More from Darek Kay
I enjoyed the busy city life in Melbourne for a few days, but soon the adventurer and nature seeker in me took over again. It so happens that one of the best road trips in the world is around the corner: The Great Ocean Road. It is also the world's largest war memorial, dedicated to soldiers killed during World War I. After a wonderful group trip in Rotorua, I was again looking to share the experience with other people. It didn't take long to gather a group, which coincidentally consisted only of Germans. We roughly followed the guide from Lauren. In a time of popularity-oriented LLMs and influencers sharing "must-do's" after spending one day in a foreign place, I highly appreciate the valuable knowledge of a local person. In theory, one can do the Great Ocean Road in a single day, but I can't imagine that being a good experience. Instead, we decided to stay a night in Port Campbell. It was also nice to have another driver on board, so we could split the driving time. Bell's Beach The first highlight was Bells Beach, the home of the world's longest continuously running pro-surfing competition (since 1962). Despite the rain, we spotted multiple people surfing the waves. Anglesea Golf Club "There are no kangaroos in Austria…", but there are in Australia! We spotted a couple of them along the way, but they quickly disappeared into the bush. We decided to go to the Anglesea Golf Club, known for its wild kangaroos. You can buy an overpriced tour on the golf course, but there were lots of kangaroos outside as well. As responsible tourists, we kept our distance, but they seemed to be only mildly interested in us. Aireys Inlet Our next short stop was at Aireys Inlet and the famous (among Australians) Split Point Lighthouse. Memorial Arch Half an hour after the official beginning of the Great Ocean Road in Torquay, we reached the Memorial Arch. The traffic was low, so we took the opportunity to get the iconic photo. Kennett River After a short detour to Teddy's Lookout, we headed toward the next spot. Kennett River is a tiny village, mostly known for wild koalas living nearby. We followed the path through the forest, but actually spotting those furry bears turned out to be a challenge. However, with four pairs of eyes (and some exchanges with other tourists), we were able to see four or five different individuals high in the trees. Keep your eyes open when driving, too. If you notice people standing next to the main road, there's probably some wildlife around. Loch Ard Gorge After checking into our hostel, we had enough time for a quick stop at Loch Ard Gorge. Twelve Apostles A few minutes away, right before sunset, we finally reached our main destination: the Twelve Apostles. It was by far the most crowded place, and I wouldn't like to see what it's like around noon with all the day visitors. However, there's a lot of space, so we mostly didn't have to fight for a viewpoint. While the sunset and the view were great, it wasn't the life-changing experience it's claimed to be. It's a solid 8/10 spot, but nowhere near the hype it is given. We followed the recommendation from the guide and revisited the Twelve Apostles the next morning. I'm so glad we did, as the vibe is different and it's way less crowded. Stargazing After a long and exciting day, we were all tired. Two of us had some motivation left, and we decided to once again see the Milky Way. We didn't have to drive long to reach a fully dark spot. The sky was slightly cloudy, but it was a great experience nonetheless. London Bridge The next morning, we started at the London Bridge. The formation was once connected to the mainland, but it collapsed in 1990. Gibson Steps The Gibson Steps Beach differs from the other spots, as you can climb down the steps to reach the beach, offering a different perspective. We also did a quick and fun photo shoot! Redwoods Otways I still remember being impressed by the tall redwoods in Rotorua, so I was looking forward to visiting the Redwoods Otways. The place is also great for a picnic. Waterfalls Given the time, we decided to visit two out of the three recommended waterfalls. The 45-minute walk to see the Triplet Falls is a nice way to escape the heat. While the waterfall itself is impressive, there's no good (official) spot to enjoy it unobstructed. Because of that, I found it underwhelming. Our second choice was the Beauchamp Falls, mainly because it is possible to swim near the waterfall. It takes 1.5 km one way to reach the spot, and it's slightly more demanding. For the most part, we had the spot all to ourselves. After reaching the waterfall, our expectations were literally chilled. Two of us didn't even try to get into the water, while another person tried but backed down quickly. Following my Yes Man approach, I once again took up the challenge. After my caving adventure, the water was not as freezing as I had expected. Still, at only 10–15 °C, it officially counted as my first ice bath. Without a wetsuit, I quickly noticed all kinds of body reactions, but it got better over time. Finally, I swam all the way to the waterfall to round out this unique experience. Me jumping into the water was enough to motivate my companion to follow through, and we both enjoyed the dopamine hit. After getting out of the water, I had to face my initial worry: getting warm again. My extra-light towel was enough to get me dry. I put my clothes on and rushed back to the car, using the heat from the physical activity. I'm not sure how healthy this was, but it worked pretty well 😅. Fauna Apart from kangaroos and koalas, I had two noteworthy bird encounters. A laughing kookaburra A red wattlebird
“Well, I’ve made up my mind, anyway. I want to see mountains again, Gandalf.” ― The Lord of the Rings Wānaka is a smaller, less commercialized resort town compared to Queenstown, with a population of around 13 000, but it's as exciting. On my way to Wānaka, I made a quick stop at the Crown Range Lookout, which offers an amazing view over the Queenstown area — especially during the golden hour. Once reaching a cozy hostel in Wānaka, I was greeted by a fitting name tag that has been selected for me. The main "hub" of the town is scattered around Lake Wānaka, where you chill or do some water-based activities. Probably the most popular spot in Wānaka is That Wānaka Tree, a willow tree surrounded by water from the lake. Yes, that's the official name coming from the #ThatWanakaTree social media hashtag. During the day, the place is too crowded to take a good photo of "New Zealand's most famous tree", but after the sun goes down, you have this place all to yourself. Put your camera on a tripod, hope for a clear sky, and you can get some magical shots. Lord of the Rungs The activity I was looking for the most was Lord of the Rungs by Wildwire, a via ferrata next to a waterfall. With 450 meters, it is the highest waterfall via ferrata in the world. You can choose from three levels, differing in length and price. It's a single track with early exits, so level 3 continues after completing the first two levels. I was concerned about the difficulty of level 3, but I went all-in. Surprisingly, hanging on the side of a cliff and looking down didn't scare me as much as I thought. On the contrary: it enforced my wish to transition from bouldering to rock climbing in the future. I've once had a fear of heights, but over the years, I seem to have mostly cured it. Now I enjoy the thrill. During the tour, we've crossed seven suspension bridges. On some, we've suspended ourselves by the rope and let go for the extra thrill. The first two levels are fun, but I didn't find them physically challenging. The third level is what makes this activity one of my highlights in New Zealand. It included steeper sections and one overhang. With my bouldering experience, the track was fun but rather cozy. Others were visibly struggling, but still managed to complete the climb. At one point, we walked behind a 60m waterfall — a truly memorable experience. Once we've reached the top, a helicopter picked us up. It wasn't my first time flying in a helicopter, but I've never been on board during landing 😄. The descent was quick but exciting. In total, it took us around five hours to complete the via ferrata (including the preparations). Roys Peak Wānaka is also a great base for hikers. One destination that has been mentioned over and over was Roys Peak, along with its less famous sibling Isthmus Peak. I wanted to see the mountains again and decided to go with the more popular option. Both hiking tracks are described as somewhat demanding, but after the Tongariro Crossing, I was up for the challenge. Many backpackers went for the sunrise, but this meant waking up around 3:30 am. Due to my planned night activity (see next section), I wasn't willing to do that. However, I did like the idea of starting a hike before the sunrise, and I also had to justify buying a head torch in Queenstown 😄. I decided to start around 6 am. What seemed like a lose-lose scenario (waking up early but not seeing the sunrise at the peak) was actually a great decision. I still experienced the sunrise during the hike, which was maybe even more beautiful. More importantly, the otherwise crowded peak was mostly empty: the early birds were hiking down, while regular hikers haven't arrived yet. I was aware of the demanding hike, but the first challenges came before even reaching the starting point. First, I was greeted with a frozen windshield. With no ice scraper in the car, I had to improvise one with a credit card, which worked pretty well. Another problem was finding a parking spot. I arrived at 6:30 am, and the official parking lot was already full, even at the end of peak season (pun intended). I found a somewhat sketchy spot and was once again glad I rented a compact SUV car. Later I discovered a paid parking lot that I could have used. The hike is straightforward yet steep. I only needed my head torch for the first half an hour. After an hour, I could enjoy the sunrise with a beautiful view. A few curious sheep completed the scenery. After 2 hours and 20 minutes, I've reached the famous lookout. I already briefly mentioned Instagram factories, and this one is no exception. You can observe one person after another walking or running to the end of a short path. I didn't intend to take the famous shot, but as mentioned, the spot was almost empty (compared to midday). We were maybe 10–15 people in total. I took my telephoto lens with me just in case, and I was glad I did. I offered a group of people an offer they couldn't reject. After taking turns, each of us got a "unique" photo (as unique as taking the same photo hundreds of times a day can be). Luckily, a cloud has formed out of nothing right behind the spot, adding a little bit of mystery. While I did make a few poses, the best part was the actual view. It's a little bit cliché, but this spot feels like standing at the top of the world. Now, when people talk about Roys Peak, they often think about the Instagram spot. In fact, from all the people I've met and talked to, only one person reached the actual top. I had to do it. After all, it's called Roys Peak and not Roys Instagram Lookout 🤷 It took me another 30 minutes to reach the top, and it was definitely worth it. I think this section offers equally great (and unique) photo opportunities. On my way down, I saw a few paragliders launching from the mountain. It took me 2 hours and 10 minutes to walk straight from the top to my car. I've met lots of hikers going in the opposite direction again, especially from France. 💡 I was curious about the missing apostrophe in names like "Roys Peak". It's probably following the U.S. Board on Geographic Names policy dating back to 1890 to discourage the use of possessive forms and apostrophes. Total lunar eclipse This year's total lunar eclipse was mainly visible in New Zealand and Australia. Even after my long hike, I was definitely not missing that, especially as the sky was almost clear. I was fortunate to experience this spectacle in real time. Once the earth shadow fully covers the moon, we get what is called the Blood Moon, due to its red color. This is not to be confused with the honey moon in June, which has only a slight yellow/red tint.
“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” ― The Lord of the Rings Dunedin is a former Scottish settlement, which becomes apparent after a quick walk through the city. The name is an anglicization of the Gaelic name for Edinburgh. It is counterintuitively pronounced /dɐˈniːdɘn/ (duh-nee-din). I arrived on a Saturday during the Chinese New Year Festival, so the city was full. In fact, there was not a single accommodation available in the entire city, as a person I drove with had to find out the hard way. The first thing I noticed is how hilly the city is. Driving here was an interesting experience. I should have seen that coming, knowing about the Baldwin Street in Dunedin: the steepest street in the world. The slope is 35%, which means the ground rises 1m for every 2.86m you cover horizontally. It's famous enough to have tourist buses stop here. I also liked the botanical garden, as it was a mix of a park and a forest. Otago Peninsula Next to Dunedin, there is the Otago Peninsula, a nature and wildlife paradise. The main road mostly follows the coastline. While it is scenic, it also contains countless curves, but I got used to that by now. I like to check Google Maps for points of interest along the route I take, which helps me find less known spots like the Pineapple Rock. My main destination was OPERA: The Otago Peninsula Eco Restoration Alliance. It is a private eco-reserve dedicated to conservation, rehabilitation, restoration and education. The former working farm is being transitioned back to a native forest, offering a safe habitat to many species. I booked the Canopy to Coast Tour, which is an educational hike through the reserve. The yellow-eyed penguin (hoiho) is one of the rarest penguins in the world and is classified as endangered. In the past two decades, its population decreased by 75%. Saving those birds is one of the main goals of OPERA. The smallest penguin species, the little blue penguin (kororā), is also living in the reserve. We've spotted a few in their small shelters. The reserve is also a great place for other birds. While still sitting in my car, I've already spotted the first one, a tūī. Similar to parrots, they can replicate human speech, but also other sounds, like glass shattering. The endemic New Zealand fantail (pīwakawaka) became one of my favorite birds. They like to follow people during a hike, as our steps might reveal bugs below the earth. In Māori mythology, the fantail was responsible for the presence of death in the world. To this day, the bird is considered either a good or bad omen, depending on the region. The swamp harrier (kāhu) is one of only three birds of prey in New Zealand. Around the beach, there were many sea lions and fur seals. Fur seals are more closely related to sea lions than seals, making the distinction between those two species tricky. We've also learned much about the regional flora. The endemic tree nettle (ongaonga) is one of the most poisonous plants in New Zealand. The sting reactions can last for weeks and the reaction can be fatal. As it's a native species, OPERA doesn't remove those plants. Driving in New Zealand: Part II For the south island, I have booked the same small economy car model, as I got used to it. After talking about my plans with the lady from the rental company, she highly suggested to get a compact SUV instead for just a few more dollars. I haven't driven a car of that size before, but I've been warned about the curvy, hilly and narrow roads on the south island. I didn't have the feeling that she was trying to squeeze more money out of me (she argued against a proper SUV). But I also remembered my friend telling me a similar story, so I decided to do it. Spoiler alert: it was a great decision. Do you remember how proud I was to not have confused the windshield wipers and turn signals in New Zealand? Well, that's because my Suzuki Swift didn't have them switched as I had assumed 🤦 This time, the controls were actually inversed. It only took me until the parking exit to notice that 😆 The mistake happened three or four times after that, so it was still fine.
“I know we are going to take a very long road, into darkness; but I know I can't turn back.” ― The Lord of the Rings Black Abyss Waitomo is mostly known for their glowworm caves. Most people book a short boat ride to view the countless New Zealand glowworms (Arachnocampa luminosa). I probably wouldn't include this activity in my trip if there wasn't a much more adventurous alternative: the Black Abyss, a caving tour. After putting on a wetsuit, you start with a 35 m abseil into a pitch dark cave. While you're waiting for the others, you can already admire the first glowworms. Next, you do a short zipline inside the cave, with more glowworms above you. After a short break with hot chocolate and a cookie, you jump with a big tube into the dark, refreshing water. What follows is a short light painting photo session. For the next hour or so, you are swimming and/or floating on your tube through the big cave. Despite the wetsuit and the hot chocolate, it was freezing cold, getting worse over time. My teeth were chattering, slightly distracting from the otherwise awesome experience. Once you reach a dead end, you form a "tube train" with your group, and the guide slowly pulls you all back to the starting point. You can now once again enjoy thousands of glowworms in what feels like a star-spangled sky. You also learn a few interesting facts about those creatures. Glowworms are not related to fireflies in any way. It's mostly the larvae that exhibit the largest bioluminescence. They use this technique to attract prey, and the hungriest individuals will glow the strongest. There's also a small waterfall, which makes for another great photo opportunity. After you give back your tube, you'll continue the caving tour by foot, following more narrow passages. Finally, you are given a decision to leave the cave the easy way or climb your way out on cascading underground waterfalls. I probably don't have to mention the option I've chosen 🧗 I expected this to be the highlight of the north island, and I wasn't disappointed! While I've had many "first time" experiences in New Zealand, this tour combined a couple of those in a 4–5 hour time span. Omaru Falls On my way to Waitomo, I did a short walk to the Omaru Falls. I can imagine the waterfall looking nice during sunshine, but after rain it's just a brown soup falling down. With long exposure, it still looks interesting, though. Fauna There are no (new) birds this time, but I've made some other encounters. Another cicada A single goat chilling at a river. A captivated T-Rex in Te Kuiti
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TokyoDev has grown substantially over the past few years. We’ve expanded our community, dramatically increased the scope and frequency of our events, and have curated a library of articles for international developers. Despite all that, the way we run the business hasn’t changed much. I’ve continued to coordinate most of these activities myself, making the final decisions and keeping everything connected. In short, TokyoDev cannot run without my daily input. That approach worked well when TokyoDev was smaller, but it’s increasingly limiting how much we can accomplish. To help the business grow further, I wanted to find someone to take over some of my responsibilities and bring a fresh perspective. This is a significant step for me personally, as while I have worked with many contractors over the years, I have never actually hired a regular employee. Most importantly, I wanted to ensure that this person was someone I could trust to understand what TokyoDev stands for, and to make decisions in line with our philosophy. So I’m happy to announce that Scott Rothrock is joining TokyoDev full time as our Head of Operations. About Scott Scott has lived in Japan for nearly 20 years and has worked as a software engineer in multiple industries and environments, including small Japanese-owned businesses, overseas employers, and international companies based in Japan. Until the end of October 2026, he was the head of the Japan Markets team at Kraken Technologies, where he led an international team of software engineers in delivering complicated, regulated products on strict timelines for Japanese electricity and gas retailers, while also ensuring compliance with evolving organizational and global standards. He’s made a name for himself both inside and outside Japan as a kind, effective mentor who can cultivate great engineers and leaders. Scott’s previous role in TokyoDev Some of you may already know Scott in another capacity, as he has been involved with TokyoDev since 2022. He began as a community volunteer and later became our community manager, which also included responsibilities such as managing our article pipeline from submission to publishing. When I created TokyoDev’s Discord, I had no previous experience running an online community. Scott joined soon after I started and began helping other members, stepping in when people behaved inappropriately, and configuring our roles and permissions and safety features. I was impressed by his initiative and asked him to become an official moderator in January 2023. Outside of his role as a moderator, Scott has always pushed TokyoDev to grow; for example, he arranged internet events such as livestreamed AMAs and interviews. He organized TokyoDev’s first meetup as a volunteer in February 2023, which taught me that there was interest in TokyoDev events outside of the internet. By the end of 2023, I had brought him on as our part-time community manager. What I saw throughout his tenure was that Scott continued to take initiative in expanding TokyoDev. Scott was one of our first external contributors, writing about his experience living with a disability in Japan. He encouraged me to expand and refine both our editing and submission processes so that we could reach out to even more contributors and platform their perspectives. The editorial team now consists of him and Rebecca Callahan, and they’ve had a hand in every article that TokyoDev has published. In other words, since 2022, Scott has shown that he cares about TokyoDev as much as I do. He is invested in what we do and why we do it, and shares my vision for what TokyoDev can become. What changes now Scott’s experiences as an engineer, a mentor, and a leader make me confident that, as our Head of Operations, he will continue to help TokyoDev mature. A big part of what has made TokyoDev successful is that I see the software developers who use our site as my peers and genuinely want to help them. Scott shares that perspective, and will join me in ensuring that TokyoDev remains true to its principles while we grow. So what changes in the short term? Nothing dramatic. I will teach Scott about managing TokyoDev as a business, and he will document our processes and products as a part of that learning. He will also look for areas of improvement while ensuring that we remain compliant with regulations and labor law. Over time, I will hand over some other responsibilities. I will continue to run TokyoDev, but TokyoDev will become less dependent on me for its day-to-day operations. Long term, I’m excited about what this will enable us to do. TokyoDev has always been about helping international software developers build successful careers in Japan, and bringing Scott on full time puts us in a much better position to continue doing that. We look forward to writing the next chapter of TokyoDev together.
Kidz Fun Art is a drawing, colouring and animation app for kids that I’ve been building since 2021. It runs in the browser also as a simple wrapper app on iOS, iPadOS and Windows. It wasn’t getting a great click through rate on Google, even for people who directly searched for it. So, for two days I took a hard look at how fast it loads and how search engines see it. It wasn’t flattering. This post covers what I found, what I changed and what the graphs say now. Short version: on a simulated slow phone, the homepage’s Largest Contentful Paint got about 2.6× faster (15.9 s to 6.1 s) and its first load is about 82% smaller (4.2 MB to 0.75 MB). I also fixed a set of SEO mistakes that are, frankly, embarrassing to write down. I’ll write them down anyway. Part 1: Google had no idea what the site was for I started by reading 16 months of Google Search Console data. 9,380 clicks in total. About 9,200 came from people who had typed “kidz fun art” or a close spelling. People searching for what the app actually does (“coloring app for kids”, “ai art for kids”, “make a comic book”) sent the site 164 clicks. In 16 months. Total. When there was a relevant page, Google ranked it well. The site was #1 for things like “drawing app for kids ipad” and a German query that means “paint by numbers app without ads”. There just weren’t many relevant pages. Then I looked at the code, and the cause was obvious. The homepage <title> was “Kidz Fun Art” in all 12 languages. That’s a fine name, and a terrible title. It tells a search engine nothing. The homepage’s first <h1> was the pricing table’s “Choose your experience”. I was, in effect, telling Google that the most important thing on my homepage was the checkout. Every blog post had the same meta description: a generic line about “news, updates, tips”. Each post’s front matter already had a perfectly good excerpt field that nobody read. Blog posts had two <h1>s: the site header and the post title. There was no structured data at all. The sitemap that redirected every single URL This one stings. The sitemap is the one file whose whole job is to say “here are my URLs, please index them”. Mine listed 17 URLs, and every one of them redirected. The sitemap build used an environment variable that resolved to kidzfun.art. The site lives on www.kidzfun.art, so every URL got a 308. Only the English blog posts were listed. The other 11 languages appeared only as hreflang alternates, which pointed at redirecting URLs too. There were no <link rel="canonical"> tags on any page and no hreflang in the page <head>. Google was left to guess which URL was the real one, and it guessed wrong a lot. What I changed: The sitemap is now built on https://www.kidzfun.art, with 204 URLs: every home page, blog index, blog post, About page and gallery page, in all 12 languages. Each one lists all of its language alternates plus an x-default. A shared SeoLinks component adds an absolute canonical (www, no query string) and the full hreflang set to every public page. The ?v= cache-busting URLs that had been showing up as duplicates now canonicalise to the clean URL. /xx/blog/yy/... URLs, which returned a 500 in production (oops), now 308 to /blog/yy/.... Login, account, debug, export and embed pages send X-Robots-Tag: noindex, follow from next.config.js, so they stop using up crawl budget. robots.txt now mentions the sitemap. Novel idea. Why Google skipped half the site Search Console’s Pages report had 93 of 174 known pages not indexed. Every reason on that list traces back to the mistakes above: “Page with redirect” (22): that sitemap, plus internal links to the non-www host. “Duplicate without user-selected canonical” (18): I hadn’t selected any canonicals. Fair cop. “Crawled, currently not indexed” (39): mostly translated posts that Google reached through redirecting URLs, plus thin pages like /login. “Discovered, currently not indexed” (12): Google found these and decided they weren’t worth a visit. With no sitemap entry and no hreflang, I hadn’t given it a reason to. On-page fixes Titles and descriptions: Each blog post got its own seoTitle and description, in all 12 languages. The meta description now comes from the post’s excerpt, which is what that field was for all along. The About pages take their title and description from their own localized Markdown. They had been sharing an English title and a generic description. One <h1> per page: A # heading inside a post’s Markdown now renders as an <h2>, so the post title is the only <h1>. The About page opts back in with a keepH1 prop. Its Markdown heading is the page title. This fix arrived in two parts. The first part left the About page with zero <h1>s. I noticed, eventually. Structured data and social tags: JSON-LD for the home page (the app), blog posts (articles) and the embedded videos. Open Graph and X/Twitter tags on every public page, so shared links get a proper card. A real 404 for deleted gallery images: The AI gallery shows a friendly “AI Artwork Not Found” page when an image has been deleted. It used to return 200 OK, which Google calls a “soft 404” and dislikes. It now returns a 404 with noindex, and a 503 if the Firestore lookup itself fails, so a database hiccup tells crawlers “come back later” rather than “this is gone”. Part 2: Making the homepage fast The homepage is the app. It works offline, so every dialog (save, stickers, colouring pages, “get an adult”, “no wifi”) is server-rendered into the HTML up front. That’s a deliberate trade-off, and I kept it because I want new users to be able to immediately be able to start drawing as soon as they launch the app. What I hadn’t thought about was what it meant for the network. What the homepage downloaded before the app could start I measured the live site with a Lighthouse-style mobile profile: slow 4G (1.6 Mbps, 150 ms latency), 4× CPU slowdown, empty cache. First load: 4.5 MB over 198 requests. The homepage HTML alone was 358 KB, with about 77 <img> tags in hidden dialogs. The browser dutifully fetched every one of those images. The script that starts the app (main.min.js, 191 KB) sat at the very end of the document, so the browser found it last and gave it whatever bandwidth was left. The app script finished arriving at about 14 seconds. The CPU was not the problem. Every long task was under 300 ms. This was purely about bandwidth and request order. I had built a very polite queue and put my own app at the back of it. Watch the queue The waterfall is a simplified illustration. The milestone times (first paint, LCP, load) are measured: slow 4G + 4× CPU, local production build, median of 3 runs. My Largest Contentful Paint was the “Contact support” link The canvas doesn’t count toward LCP, and the toolbar buttons are small. So on a slow load the largest thing painted was… the loading dialog. The loading dialog fades in its “Taking a while? Contact support” text after 5 to 7.5 seconds. On a slow connection, that text became the page’s LCP element, at 15.9 s. I was measuring my page speed by how long it took to suggest the user complain about my page speed. There’s a lesson in there somewhere. The fix wasn’t to change the dialog. It was to make the app start sooner, so it paints before that text ever appears. What I changed Preload the app script. I added <link rel="preload" as="script"> in <head> for main.min.js and errorHandler.min.js. The <script> tags stay where they were, so execution order doesn’t change. The browser just starts fetching them before any image. This one line did more than anything else on this list. It’s a little humbling. Turn the three dialog GIFs into MP4s. Three animated GIFs: an arrow pushing pictures into a tablet (927 KB), a dancing rainbow pencil (650 KB) and a paper plane (305 KB). That’s 1.9 MB of decoration in dialogs most visitors never open on their first visit. I re-encoded them with ffmpeg: H.264 High profile, -preset veryslow -crf 20, yuv420p, +faststart, constant frame rate taken from each GIF’s frame delay. The commands are committed as scripts/gif-to-mp4.sh. The result is 130 KB in total, with SSIM between 0.988 and 0.993 against the originals. The pencil needed tpad=stop_mode=clone:stop_duration=0.2, because ffmpeg’s GIF reader drops the final 250 ms hold and the dance lost its big finish. The new <video autoplay loop muted playsinline> tags render at exactly the same size and class as the old <img> tags. Alt text moved to aria-label. Locked colouring thumbnails were full-size PNGs. In the colouring page picker, locked pages used the full-size colouring PNG as their background image, inlined into the HTML. That came to about 1.3 MB on every first visit, to draw thumbnails in a dialog that was closed. They now use the small image, set when the picker opens, like the unlocked ones always did. Sticker thumbnails wait their turn. I tried loading="lazy" first. It didn’t help: Chrome fetched the images before the stylesheet that hides the dialogs had arrived, so as far as it knew they were visible. Sticker thumbnails and the media library’s YouTube thumbnail now use data-deferred-src. They load 3 seconds after the load event, or as soon as their dialog opens, whichever comes first. The service worker preload starts after load. The offline preload queue (about 2 MB of colouring pages and stickers) used to start while the page was still loading and compete with it. Now it starts after the load event. Same files, same offline result, no fighting for bandwidth. Analytics is async. Nothing waited for it, so nothing needed to block on it. Cache headers. /images/*: max-age=86400, stale-while-revalidate=604800. It had been max-age=0, so every image was re-checked on every visit. Versioned /js, /css and /addToHomescreen files are immutable for a year in production. Offline still has to work Offline support is a core feature, so “just don’t download it” was never an option. Some of the changes above put it at risk, and a couple of things turned up along the way: Safari plays video from byte ranges. Safari requests video with Range: bytes=.... Answer that with a full cached response and the video won’t play. The service worker now answers Range requests from its cache with a proper 206 Partial Content slice (lib/util/rangeResponse.ts, with unit tests). First-visit gap: on a first visit the service worker isn’t controlling the page yet, so dialog images only reached the offline cache on the second online visit. The page’s own dialog images and videos now go to the front of the offline preload queue on the first visit. I nearly downloaded my whole site, 12 times over. The service worker cached every <link href> it found in the page. The new SEO work had just added canonical and hreflang <link>s pointing at all 12 localized homepages. So every new visitor would have downloaded about 12 extra homepages, in languages they don’t speak, “for offline use”. I caught it before production. The service worker now skips rel=canonical and rel=alternate. Safari stopped the service worker mid-download. The old preload queue ran on timers after the request had been answered. Safari considers an idle service worker fair game, so it stopped it after the first few images. The page now sends images in batches of 10, and the service worker caches each batch before it replies. A page lock-up I’d never noticed. resizeDialog added a new “image loaded” listener every time the window resized. With lots of images loading at once, the listeners multiplied until the page locked up. It now attaches one listener per image, which, in hindsight, is how many it needed. Part 3: The blog Blog index cards used the full 1920 px screenshots as covers, up to 500 KB each, in a box about 200 px wide. Each card was a little billboard, shrunk down by the browser on every visit. Covers now go through next/image with sizes that match the actual card widths, so the browser gets a resized WebP. The first few cards get priority. The rest load lazily. The first sizes hint was too small at some widths and made covers blurry. It now matches the real card widths, up to about 630 px between 769 px and 1028 px wide. Post pages: The cover image gets fetchpriority="high", and images further down the post load lazily. Five images were recompressed in place, keeping the same filenames and dimensions. The PNGs came out about 4× smaller and the JPEGs about 40% smaller. I deleted a 1.1 MB cover.png that nothing referenced. All 12 translations of that post used cover.jpg. The PNG had just been sitting in public/ taking up space. Results on the slow 4G profile: /blog LCP went from 13.3 s to 1.8 s. A typical post went from 3.9 s to 1.7 s. The gallery didn’t get faster, on purpose. It got a 5-minute edge cache and a cached Firestore image count, which fixed its slow server responses. I decided not to change its 20 full-size PNG thumbnails, so its lab LCP barely moved (8.4 s to 8.6 s). That’s a choice, and the chart owns it. Part 4: Lighthouse homework After the speed work went live I ran Lighthouse on the production homepage (mobile) and cleaned up what it flagged. Performance stayed in the low 70s, so I have some more work to do, but it’s moved nicely in the right direction. Part 5: Telling the search engines Fixing the site is half the job. The other half is getting crawlers to come back and notice. Google Search Console: Resubmitted the www sitemap. Clicked “Validate fix” on “Duplicate without user-selected canonical” and on the redirect errors. Requested indexing for the main language homepages and the top blog posts. The quota is about 10 a day, so it’ll take a few days. Wrote down a baseline from the Performance report, so in 4 to 8 weeks I can tell whether any of this worked. Bing Webmaster Tools: Submitted all 204 sitemap URLs through URL Submission. The daily quota is 10,000, so no trickle-feeding needed. Bing’s index also feeds DuckDuckGo and several AI search tools, so it’s cheap extra reach. Most of Bing’s “SEO recommendations” pointed at old ?v= URLs and old titles. They’ll clear as Bing recrawls. What I’m not watching: the Lighthouse score. Google ranks on real-user Chrome data (the Chrome UX Report): a rolling 28-day window, judged at the 75th percentile. So the honest answer to “did it work?” is “ask me in a month”. How I kept from breaking things The app has hundreds of unit and integration tests, all of which still pass (even though they do take over 30 minutes to run). I also manually regression tested all the riskiest changes. Hopefully I don’t make things worse before they get better… Lessons, mostly at my own expense Read your own sitemap. Actually open it and click a URL. Mine had been quietly redirecting for who knows how long. <link rel="preload"> for the script that boots your app is the cheapest big win there is. Browsers fetch resources in the order they find them. If your app script is at the bottom of a 358 KB document full of images, it really is last in line. Check what your LCP element actually is before you try to make it faster. Mine was a “Contact support” link. GIF is an image format from 1987 that I was using as a video format. A real video codec beats it by an order of magnitude at the same quality. try/catch doesn’t catch promise rejections. I knew that. My code didn’t. Every <link> you add to <head> is something your service worker might decide to download. Speed scores are for diagnosis. Rankings come from real users. Fix what the lab finds, then wait for the field data. Epilogue You’re still here? Wow. Cool. After all this, I’m hoping that users notice nothing other than quicker app start times. I’m looking forward to keeping an eye on traffic and retention in the coming weeks. Wish me luck!
It's time for a dev blogger's favorite topic: blogging about my new blogging setup. After migrating my blog from Hexo to Eleventy, building a photography website and creating a personal one-pager, it was time to find a new digital home for all my projects. If you notice any issue after the migration, please let me know. I redirect the RSS feed to the new domain, but you might want to update the feed URL in your reader. Motivation I've been maintaining three different websites under two different names: a mostly developer-oriented blog, a photography portfolio and a one-pager gluing everything together. When I started blogging about my sabbatical journey, I was thinking about making yet another page to create a clear separation. I've decided to do the opposite and merge all my websites into one instead. As I further reduce my dependency on social media and third-party services, it has become even more important to have my own space and practice POSSE. Every decision I've made was driven by two main goals: simplicity and personality. Setup I've stopped chasing the latest and greatest. I want to keep the setup as clean as possible, which means pulling fewer dependencies. Every package adds complexity and maintainability costs, so I've only added what was necessary — no more Gulp, Sass or Tailwind. Instead of taking one of my existing websites as a starting point, I created this project from scratch. I reused some of my previous code, but I didn't want to take over any technical debt (especially with the advancements in CSS). The foundation of this website hasn't changed: Eleventy (Build Awesome). It covers the fundamentals of a static site and offers a great level of customization. I've made my project more and less dependent on Eleventy at the same time: I replaced Gulp as my build pipeline with pure Eleventy processing. I replaced most shortcodes with Markdown alternatives (and markdown-it plugins), which are better supported by editors like Obsidian. I've also replaced the Nunjucks template engine with Liquid, which comes with a few trade-offs. The main reason was to avoid creating a new collection for every set of posts I render. With Liquid, you can apply array functions like filtering or sorting in the template itself: {% assign drafts = collections.all | where: "data.isDraft" | reverse %} {% for draft in drafts %} … {% endfor %} Another advantage is having date formatting included, so I don't need another library or custom code. You can even set a default date format, so you don't have to provide it each time. What I don't like is the verbosity of the template language, although I've gotten used to it by now. Nunjucks: {{ "/tags/" + tag + "/" }} {{ modified or created or date }} {% set perspectives = ["dev", "photography", "life"] %} Liquid: {{ "/tags/" | append: tag | append: "/" }} {{ modified | default: created | default: date }} {% assign perspectives = "dev, photography, life" | split: ", " %} After migrating my existing content, I've noticed the build taking way too long, both in the dev server and the production build. I've found out that the Eleventy template cache is turned off for Liquid by default. This was useful during development, but when updating actual content, it caused every template and partial to be constantly recalculated. After turning the cache on, this issue was resolved: eleventyConfig.setLiquidOptions({ cache: true }); Check the colophon for the full tech stack overview. Perspectives The main challenge was finding a way to separate and present my main personas. The Venn diagram intersection of people interested in software development, photography and my personal life is probably small. I could use tags, but they don't offer the level of personalization I was looking for. Most personal blogs separate the content by post type (blog post, note, photo), but this doesn't fit my use case. Instead, I've decided to structure my website around three perspectives, a term I have borrowed from the Eclipse IDE. Each perspective comes with its own avatar, tagline and bio. If someone is interested in everything I share (hi Mom!), they can still view all my posts. Design Since building my photography website, I've made many changes, but I never got around to share an update. The biggest change was the design, which I have used as a blueprint for the new website. I've decided to mimic a social timeline/feed, which most people are familiar with. At the same time, it should be clear that it's a personal website and not yet another walled garden. Typography is an important part of every design. The first step is to choose between a system font stack and a custom font, which comes with the usual performance vs. personality trade-offs. I've decided to go with a uniform look across all devices. I've settled on Source Sans 3 for copy text and Hack for code. Another big change was introducing a sidebar. I always felt like the empty horizontal space was "wasted" on a desktop device, but getting the sidebar UX right is challenging. I'm happy with the result, especially with the last two panels adding a personal touch to the design. Images I've made several changes to the handling of image files. To make them compatible with Markdown editors, I had to replace my custom picture shortcode. The official Eleventy image plugin is a popular choice, but it violates my simplicity goal and doesn't support everything I needed. I've decided to go with a plain Markdown image markup and a single image file (no format fallback or 2x version for retina displays). Additionally, I wrote a markdown-it plugin to turn the optional title parameter into a caption. As for the file format, both WebP and AVIF have excellent browser support. For each image, I select the format based on the quality and file size. For my photos, I'm using WebP for the timeline thumbnails and JPG for the full-size version. Theme picker There have been some recent discussions about dark mode toggles, and I considered going for a light/dark solution based on the user's OS preference. Driven by the personality goal, I knew I had to add at least one more theme, so a proper theme picker was necessary. Similar to navigation, people like to hide the theme selection on mobile devices behind a burger menu or a dropdown. I prefer the solution by Sarah L. Fossheim, where all available themes are displayed above the page footer. A friend was scrolling through my new website, and their first question was "Why is the theme picker in the footer?". This tells me the solution was a good idea — I don't think he would have noticed a typical theme button in the header. The implementation follows standard practices: Use the light or dark theme as default based on the user's OS or browser preference. Store a selected theme in the local storage and use it as the single source of truth. Prevent a flash of inaccurate color theme. Make the theme play nicely with bfcache. I might have slightly gone overboard with my third theme, but the nostalgia kept me adding more and more features. Enjoy going back to the 90s: Feeds As browser vendors decided to remove XSLT support, I didn't bother to style my feed. Instead, I've created a new web feeds page, listing all available feeds and a short explanation. I provide one feed for every perspective and one with all my posts combined. I once offered tag-based RSS feeds. This was useful for my sabbatical, but even there I had only a single subscriber. Now, all tag feeds redirect to their main perspective feed. I've also dropped the JSON feed, despite having at least 16 subscribers. Given that every web feed reader supports Atom feeds, I don't see the value of providing a JSON alternative. A JSON feed doesn't add much complexity, but handling different media types (post, photo) and properly escaping the content is one more thing to implement and maintain. Quality assurance I've put a lot of effort into my new digital home, and I want to make sure it stays in good shape. I've included several tools, most running automatically as part of the CI pipeline: eleventyDataSchema — lint Eleventy data values like titles or dates markdownlint — format/lint Markdown files Vale — lint content (grammar, writing style, formatting) Lychee — find broken links (internal and external) Evaluatory — check accessibility and validate HTML Oxlint — lint JavaScript files Eleventy linters are another option to analyze a template's output, but I haven't found a use case for it yet. Not everything can be automated, so I also did the following manually: Test with Chrome, Firefox and Safari Test with Polypane Test with Google Lighthouse Test with a screen reader Test with JavaScript disabled Test with CSS disabled Test at 200% zoom Test with a bigger browser font size Test with custom fonts disabled Test with delayed assets Performance It's difficult to compare the performance of two separate websites with that of a combined one. Some parts got worse, e.g. bigger font files and more CSS. At the same time, I've noticed that gzip compression was turned off for anything but HTML for a few years now (I must have missed it when upgrading nginx) 🙈. One improvement was to implement on-demand assets. For example, the lite-youtube-embed CSS and JavaScript is only loaded if a <lite-youtube> element is present on the page. As before, JavaScript is fully optional (except for interactive demos in individual posts). I've been using a mix of <noscript> and CSS to hide elements that require JS (like the theme picker). I don't like the user experience of pagination, so I avoided it for years. But now that I have almost 300 posts, I've decided to finally add it. I display 30 posts per page, with images further down still being lazy-loaded for better performance. I haven't applied pagination to tag pages, as that's more complex with Eleventy. Bits and pieces Here are some other noteworthy changes: I've removed post-specific social share images and use a single WebP Open Graph image instead. I've dropped JSON-LD. Open Graph and microformats are sufficient. "Naming is hard" is a common expression in software development, but it also applies to photograph titles. I've decided to use a counter as the title, e.g. #0100. Sometimes I do come up with a title that I love, like the Castle in the Sky, so I might mention it in the description. On a photo page, you can now open the previous/next photo using the left/right arrow keys (in addition to the existing navigation buttons). It's now possible to filter photos by date, gear, or location. Check the explore page for an overview. I've learned about and used some experimental CSS features (with progressive enhancement), like scroll-triggered animations or squircle corners. I've added an AI statement on my LLM usage. I finally have a proper about page. Cool URIs don't change, but it's inevitable when moving to a new domain. All my previous URLs are redirected, except for some assets that are no longer used. I will keep the old domain, so the redirects will continue to work for a foreseeable future. I've kept my previous Easter egg and added a few more. Have a happy hunt! 🕵️♂️ Inspiration I visited hundreds of personal websites looking for inspiration. Here are a few that I kept coming back to: Emma Goto. I love Emma's approach to presenting the variety of her interests, even though I went a different route. Brennan Kenneth Brown. This website has so much to offer. It's a great example of what the open web looks like. Rex Barrett. The sentence "Collecting hobbies is my hobby." hit home — so much that I had to steal borrow it for my short life bio. Conclusion This project was mostly about merging the content of two websites into one. I knew this would take a considerable amount of time, but I still greatly underestimated the effort. In the end, it was all about the journey, not the destination. I loved fine-tuning the design and tweaking little details that probably no one will ever notice. I still have many more ideas left in my backlog. How do you like my new digital home? If you have an opinion, let me know! Reply via email
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