Nic

codes on the weekdays and draws on the weekends. tech stuff, web accessibility, cats, and fire emblem💖

Website: https://nicchan.me/
Pronouns: she/her/佢

Public Key

npub1ppzr4pxhmdl52zh4a7ku5lhhky2qh96yxv2vlx3s8d44rx8a2vjsxw5fpk

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsqs3p6sntakl69pt67ltw20mmmz9qtjazrx9x0ngcrk663nr74xfgpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0ds7hwkl3

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1ppzr4pxhmdl52zh4a7ku5lhhky2qh96yxv2vlx3s8d44rx8a2vjsxw5fpk

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Last Notes

2026-01-23 06:56:27 GMT

I have free afternoon today so I think it's finally time to switch to Linux Mint permanently? Bye windows i hated you

2026-01-21 07:50:13 GMT

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the indieweb carnival might interest you!
https://indieweb.org/IndieWeb_Carnival

2026-01-04 04:06:18 GMT

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Probably indie? Your wifes taste is more retro (i grew up on the twins, and leslie would be one generation before me), but there are a bunch of current indie cantopop artists like my little airport, Garth T and Moon Tang!

2026-01-04 02:39:07 GMT

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feels like a dialogue between two people in Chinglish!

2026-01-04 02:38:22 GMT

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Wow, quite hard as it switches quite seamlessly (sometimes several times a sentence) and I missed a lot, hope it helps!
canto phrases i heard bracketed
"don't want [to go home]"
"you ask me [if i'm tired]"
"i say ok, [actually not tired]"
"tonight let me [be your person]"
"no future [don't think about it], just stay with me"
"i say life [is always like that]"
"this feeling [will disappear quickly] if [tomorrow you will go]"
"[tonight let's not say] bye bye [ok] no promises"

2025-12-14 09:43:19 GMT

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we were gathering cow dung for fertilizer for farming! But I'm going to pretend it was druidic activities 😏

2025-12-14 09:30:37 GMT

Today i went to the top of HKs tallest mountain to gather cow shit! I ain't passing up this opportunity to do a literal shit post! I also got to use a scythe for the first time, very fun

2025-12-05 03:55:09 GMT

I've never seen the industry so reluctant to spend. I had a company with 9 figures (yes, in USD) in revenue turn down a low five figure quote for a custom solution that would be revenue generating.
As a side note, if you're looking for a web swiss army knife, your gal is free in Q1~

2025-11-14 23:50:44 GMT

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Sad to lose my status as international woman of mystery but happy to hear it 😂

2025-11-14 15:25:42 GMT

I've loved the People and Blogs series for a long time, absolutely stoked to get to write an entry 💛
https://manuelmoreale.com/interview/nic-chan

2025-11-06 05:00:00 GMT

I have accidentally acquired another cat! Now comes the problem of what to name her.
She is a youngish cat but has one stump leg and no teeth(??), so she has strong sweet ol' grandma energy. (Pic in next post)
Our existing cats are called Hector and Poe (both black).

2025-10-22 03:29:09 GMT

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I know someone who makes a living off of apps, and basically he did a bunch of marketing stuff that didn't work, so in the end, he crunched the numbers, figured out how much he needed to charge to run ads and still profit, and then he just runs ads constantly. All sales are ads driven 🤷

2025-10-20 06:30:55 GMT

I'm at a point in my chronic pain where I'm like hell yeah give me anything you've got, i'll try it, which is freeing for an anxious brain but also very sad

2025-10-18 09:29:52 GMT

Getting my film developed is like a hit of dopamine directly into my veins
https://cdn.masto.host/indiewebsocial/media_attachments/files/115/394/400/704/327/117/original/e6bd68e59fd3ef9c.jpg
https://cdn.masto.host/indiewebsocial/media_attachments/files/115/394/434/544/514/666/original/9c795fe7ef241d1d.jpg
https://cdn.masto.host/indiewebsocial/media_attachments/files/115/394/434/554/037/635/original/af643197e06ea564.jpg

2025-10-14 04:33:07 GMT

Having a hell of a time with Safari today. You would think the introduction of liquid (gl)ass means that Safari would try to support things like filters, color-mix, etc, but i'm just hitting rendering bug after rendering bug.

2025-10-09 02:23:29 GMT

I spoke to a doctor who switched to a new hospital which had a different patient tracking software.
The hidden scrollbars in the user interface made it so that the doctor nearly forgot to see a patient who's name was not initially viewable in the list.
Had the scrollbar been persistently visible, there would be a clear visual indicator that there were more patients to visit.
Design can be life or death, are you really going to let your hatred of affordances kill someone?

2025-09-17 08:18:40 GMT

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Haha oh, I thought I was just a weirdo who was really attached! It's more that I'm old and too lazy to learn a new program, I'd be willing to try Krita as long as there is a way to migrate my extensive brush collection over!

2025-09-17 04:24:31 GMT

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I'm torn because I have one single holdover program on Windows/Macs only that I love and don't want to switch from (Clip Studio Paint), and I also need to be on Windows to not void my contract with my IT guys (I would like to keep it because they replaced my faulty GPU for free and we all know how much they cost), so I'll probably dual boot but main Linux! they can have windows 11 to troubleshoot my hardware

2025-09-17 04:17:02 GMT

fellow windows 10 users, what are we doing in a month?

2025-09-08 16:04:49 GMT

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I hope I have absorbed all the bad train luck today so you can make that connection 😂

2025-09-08 15:16:56 GMT

I was warned about the Deutsche Bahn by three separate people before coming on this trip, and i asked myself how bad could it be? I should have listened as there were three separate delays, each with a panic inducing email, but we made it in one piece. Luckily our planned activity of immediately getting cake does not have a time limit

2025-08-31 09:35:28 GMT

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I love these so much! The design work is really lovely

2025-08-15 07:51:31 GMT

I hate it when people people who have no experience with accessibility use accessibility as a defense for AI because I can actively see pro-AI people making accessibility communities worse. Every other post is just low quality shilling for a new product that is 1. obviously just some kind of ChatGPT wrapper and 2. just a knockoff of a bettter, existing product. Then get mad if you question them, as if disabled people should be grateful to even be considered. fuck 'em.

2025-07-16 14:58:59 GMT

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I need to get your feed because this is VERY not my experience and I can't stand it 😂

2025-07-04 12:39:58 GMT

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Honestly I think it would be a really cool post to compare what you liked and didn't like about them!

2025-07-04 10:46:33 GMT

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Jokes on me, it didn't build on Netlify because it hit some kind of limit. 😂 I somehow managed to avoid ever touching Gridsome, perhaps it was for the best!

2025-07-04 07:29:02 GMT

I had to get an old Gatsby build running and I'm genuinely impressed at how slow it is. Took several minutes to build and my PC fans went up to max speed; the site only has about 15 pages, lol.

2025-07-01 00:34:48 GMT

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The 'shape into a rough fish shape' intrigues me so much, can't wait to try it! Like a taiyaki made out of savory ingredients 🐟

2025-06-30 11:53:40 GMT

I'm incredibly sick of eating my own cooking, does anyone have any recipes to share? Preferably without cheese as it's really expensive here, but otherwise open to any culture!

2025-06-27 10:28:34 GMT

4 minutes into this video and I hit the subscribe button.
An incredibly powerful, beautifully presented video essay on creative software licensing and why it is shit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4mdMMu-3fc

2025-06-18 03:09:35 GMT

Ugh I have so many cool ideas I want to build and no time to build them!
This is why for a while I thought devrel was the coolest job ever, just building things with new technologies and talking to people about how to improve the platform. I think that ship has sailed for good though 🥲

2025-06-17 14:51:08 GMT

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💛💛 did you end up in a 'I'm so very tired tier'? 😂

2025-06-17 10:38:51 GMT

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really excellent post! 💛

2025-06-10 14:43:21 GMT

📝 You're not a front-end developer until you've...
Gotten bullied by me in the form of an interactive quiz!
https://www.nicchan.me/blog/youre-not-a-front-end-developer-until-youve/

2025-05-15 00:43:49 GMT

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Thanks so much for catching that! I finished the sentence 😂

2025-05-14 12:30:22 GMT

📝 We launched our first Shopify theme
Come for the technical deep dive, stay for the terrible jokes?
https://www.nicchan.me/blog/we-launched-our-first-shopify-theme/

2025-05-13 00:46:37 GMT

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The dozens of replies in the comments agreeing and/or treating this as a serious good faith position made me log off

2025-05-13 00:44:35 GMT

Saw a post on linkedin about how developers trying to fight scrapers is futile, a company should 'collaborate' (ie. allow the scrapers to hoover up everything relentlessly) with the scrapers to make use of the increased exposure that will surely result from the scrapers.
The cherry on top of the cake was that this guy owns a scraping company, lol.
'Please just let me have the data so I personally can profit!'

2025-03-25 02:42:10 GMT

The worst thing about Typescript + VS Code for me personally is that every now and then, the server kind of hangs for a bit and it prevents you from doing things like copy and pasting, it just shows an infinite loading spinner. I want this stuff to just fail gracefully. Let me keep typing, show me an error in the corner, don't interrupt my flow.

2025-03-18 06:21:42 GMT

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You've got a long journey still ahead of you!

2025-03-04 12:57:37 GMT

Pack it up folks, I just got asked to double the size of the logo and make it neon green. Finally I get to experience this rite of passage in the industry

2025-02-22 01:01:38 GMT

My weekend project is to migrate from Chrome to Zen browser and get my bookmarks organized on raindrop.io!

2025-01-02 16:53:51 GMT

Its 1am and im sitting at the emergency vet as my male cat might be blocked 😵‍💫 2025 is off to a hellish start

2024-12-31 01:26:58 GMT

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I'm trying to find some software and my standards have gone from 'I'd like for this to have a VPAT that shows an acceptable compliance level' to 'at a minimum i would like for this to be keyboard operable and not be div soup'

2024-12-31 01:24:09 GMT

I'm actually astonished at how inaccessible most help desk ticket/knowledge base software is. A knowledge base is essentially just a bunch of text content with maybe a few disclosure widgets and a search input and most major vendors can't even get that right!
Where are the HTML is just for documents*~*~ crowd when they are in fact not even able to build these documents correctly

2024-12-17 15:45:48 GMT

Having a boatload of computer trouble, which isn't fun to hear when you've dropped the equivalent of macbook pro price on a new build in the last 6 months 😭 I look forward to the quiet comfort of having everything in my life working again.

2024-12-01 08:42:19 GMT

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I have another apple website to share, https://applerankings.com/ is a load of fun if you have a bunch of time. I want to try the Kanzi, apparently that's pretty widely available in Europe? 😂

2024-12-01 03:16:53 GMT

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Please never stop posting these, I absolutely love them. The last one made my cry happy tears, the grey fluffy cat is a clone of my last cat who is no longer with us, it makes me happy to think she might be reincarnated in Iceland.

2024-12-01 02:38:06 GMT

Re: last retoot
This makes me unexpectedly sad, as an apple lover (the fruit not the company), whose first word was 'Apple', trying a honey crisp apple is on my bucket list, but perhaps it's not even worth trying any more 🫠

2024-11-09 01:01:55 GMT

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im so looking forward to the holiday season when i might have time to play this!

2024-10-20 01:22:01 GMT

Is there anything more annoying than the fact that after a long period of time paused, Youtube videos no longer pick up where you left off, instead they play for a few seconds before jumping back 10ish seconds and resuming 'seamlessly', creating an ouroboros of a sentence

2024-10-14 01:59:22 GMT

You can get paid reporting security bugs to vendors but I've never heard of anyone getting paid for reporting accessibility bugs 🤔

2024-10-09 10:34:38 GMT

📝 Shopify, accessibility lawsuits & 'Compliance'
Debated hitting publish on this one since I wrote most of it angrily, in one 8 hour sitting, but I thought it would be useful/of interest to some. A -very- deep dive into whether or not we need to grab our pitforks over Shopify's accessibility.
https://www.nicchan.me/blog/shopify-accessibility-lawsuits-compliance/
#a11y

2024-10-09 08:34:28 GMT

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I skipped a major version for Astro and it was not super smooth, I also recall one time where a update silently broke something and that stressed me out 😂. 11ty upgrades are really seamless since they have an upgrade-helper plugin that checks your code to make sure you aren't using anything.

2024-10-09 07:06:13 GMT

Debating between Astro and Eleventy for a client project. Astro provides a better experience for authoring client-side components, but this project is for an event that only happens yearly, and I have the feeling that if I go with Astro, I'll be saddling the client with painful upgrades down the line 🤔

2024-09-29 01:45:03 GMT

📝 Building my new website:
Why are pixel SVGs so difficult, table of contents & full-text RSS
In which I wait 6 months to do anything and my belief that 'eh, this'll be added to core eventually' -actually pays off-. Also featuring some interesting rendering quirks with image-rendering: pixelated.
https://www.nicchan.me/blog/building-my-new-website-part-5/

2024-09-28 09:20:10 GMT

I thought i cancelled my adobe subscription and they did not charge me during that month, but they appear to have charged me for the subsequent months. I couldn't find any contact links that were open to non-subscribers, so I had to become hostile to the AI chatbot in order to get a real human. If I die in the robot uprising, this is why

2024-09-26 03:17:40 GMT

in this time of great trial for the internet ecosystem, we turn to the sacred texts for guidance
(memes, i'm talking about memes)
#WordPress
https://cdn.masto.host/indiewebsocial/media_attachments/files/113/201/679/843/793/441/original/07134af85185314d.jfif

2024-09-17 11:34:27 GMT

I'm (soft) launching my personal site! It took the better part of a year to get this done, I hope you take a look! I definitely have a few more things to work on, but not having it published was really killing any motivation to blog since I'd have to 'post' it twice, so look forward to more blog posts soon. 📝
(Looks the fanciest*~ in a browser that supports View Transitions)
https://www.nicchan.me/
https://cdn.masto.host/indiewebsocial/media_attachments/files/113/152/665/618/443/511/original/b6181fd27f5a861f.png

2024-09-11 09:50:22 GMT

The building's only lift is down, might be down for a few days. My floor number is in the double digits. 🙈

2024-09-03 13:04:14 GMT

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I tried -really- hard to make it a somewhat presentable! You should give it a shot, it's fun!

2024-09-03 09:21:01 GMT

Shoutout to the one day during the pandemic I got really bored and used a Calligraphr trial to make fonts of all my friends handwriting.
(attached is mine, I just found it on my hard drive)
https://cdn.masto.host/indiewebsocial/media_attachments/files/113/072/876/444/694/094/original/f032f9b1f1e468c5.png

2024-08-30 23:51:17 GMT

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honestly, mando is the last language i think of when i think of singapore, after english, malay, hokkien etc. 🙈

2024-08-26 09:53:35 GMT

you ever listen to a zoom recording of a meeting and your own voice jump scares you?

2024-08-23 00:43:54 GMT

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Incredible! I so enjoy your wildlife photography, I have never seen this kind of environment in real life so it's always nice to have it pop up on my feed.

2024-08-08 03:49:09 GMT

Found it interesting to see that https://onemillionscreenshots.com/ is using Leaflet.js, a popular open source mapping library, in order to handle things like zooming + dynamically loading relevant tilesets.
Interaction patterns and primitives used for geographic maps have other uses besides web maps, and bringing them to the browsers would unlock a variety of use cases. If you are interested, check out the work @npub1uyd…n8ge and others are doing at the Maps4HTML working group. 👀 https://maps4html.org/

2024-07-30 06:14:09 GMT

`npm install`
58 vulnerabilities
"Oh shit, better run `npm audit fix`!"
61 vulnerabilities
🙃

2024-06-30 07:22:21 GMT

My girlfriend: -filling out a signup form on a mobile app so we can get a coupon on a hat i want-
Me: you've accidentally swapped the first and last name fields. This is why using placeholders as labels is an antipattern. You think you're saving space but actually-