Leilukin's Hub

Changelog: 10 December 2024

2024-12-10T10:25:01Z

Obfuscate my email address with CSS and HTTP redirects. (Credit to Spencer Mortensen's article, "Email obfuscation: What works in 2024?")

Changelog: 9 December 2024

2024-12-09T05:07:05Z

Add table of contents to each tab section of the Links page.
Add link to my Pixel Cat's End profile to my Adoptables page. Free free to check out my not-cats!

Changelog: 3 December 2024

2024-12-03T15:53:36Z

Improve footnotes by enlarging the target area of reference links and footntoe backlinks.
Update article "How I (Tried to) Implement Accessible Footnotes" with information about improving footnote links' target area.

Changelog: 1 December 2024

2024-12-01T05:01:33Z

New blog post: IndieWeb Carnival November 2024: Impact

IndieWeb Carnival November 2024: Impact | Blog

2024-12-01T05:01:27Z

Alexandra, also known as Xandra, is hosting the IndieWeb Carnival for November 2024, with the topic being "Impact". It is a great topic for self-reflection, and Xandra has provided prompts as jumping points for us to share our thoughts and experiences related to the topic. I have some of my own to share as well.

I believe everyone is capable of making an impact on someone else's life, no matter how small, and even if in an indirect manner, because our actions and choices have consequences.

Impact of a Kind and Generous Stranger

One of the people who have made great impact on my life was a stranger whose name and face I have unfortunately forgotten, but I still fondly remember the moment when she helped me.

At the time, I was about to travel back to my home state for the first time since I began to attend university, which was located on a different state from my home state. I was supposed to take a regular train to a station closest to my parents' hometown, but due to my lack of knowledge, I accidentally took rapid transit that was not even connected to my home state, so I realised my mistake only when the rapid transit began to travel back to the direction of the state where my university was located. I contacted my parents about my situation, and they suggested me to drop by the next stop in the neighbouring state to my home state and wait for them to pick me up and bring me to my parents' hometown.

There was a woman passenger who intended to leave the rapid transit at the next stop learned about my situation, then acting as my temporary guide at a place I was unfamiliar with, and suggest me to stay in a shopping mall while waiting for my parents, while giving me her phone number so I can call her in case I need her help again. Eventually, through continuous contact with my parents, my father managed to locate me, pick me up, and safely brought me to my parents' hometown.

I never saw that woman again, and I lost her phone number, but despite being a stranger, her kindness and generosity had left a great impact on me, for being a major reason why I can still have faith in humanity to this day despite everything. She made me genuinely believe there are still humans who are willing to help out strangers in times of need, and why I strive to be a kind person myself.

Strangers' Impact on My Career Choices

My career choices from graphic design to web development were another major example in my life of how strangers can still capable of making a profound impact on me.

During my teenage blogging years, I was following a Taiwanese blogger who was also a professional web designer. I was impressed by her web design skills displayed on her blog, especially her Flash header. She ended up becoming the main inspiration for my interest in design, and I picked up some basic HTML and CSS knowledge and skills. However, I lack the knowledge of how to break into the web design field, so I studied graphic design in university and subsequently worked as a graphic designer instead. After working in the field for 8 years, I was burned out from graphic design as a profession, for many reasons, including my mistaken belief that I could get web design work as a graphic designer.

Fast-forward to 2022, I discovered Neocities through Tumblr, and thus discovered the resurgence of personal websites. My interest in HTML and CSS was fully rekindled after learning to code my personal website from scratch for the first time on Neocities. Eventually, my interest grew large enough to take online courses to teach myself web development, starting with freeCodeCamp. I decided that I wanted to become a web developer after hearing other web and software developers' stories about getting developer jobs without a computer science degree, including stories of those who previously worked on a different occupation.

In mid-2024, I decided to get more involved in the personal web by joining its communities. In June 2024, I joined a personal web community for hobbyist web developers named 32-Bit Cafe, which was started by Xandra herself, on both its Discourse forum and its Discord server. In my introduction thread on 32-Bit Cafe's Discourse forum, I introduced myself as an aspiring web developer, because I was already in the process of working towards my goal of switching my career path from graphic design to web development.

I was drawn to 32-Bit Cafe because it appears to share my values, after reading its code of conduct and community guidelines, and I was proven right. I have been enjoying my time in the 32-Bit Cafe community and have always felt welcomed there. Interacting with other webweavers has provided me a lot of inspirations for my own website as well.

Finally, after spending almost 2 years to teach myself web development, I reached my goal of becoming a professional web development in August 2024. I shared the news of my official career transition from graphic design to web development on this blog and 32-Bit Cafe's Discourse forum, and received a great deal of support and positive responses. I even received messages from other people in the personal space, including members of 32-Bit Cafe, that my story of transitioning from hobbyist to professional web developer has inspired them to learn web development more.

I made the decision to pursue web development as a profession after being inspired by other people's stories, so I was pleased to hear that my own story has inspired others in turn too. This shows the impact we can have on others by sharing our stories.

What Impact I Hope to Make

My life and experience have taught me that everyone is capable of making an impact on other people and the world, and making connections to people from all walks of life on the web only cemented such belief.

I have used the internet for most of my life, with blogging being my first foray into creating things on the web, and thus planting the seed of my love for the web. Participating in the independent web as an adult has given me hope that a better web is possible. Now that I am a professional web developer, I aim to make use of my knowledges, skills and abilities to make the web better.

I cannot predict how long I will live, but I hope to do what I can to make a positive impact on the world by channelling my desire to want to make the world a better place into my actions and creations.

Changelog: 21 November 2024

2024-11-20T16:55:40Z

Officially launch my Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire shrine to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the games' release.

Changelog: 19 November 2024

2024-11-19T14:19:00Z

Expand the home page of my Cassette Beasts shrine by adding a "Cassette Beasts — My Ultimate Comfort Media" section.

Changelog: 28 October 2024

2024-10-28T09:17:22Z

New blog post: "Re: Social Media Hasn't Killed the Personal Blog Just Yet"

Re: Social Media Hasn't Killed the Personal Blog Just Yet | Blog

2024-10-28T09:16:14Z

Jim Mitchell wrote a blog post, "Social Media Hasn't Killed the Personal Blog Just Yet", discussing the decline of personal blogs after social media took off, and the question of if social media killed personal blogs, and if personal blogging can make a comeback. This post caught me by surprise when I discovered it, because recently I have been reflecting on my blogging history, and how social media changed that, with my thoughts ended up being incredibly similar to Jim's.

Blogs have always had a special place in my heart and my history with the web, because blogging was my first foray into creating things and sharing things about myself on the web way back in the 2000s as a teenager. Teenage me was deeply fascinated by the concept of writing a personal journal on the web, and being able to connect with other people on the internet through reading and commenting on each other's online journal. I have loved writing and like to express myself through writing since I was a child, so blogging seemed to be a great way to do so.

Then social media began to take off. Jim Mitchell wrote:

Personal blogs didn’t just disappear in one big poof. It was more like a slow fade. As Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter took off, people – me included – found it easier to share bite-sized pieces of life. Why write a long, reflective post to publish on your personal site when you could sum it up in a quick status update that some “friend” you don’t really even know could give you a mindless like?

I can attest to that, because I was there when bloggers began to use social media, and how social media platforms gradually replaced their personal blogs as means share their thoughts and life updates. I was introduced to Facebook in the late 2000s by other Malaysian Chinese bloggers. As more of us bloggers use Facebook, updates of our personal blogs have gradually decreased.

Jim Mitchell's post talked about the shift to niche or professional blogging, which is a phenomenon I have noticed as well. I do not think blogs ever died, and in fact, even before discovering the personal web and coding my own website from scratch for the first time in 2022, I still found niche blogs to follow and subscribed to their RSS feeds, but social media and search engine optimisation (SEO) have made personal blogs obscure and more difficult to find than niche and professional blogs.

That said, exploring the web outside social media and seeing the resurgence of personal websites and blogs on platforms like Neocities and Bear Blog, gave me hope. I am happy to see people on the personal web are bringing back personal blogs too, which motivated me to include a blog to my website.

As Jim Mitchell concluded in his post:

Is social media the death of the personal blog? Not quite. It may have nearly killed it, yes. But for those of us willing to carve out our own space in the digital landscape, personal blogs still have a heartbeat. It just takes more effort to keep it alive.

Changelog: 17 September 2024

2024-09-17T05:58:34Z

Add Pantson Color Club section to my adoptables page, including my own colour card for the pixel club.

Changelog: 6 September 2024

2024-09-06T15:16:00Z

Replace the estimated reading time of articles and blog posts with word count, by using the eleventy-plugin-wordcount-extended plugin.
Create 200×40 pixel size version of Leilukin's Hub site button.

Changelog: 18 August 2024

2024-08-18T12:33:42Z

New blog post about me officially becoming a professional web developer, "From Hobbyist to Professional Web Developer".

From Hobbyist to Professional Web Developer | Blog

2024-08-18T12:28:21Z

I am pleased to announce that I am officially a professional web developer now — starting from 16 August 2024, I am working for a local traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) healthcare company, with my job involving web development, UX design and graphic design. I owe much to this very website for inspiring me to pursue web development as a profession.

My Web Design Origin Story

My interest in web design and development go back as far as my teenage years in the 2000s. I had a GeoCities account, but by the time I started to participate on the web when I was around 14, blogs were on the rise, so blogging was my first foray into creating on the internet, so I did not experience creating and coding a personal website like other GeoCities users did. That said, I got my start on HTML and CSS through blogging, by editing the codes of widgets and blog themes, while being inspired by many other blogs.

In particular, there was a Taiwanese blogger who was a professional designer whose blog had a gorgeous header made with Flash, who ended up being an inspiration for me to aspire to become a graphic designer when I grew up. I did study graphic design, earn a diploma and began working as a graphic designer. However, years in the field, I got burned out; there were multiple factors contributing to my burnout from the graphic design field, but the short version is that the reality of graphic design work, at least in my experience, did not turn out as great as what my younger self had expected and hoped for.

Rekindled Interest in Web Design

Fast forward to 2022, my interest in web design was rekindled when I discovered Neocities through Tumblr and the resurgence of creating personal websites, so I decided to build and code my own website to gather various stuff I have created and curated across various online spaces. For this, I re-learned HTML and CSS, and began to truly experience the joy of carving one's own space on the web, and the more I worked on my website, the more I learned about not only web design, but also web development, by dabbling in JavaScript.

Furthermore, despite being burned out from graphic design as a profession, my graphic design background does come in handy in building Leilukin's Hub, by designing and creating graphics for my website, including header image, site button, favicon, etc., as well as applying my design knowledge and skill to design my own website, from colour schemes to layout.

Web Development: More than a Hobby

Over time, my interest in web development evolved enough to take online coding courses, starting with freeCodeCamp, then Scrimba shortly after. Taking these courses made me realise that these languages have evolved a lot since more than a decade ago. I applied the HTML, CSS and JavaScript skills and knowledge I learned from these courses to make improvements to my website.

Meanwhile, learning that there were people who became developers without a computer science degree inspired me to consider switching my career path to web development. In other words, web design and development have become more than a hobby to me. I did not expect it to be easy, so I did put as much as I could in learning and practising web development. That said, Leilukin's Hub remains a hobby project, and it serves as a good platform for me to practice and experiment my front end web development.

After teaching myself to code for almost two years, and received multiple code and tech-related certifications, I updated my résumé with information about my interest in switching career from graphic design to web development, and hope for transferring my creativity and design expertise into building the web. I started to try hunting for front end web developer jobs, but my attempts to apply for the job for many companies did not succeed, then I received a surprised belated birthday present in the form of a job interview invitation.

New Job Interview: A Surprise Belated Birthday Present

On 29 July 2024, a day after my birthday, I received an invitation by the managing director of a local traditional Chinese medicine company to attend an interview with him. The company was looking for someone with web development expertise to work on and improve their website, which is built with WordPress, and the managing director discovered my résumé on a Malaysian job hunting website I had registered an account on.

During my interview, I explained to the managing director that I have been looking to switch career from graphic design to web development. Turned out, the company was also interested in hiring a web developer with design expertise to improve the front end of their website, so my 8 years worth of graphic design experience was a bonus. A week after the interview, the managing director sent me a job offer, and I accepted and got hired, with my responsibilities include web development, UX design and graphic design.

WordPress Developer by Day, Eleventy Developer by Night

Starting my professional web development journey with WordPress is going to be a new experience for me. I had brief experience with working on WordPress websites as a website administrator in one of my previous jobs, but never as a developer. Furthermore, prior to receiving this job offer, I never studied WordPress development, nor built my own website with WordPress.

That said, I hope to apply the programming knowledge and skills I learned from the coding courses I had taken to adapt to learning WordPress development. My confidence in my ability to learn new tech skills was bolstered by the time I created a fork for the fanlisting script BellaBuffs with SMTP support despite my inexperience with PHP. I am looking forward to learning more about PHP with my new job as well.

Although now I work on WordPress in my day job, my personal website will continue to be built with Eleventy. One of the reasons I wanted to pursue web development as a profession is the freedom to learn and use different tools outside day job while continuing to grow as a developer.

None of the coding courses I took taught about Eleventy or any static site generator, but rebuilding Leilukin's Hub with Eleventy in April 2024 allowed me to learn more about web development, not to mention I do have a lot of fun with using Eleventy. Therefore, I am content to be a WordPress developer by day, Eleventy developer by night.

Wrapping Up

Looking back, even I am amazed by the fact that building this very website kickstarted my path to become a professional web developer, especially since I did not come from a tech educational or industrial background, but I am glad that it happened.

I am happy to be able to switch my career path to web development despite not having a computer science degree, and that my prior working experience as a graphic designer helped with getting this new opportunity.

Changelog: 11 August 2024

2024-08-11T14:46:00Z

Improve the site's RSS feed:
- Make RSS feeds automatically discoverable by feed readers
- Use time and time zone to make feed items' timestamps accurate

Changelog: 6 August 2024

2024-08-06T13:20:00Z

New article: "How I (Tried to) Implement Accessible Footnotes", which is also my entry for 32-Bit Cafe's Community Code Jam #5: Back to School.