Blog | Travis Southard

Blog

It's okay to let things end

Last week, I was listening to Spotify for the last time. Already I wa… Read more

Building the web I want to see

A brick-like pattern of white rectangles with blue outlines, blue names like Ruby Gertz, Clotheshorse, and many other names of people and projects, plus each rectangle has blue labels with the topics each person/project covers

I have made a webring! This feels important to me as I try (along with many o… Read more

Your project is worth it

A dithered photo of Travis riding a mountain bike in the woods

After reading a blog post from Andrew Dana Hudson about therm… Read more

We cannot afford to skip repairs

A dithered image of a flowering sage plant in my backyard

Maintenance and repair are essential to a more sustainable, and frank… Read more

My Kingdom for a Paper Map

A dithered view from the bottom of the Initiation Well at Quinta de Regaleira in Portugal. The well is a large stone sprial staircase with ornate arches twisting up to the sunlight. Strongly recommend visiting if you can.

Recently returned from a ten day vacation in Lisbon, Portugal to cele… Read more

My interest in Solarpunk

A dithered view of Lisbon showing its castle, hills, and many homes and buildings in pastel colors with orange tile roofs

Over the past few years, I have been taking in a lot of Solarpunk inf… Read more

Sketches of the Real

A dithered image of a spiral-bound sketchbook with a pen sketch of a Victorian house with a hoophouse in front of it and a tree branch ot the right

I have been sketching lately. Mostly sitting in a place and drawing a… Read more

I am the hand, not the tool

A dithered image of a clock tower atop a storage warehouse looming over a tree-filled neighborhood

Despite a very full schedule leading up to the Social Justice Hackath… Read more

Finding my best duck-ness

A dithered image of my mountain bike on a small bridge in front of an old homestead

Coming through feeling sick and just in time for day light savings, w… Read more

After vacation; before spring

A dithered photo of people walking down a street of the medina in Assilah, Morocco

Excited to see that the sunlight is just starting to stick around aft… Read more

Back in the saddle

A dithered photo of a wooded trail going off into the trees

After a few weeks working at my new job and settling into new habits,… Read more

New year. New job. New habits.

A dithered photo of our backyard lightly coated in snow, a rarity now in Philly. A mostly brown landscape features some orange pots, a blue umbrella, and white snow.

New year. I am newly 35 years old and just came through a tough but s… Read more

A personal financial project

A screenshot of the debt snowball chart showing the paydown of the debts compared to the traditional payment plan

Earlier this year I built a project that came from a … Read more

Season of Change

The Wissahickon Creek flowing from around the corner through orange leaved tees that have dropped about 20% of their leaves

Autumn is in full show here in Philadelphia, at least up in the North… Read more

Smaller code and bigger plans

Ruby standing on an autumn beach on her birthday weekend

Over the past few weeks I have released a tutorial to make the classi… Read more

How to make Minesweeper part 3

Our fully done Minesweeper game with styling to make it look like cut stone.

How to make Minesweeper part 3 This is the final part of this 3-part series! I rec… Read more

How to make Minesweeper part 2

Our partially done Minesweeper game with blank squares, some pink ones, and an array of buttons reading 'reset', 'easy', 'medium', and 'hard'

How to make Minesweeper part 2 This is part 2 of 3 and I recommend starting with R… Read more

How to make Minesweeper part 1

Our partially done Minesweeper game with randomly placed bombs and safe squares

Overview Let’s make minesweeper with just native web tools! Using only native web components we ca… Read more

September Updates and October Upcoming

Sunset over a local church and graveyard

I have some updates from the past week and a content schedule for the… Read more

Web development streams coming soon!

Travis holding a bouquet of flowers in a field of flowers!

I have been working on personal projects in my spare time for a few w… Read more

Cautiously considering creating content

Gray buildings amongst green trees under a blue sky. A dithered pixel-art of a view of Fairmount, The Art Museum, the Schuylkill River, and the ridges beyond.

I have been arguing with myself for a while now about getting back into content cre… Read more

Now with permalinks!

A recursive screenshot of this blog post in tinier and tinier images as they recursively recede into themselves.

I have been trying to keep this portfolio and its parts pretty simple and lightweigh… Read more

I need a better routine

A dithered photo of our campsite from our recent vacation to Raystown Lake PA. Featureing our camp chairs in front of our campfire pizza, our borrowed tent and our two hammocks near the lake.

I am still very much on the job search. I am actively seeking a full-time (thoug… Read more

Solved a tricky (for me) docker-compose error!

I am currently volunteering on a project as part of Code for Philly's Launchpad … Read more

Why is some documentation better than others?

Note: This was originally published on the Azavea blog, but I wanted to put this here… Read more