I have tinkered my way through writing blogs over the years but never really found a way to keep things moving the way I wanted to. I’d build a site, write a blog or two, and then move on. The friction related to writing new things was too much.
Enter Astro
I experimented with Astro a while ago but never really got very far in setting it up. However, after spending a few weeks diving back into making, I decided it was time to spin up the thread again.
My first thought was to move my photo portfolio and blog to a new location with Astro as the backend. However, I have paid Squarespace to host that site until this coming November. (8 months from now, as of writing this) So, that wasn’t going to work.
I remembered that I’ve holed away tons of domains over the years and i wanted to expand the tenten universe a bit more. So TenTen Bits..the blog was born. (You don’t need a link..you’re already here)
How did I get this done?
Claude Code.. is a miracle worker.
My day job is as a product manager. Being able to write spec sheets, describes problems to the little robot, and then refine the plans until I arrive at a design I’m happy with is mostly my day job. The only difference is that instead of waiting for Engineering to do their work, I can just spawn subagents, let them file pull requests, review the code, and approve/merge it into production.
It’s been a game changer. I’ve written a journal app, a game score tracker app, this blog, and other projects. All from the comfort of my product manager shelter.
Exploration with a purpose
The reality is that none of these side projects has been particularly necessary. (With the possible exception of the Duplicate File Finder and Photo Culler apps I’ve written. Those have both saved me time and money so far.) These explorations have all be in service of better understanding the tools that my engineering teams at work are required to use and how I can use those tools in my day to day life.
Keep in mind..I can’t do certain things for corporate data security reasons, but understanding the art of the possible is still crucial.
Onward and upward
We shall see where this goes. Hopefully, i’m not just making yet another blog I will abandon over time. Who knows. Maybe it will be. This time though, I have thoughts to share about where these new technologies can take us and I want to document some of the things I’ve built over time. Ultimately, I’d like to use this space to help drive content on my YouTube channel that I mostly forget about too.