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In case you’re wondering about the technology powering this project, here’s a quick overview. The current version of this site is built with:
- Astro: a frontend framework and static site generator
- Tailwind: the most widely-used atomic CSS library
- MDX: essentially Markdown with custom components transformed by the Rust-based Sätteri
- Unpic and imagor: responsive images transformed on demand from a self-hosted server
Map Component
- Protomaps
- MapLibre
- React Map GL
- React
- React Query: data fetching and client-side caching
- Turf: geospatial analysis utilities
- Zustand: lightweight state management
Utilities and Tooling
- Astro Lab: a set of plugins and tools for Astro
- TypeScript
- Sharp and Takumi: image processing and OpenGraph image generation
- Pagefind: static full-text search across the entire site
- kdbush and geokdbush: geospatial indexing for nearby location lookups
- Transformers.js and USearch: LLM-powered embeddings and vector search for similar content
- Remeda: TypeScript-first utility library
- Vite and Vitest
- Zod: TypeScript and runtime data schema validation
- Type set in Lora, Geologica, and Commissioner
- Prettier, type-aware ESLint, Stylelint, mdxlint, and Knip
- Claude Code and Zed
Previous Version
Spectral Codex 1.0 ran on WordPress and a fully-featured theme built with Timber, Twig, and Carbon Fields. An elaborate build system patched together with Gulp and Webpack allowed for a highly optimized output similar to what you might achieve when using Roots ecosystem tools, but the burden of maintenance was significant. Magazine-style image layout was facilitated with lazysizes and a hefty chunk of specialized code. Styling was accomplished with Sass. Finally, interactivity was accomplished entirely without jQuery; everything from comments handling to dropdown menus was 100% TypeScript without any UI framework.
Author
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I am a web application developer, photojournalist, urban explorer, and history enthusiast passionate about the open web and documenting my experiences on this planet. This project was founded in the early 2010s and has evolved into a sort of personal Wikipedia of places that interest me (and often the photographs I’ve taken there). I’m originally from Toronto, Canada, but spend most of my time residing in Taiwan.