{ "version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1", "title": "Blogging on Toby Geeks Out! ", "icon": "https://avatars.micro.blog/avatars/2026/27/1292398.jpg", "home_page_url": "https://tobygeeksout.micro.blog/", "feed_url": "https://tobygeeksout.micro.blog/feed.json", "items": [ { "id": "http://tobygeeksout.micro.blog/2026/07/16/the-web-is-my-playground.html", "title": "The Web Is My Playground", "content_html": "

This hit me. Web development has always been my passion and hobby — not a side hustle, not a product. Just something I love to do.

\n

I came back to Micro.blog earlier this year after being away for five years, and I've been tinkering with my blog ever since. Learning what I can do with it, trying things out, breaking stuff on purpose. I've tried a lot of platforms over the years and most of them were pretty limiting. Micro.blog gave me room to actually play. If you're curious what I've been up to, my blogging category has a bunch of posts about it.

\n

I'm glad I found it. Looking forward to many more rounds of tinkering — making my blog look better, improving things over time, and writing more. Just having fun with it.

\n
\n

Build silly, build simple and above all else, build for the sake of creativity.

\n

Go Have Fun With the Web — Alex White

\n
\n", "date_published": "2026-07-16T15:06:55-04:00", "url": "https://tobygeeksout.micro.blog/2026/07/16/the-web-is-my-playground.html", "tags": ["Blogging"] }, { "id": "http://tobygeeksout.micro.blog/2026/07/16/a-big-refresh-for-toby.html", "title": "A Big Refresh for Toby Geeks Out!", "content_html": "

My last big update to the blog was back in April. Since then I've been quietly adding small things here and there, nothing major. But today I decided it was time to do a full redesign.

\n

Here's the why behind it. My header, feature area, and subscribe box were all painted in heavy navy blocks, one after another. It's not that blue is too much — I still love it — but this is an indie web blog, and I want it to feel simple. Easy to navigate. Something you can read leisurely without any noise getting in the way.

\n

I wanted the blog to feel lighter and more open, something pleasant to move around in. Cleaner. Maybe minimalist, though I'm still not totally sure that's the right word for it.

\n

So this time, I went lighter. Clean, simple colors, and a few small animations to give the site some life without going overboard. It feels fresher already.

\n

One bigger change: I dropped the pill-shaped morphing nav. That one was short-lived — I just wanted to see how it looked for a while, but in the end I decided to go back to a sticky header like before.

\n

The one change I kept: the logo now quietly hides itself as you scroll down, while the header itself stays put. It also shows my avatar and site logo together, and has icons in the nav now. That avatar is a new one too — updated both on the blog and in my Micro.blog account settings.

\n

I also redesigned the logo itself. Glasses now replace the two e's in \"Geeks,\" and \"Out!\" tilts up slightly with a terracotta underline underneath.

\n

\"Toby

\n

I also redid the home page. No more pagination — it just shows the 5 or 6 most recent posts, then you head over to the archive for everything else. Longer posts now fade out near the bottom once they pass 800 characters, so you get a taste and click through to keep reading. On mobile, there's a bottom nav bar now instead of a hamburger menu, and on the home page it just stays put as you scroll.

\n

The archive page now lets you expand and collapse categories instead of scrolling through one long list. And on the subscribe side, I added RSS as an option on the home page strip, right alongside email — single posts now have their own subscribe block with that same choice too.

\n

On single posts, I redid the post titles. I had updated them not long ago, but I wasn't happy with how they turned out, so I built a better version this time. I also decided to drop the background block that used to sit around the title — now it just blends into the same background as the rest of the page, which looks a lot cleaner.

\n

On those same posts, I also redid the table of contents styling and colors to match the new lighter look, and added a recent posts section at the end so it's easier to keep reading once you finish one.

\n

The bottom nav bar also quietly disappears while you scroll here, so it stays out of the way until you need it. Single posts also get a back button now that takes you right back where you came from. So if you were browsing the archive and tapped into a post, back takes you to the archive. If you came from the home page, back takes you to the home page.

\n

The newsletter page finally got some real attention too. I installed the Newsletters plugin earlier this year and eventually got around to fixing up the CSS and styling for the newsletter list and single view.

\n

Today I took it further — I wanted it to feel like you're actually inside an email while browsing past newsletters, almost like scrolling through your own inbox. That's the direction I went with this time.

\n

I'd read a few blog posts about doing a light and dark toggle before, and thought it was a great idea, mostly for eye health — bright, light colors at night can be rough on your eyes, and I didn't want that during nighttime reading.

\n

I found this article about time-based background color transitions, and it gave me an idea.

\n

Since I'd already decided to go lighter with this redesign, I hadn't thought much about nighttime reading until this article made me rethink it. So I decided to implement something similar on the blog: instead of a plain on/off toggle, a sunrise and sunset background transition based on your own location — kind of like the Night Shift feature on Windows and Mac, but built into the site itself.

\n

The background now shifts through the day based on your own clock, right where you're reading. Pre-dawn starts deep navy, then eases into a dusky navy as sunrise gets close. Sunrise brings in a pale, warm cream — morning is intentionally lighter than evening. Daytime settles into the site's regular colors, completely unchanged. As sunset approaches, it shifts into a warmer cream tone, easing back into dusky navy and then deep night navy after dark. It's live now, quietly shifting in the background as the day goes on.

\n

This is what I've been tinkering with to get things closer to how I want them. Take a look around the site and let me know what you think. I'll probably keep making small changes quietly as I go — some areas still need a bit more tinkering.

\n
\n

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.

\n

— Winston Churchill

\n
\n
\n

Never quite done. Always a little better.

\n", "date_published": "2026-07-16T15:04:37-04:00", "url": "https://tobygeeksout.micro.blog/2026/07/16/a-big-refresh-for-toby.html", "tags": ["Blogging","Spotlight"] }, { "id": "http://tobygeeksout.micro.blog/2026/07/13/theres-no-right-way-to.html", "title": "There's No Right Way to Blog, Just Mine", "content_html": "

\nI read a post from Dan Q this week called You Don't Have to Blog Like Me, and I agree with every bit of it, 100 percent. There's no right way to do this, it really is just preference. His post is basically a permission slip: you don't have to tag things, keep a schedule, have a feature image, split your posts by type, or have a tidy answer ready when someone asks what your blog is even about.\n

\n

\nThat last one hit home. My blog could stretch across as many as 20 topics if I let it, but right now I mostly stick to four or five: tech and AI, home decor, movie and TV reviews, and sometimes politics. I'd like that range to eventually grow into sustainability and climate change, once I find the right angle. I'm still figuring it out, and blogging works best when it just flows the way your thoughts do.\n

\n

\nThat part about categories isn't really me taking a stand against his list, if I'm honest. Most blogging platforms hand you that stuff as part of the setup, whether you use it or not. If I built a blog completely from scratch, a plain static HTML site, I'd probably skip most of it. What I'd actually care about is making it clean, attractive, and easy to read, with the right colors doing most of the work.\n

\n

\nYou don't have to blog like me, or like Dan Q, or like anyone else whose blog you admire. None of this makes me a better writer than anyone else; it's just what sounds like me. I still poke around other blogs and swipe ideas for fun, and half the time it turns into an afternoon tinkering with HTML and CSS on my own site. That's the real hobby.\n

\n

\nHappy blogging, and be true to yourself. It's a good kind of self-care, having a place where you can just think out loud and say it however you want.\n

\n", "date_published": "2026-07-13T12:38:11-04:00", "url": "https://tobygeeksout.micro.blog/2026/07/13/theres-no-right-way-to.html", "tags": ["Blogging","Spotlight"] }, { "id": "http://tobygeeksout.micro.blog/2026/07/11/yes-this.html", "title": "Yes, This", "content_html": "

Jim Nielsen's post about blogging landed right after I wrote about dickovers, and it's basically why I bothered writing that post at all.

\n
\n

have a willingness to state something that seems obvious to you.

\n

— Jim Nielsen

\n
\n

Yes. This.

\n", "date_published": "2026-07-11T13:06:28-04:00", "url": "https://tobygeeksout.micro.blog/2026/07/11/yes-this.html", "tags": ["Random Musings","Technology","Blogging"] }, { "id": "http://tobygeeksout.micro.blog/2026/07/01/today-recent-fading-the-inkwell.html", "title": "Today, Recent, Fading: The Inkwell Idea I Couldn't Leave Alone", "content_html": "

So my RSS tab in Perch runs on Inkwell, Micro.blog’s RSS reader, using my micro.blog token.

\n

Inkwell’s own apps have this thing where posts are split into three tabs — Today, Recent, and Fading — and stuff just naturally ages out instead of turning into a giant unread pile. Manton talked about this when he introduced Inkwell.

\n

Honestly it’s one of my favorite ideas in any feed reader, and I really wanted that same feel inside Perch, not just in Inkwell’s own app.

\n

Turns out that wasn’t a quick copy-paste though. Inkwell’s API just gives you a flat list of entries with timestamps — no “bucket” built in. So I had to rebuild that whole Today/Recent/Fading thing from scratch. Took hours to get right, honestly no easy task.

\n

But it paid off — Perch’s RSS view now sorts everything into Today, Recent, or Fading just like Inkwell’s own app does, and lets old stuff quietly drop off. I actually finally caught up on all the RSS that’s been sitting in Inkwell somewhere, which felt pretty great.

\n

Now, categories — this is the one Inkwell just doesn’t have at all, not in the app, not in the API. Feeds are just a flat list over there.

\n

So I built my own version. Categories live in a Notion database, keyed by feed URL, so I only have to tag a feed once and every entry from it picks up the category automatically.

\n

You can set a category from a popover on any card, or from a slide-in panel, and then filter your feed down to just one topic.

\n

That same panel also has a Sources tab — just a plain list of everything you’re subscribed to, so you can filter to one specific feed just as easily.

\n

There’s a one-way sync keeping Inkwell and Notion in step so neither one messes up the other — Inkwell’s still the truth for what you’re subscribed to, Notion’s the truth for how it’s organized.

\n

All together, this setup just works for me. Today/Recent/Fading for pacing, categories and sources for organizing, all sitting on top of Inkwell instead of replacing it. Kind of feels like a Feedly/Inkwell mashup at this point. Categories/tags are honestly the one thing I keep hoping Inkwell adds on its own someday — until then, this is how I get there myself.

\n\n\n\n\n
\n\"Today,
Today, Recent, and Fading in the RSS feed
\n		\n\"Category
Category list
\n		\n\"Source
Source list
\n
\n", "date_published": "2026-07-01T14:48:15-04:00", "url": "https://tobygeeksout.micro.blog/2026/07/01/today-recent-fading-the-inkwell.html", "tags": ["Long Read","Blogging","Spotlight"] }, { "id": "http://tobygeeksout.micro.blog/2026/06/27/site-refresh-the-header-got.html", "title": "Site Refresh: The Header Got a Glow-Up", "content_html": "

I've been tinkering with the blog again. Honestly, I can't help it.

\n

The biggest change is the header. As you scroll down, it collapses into a floating pill — clean, minimal, just \"Toby Geeks Out!\" sitting at the top of the screen. The inspiration came from glass.photo, which has one of the slickest pill header treatments I've seen. I loved it so much I had to bring that energy here. It's also very much iOS-inspired — that Liquid Glass feel Apple has been leaning into lately felt right for what I was going for.

\n

I also added a scroll-to-top button. Tap it and it sends you back to the top of the page. Still tweaking how it behaves — it's a work in progress — but the bones are there.

\n
\n \n \"Click\n \n
▶ Click to watch
\n
\n

The overall look got a refresh too. The single post header is one I'm still actively rethinking — I have ideas but nothing locked in yet. I'm keeping what's there for now while I look around for inspiration and figure out the direction I actually want to go. Some design decisions need to sit for a while before they become obvious.

\n
\n \"Screenshot\n
The single post header as it stands now — still figuring out where this one goes.
\n
\n

More tweaks are coming. They always are. But this one feels good.

\n

If you notice anything wonky or have thoughts on the direction, I'd love to hear it.

\n", "date_published": "2026-06-27T15:14:44-04:00", "url": "https://tobygeeksout.micro.blog/2026/06/27/site-refresh-the-header-got.html", "tags": ["Blogging"] }, { "id": "http://tobygeeksout.micro.blog/2026/06/24/two-new-pages-one-productive.html", "title": "Two New Pages, One Productive Day", "content_html": "

Back in February I installed the Newsletters plugin for Micro.blog — @manton’s own — and then completely forgot about it. Today I stumbled across it again and finally dug in. It creates a dedicated /newsletters/ index page listing all your past issues. Neat! Except it came with absolutely zero styling. Bare bones.

\n

So I styled it to match the rest of the blog. Took some back and forth, but it came together nicely. There’s even pagination on the single newsletter view. And when you click one of the newsletter posts, it shows a preview of exactly what was sent to subscribers.

\n

The other page I finished today was my rating scale. It started with stumbling across a post by @JohnPhilpin — he had a link to his own review ratings page and I liked the idea enough to borrow it as inspiration and build my own version.

\n

His page and mine are similar, but I added a recent reviews section at the bottom — a short list of my latest watched films and shows.

\n

Always fun to tinker with Micro.blog. There’s always room for improvement and new additions — and honestly that’s half the fun.

\n", "date_published": "2026-06-24T21:33:53-04:00", "url": "https://tobygeeksout.micro.blog/2026/06/24/two-new-pages-one-productive.html", "tags": ["Blogging","Spotlight"] }, { "id": "http://tobygeeksout.micro.blog/2026/06/01/why-i-built-perch.html", "title": "Why I built Perch...", "content_html": "

I've been writing blog posts on and off for over 20 years. I survived the Blogger era, bounced around platforms, and eventually landed on Micro.blog — where I've been happily tinkering ever since. I dabble in HTML and CSS for fun, I'm a perfectionist about how my posts look, and I have a long history of going down rabbit holes trying to get things exactly right. If you've read my post about wrestling with Micro.blog, you already know how this goes.

\n

So when things kept getting in the way of how I wanted to work — it was only a matter of time before I did something about it. I'm a builder at heart. I like solving my own problems. And honestly? Building something from scratch is just fun.

\n

That's how Perch was born.

\n

Micro.blog is a great platform for writing. It actually does a solid job with books and movies, too. But I wanted to take it further — richer visual cards, my own design, my own rating. The problem is that building a custom HTML card every single time is exhausting. Find the poster, copy the synopsis, manually assemble the star rating, and put it all together from a saved template. Every single post.

\n

Same thing with figure and figcaption — a format I like, rebuilt from scratch every time. The writing part takes minutes. The HTML assembly takes forever. I wanted to spend my time writing, not repeating the same HTML over and over.

\n

And the composer isn't exactly mobile-friendly either. It gets the job done, but it never felt built for the way I actually work.

\n

Blogging is about writing. Plain and simple. And honestly, plain text does the job just fine — nobody needs custom HTML to tell a good story. But for me, blogging is also a hobby, and part of the fun is getting creative with how a post looks. Micro.blog gives me the freedom to write in HTML and Markdown right in the composer — and I intend to use every bit of that. I enjoy experimenting with layouts, making things more visual and enjoyable to read. It's not about impressing anyone. It's just fun. Why not use it?

\n

But there's a difference between creative HTML work and repeatedly writing the same HTML, especially on mobile. That part stops being fun fast.

\n
\n

There are some great apps in the Micro.blog ecosystem. Epilogues are lovely in books and movies. Micro.social is a solid native client. Drafts is a fantastic writing app — I still use it on the computer for long reads. Other cross-platform writing apps exist, but most charge per platform, which gets expensive fast. I use Notion too, but Notion can't publish directly to Micro.blog.

\n

I saw good ideas across all of them and took notes. As the old saying goes, great artists steal. I just wanted to take the best of what I saw and build something that works the way I do, on every device I use.

\n

So I built Perch.

\n
\n \"Timeline \n
Timeline with Flock (Micro.blog), RSS (Inkwell), Reel and Discover
\n
\n

Perch is a Vite + React PWA hosted on Netlify. It publishes to Micro.blog via Micropub, with Netlify functions handling title fetching and API proxy calls. APIs used: Trakt and TMDB for movies and TV, Google Books with Open Library fallback for books, and Merriam-Webster with Free Dictionary fallback for definitions.

\n

The name started as Porch — sitting on the porch, watching the world go by, writing whatever's on my mind. I added an E, and it became something with a little more character. Perch. It felt right because I see birds on my porch every day, so the bird theme was a natural fit. The whole app leaned into that: bird-themed throughout, color palette pulled straight from this blog's terracotta and navy.

\n

I started building it a couple of months ago, working across many sessions with Claude and some help from Gemini along the way. I've been using AI tools for over a year and a half now, and watching them get better and better has been amazing. I had zero experience building an app before this. But AI helped me build exactly what I had in mind, the way I wanted it. I've learned a lot, and I'm grateful for that. Being a perfectionist probably didn't make it easier — but it made Perch better.

\n
\n

The idea was simple at first: one composer with everything in one window. The toolbar lets me write in either Markdown or HTML — I switch between them depending on what I'm building. The composer also knows when a post needs a title — it prompts automatically for longer posts so I don't have to think about it.

\n
\n
\n \"Composer\"\n
Composer
\n
\n
\n \"Composer\n
Composer Insert
\n
\n
\n \"Markdown\n
Markdown Toolbar
\n
\n
\n \"HTML\n
HTML Toolbar
\n
\n
\n

Here's what I can insert directly from the composer:

\n
\n
\n
Add title
Added manually or auto-prompted for longer posts\n
\n
\n
Photo
Insert as Markdown, HTML, or figure/figcaption\n
\n
\n
Movie
Search, build a card, add your rating when done watching\n
\n
\n
Book
Search, build a card, add your rating when done reading\n
\n
\n
Embed
YouTube or Instagram shortcode auto-generated\n
\n
\n
Link
Drop in a URL, fetch the title, insert as Markdown or HTML\n
\n
\n
Define
Search a word & drop in a styled definition card\n
\n
\n
Cache
Pull a saved bookmark into the composer\n
\n
\n

One more thing I'm particularly proud of — the composer shows a live preview of exactly how the post will look on my blog, rendered with my own theme CSS. Not a generic preview. My actual design.

\n
\n \"Desktop\n
Desktop Composer + Preview
\n
\n

I search for a movie or TV show and Perch pulls the info from Trakt and grabs the poster from TMDB — then builds the card HTML automatically. Same for books via Google Books. When I've finished watching or reading, I add my star rating, and that's it. No more hunting for posters, copying synopses, or assembling HTML by hand.

\n

Come across a new word while writing? I drop in a definition card instead of writing it plain. Paste a YouTube or Instagram link, and Perch generates the shortcode and inserts it automatically.

\n

Micro.blog has a reblog embed I can copy into the composer, but I wanted to skip that step entirely. Hit Echo — Perch's name for reblogging — and the composer opens already formatted with the blockquote in place, ready for me to add my own comment after it. It's still early, and I plan to improve it over time.

\n

And if I want a post with a movie card, a book card, and a link all at once? That doesn't even exist as a concept in Micro.blog. In Perch, it's just Tuesday.

\n

Then I started building and realized I could do more. If I'm already connecting to Micro.blog's API, I can pull my timeline too. And my bookmarks. And my drafts — saved in Micro.blog, pulled into Perch whenever I'm ready to finish and publish. Perch went from being a smarter composer to a full client, built around how I actually use the platform.

\n
\n

Every word in the app was picked on purpose. Here's how it breaks down:

\n
\n
\n
🐦 Flock
\n My timeline — but it's not just one feed. Flock has four tabs: the main timeline of people I follow, RSS via Inkwell, Reel (books, movies, and TV all in one dedicated feed), and Discover for finding other blogs.\n
\n
\n
✍️ Perch
\n The composer tab shares the app's name for a reason. It's the heart of the whole thing — where everything described above lives.\n
\n
\n
🪺 Nest
\n Where my posts live. I can view, edit drafts, edit published posts, and pull up post URLs. Nest also has dedicated Books and Movies tabs for managing my reading and watchlists.\n
\n
\n
\n
\n \"Bookshelves\"\n
Bookshelves
\n
\n
\n \"Movies/TV\"\n
Movies/TV
\n
\n
\n
\n
📦 Cache
\n My bookmark hub. Right now it pulls from two sources — Notion and Micro.blog. I can read a saved link, jump straight into the composer to write about it, and if I delete something from Cache it syncs back to the source. Two-way. Clean.\n
\n
\n \"Bookmarks\n
Bookmarks (Notion + Microblog)
\n
\n
\n
🪮 Preen
\n Settings and control panel. Token, dictionary, and RSS list live here, plus quick shortcuts into Micro.blog. There's also a built-in Perch Glossary so the bird vocabulary always makes sense.\n
\n
\n \"Settings\"\n
Settings
\n
\n

One thing worth explaining about Flock is the thread view. Micro.blog's conversation view was driving me nuts. When I see a reply I scroll up to read the whole conversation for context — then I hit another reply to the same thread and have to read it all over again. Redundant and annoying. So I built a proper thread view in Perch. It sorts everything into one thread — original post at the top, replies in order below it. It takes a moment to load but that's a fair trade. It won't be perfect but it's a lot better than reading the same conversation twice.

\n
\n \"Threads\n
Threads for Conversation
\n
\n

And the actions follow the same language:

\n
\n
\n
Chirp
Reply to a post\n
\n
\n
Echo
Reblog and amplify\n
\n
\n
Branches
View conversation\n
\n
\n
Beak
Copy the post URL\n
\n
\n

Nothing is random — it all fits together.

\n

I'm still building. Life has been a bit chaotic lately — I'm a caregiver for my aging parents and a close friend who had a stroke, cooking dinner every night, and juggling a lot of doctor visits. Progress has been slower than I'd like. That's also why I haven't been writing long-form posts lately — just micros and micro quotes. When Perch is in a solid place, I'm hoping to get back to writing long-form again this summer.

\n

There are a few things I want to add down the road. A translate button for non-English posts in the timeline. Link preview cards so URLs in the feed show up as rich previews. Micro.blog Notes as a panel in Cache. And a tinted callout box in the composer for when I want to highlight something without it being a full blockquote. Nothing urgent — just things I know I'll want eventually.

\n

That's the whole point of building something yourself — nobody else is going to build exactly what you need, because nobody else works exactly the way you do. This isn't a critique of Micro.blog or any of those apps. It's just me making my life easier in the way that makes sense for me. When I want something new in Perch, I go build it. No waiting, no workarounds. Just the way I like it.

\n

This is also the first post I've written using Draft Studio — a writing tool I built for this blog. More on that soon.

\n", "date_published": "2026-06-01T13:57:48-04:00", "url": "https://tobygeeksout.micro.blog/2026/06/01/why-i-built-perch.html", "tags": ["Writing","AI","Long Read","Hobbies","Blogging","Spotlight"] }, { "id": "http://tobygeeksout.micro.blog/2026/05/31/been-tinkering-with-two-apps.html", "content_html": "

Been tinkering with two apps and they’re both coming together nicely. Perch is my custom Micro.blog client (books from my bookshelf, movies and TV from Trakt). Draft Studio is for my long-form writing here and OULDHH, sending drafts straight to Micro.blog and Wix, no copy-paste. More on Perch soon.

\n", "date_published": "2026-05-31T20:05:38-04:00", "url": "https://tobygeeksout.micro.blog/2026/05/31/been-tinkering-with-two-apps.html", "tags": ["Writing","Hobbies","Blogging"] }, { "id": "http://tobygeeksout.micro.blog/2026/04/18/a-few-weeks-in-the.html", "title": "A Few Weeks in the Geek Cave: What I've Been Building", "content_html": "\"A\n

The past few weeks have been less about writing posts and more about building the thing that holds them. If you've visited the blog recently and noticed things looking a little sharper, a little more intentional — that's not your imagination. I've been deep in the code, and I want to tell you what that actually looked like.

\n

It Started With One Thing and Became Twenty

\n

That's always how it goes, isn't it? I went in wanting to clean up a small layout inconsistency, and three weeks later I had touched nearly every part of the theme. CSS sections, Hugo templates, JavaScript, mobile layouts — all of it got some attention. Not because anything was broken beyond fixing, but because once you start looking, you can't stop seeing what could be better.

\n

The biggest structural change was collapsing two redundant card components into one. The blog feed used to have a micro-card for short posts and a post-card for longer ones — two separate chunks of code doing almost the same job. I merged them into a single unified card with simple logic inside: if a post is over 800 characters, it shows a truncated summary with a \"Keep reading\" link. Under 800, it shows everything. Same visual design, half the code. That kind of cleanup feels good in a way that's hard to explain to non-developers, but if you've ever reorganized a messy drawer and felt the satisfaction of it — it's that.

\n

The TOC Fight

\n

One of the more satisfying fixes involved the Table of Contents sidebar on Long Read posts. It had been working, then stopped, and I couldn't figure out why. The TOC is supposed to stay sticky as you scroll — following you down the page, highlighting each section as you reach it. It wasn't doing that anymore.

\n

After a lot of digging, I found the culprit: Grammarly. The browser extension was injecting overflow: hidden onto the page body at runtime, which silently broke position: sticky on the sidebar. One line of CSS fixed it — I forced the body to allow vertical scroll regardless of what extensions try to inject. Took a while to find, took a second to fix. That's debugging in a nutshell.

\n

Mobile Got a Real Rethink

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I spent a good chunk of time thinking hard about the mobile experience. The blog was sitting at 56% on PageSpeed Insights, and I wanted to push that number up. Some of it was technical — moving the Splide.js carousel off the top of the page and down between the About Me blurb and Recent Geeksouts, converting images to WebP format, and making sure every image has proper alt text for accessibility. Some of it was design.

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Honestly though, the performance score didn't budge much. A lot of what's dragging it down is baked into how Hugo builds on Micro.blog — stuff I simply don't have control over. So I made peace with it. I loaded the blog on my phone — a newer, high-end device — and it runs beautifully. The tradeoff I'm aware of is that people on older, aging devices might have a different experience. That's something I'll keep an eye on.

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The feed layout on mobile used to have the post date in a column on the left, with the post content on the right. It worked, but on a small screen it was eating up real estate. I dropped it and switched to a stacked editorial style — date above, content below — which gave the text more room to breathe. I also discovered that iPhone Safari and Android Chrome render fonts very differently, and had to add a specific CSS block just to tame the iPhone sizing without breaking how good it already looked on Android.

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I tested across Brave, Safari, Orion, Comet, Arc, and Chrome — the browsers I use most often. Everything looks good on both mobile and desktop. The one exception is Comet and Arc on my Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 when unfolded — there's a header nav issue and some unexpected white space on the right side that the other browsers don't have. Still investigating why. The rest of the browsers handle it beautifully, so it's a quirk worth chasing down rather than a crisis.

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Little Things That Add Up

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Beyond the big structural stuff, a lot of small things got fixed or refined:

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The blockquote style got unified across every context on the site — feed, single post, static pages — so it always looks the same no matter where it appears. Warm terracotta background, deep rust border, Georgia italic. It's a small detail but it matters.

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The homepage search bar got taller and wider — more inviting, easier to tap on mobile. The subscribe section got a proper card layout. The footer on short posts now shows a permalink instead of a redundant date. The category pills lost the wavy underline that Micro.blog's own CSS was injecting over my styles.

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The Reading page got some love too. The bookshelf got a visual overhaul — compact cover cards with title and author, styled consistently with the rest of the site. I even added a fake wood shelf underneath the currently reading section, which sounds a little silly but looks fantastic. It's a much nicer way to show what I'm currently reading than a plain list.

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The Now page got a full redesign — a navy card for what I'm currently tinkering with, arrow-style lists for writing links, a bookshelf section for what I'm reading, and an auto-updating Long Reads block so I never have to update it manually again.

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And \"Recent Posts\" became \"Recent Geekouts.\" Because obviously.

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Rethinking the Homepage Order

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I also reorganized the homepage layout. It used to open with the featured post, then my About Me blurb, then the subscribe strip, then the recent feed. It made sense at the time, but it always felt like the featured post was grabbing attention before readers even knew what the blog was about.

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So I flipped it. Now the homepage opens with the About Me section, followed by the subscribe strip, then the featured post, then the recent feed. It's a small reorder but it changes the feel significantly — you get context first, then content. New visitors know who I am and what this place is before they dive into anything. It just makes more sense.

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What's Next

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The theme is in a good place right now. There are always small things to revisit — there's a Browse by Topic spacing issue that keeps evading me, and I want to keep watching how the \"Keep reading\" truncation performs across different post types. But the tinkering never really stops. I'll keep poking at the HTML and CSS, making this a more enjoyable reading experience one small improvement at a time.

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If you've landed on the homepage and have thoughts about how it looks or reads, I'd love to hear from you. Seriously — drop me a note. Feedback from actual readers means a lot.

\n", "date_published": "2026-04-18T16:24:25-04:00", "url": "https://tobygeeksout.micro.blog/2026/04/18/a-few-weeks-in-the.html", "tags": ["Hobbies","Blogging","Spotlight"] }, { "id": "http://tobygeeksout.micro.blog/2026/04/02/finally-upgraded-to-hugo-hit.html", "content_html": "

Finally upgraded to Hugo 0.158! Hit a small snag with an outdated plugin using a removed function, but updating the plugin to the latest version cleared things right up. Theme is clean, builds are faster. Upgrade approved. ✅

\n", "date_published": "2026-04-02T20:52:15-04:00", "url": "https://tobygeeksout.micro.blog/2026/04/02/finally-upgraded-to-hugo-hit.html", "tags": ["Blogging"] }, { "id": "http://tobygeeksout.micro.blog/2026/03/26/theme-in-progress.html", "title": "Theme in Progress", "content_html": "

Decided to build my own Micro.blog theme. A couple of days of tinkering in, still working through a few minor issues, but progress is being made. More tweaks coming soon.

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\"Auto-generated

\n", "date_published": "2026-03-26T22:55:42-04:00", "url": "https://tobygeeksout.micro.blog/2026/03/26/theme-in-progress.html", "tags": ["Blogging"] }, { "id": "http://tobygeeksout.micro.blog/2026/02/15/sunday-afternoon-css-tinkering.html", "title": "Sunday Afternoon CSS Tinkering", "content_html": "

So I spent my Sunday doing what normal people probably don’t do—obsessing over blog spacing. You know how it is. You notice one little thing that’s bugging you, and next thing you know, three hours have disappeared, and you’re still messing around with CSS.

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It started with my blockquotes. I’ve got this dropcap thing going on for the first letter of posts, which I think looks pretty cool. But when a blockquote showed up right after that fancy first letter? Huge, awkward gap of white space. Just looked weird.

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So I tried adjusting the dropcap’s line-height first. Then I messed around with margins—positive, negative, whatever I could think of. Nothing worked until I finally stumbled on the magic combo: negative margins on the blockquote itself, plus zeroing out the padding. And boom, fixed.

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While I was in there anyway, I gave the blockquotes a little makeover. Switched the font to Georgia with italics. It’s got that slightly fancy, bookish vibe without being too much. Made the text bigger too so the quotes actually stand out.

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I also tweaked the previous/next post navigation at the bottom of the pages. Made those links bold, colored them with my accent color, and added underlines when you hover over them. Just a few little touches to make everything feel more polished.

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Here’s the funny part, though: I kept thinking the navigation font looked weird in Firefox compared to my other browser. Spent way too long trying to fix it with CSS. Turns out? Firefox’s font setting was on “Large” instead of “Medium.” Facepalm moment. 🤦‍♂️🤷‍♂️

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But hey, that’s the fun of tinkering with your own site, right? You can spend a whole afternoon tweaking tiny details that probably only you’ll notice, and somehow it’s completely worth it.

\n\n", "date_published": "2026-02-15T20:03:00-04:00", "url": "https://tobygeeksout.micro.blog/2026/02/15/sunday-afternoon-css-tinkering.html", "tags": ["Blogging","Spotlight"] }, { "id": "http://tobygeeksout.micro.blog/2026/02/13/wrestling-with-microblog.html", "title": "Wrestling with Micro.blog", "content_html": "

I’ve been in a full-on wrestling match with my Micro.blog theme lately. Had this specific vision: truncated posts on the homepage with a “Continue Reading” link, a nice drop cap at the start of long-form posts, and images that didn’t feel like they were yelling over the text. Simple, right?

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Started with trying to add the “Continue Reading” link myself but it didn’t work. Was about to send a support ticket, then thought “nah, I want to figure this out.” Asked Perplexity for help instead, and honestly? Huge help figuring out what I’d done wrong.

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While I was at it, I asked Perplexity to help with other stuff too. Spotted a drop cap line in the CSS and thought “oh, I want that.” That turned into a whole thing. Spent HOURS trying to figure out what we kept doing wrong. Drop caps are a pain in the ass. Got them working on the homepage eventually, then tried adding them to the long-form summaries and everything broke. Finally just gave up on homepage drop caps.

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\"\"

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Now I’m focusing on single post pages — getting that first letter styled with a drop cap in my theme color, sitting under the title and hero image. Also resizing images on the homepage so they don’t swallow the text.

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Somewhere in all this, I realized how much I’ve missed this kind of tinkering. Used to mess with HTML and CSS all the time years ago, got rusty without noticing. Digging into Micro.blog’s custom themes, poking at selectors, breaking things and fixing them — it lit that old spark back up. Even figured out how to add anchor links within posts.

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Now I’m venturing into shortcodes with some plug-ins I installed. The annoying part? Not every shortcode works nicely across every theme, which sucks when you’re excited to experiment. I mentioned this to the Micro.blog Help team and they agreed and are working on it — which is pretty cool.

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It’s been equal parts frustrating and fun. One moment I’m grumbling because a div won’t behave, the next I’m genuinely excited because I got a drop cap to sit exactly where I want it, in exactly the right color. Can’t wait to keep learning more tricks to customize my little corner of the web.

\n", "date_published": "2026-02-13T16:36:00-04:00", "url": "https://tobygeeksout.micro.blog/2026/02/13/wrestling-with-microblog.html", "tags": ["Blogging","Spotlight"] } ] }