iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Simon W @simonw.xyz · 06/10/2026

Here's a bonus option to add: "sessionUrl": false If you have the remote session link enabled it'll also dump a link to your session transcript in your commits without asking.

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 19/02/2026

A few of years ago I started migrating away from Outlook email. In the last year or so especially I've started getting a lot of spam in my old outlook inbox, but given that Microsoft is a company with near limitless resources it's probably just some really sophisticated spam filter avoidance, right?

A series of emails with extremely dodgy looking sender names, each with a very dodgy looking pdf attachment, using non-latin characters in English phrases like "Final Warning" and "Payment RequireD".

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 29/12/2025

Me: My new year's resolution is to drink loads of water. AI server farms: Me too 😂

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 11/12/2025

Every time I have to look up the Intersection Observer API to do something like this I think "this should just be a CSS thing", it'll be a good day when this is baseline - damn.

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 11/12/2025

Going live on twitch: #laravel dev learning #symfony - how hard could it be? www.twitch.tv/mister_simon

twitch.tv

mister_simon - Twitch

Dustforks

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 26/11/2025

Thinking about how AI is not a hammer making every problem look like a nail. But a hammer which people say works like all the other tools while the hammer desperately smiles and nods.

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 07/11/2025

Spent some time fixing a #css issue which bugs me with most implementations of sticky stacking cards; Scrolling is often imprecise or jumpy, so you usually end up with cards unsatisfyingly overlapped... Unless you add a little "wiggle room": svelte.dev/playground/7...

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 29/10/2025

I followed a creative itch and learnt about SVG paths. It was hard to find the motivation today, but I'm pleased to have done *something*. Take a look :) #svelte #webdev svelte.dev/playground/a... Also shout out to @joshwcomeau.com. Their exceptional SVG articles inspired me out of the day's funk.

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 24/10/2025

Tiny #php tip: Swap `array|Traversable` type-hints for `iterable`. Arrays, a primitive type, can't inherit or implement interfaces. So to type-hint something you can pass to a `foreach` you would otherwise need to accept arrays and traversable objects. The iterable alias handles that for you!

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 30/09/2025

How does Bigfoot protect his data? It's all in cryptid

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 04/09/2025

Typescript feels like an uphill struggle and I'm either going to push through and get stronger or end up with arthritic knees.

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 08/08/2025

I think the point is that many people are coming to believe it is a magical everything machine, with infallible logic. So it's funny when the logic it fails on is just so incredibly basic.

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Reposted by Simon W

Maggie Appleton @maggieappleton.com · 06/08/2025

I've been trying to articulate why the fawning, complimentary responses from AI chatbots feel so insidious to me. I've finally figured out how to explain it. Wrote a long piece on how current model training and design choices threaten our critical thinking skills: maggieappleton.com/ai-enlighten...

maggieappleton.com

A Treatise on AI Chatbots Undermining the Enlightenment

On chatbot sycophancy, passivity, and the case for more intellectually challenging companions

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 30/07/2025

Could see this effect being cool for a music video of some other application where the messiness would be creatively welcome.

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 30/07/2025

I achieved this effect by copying the input camera keyframes to a new camera, spreading them across a longer timeline to allow it to interpolate between poses, and finally tweaking FOV and tinkering for a while.

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 30/07/2025

Inspired by a recent Posy video - I wondered what would happen if you Gaussian Splatted a selfie video. Seems that @jawset.bsky.social Postshot seems to get quite confused, tries it's best, and creates something wonderfully trippy as a result.

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 17/07/2025

*skips failing tests*

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 15/07/2025

As soon as I learnt that AI would use "delve" a lot, it disappeared from my day to day speech. Quite the opposite effect.

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 27/06/2025

Aside from that thought, this looks very smooth to work with. Great stuff! 😎

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 27/06/2025

I wonder how the styles are compiled? Will it include every colour and size variant class even if your app only uses one? Difficulty in purging unused styles is probably not a huge issue, but a definite tradeoff if the UI lib has a lot of components and variants.

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 24/06/2025

Just started tinkering with @astro.build. Had been considering rewriting my Nuxt based personal site with Svelte, but maybe I just go for Astro instead. No need to throw away *all* the old code - just islandify all the things. We shall see. In any case, very intriguing.

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 20/06/2025

Super impressive, damn. Wish we had simple pseudo selectors for things like this. One thing, would it be possible to name variables / custom properties a little more descriptively before you share it? Would really help with more quickly understanding the magic you've cast haha.

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 16/06/2025

I'd be interested to know what you came up with. Seems like quite a complex use case. So - Livewire pulls a model with info about the layout, Livewire then hydrates a layout component with appropriate attributes and renders it out for your email? But there's some snag along the way? Tricky.

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 11/06/2025

Solved: Use Blade::renderComponent($item) to properly render a component you instantiated yourself. Bonus: Use "withAttributes" to manage the component's attribute bag programatically.

Shows a component's blade view. Each item in the items collection is output using Blade::renderComponent($item).

Setting the navbar's items as a collection of components. The "Home" Link instance's attributes are customised by calling withAttributes to set a "btn-home" class.

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 11/06/2025

The problem I'm really having is that calling `->render()` on a component doesn't actually do the same thing as the blade engine does - passing all the public properties and methods as variables, and importantly - passing the attribute bag along, etc. Time to dig deeper.

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 11/06/2025

Working on a menu system and I'd like to compose the it as a heirarchy of Component classes. Sadly, instantiating them yourself causes errors to be thrown on render, due to no $attributes being set. Maybe Laravel is telling me I should be handling more of this logic in the view...

An example Navbar component, the constructor sets the items property to a collection of Link and Dropdown components (Home, About, Services Dropdown, etc).

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 11/06/2025

Ergo split columnar keyboard, never touching mouse for max ergonomics, but sitting like an absolute gremlin in an old ass chair with only one arm rest.

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 22/05/2025

Just saw an issue on an open-source project where someone had passive aggressively posted a full convo from an LLM on how to fix the problem. Including a suggested schedule of sprints. It took so long to scroll past, oh my god. Why are people like this?

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 11/05/2025

I think there are parallels between learning a new keyboard layout and gaining fluency in sign language finger spelling. I want to reach a point where I stop thinking of letters and develop muscle memory for common patterns. Maybe it's time for me to start drilling diagrams and trigrams in BSL. 🤔

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 30/04/2025

Am I right that the symbolic-ref command is much the same as `git branch --show-current` ? So your snippet grabs the current branch name, switches back to main + pulls, then deletes the branch you just came from?

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 23/04/2025

#laravel people, do you use the Context system much? I've not found myself reaching for it since it's addition, but maybe I'm just missing a trick.

A screenshot of code taken from the laravel docs, showing how middleware can be used to add the current URL and a trace ID to the request's Context.

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 16/04/2025

The fact that you can animate the radius makes this even cooler. Like, going from a near perfect circle to a rotating and hexagonning shape is damn impressive. Even going from a pointy hexagon to a roundy one is super cool. I'm sure there's lots of potential with this for creative interactivity.

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Reposted by Simon W

CSS by T. Afif @css-only.dev · 16/04/2025

💡 CSS Tip! Shapes with rounded corners are a nightmare in CSS but it's now easy with the new shape() function! 🥳 Let's start with a classic: The Hexagon css-tip.com/rounded-hexa... Yes, you can animate the radius and rotate the shape. Modern CSS is cool!

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 02/04/2025

I figured it'd look awful, but had to at least consider it haha

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 02/04/2025

A feels clearer. If your attributes also take arguments you could end up with a lot going on in a single line version. Is there a C option where you take B and break it over several lines, or is that invalid?

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 26/03/2025

This is *really* interesting. Surprisingly simple. Also, I love having picture-in-picture when working across several workspaces and this could provide a slightly hacky way to achieve that on any machine with a browser. Just record a window and call requestPictureInPicture(). 😂

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 24/03/2025

Every time I read the words "vibe coding" I lose a few brain cells

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 22/03/2025

This was brilliant. Truly. I grew up with the flash internet. Animated, 3d modelled, web programmed. I loved Flash and the Macromedia ecosystem of programs. Yet I've never loved Adobe for even a second. Fully on board with trying to elevate open-source alternatives and take the power back. Ty!

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Reposted by Simon W

CSS by T. Afif @css-only.dev · 13/03/2025

An infinite logos animation? Here is the real infinite logos animations! ♾️ css-tip.com/infinite-log... #CSS

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 11/03/2025

This Unorthodox Eloquent post I read ages ago by @muhammedsari.me is great. Found it again today while trying to remember Tappable Scopes - a clever way around magic method local scopes. There's a bunch of really fascinating ideas in this post alone, and there's a follow up post with more! #laravel

muhammedsari.me

Unorthodox Eloquent - Muhammed Sarı

I've been working with Eloquent for over half a decade now, and it's time to share my bag of tricks. Buckle up, it'll be a good ride!

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 10/03/2025

My next drum practice project should be learning this set and playing through in one sitting.

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 04/03/2025

I approve of the random drum key 😂. They end up everywhere except at the kit when you need one.

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 18/02/2025

They're only limited by their managers' ability to spot their lack of understanding. Some day these people will be overseeing others, thinking they too are doing great. Ha. I hope a stronger counter-culture emerges when the limits of AI can no longer be swept out of sight with investor money. 🤞

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 18/02/2025

Spotted the CSS Painting API draft spec. The idea that using a little CSS and JS you could turn any element into a <canvas> via background-image is wild. They have an example rendering an image placeholder, but imagine passing your paint worklet a blurhash variable, rendering an lqip while loading.

drafts.css-houdini.org

CSS Painting API Level 1

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 14/02/2025

What is it that you dislike in particular, out of interest? The way it looks / theming, the dev side of things, inflexibility / build complications? What motivated the change?

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Simon W @simonw.xyz · 14/02/2025

I forgot to post the link to the svelte playground: svelte.dev/playground/3... Enjoy!

svelte.dev

Conic Gradient Clockface - v2 • Playground • Svelte

Web development for the rest of us

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