CrowderSoup

A website about technology and life.

Aaron Crowder avatar

Aaron Crowder

Hi, I'm Aaron Crowder. Or—if you know me online—CrowderSoup.

Father of two, Software developer, and lover of the open web. I like to take things apart (and sometimes even put them back together). I can frequently be found tinkering with some bit of code in my spare time.

Pronouns: He/Him, They/Them

Walk

Saturday Afternoon Walk

Elevation profile

Gain -- Loss --

Distance
--
Moving time
--
Stopped time
--
Total time
--
Avg moving speed
--
Max speed
--
Elevation gain
--
Elevation loss
--

Over the weekened Azure and I went for a walk around the neighborhood and saw some really fun and cute houses. It was nice to get outside despite it being cold! The sun felt increidble juxtaposed against the cold air.

Aaron Crowder
  1. desk in seated position
    New desk default mode: seated.
  2. desk top with keyboard and mouse
    I love this new setup so much
  3. Desk in standing position
    Wiggle mode: standing

I start a new job tomorrow at Filevine, and I’m more than a little excited. So excited, in fact, that it felt like the perfect excuse to finally upgrade my desk setup 📸

IKEA came through with the GLADHÖJDEN sit-stand desk, and Amazon handled the rest with a new keyboard, mouse, and monitor arm.

The last piece left is a chair. Something comfortable is next on the list, I just have not landed on the right one yet.

Aaron Crowder
  1. screenshot of theme settings and color picker
    The color glow is such a vibe

I'm implementing custom theme settings! This is something I had the idea for late one night last week. You define the settings you want in your theme's theme.json like this:

{
  ...
  "settings": {
    "fields": {
      "accent_color": {
        "type": "color",
        "label": "Accent color",
        "default": "#cc3f2e"
      },
      "background_color": {
        "type": "color",
        "label": "Background color",
        "default": "#f8f4ef"
      },
      "max_width": {
        "type": "string",
        "label": "Layout max width",
        "default": "72rem",
        "help": "Used for the main content column."
      }
    },
    "groups": [
      {
        "label": "Colors",
        "fields": ["accent_color", "background_color"]
      },
      {
        "label": "Layout",
        "fields": ["max_width"]
      }
    ]
  }
}

The result is the UI you see above! Then they can be used your theme like this:

<style>
    :root {
        --accent: {{ theme.settings.accent_color|default:"#cc3f2e" }};
        --bg: {{ theme.settings.background_color|default:"#f8f4ef" }};
    }
</style>

This seems like a small feature but it gives users and theme devs a ton of flexibility! I'm exicted to someday see how people use it.

Aaron Crowder
  1. all the pieces laid out
    I swear if you have a strategy for laying out the pieces it goes easier!
  2. the back of the BILLY
    I should have drawn something back here lol
  3. upright BILLY
    An upright BILLY
  4. the living room
    I’m so happy with how it came together 😍

Azure and I bought this bookshelf wayyyyy back in December, but couldn't put it up until the Yule tree went away. We did that last weekend but finally had the energy to assemble the BILLY tonight.

It went together much easier than I expected, even for IKEA furniture. And I love how it came together!

Aaron Crowder

I made a no‑build CMS for Neocities
Aaron Crowder

I’ve been wanting a dead‑simple way to publish small personal sites on Neocities without build tools, databases, or plugins. Today I’m sharing Neo‑CMS — a tiny flat‑file CMS that renders Markdown right in the browser. The whole idea is: just files. Drop Markdown into /content, list those files in content/index.json, and add a little YAML front matter for titles, menus, and slugs. That’s it. No build step. No dependencies. No CLI. If you can edit a text file and upload it to Neocities, you ca...

Read more

Building a Home Server
Aaron Crowder

I’ve been having a lot of fun the past few days building out my home server. It’s been a fun adventure revisiting old territory, and I wanted to take some time to write about the setup I’ve settled on for now. The core idea behind this setup is simple: the foundation should be well documented. That way, if I want or need to tear it all down, build a new server, and spin everything back up, I can do it with minimal effort. This setup definitely still has some rough edges, but what I have is so...

Read more
  1. Pepe Gaka
    Closer Up look at the cellist
  2. Pepe Gaka
    Most of the mural!

Today Azure and I went wandering around downtown St. George. We stumbled across this street art by Pepe Gaka and I had to take a picture to look up later.

Someday I'm going to finally build my app to map and tag street art!

Aaron Crowder