frillish

Astro Blog Upgrade

• thoughts

Here is my nerd post on findings and enjoyments of upgrading to Astro!

First off, unfortunately, yes, I believe there’s an issue with caching that causes my blog to not display the newest layout and appear to “revert” to the old blog design w/ old posts.

I’m trying to work on fixing it, but it seems to maybe be an issue between the client-side browser, Netlify, and having previously used Gatsby with no consistent solution yet. Hopefully, I can find a way to fix this soon!

For now, there’s a workaround if you’re stuck on the old site:

No more Gatsby

Or what A calls: “Gats-bye!”

A while back, I had a fun meetup with A over coffee & cookies where we talked about blogs, and I recommended self-hosting versus the old (reliable, but old) Wordpress. After A went back and did some research, he found that Gatsby, the backend that I used for my blog, is not so trendy anymore* and one of the better static site hosts is Astro! I took a bit of a look into it (all of 15 minutes, really) and was immediately convinced I needed to upgrade!

*Not only is Gatsby “not trendy”; it’s completely unsupported after being acquired by Netlify. I found this “Gatsby headaches” description fairly apt:

It was like Gatsby got tougher to use with time because of lots of unaddressed issues: outdated dependencies, cold starts, slow builds, and stale plugins, to name a few. Starting a Gatsby project became tedious for me, and perfect Lighthouse scores couldn’t make up for that.

My initial experience with Gatsby was that it was super fun & snappy to whip up a site while not feeling like you live in 2006 still, so it was a bit sad to hear that, but I’m glad (as with tech always goes) there’s plenty of alternatives. Because of dependencies issues, I was only able to update my blog on my desktop PC (not my laptop) for over a year until I finally got brave enough to tackle it over several days, but it really was a Gatsby Headache

I was intrigued by Astro because it seemed even simpler and more customisable… so I had to try it

In short, “converting” my blog over was very straightforward - I don’t use many unusual or complex features, and it’s pretty close to a baseline blog implementation. Still, as with tech tutorials, the moment you take one step off the exact guideline everything tends to break Thankfully, everything ended up working well, I think! (Aside from the cache issue… grr)

Development hiccups:

• Blogroll: It’s trendy for static site blogs to not display the full text of posts (like “traditional” blogs) and instead display a list of titles to click into. The official guide didn’t easily provide steps to add it, but I found this Astro documentation on Rendering body content helpful.

• Post date is 1 day behind: tiny issue that affects accuracy of post dates. Simple solution to this is to add 12 hours to your post date time. See: Handling Astro Date Formatting

• Paging under tags: this sounds like basic blog functionality, but since you have to implement features like pagination in a SSG blog yourself, this was weirdly harder than I thought. The official blog tutorial has a guide on this, but only using the non-dynamically generated collection code, so mixing dynamically-generated tag code and pagination got confusing. I ended up using these sources to help with writing this feature: Nesting Pagination (Astro Docs) & BUG: Conflict between pagination and dynamic routes… (this helped with folder structure)

• Images in Astro: Trying to get Emojis to work “with” Astro was a bit of a pain, so I ended up making a dumbed-down component to do it instead. Maybe I’m misunderstanding the purpose of non-public vs static public files, but it feels a little backwards.

  • Astro (using Vite) requires you to put any assets under the /src/ folder if you want them to be generated with the site’s dist build, but they also require you to import each image manually in your .astro file (imagine adding the related imports to every emoji you add to your site). If you want to link the file easily without importing, you’d put them in the /public/ folder, but you can no longer dynamically call them from your .astro files.

  • This works for most cases, except I have another use case other than calling them via Emoji component in my blog posts: dynamically generating a list of emoji + their original filenames in a separate page so I can use the page as a reference for emoji I can use.

  • Since Astro’s dynamic glob function won’t work with /public/ files on a deployed build, I can’t automatically get all emoji and their original filenames to list out, OR I could call them with a workaround but end up with hashed names that don’t work in my case.

  • I ended up deciding to have this reference page only working in local and look like a mess in the deployed version. After all, only I use it. However, it’s really not completed to me and I’d like to revisit it eventually.

• User Error for captions: This is my fault based on how I implemented this, but I can no longer attach captions when I post multiple images in a row. I might revisit this eventually, but for now, I’m alright with dropping captions on those and just describing them manually with surrounding text.

Fun Astro discoveries:

• Building the site is SUPER fast. I don’t have anything complex to build on this blog nor do I have need for super fast build speeds, but it went from taking ~2min with Gatsby to 40s with Astro.

• Components can appear inline with your markdown files. Not sure if this is just “user error”, but in Gatsby, I couldn’t write an Emoji component to quickly and consistently call emoji files in my paragraph text as the emojis would appear on their own line (as if wrapped in a <div>.) In Astro, I easily made it appear inline instead. Small change, but very happy with not needing to call emojis as images using markdown

• Blog posts are much cleaner to write. Take a look at the comparison below! Astro allowed me to customize the frontmatter for posts and import components as part of the “template” of a blog post, so I could adjust .mdx files to my use and have a much cleaner written file. See below: Gatsby vs Astro!

I’m just happy I was able to have a little more fun with my blog To be honest, I know I could just use something like Blogspot, Wordpress, or many other options, but I’m very picky and want things to be customised exactly how I like it.

Even if it means more work, not being able to post from my phone, encountering development issues, or other drawbacks, I’m pretty happy with using a static site generator backend for blogging

One last fun thing: did you see the kitty send-off near the paging? I’m hoping to add some more cute fun things eventually

Diet Thoughts

• daily
• thoughts

Hello! I wanted to share a little about my diet that I started at the end of October

Anyway, I’m going to be listing diet and calorie-related numbers but I know these can be sensitive topics, especially because I will be listing numbers that may look very low due to my stature and sedentary lifestyle - so please read below the toggled sections containing calorie #‘s cautiously if you’re interested; if not, it’s totally fine to skip reading

Starting point

I don’t exactly know what got me fully motivated to start a diet which I have never done before in my life - I think it was a combination of being curious what it’s like to try it once; trying to find out a method to lose weight for someone who confided in me that she gained more than she wanted but did not know how to lose it (so, discovery); being overall unsatisfied with hit-or-miss energy days and issues with food intake, which I thought might be helped with more mindful eating; and general boredom and needing to fixate on something new

I had a few conditions for myself

• No unhealthy mindset around eating.
• If I’m starving, I will eat, even if it’ll make me go over the caloric limit of the day.
• Oatly may be considered high calorie, but I won’t give it up!
• I will also add an exercise routine to “counter” my low TDEE while improving my health in other ways than just dieting

I use Cronometer to track calorie and macro goals. Initially, one of my curiosities of this venture was to see how I could better balance my diet to get enough variety of essential nutrients I learned that I really lacked protein, so I did my best to come up with some easier protein-filling meals that still fulfilled my incapable cook side

Pantry stocking

To make eating healthy easier, I tend to stock my pantry with lots of easy kinds of things

• Greens: hardy ones like kale last a long time. Bok choy is very healthy, super low calorie, and easy to cook - often on sale at our local Hmart too
• Beans: canned beans are easy to prepare, versatile, filling, and nutrient-packed. I also like bulk dry beans since they’re cheap and in bulk, but I get pretty lazy to cook them
• Tofu: I usually have 3-4 in the freezer and 1-2 defrosting in the fridge
• Frozen foods: haven’t looked that much into this to be honest, but mostly frozen fruit or premade meat alternatives from Trader Joe’s (their frozen falafel is very good)
• Oats: not low calorie but filling - I usually get rolled oats
• Chia seeds: also not low calorie but will keep you fuller when added to water or overnight oats, even if you just add a little bit - also good protein and healthy fats
• Apples: get their own shout out. Great to mix with oats, salads, or peanut butter powder
• Peanut butter powder: my new obsession with cut fruit like apples for a snack. Lots of protein without the fat of peanut butter. Great in smoothies but good on its own too
• Premade soup mixes: recently got into these after trying Sierra Soups split pea soup - super nutritious and easy to cook while making huge portions. Stores easily when uncooked so you can keep a few bags laying around
• Liquid IV: kind of a luxury pantry addition - but sometimes when I get the munchies, instead of getting a snack, I’ll make an electrolyte drink with a bit of chia seeds. Helps with how I don’t typically eat food with salt/sodium, too

So far I haven’t found a very good low calorie alternative for grains that I like enough, so I still stock and eat brown rice, quinoa, and soba. I don’t normally buy pasta but my manz stocks it, so I have that too

I don’t tend to like to eat premade frozen meals because I get heartburn easily from overabundance of oil/salt, which a lot of them (especially meatless options) have

Exercise

I added a workout routine to my schedule near the end of last year which has given me an opportunity not only to get healthier fit-wise, but hopefully tone up over time So in terms of weight, I expect my number to gain, but size-wise I may shift too. I attend coached group classes that have a half/half split of cardio work and weights 2-3x a week. Even though I know people can do these kinds of exercises without paying a studio, since I have a weak back I prefer to have someone who can teach me alternatives which I usually need to request almost every session.

This is my first time consistently doing weight-related exercises (as opposed to bodyweight like barre/pilates) I mostly prefer to focus my exercise on low-impact due to my back injury and arthritis, but it’s been really fun trying out and sticking with something new to me - cardio and weights! I’m also thinking it’s a better coverage for my health to have different types of workouts, especially since I am primarily sedentary. In the future, I’m hoping I can get back into a regular pilates/barre routine even if it’s not a full class since that helps my weak back a lot while being extremely fun

The only actual change this made to my daily caloric intake is that after a few months now, I realised that the day after my workout, I am usually RAVENOUS! So I’m okay with eating more on post-workout days if I need it.

Sometimes, it’s a bit discouraging because I struggle a lot in the class and often feel nauseous if I’ve worked too hard in a session, while seeing that other people around me are able to do an entire set without stopping with heavier weights too I always have to try to remember to compare progress with my own self instead of comparing, though For instance, I’ve been completing the cardio sessions as a jog for the last few classes now instead of only walking, so I’m really happy about that!

Challenges

The hardest part was starting the diet - the first two days I just could not stop thinking about eating food After that, somehow the mindset shifted and I was ready to go!

Another challenge is eating with my manz. For one, he (understandably) doesn’t like to see me eat significantly less than he does, but with my TDEE vs his (highly active male), I just cannot eat close to the same amounts. Still, I don’t like him to worry or stress so when we eat together, I don’t mind loosening up on not counting everything and just making sure I try to keep within my diet over the week. (Also, it means I can eat his snacks ) I’m aiming for long-term health rather than short-term weight loss, so I’m okay with it.

I had two temporary issues - one solved itself and the other seems to be going away, but I’m unsure. For the first one, about a week or two into my diet I started to get super nauseous after getting to about 50-70% of my calorie target for the day (this number is VERY low) and did not have any appetite to eat more - not even my favourite food (Mendocino Farms avocado quinoa salad) that I tried to spoil myself with This lasted for about a week and came on/off on random days for a while but thankfully, I haven’t had this issue recently. I wonder if this was due to my body being confused at the change in food intake before it got used to it.

Second issue of this set was that I became Extremely Cold (physically) You know how after you work out, typically you’re warmed up for a little bit? When I first started my exercise routine, it was in winter, and I could walk outside in the cold air without my jacket and feel totally fine. However, in the recent month, even though the temperature is overall not as cold as the previous months, I’ve been absolutely freezing when I didn’t expect to be - such as while or after drinking/eating hot tea or soup, or taking a hot shower, too My thought is that I haven’t adjusted my diet to accomodate my exercise routine caloric loss properly, but I’m unsure how to adjust it due to not working out daily. So, I’m still working on solving this. Thankfully, the weather’s been warming up, so maybe it’ll be okay.

Results so far

I did lose an amount of weight that surprised me. I read that typically, people on diets lose weight faster in the beginning before reaching a plateau. I got a lot of comments in-person about people noticing on my weight loss, which I didn’t expect was visible since I didn’t see it myself. So, I guess in terms of weight loss, it’s been going well

A fun benefit I gained: I used to get stomach aches after nearly every meal I don’t have that as often anymore unless I scarf down my food too fast - so I think I was just eating too much for each meal. Now, I learned that I can either split up my meals a bit more or portion out less to eat, and likely avoid stomach ache issues. Honestly, this part was the most encouraging part of dieting to me.

Not super fun part: I changed size enough to need to replace or sell some clothing that I liked a lot. I’m a little bummed about this, but I can’t control where my weight distributes, so it’s just how it is.

Currently, I’ve slowed down the diet and am aiming for more maintenance days (eating around TDEE), and count calories more loosely. Since I can’t lose that much more weight without going underweight, I’m okay with staying at my current weight for now I realised that to get the sizes I want in the areas I’m targetting, I would probably have to still lose significantly more due to how my weight distributes, which is just not healthy at that point.

I’m still considering when I can officially be “off my diet”, but even so, I learned a lot about my eating habits and where I tend to lack in nutrients due to my food choices. Hopefully I can make better choices intuitively about my meals in the future even if I’m not counting calories

I found this whole experience fascinating and actually quite fun, so I’m happy I gave it a try.