Recent Posts

A black and tan dachshund named Elvis sitting on wooden flooring, wearing a pink bandana with watermelon print. He has soulful dark eyes, floppy ears, and is looking directly at the camera with an alert, friendly expression.

Welcome Elvis to this blog!

| In General
| 8 minute read

Over the last few days, I’ve been working on putting Elvis, our Dachshund, onto this blog’s banner. The goal was to create a smooth animation where Elvis appears by rising from the bottom of the banner, then leans his paws over the border—adding some personality to the site while exploring modern web animation techniques.

A surreal, colorful collage of musical instruments, notes, and music symbols.

Using Claude to create a playlist for Exploding Kittens

| In Miscellaneous
| 1 minute read

What happened was that last weekend, my family and I played Exploding Kittens: Good vs. Evil, which we were recently gifted. What a fun game! A random idea struck me: why not ask Claude to put together a playlist for us?

Hi Claude, we‘re about to play a few rounds of Exploding Kittens (“Good vs. Ev…

Abstract, wave-like structures, like sand dunes, from blue-green to yellow.

Introducing: Office hours!

| In General
| 2 minute read

What are office hours? Office hours have their roots in academia, where professors would publish certain hours at specific days of the week where students could simply come in and ask questions. It’s an easy way to meet without the back and forth of finding a date/time that works. Why office hours? …

A magical library interior with towering curved bookshelves reaching up to a ceiling covered in golden autumn leaves, warm ambient lighting, and a silhouetted person standing before a large circular window that floods the space with golden light

How to turn imposter syndrome into a superpower

| In Productivity
| 5 minute read

Here’s a secret: after almost 13 years at Amazon Web Services, I still felt like most people around me were smarter and more capable than me. And now, as a blogger looking at other writers? That feeling hasn’t gone away. If this sounds familiar, you’re experiencing imposter syndrome—and you’re in ex…

A dreamy, ethereal landscape with soft pink and purple clouds in a pastel sky. Flowing sine waves made of code characters weave through the scene in translucent ribbons of light, creating gentle wave patterns. Several colorful butterflies - including blue, purple, and pink ones - flutter gracefully across the composition. The overall mood is serene and fantastical, blending programming elements with natural beauty.

Animating SVG with plain JavaScript and CSS

| In Tech
| 5 minute read

Refactoring my banner into SVG was only the beginning: the next step was animation. I continued with the “AI as a teacher” model and asked Claude to explain to me concepts like IIFE, how the browser’s DOM processes SVG elements, which SVG properties are GPU-accelerated and other CSS performance conc…

Abstract digital landscape with flowing wave-like forms in vibrant magenta, purple, and cyan colors, overlaid with glowing geometric patterns and data visualization elements against a starry black background.

This time I coded it myself: using AI as a teacher

| In Tech
| 7 minute read

If you’re a returning visitor, you might notice the header image on this blog looks more sharp and crisp—that’s because it is! ✨ After creating my own URL shortener, I wanted to modernize my header image. I built it back then in 2022 using p5.js, but the resolution wasn’t great. Now I wanted a more …