Simon W
@simonw.xyz
UK web dev - mostly Laravel. Svelte is great though. I'm a drummer, vegan, engaged, and have rabbits. Level 2 British Sign Language done! Get creative and learn stuff, always.
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...
November 7, 2025 at 3:08 PM
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...
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.
Also shout out to @joshwcomeau.com. Their exceptional SVG articles inspired me out of the day's funk.
October 29, 2025 at 6:04 PM
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.
Also shout out to @joshwcomeau.com. Their exceptional SVG articles inspired me out of the day's funk.
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!
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!
October 24, 2025 at 2:04 PM
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!
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!
How does Bigfoot protect his data?
It's all in cryptid
It's all in cryptid
September 30, 2025 at 5:40 PM
How does Bigfoot protect his data?
It's all in cryptid
It's all in cryptid
Typescript feels like an uphill struggle and I'm either going to push through and get stronger or end up with arthritic knees.
September 4, 2025 at 3:33 PM
Typescript feels like an uphill struggle and I'm either going to push through and get stronger or end up with arthritic knees.
Reposted by Simon W
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...
Wrote a long piece on how current model training and design choices threaten our critical thinking skills: maggieappleton.com/ai-enlighten...
A Treatise on AI Chatbots Undermining the Enlightenment
On chatbot sycophancy, passivity, and the case for more intellectually challenging companions
maggieappleton.com
August 6, 2025 at 9:34 AM
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...
Wrote a long piece on how current model training and design choices threaten our critical thinking skills: maggieappleton.com/ai-enlighten...
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.
July 30, 2025 at 11:57 AM
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.
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.
We shall see. In any case, very intriguing.
June 24, 2025 at 5:10 PM
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.
We shall see. In any case, very intriguing.
Reposted by Simon W
The fact that so many people think celebrating the end of slavery in the US is “DEI” is actually clarifying of what they mean when they use DEI. amp.cnn.com/cnn/2025/06/...
Juneteenth: How cities are scaling back celebrations after Trump-era DEI rollbacks | CNN
Despite Juneteenth’s status as a federal holiday, celebrations across the country are being scaled back or canceled, as organizers cite safety problems and mounting resistance to diversity, equity and...
amp.cnn.com
June 19, 2025 at 4:46 PM
The fact that so many people think celebrating the end of slavery in the US is “DEI” is actually clarifying of what they mean when they use DEI. amp.cnn.com/cnn/2025/06/...
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...
Maybe Laravel is telling me I should be handling more of this logic in the view...
June 11, 2025 at 11:36 AM
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...
Maybe Laravel is telling me I should be handling more of this logic in the view...
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?
May 22, 2025 at 2:35 PM
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?
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. 🤔
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. 🤔
May 11, 2025 at 8:46 AM
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. 🤔
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. 🤔
#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.
April 23, 2025 at 3:38 PM
#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.
Reposted by Simon W
G̶o̶o̶g̶l̶e̶r̶… ex-Googler. · April 10, 2025
My role at Google was eliminated.
nerdy.dev
April 11, 2025 at 6:05 PM
Reposted by Simon W
💡 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!
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!
April 16, 2025 at 11:00 AM
💡 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!
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!
Every time I read the words "vibe coding" I lose a few brain cells
March 24, 2025 at 3:03 PM
Every time I read the words "vibe coding" I lose a few brain cells
Reposted by Simon W
An infinite logos animation? Here is the real infinite logos animations! ♾️
css-tip.com/infinite-log...
#CSS
css-tip.com/infinite-log...
#CSS
March 13, 2025 at 12:24 PM
An infinite logos animation? Here is the real infinite logos animations! ♾️
css-tip.com/infinite-log...
#CSS
css-tip.com/infinite-log...
#CSS
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
There's a bunch of really fascinating ideas in this post alone, and there's a follow up post with more! #laravel
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!
muhammedsari.me
March 11, 2025 at 10:57 AM
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
There's a bunch of really fascinating ideas in this post alone, and there's a follow up post with more! #laravel
This Bent Knee live show absolutely rips
Bent Knee - Live at Big Nice Studio (Full Concert Film)
YouTube video by Bent Knee
youtu.be
March 10, 2025 at 3:03 PM
This Bent Knee live show absolutely rips
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.
They have an example rendering an image placeholder, but imagine passing your paint worklet a blurhash variable, rendering an lqip while loading.
CSS Painting API Level 1
drafts.css-houdini.org
February 18, 2025 at 12:19 PM
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.
They have an example rendering an image placeholder, but imagine passing your paint worklet a blurhash variable, rendering an lqip while loading.
I improved this weird clock! It has a different colour for pm, hours and minutes move gradually, and nothing animates backwards on minute / hour changes, much nicer. That happened because css animating from 1 turn to 0 turn doesn't take the "shortest path". The solution... Only ever increase!
February 14, 2025 at 1:08 PM
I improved this weird clock! It has a different colour for pm, hours and minutes move gradually, and nothing animates backwards on minute / hour changes, much nicer. That happened because css animating from 1 turn to 0 turn doesn't take the "shortest path". The solution... Only ever increase!
The time is 3:27:49, as you can clearly see by this clock I just made with a few stacked conical gradients and a mask. I've always enjoyed abstract and hard to read clocks.
svelte.dev/playground/3...
svelte.dev/playground/3...
February 11, 2025 at 3:34 PM
The time is 3:27:49, as you can clearly see by this clock I just made with a few stacked conical gradients and a mask. I've always enjoyed abstract and hard to read clocks.
svelte.dev/playground/3...
svelte.dev/playground/3...
#Laravel people. When using "create" policies in your views, do you do anything to avoid fully qualified classes?
E.g. `@can('create', \App\Models\User::class)`
E.g. `@can('create', \App\Models\User::class)`
January 31, 2025 at 2:44 PM
#Laravel people. When using "create" policies in your views, do you do anything to avoid fully qualified classes?
E.g. `@can('create', \App\Models\User::class)`
E.g. `@can('create', \App\Models\User::class)`
git switch -c "update-$(date +%Y%m%d)"
Why would I take 1 minute to write the current date, when I can spend 10 minutes working out how to properly interpolate a formatted date into my branch name.
Why would I take 1 minute to write the current date, when I can spend 10 minutes working out how to properly interpolate a formatted date into my branch name.
January 24, 2025 at 2:26 PM
git switch -c "update-$(date +%Y%m%d)"
Why would I take 1 minute to write the current date, when I can spend 10 minutes working out how to properly interpolate a formatted date into my branch name.
Why would I take 1 minute to write the current date, when I can spend 10 minutes working out how to properly interpolate a formatted date into my branch name.
Looking back at old code, I think I used to lean into imperative solutions for problems a lot more than I do now.
As an example, years ago, formatting a model's attributes for output I wrote a system which format based on the attribute name, ending "diameter" (append mm), or "volume" (ml), etc.
As an example, years ago, formatting a model's attributes for output I wrote a system which format based on the attribute name, ending "diameter" (append mm), or "volume" (ml), etc.
January 15, 2025 at 2:47 PM
Looking back at old code, I think I used to lean into imperative solutions for problems a lot more than I do now.
As an example, years ago, formatting a model's attributes for output I wrote a system which format based on the attribute name, ending "diameter" (append mm), or "volume" (ml), etc.
As an example, years ago, formatting a model's attributes for output I wrote a system which format based on the attribute name, ending "diameter" (append mm), or "volume" (ml), etc.