Homemade Hot Pepper Olive Oil
![Hot chili peppers with the tops cut off in an air fryer](/_next/image?url=%2Fimg%2Fblog%2F2021%2Fpeppers-dehydrate.jpg&w=2048&q=75)
We’ve been growing hot chili peppers in our backyard, picked them, dried them out in our air fryer, turned them into flakes and bottled them up into our own homemade Pola-Pepper Hot Olive Oil.
Next.js Web Scraper Playground
![Url and property input fields with a submit button for using the Next.js Scraper Playground](/_next/image?url=%2Fimg%2Fblog%2F2021%2Fnextjs-scraper-playground.png&w=1920&q=75)
Was working a bit with setting up some web scraping using Next.js API routes, so I made a tool for experimenting with web scraping on different urls and parsing the markup with cheerio. You can see it at nextjs-scraper-playground.vercel.app and check out the code on Github.
The Death of Flash, the Rise of React and What’s Next
![Me wearing Adobe Flash User Group T-Shirt from 2010](/_next/image?url=%2Fimg%2Fblog%2F2020%2Fflash-shirt.jpg&w=3840&q=75)
A bit over 10 years ago, I was a Flash developer. We were in high demand in those days. We were building RIAs, aka Rich Internet Applications, that delivered snappy animations, all manner of graphics and fonts in a single page experience that made computer fans accelerate all over the internet..
Trick or Treat It Forward
![My kids posing in front of our house with signs for Trick or Treat It Forward](/_next/image?url=%2Fimg%2Fblog%2F2020%2Ftrick-or-treat-it-forward.jpg&w=2048&q=75)
Halloween is tricky this year so we are doing something different this year. A family project we call Trick or Treat It Forward with donations going to Lakeview Pantry, Chicago’s largest food pantry. Check out the demo site.
Growth Areas for a Software Developer
![5 Growth Areas for a Software Developer](/_next/image?url=%2Fimg%2Fblog%2F2020%2Fgrowth-areas.png&w=1920&q=75)
I’ve been interested in using Next.js and MDX to take a README markdown file in a Github project and transforming it into something interesting. So I wrote up a markdown document and published it at growth-areas-for-a-software-developer.vercel.app.