If pretty patterns are so good, why didn’t they make pretty patterns 2?

Well, I have now. Instead of loading a prebaked PNG and tiling it, the pattern is now generated procedurally wherever I need it, during the static site generation. It bakes an SVG that is then repeated to fill the sidebar background. The advantage of this is a lot smaller file size, and since it can be trivially inlined, it saves an extra request and no longer flickers so badly when navigating. It also fits the vibe I was going for a lot more.

The implementation does make me think about retiring Jekyll though. I really would like to be able to write with, y’know, actual functions ‘n’ stuff. Jekyll is also getting quite slow with how complex my Liquid usage is. I would probably switch to a custom system that uses JSX/TypeScript and emits a static site from that, with extension points. Why that over Java? Because JSX is well-integrated for writing HTML.

That’s all for now. See you in another two years :)