Blog

7 Apr 2026, BST

Building a dark/light theme toggle in Astro

CSS custom properties, localStorage persistence, and no flash of wrong theme

How this blog's theme toggle works — a data-theme attribute on the root element, CSS custom properties for every colour, an icon-triggered dropdown for System/Light/Dark selection, and a synchronous inline script to prevent the flash of wrong theme on load.

1 Apr 2026, BST

Typed content collections in Astro

Zod schemas, build-time validation, and what the draft flag actually does

How this blog uses Astro content collections with a Zod schema to validate every piece of frontmatter at build time — including typed images, optional fields, and the draft flag pattern that keeps work-in-progress posts off the live site.

31 Mar 2026, BST

Keeping your zsh config out of Copilot's terminals

How a single env var separates your shell from the agent's

GitHub Copilot agent terminals are non-interactive and don't need your Powerlevel10k prompt or aliases — but a naive guard breaks your regular VS Code terminal too. Here's the fix: a custom env var that only VS Code injects into user-opened terminals.

30 Mar 2026, BST

Choosing the tech stack

Every tool was chosen deliberately — here's the reasoning

The full reasoning behind the tech stack for this blog: Astro for static output and content collections, Bulma for a no-runtime CSS foundation, Netlify for deployment and serverless functions, and TypeScript throughout.

30 Mar 2026, BST

How this blog was built

A series on the technical and design decisions behind Sourcier

A new series documenting the technical and design decisions behind this blog — from choosing Astro and setting up typed content collections, to building dark mode, a comment system, a mailing list, and everything in between.

26 Mar 2026, GMT

I Should Start a Blog

Twenty years in software — it was time to write some of it down

After years of working in software, I've decided to stop hoarding what I know and start sharing it properly. This is the story of why this blog exists, and what I actually want to do with it.

24 Mar 2026, GMT

Markdown Test

Markdown syntax reference

Markdown syntax reference testing headings, emphasis, lists, code blocks, tables, links, and more.