Welcome to Jon's Journal. This is my personal web site where I post my random thoughts, pictures, projects, and anything else I feel like writing about.
When I decided to start blogging again for the first time in many years I decided to use this as an opportunity to level up my skills with Tailwind and accessibility, etc.
I think I had two iterations of this template that I built in Tailwind, but could not get them to look how I wanted. Just little tweaks here and there that were not as easy to iron out as I had hoped. When choosing to use a UI framework you sometimes obscure the complexity of things.
So back to the basics. This actually turned out to be a good time to refresh my CSS skills and learn some of the newer stuff added to CSS over the last ten years such as the light-dark( ) function for defining different color schemes for light or dark mode browsing.
Digging into the colors, I managed to hit WCAG 2.2 AAA for color contrast for all my text elements in both light and dark mode.
Next step is cleaning up some more of the ARIA markup to make the site work better for those using assistive devices.
Once I am done with the various housekeeping tasks I can get back to actually writing.
Cheers,
–Jon
I have spent some evenings and weekends lately building a new template for this blog. As a new project, I can’t just do a new project for the sake of doing it. There has to be some end result that I gain from. In this case, I am using this as an opportunity to work more with Tailwind to build out the user interface. I’ve been using Bootstrap for like 12 years now and decided to try something different.
Another goal with building out the new UI with Tailwind is I am going to try and focus on building it from the ground up with accessibility in mind. So to that end, I am hoping to refine my skills further.
Unfortunately I cannot really get into the groove with writing more consistently until I get this site looking just how I want it. I am too stubborn haha.
Cheers,
–Jon
I used to be diligent with my blogging back in the aughts, and would post at least two or three times a month. It was mostly an expressive exercise to keep my mind sharp.
But as with many things that interest us in life, sometimes other things end up eating into our available time, we lose focus or interests wanes.
Here we are in 2025, and I feel I need to start writing again. The last time I actively maintained my old blog I was in my 30s. Now I am in my 50s and feel the need to write more than ever.
So consider this the point of origin of Jon’s Journal 2.0 where I will be sharing my thoughts about life, politics, programming, hockey, hiking or whatever else interests me on any given day.
Cheers,
–Jon