First Australian Open that I follow from the beginning since 1994 or so 🎾 Sabalenka won her first slam, Novak Djokovic made it to the 22nd, and I am loving this sport more than ever.

Astro built-ins and plugins are not sufficient to deliver all the features or details that I want to have. But that's no problem at all because Astro is very open for extension!

This post is the summary of my hands-on, head first, and all heart approach at piecing together the Astro integration that delivers my ideal ⭐ MDX authoring experience.

Since I am migrating this site to Astro - which I am convinced is the best SSG out there right now - I was expecting to have the same advanced MDX authoring experience as in my previous website. Better even, maybe the challenges I was not able to solve before were meanwhile solved by the awesome folks out there.

But I know well, there will be 🐉 🐉 🐉 dragons!

Once I got my new website's information architecture up and running, and migrated most of the old content, I want to make the authoring experience as awesome as possible. 🤩 At least as good as it was on my previous sites.

Relaunching my website, again based on another Typescript SSG framework. 🚀 Not React-Static anymore, not even React "at all". Introducing the magnificent Astro. 🌔

This library is now powering ESLint, prettier, this website, ... and pretty much anything using MD(X). Which is a lot and is only going to grow in the future. I say: it's here to stay! ✊ And coming for your fridge.

I am relaunching my website with Astro. Writing down a word or two about the previous version, React Static, and the original "MDX" experience.

They said it couldn't be done, but we drove to France to take a look. In the end, F1 is not that great experience to see live. Unless you are interested in the beautiful decay of civilisation 😏 because all of this is obviously not sustainable.

I was like 11 when I first heard this album. It took me not long to memorize the lyrics, the jokes, the sound of everything in the intervals of the songs. This might be the origin story of my fixation with music, especially popular music, played live in front of an audience.

I have a bunch of "songs" 🎸 recorded at home, here in Barcelona, that I was hoping I could record better in the studio. But thats not happening soon because our world leaders suck, so I am just going to leave them here.

Black Lives Matter. Save The Planet. End Inequality. ✊ 2020 SUCKS. Massive Attack just released a 3 song EP and it contains more insights on the sad state of our world than everything else you saw today. I am writing this on the day it was released, trying to process it and taking some notes.

This is one of my favourite live recordings of all time. I got the extended version for cheap bucks at a record store. And later, compared to other friends' copies, realised that this is the only version that really matters here, because the original release, which contains only separate performances from Getz and Gilberto, is missing the most important part.

This album is an incredible historical document, as much as it is a layer cake of precious stories, that I have been discovering since it entered my life in the late 90s in CD format.

How can something made in such a dark place be so inspiring? How can someone so depressed find the time, the energy and the resolve, to complete this laborious, delicate, beautiful piece of art? And, rhetorically we might also ask: how can someone so talented die so young? 😱 What is being young?

I am lucky to say I have covered quite a bit of ground around the Iberian peninsula, but I had never explored Costa Brava, even though I've moved to Barcelona almost 2 years ago. I had high expectations and it did not disappoint.

Hype keeps building up around static site generators. But this technique has been around for much longer than most people think. Our industry's collective memory 🧠 is very short, and it sometimes needs a little help.

Today the new version of my website is uploaded to a staging endpoint. What is happening, what is new, and what comes next?

Here I am again, rebuilding the whole thing, enjoying React and static site generation and making plans to blog more often.

Last week, I had the immense privilege of participating in London Lean Kanban Days 2017, including a mind-blowing day of workshops with the speakers. Infinite thank you for this amazing opportunity. Here are a few highlights and my retrospection on the event.

My first website was hosted on tripod, back in 1995 and for the next 13 years I had a constant, tireless, and experimental presence on the web. But In 2008 I took my last site down. For a whole decade, andretorgal.com was nothing but a placeholder or a 404. It's time to change this sad state of affairs.