<p>I&#39;ve been using Jekyll to run this blog for the better part of the last six years. But recently, I&#39;ve been giving serious consideration to switching to Gatsby or Next.js.</p>
<p>I have several reasons for making the move away from Jekyll. Some is pure personal preference, some involves the technology used, and part of it is to learn something new.</p>
<h2>Missing Features &amp; Personal Preference</h2>
<p>There are several features I&#39;ve been wanting to add to my blog. The biggest one is probably search. I&#39;ve been looking into adding search, and while possible, doesn&#39;t seem as easy as I would hope it to be. Part of this also comes down to the fact the Jekyll is built on Ruby, which is not a language I know all that well. I&#39;ve been able to keep this going, but it&#39;s still a hill to climb. This is the personal preference part of things. I&#39;m a .NET &amp; Javascript developer primarily, and that&#39;s where my comfort zone is. It&#39;s not a knock on Ruby, just not something I want to spend a lot of time delving into.</p>
<h2>The Tech Stack</h2>
<p>I also wanted to move to a stack I better understood. I&#39;ve been working with React for a couple years on the side, and now I&#39;m using it professionally as well. I thought it would be beneficial and easier to work with if I had a better understanding of the tools &amp; language used.</p>
<p>Another thing I was looking into improving was my build/deployment process. I host my blog on AWS using their S3 storage. The upside is that hosting is dirt cheap for me (granted there&#39;s very little processing power for my site, nor do I have many visitors). The downside is that there&#39;s a lot of caching involved so any changes can take a day or so to be reflected. There are ways around this of course, but I&#39;m a little cost-conscious and am worried about racking up too large a bill. This can also cause any embarassing bugs or typos (or anything else really) to be visible for much longer than I&#39;d like.</p>
<h2>Making the Switch</h2>
<PostImage src="/images/posts/2021-04-27-switching-platforms/nextjs.svg" alt="Next.js Logo" width={207} height={124} centered shadowed={false} />

<p>I&#39;ve given it a fair amount of thought and right now I believe I will be starting the design and implementation of my blog using Next.js. I used Next.js with <a href="https://advancedreact.com/">Wes Bos&#39; Advanced React &amp; GraphQL Course</a> &amp; <a href="https://github.com/kpwags/digitalfamilycookbook">Digital Family Cookbook</a> so I have some familiarity with it over Gatsby. But while I have some familiarity with it, it wasn&#39;t heavily used in either project so I figure this will also be a learning project.</p>
<h2>The Process</h2>
<p>I plan on building this out in the open and will be starting with a <a href="https://github.com/kpwags/new.kpwags.com">brand new public repository on GitHub</a>. I&#39;m going to build it using feature branches (like I&#39;ve been doing with my fitness tracker) with issues created for most work. Unlike my current blog where I mostly just work off of the main branch, I&#39;ll be doing this one the &quot;proper&quot; way. I&#39;m even planning on keeping at it with future posts.</p>
<p>I&#39;m also hoping to write about how things are going and the progress I&#39;m making as well as why I&#39;ve chosen doing things the way I do. I&#39;ve also been toying with streaming some of the development on <a href="https://www.twitch.tv/kpwags">Twitch</a>.</p>
<p>There&#39;s no rush to build this, so while I&#39;m going to try to devote some time on it regularly, I also want to continue to work on my fitness tracker. So keep checking back as I&#39;m sure there will be more posts between now and when I officially make the switch.</p>


Switching Platforms

<p>I still can&#39;t believe it&#39;s already April, it really seems like it was just New Year&#39;s yesterday. Alas, I figured I&#39;d check in with how I&#39;m doing with my goals.</p>
<h2>Staying Active</h2>
<p>I&#39;ve been doing a good job staying active. I&#39;m lifting 5-6 days a week, I&#39;m running more now that the weather&#39;s gettiing a little nicer. I feel generally pretty good about my activity level. My issue is that I struggle with the willpower to lay off the snacking. Now that I&#39;m working from home, it&#39;s a little too easy to just munch on things here and there. I&#39;m a little disappointed in myself sometimes, but I also do my best to remember that it&#39;s also not that big of a deal. I&#39;m hoping to focus this month on trying to stick within my calorie goals.</p>
<h2>Improving My Development Chops</h2>
<p>I&#39;m continuing to learn both at work, and at home. I&#39;m continuing work on my fitness tracker app. It&#39;s development is taking a little bit of a roundabout, which I&#39;m currently writing a post to explain. The important thing is that I&#39;m making progress and generally feeling accomplished with what I&#39;m producing.</p>
<h2>Continuing to Read</h2>
<p>I&#39;m on my fifth book of the year and have mixed in keeping up with my <em>Economist</em> subscription, so I&#39;m happy with where I&#39;m at. It&#39;s nice getting into bed a little early, winding down reading before going to sleep.</p>
<h2>Write More</h2>
<p>I&#39;ll chalk this up as a mixed bag. I have a whole bunch of post ideas and some started. I just need to actually take the time to sit down and write them up. A lot of them are more in-depth than posts like this one.</p>
<h2>Everything Else</h2>
<p>I ended up getting my first COVID-19 shot mid-March. I am getting my second this weekend &amp; my wife is next week, so I&#39;m happy to really see the beginning of the end of this thing. Hopefully more people can line up appointments and get the shot. I&#39;m also hoping I&#39;ll be able to start playing hockey again soon too.</p>
<p>I also ended up re-doing my office this past week. I switched from an ultrawide monitor to dual 27&quot; 4k monitors. I have to say I like the extra screen real estate. I ended up moving my ultrawide downstairs to use for work. Since both my wife and I work from home and regularly have calls, I ended up creating a second office in my basement for work so that we&#39;re not interfering with each other. An added benefit of this setup is that it gives me some separation between &quot;home&quot; and &quot;work&quot;. When I&#39;m downstairs, I&#39;m working; when I&#39;m upstairs, I am on my own time.</p>
<p><PostImage
    src="/images/posts/2021-04-06-three-months-down-in-2021/desksetup.jpg"
    alt="My new desk setup with dual 27'' 4k monitors"
    width={1920}
    height={1167}
    centered
    shadowed
/></p>
<p>My wife and I have now also started to re-do the kitchen cabinets. It&#39;s a smaller home improvement project, but we&#39;re taking the cabinet doors off, sanding and re-painting everything, and installing new hardware. It&#39;s not exactly HGTV-worthy, but it should spruce the kitchen up a little bit until we get around to redoing it entirely.</p>
<hr />

<p>Still not much to report, but figured I&#39;d post this to help keep myself accountable. Stay safe out there!</p>


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