Monica Powell is a senior software engineer, generative artist, and speaker who writes about developer education, creative coding, SVG animation, and hands-on learning through experimentation.
42 articles from this blog
A developer reflects on their personal website as a learning playground, discussing the IndieWeb, web standards, and the joy of hands-on creation.
A guide to automating Webmention retrieval for a static site using GitHub Actions, Webmention.io, and Brid.gy.
Learn how to use Astro's Content Collection Schemas with Zod to enforce consistent tags and structured data for organized, SEO-friendly content.
A technical guide on using linear interpolation (lerpColor) in p5.js to create smooth color gradients through code.
A guide to customizing the ZSH terminal startup message with ASCII art and dynamic greetings based on the time of day.
A walkthrough of solving Day 1 of Advent of Code 2022, focusing on parsing input and calculating the highest calorie count using JavaScript.
A guide to using the Netlify CLI to check the bundled size of Netlify functions locally to avoid 50MB deployment limits.
A developer shares detective-like strategies for debugging software, including reading error messages, changing one thing at a time, and confirming assumptions.
A guide to migrating from Bash to zsh on macOS, including setting up autosuggestions and transferring history and settings.
A developer outlines her step-by-step process for creating and animating Scalable Vector Graphics (SVGs), from inspiration to final animation.
A technical introduction to SVG animation, covering SVG basics, XML structure, and animating elements with CSS and JavaScript.
A tutorial on implementing user authentication and protected routes in a Next.js application using Supabase's Auth client library.
A tutorial on implementing user authentication in a Next.js application using Supabase, an open-source Firebase alternative.
A technical tutorial on integrating an Instagram feed into a Next.js website using the instagram-web-api npm package, covering authentication and data fetching.
A tutorial on implementing Webmention functionality to collect social media comments and interactions on a Next.js website.
Tips for making quality open-source contributions during Hacktoberfest, focusing on finding suitable issues and respecting maintainers.
A technical guide on programmatically displaying relevant icons (like GitHub, React, JS) for blog articles based on their tags using React components.
A guide to customizing VSCode with animated sparkles using the Power Mode extension, including configuration steps and settings.
A developer shares insights from her conference talk on migrating from Remark to MDX, highlighting the benefits of using React components in Markdown.
A guide on how to securely pass and use environment variables, like NPM tokens, within GitHub Actions workflows.
