a unique design on my website, to make it stand out on the web. Hopefully in the future my own content will be more than enough to warrant visits, but, at least for now, Tailwind will be a much appreciated aid in maintaining this website up to date.

So why did I choose to go with Tailwindcss? Maybe the reason is that I really hate comming up with CSS class names. But the real reason is just that it’s easier. Easier to write, maintain, and so on. It makes CSS trivial.

Tailwindcss trivialises CSS to a point where you don’t even need to write CSS. How does that work? It comes with pre-made atomic classes that should go directly on your HTML elements, with no need to come up with your own classes. But the real kicker is the atomic CSS philosophy, which is quite similar to some other software philosophies that stood the test of time.

Do only one thing, and do it well.

You may notice that Tailwindcss classes only have one attribute. This means that you’ll have to use multiple classes for a single HTML element to get the same functionality that you would with abstract CSS classes. The big game changer is that you don’t have to come up with abstract class names and you will not run the risk of breaking your website each time you have to change an abstract class that is used by multiple HTML elements on your webpage.

As soon as Tailwindcss idea clicked with me I choose to go with this route. I found myself writing my own atomic classes when writing CSS, so why not go with it? You’ll only have to rely on a compilation process so that Tailwind can generate the required CSS for your production environment, and maybe use a lot the documentation to learn the classes names, but if you are already experienced with CSS it shouldn’t be too dificult.

On to the next one: I was also writing a text about the historical significance of the city were I live in and an unexpected conection to a popular two wheeled mean of transportation, but some circunstances beyond my control prevented me from publishing it. I hope to be able to rewrite it and publish it on a later date. Stay tuned!

On this past year we also were blessed by God with our third daughter. She had some problems gaining weight on her first month, but thank God she put up some hefty weight on these last months and she is in perfect health right now! Thank God!

Our first two daughters are also developing really well. I’m teaching them basic grammar with my wife and they are progressing exceptionally well. They can already identify all vowels by sound and shape, and many consonants too, despite both of them being only two years old. They also got a big inclination to hearing us read books to them and are always asking us to read the same 6 children books we have over and over again, wich made me really happy! (I hope to get more for them soon, and also take them to the public libary some day).

I also started a new company in the financial sector, and I hope to talk more about it when the time comes.

I also started teaching programming and piano lessons for children. I hope to talk more about it soon, but if you’re interested in having remote programming classes for your kids with someone who is a software developer and a dad also, feel free to reach me out at melo.mateus@proton.me.

Oh, and I almost forgot. I finally got a .com domain. Now I’s less akward when I talk with others that a have a website, and I can finally focus on creating an email with my domain on it with no worries that the mail I sent will end up on someone’s spam folder, such a likely scenario for my old .xyz domain.

Thank you for reading up to this point, and if you’re interested in anything else feel free to reach me out, or read some of the articles and links I have put above. May God bless you and I hope that you have a wolderful day!