I’ve been back into coding this month, on my own projects and not just for work. The passion isn’t “burning bright” anymore, but I’m working towards reigniting it by finding coding little bits of things doing what I want, etc.

https://jtiong.dev is a bit of a commit msg logging script that I had written and integrated with my local GitLab installation; but as you’ll see if you visit the site – October’s my highest number of commits in recent memory on personal projects.

The reason for the skewed figure is because up until about August 2022, I had most of my projects stored in GitHub. Some part of me still thinks I should keep things in GitHub – but I’m looking into using that as more of a backup style system.

The Code Backup Project

I know GitLab has a “mirror repository” feature – but unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be working very well for me (too fiddly).

So to get around that I’ll be looking at building my own little automated flow:

It’s not an ideal setup – but I think it will work for my needs. Because of how nagging it is, I may well end up writing the automation script entirely in PHP (this way, I can integrate notifications to myself over Discord and other things).

Other Projects

This month though, I also worked on:

• snackpack.gg – integrating it with my Snack Pack discord server which’ll let friends and family login with their Discord accounts, and see private content on the domain (members only areas)
• topdownshooter – my first sort of game project, name is self explanatory, written in Godot Engine, sort of to prove to myself that I can make a game that’s more than just a random prototype. It should have levels, a menu, and be packable as a real release
• Private Broadcasting System – a private broadcasting system for a friend – she’s an online radio DJ and runs a virtual club which people can tune in and listen to/participate in a talkback radio show

All-in-all, it’s pretty cool to get back into doing some tinkering things, and having the time and wherewithal to do them.

I work on a lot of different coding projects from a personal perspective. Usually depending on mood, or other factors, I will jump from project to project, working on them whenever time permits. My most recent role in my career left me a little bit short of coding and development time; focusing instead more on project delivery, and team management to get a big product across the line at a FinTech startup.

So, to get my coding juices flowing once more, I thought I’d whip up some self-hosted work:

• Deploy and install GitLab to manage my code
• Build a site to track my activity to get back in the swing of things

Cue, https://jtiong.dev

What’s the purpose of this?

It is a simple quick overview of my activity on the code repositories that I’d ported over to my localized GitLab installation. It will let me see what I’ve been working on recently, and keep me motivated, on continuing to polish my skillsets.

What this project demonstrates

Well, this demonstrates several things I thought might be handy going forward:

• Deploying an NGINX Proxy (on an external machine), via Docker Compose to manage the incoming connections to jtiong.dev and other various websites
• Deploying GitLab Community Edition onto a different physical server for my personal use and code management
• Creating a Docker Compose deployment based off the php7.4-apache image for the site
• Using my own framework Spark – to create this site
  • Using a self written URL Router
  • Using PSR-4 to autoload classes
  • Interacting with the GitLab REST API
  • Using Bootstrap 4.x for a very simple frontend

Source code to the site can be provided as needed to, although I really need to clean it up.

It’s been good getting back in the saddle for some basic web development again! 🙂

So, I’ve got a “main” website – https://jtiong.com (which is currently Error 500’ing)

Which runs on a fairly old version of Laravel. Since it’s inception; the site was used mainly as a central one-stop shop for everything about my presence on the internet. Oh how times have changed.

Nowadays, it makes more sense with a number of domains I own, to split up the content and footprint of my stuff on the internet from a singular jtiong.com website, into a number of different sites based upon what people trying to find me for, or to categorise the activities I do.

Domains I have include:

• jtiong.com (this site) – my personal blog, which is strictly just personal, non-professional stuff
• jtiong.dev – where I hope to eventually host some sort of software development info about myself
• jtiong.network – currently a serverless site experiment, however I hope to change this
• jtiong.com – a central landing page from which people click through to the other domains

So what does this mean?

Two new projects! The .com and .dev domains which will be important as part of my “online resume” so, I really should get them done sooner rather than later…!

However, this also means I need to really look into how I implement these!

Laravel will be driving:

• jtiong.com – a landing page/gateway system
• jtiong.network – services and resources for friends & family

I’m looking at using the Socialite package for Laravel to integrate login via Discord, this’ll mean that certain links and features will only be visible based off friends & family that have certain roles in my Discord server; or at least, that’s been the original intent.

My Own Framework (which I call Spark) – will be driving:

• jtiong.dev – dev blogs, resources

This dev site will be more of a technical dump to keep me consistently working on my coding skills. The setup of this site is a traditional website that’ll ride on the tails of my intended GitLab installation. The fallback of course, is to just use the GitHub API, but I’ll only start looking at that later.

The site should just start listing out my commits and on what projects they’re made on to try and keep things accountable and interesting. It’s just a cool little showcase project.

More features might be added later relevant to doing development work in the future!