{"@attributes":{"version":"2.0"},"channel":{"title":"Monica's Digital Playground","description":"Monica Powell is a Senior Software Engineer who crafts innovative educational software for classrooms.","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/","item":[{"title":"2019 into 2020, Year in Review","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/2019-year-in-review\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/2019-year-in-review\/","description":"I could go on and on about the last 10 years but it's officially 2020 and I've decided to start by writing my first public year in review!","pubDate":"Wed, 01 Jan 2020 02:43:13 GMT"},{"title":"Automating File Creation With JavaScript","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/2020-01-29-automating-file-creation-with-javascript\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/2020-01-29-automating-file-creation-with-javascript\/","description":"Guide to using Plop a micro-generator to generate new text-based files.","pubDate":"Wed, 29 Jan 2020 12:40:44 GMT"},{"title":"Understanding Reduce in JavaScript","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/2020-03-29-understanding-reduce-in-javascript\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/2020-03-29-understanding-reduce-in-javascript\/","description":"This article will walk through various ways to use ES6 reduce to map, filter and construct objects from arrays.","pubDate":"Sun, 29 Mar 2020 22:21:35 GMT"},{"title":"Refactoring useState() To useReducer()","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/2020-04-04-refactoring-use-state-to-use-reducer\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/2020-04-04-refactoring-use-state-to-use-reducer\/","description":"This article walks through how to combine multiple useState() React hooks logic into a single useReducer().","pubDate":"Sat, 04 Apr 2020 17:06:08 GMT"},{"title":"Top Gatsby Plugins For Developer Blogs","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/2020-04-19-essential-gatsby-plugins-for-blogs\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/2020-04-19-essential-gatsby-plugins-for-blogs\/","description":"I've published dozens of articles on my Gatsby site and these are the top plugins I recommend to enhance your blog's SEO and user experience.","pubDate":"Sun, 19 Apr 2020 17:44:36 GMT"},{"title":"Exploring Art Direction With Gatsby-Image","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/2020-06-24-exploring-art-direction-in-gatsby\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/2020-06-24-exploring-art-direction-in-gatsby\/","description":"I recently used Gatsby's Image's Art direction to update my header to display different images based on viewport size.","pubDate":"Wed, 24 Jun 2020 00:51:34 GMT"},{"title":"4 Meetups That Helped Me Grow as A Woman of Color in Tech","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/4-meetups-that-helped-me-grow\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/4-meetups-that-helped-me-grow\/","description":"Attending various tech Meetups over the years has been pivotal to my growth as a technologist","pubDate":"Thu, 26 Jul 2018 17:11:11 GMT"},{"title":"Adding Environment Variables To GitHub Actions","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/adding-environment-variables-to-github-actions\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/adding-environment-variables-to-github-actions\/","description":"This article  walks through how to pass environment variables to GitHub Action Workflows","pubDate":"Sun, 23 Aug 2020 22:58:47 GMT"},{"title":"How to Add Instagram Timeline To a NextJS Site","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/adding-instagram-timeline-to-next-js-site\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/adding-instagram-timeline-to-next-js-site\/","description":"This article walks through how to integrate Instagram on a NextJS site.","pubDate":"Mon, 21 Dec 2020 22:10:20 GMT"},{"title":"Advent of Code - Day 01 2022","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/advent-of-code-12-01-2022\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/advent-of-code-12-01-2022\/","description":"This article walks through how I solved Day 1 of Advent of Code 2022","pubDate":"Sun, 04 Dec 2022 11:25:50 GMT"},{"title":"Fetch Webmentions Automatically with GitHub Actions","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/automate-webmentions-with-github-actions\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/automate-webmentions-with-github-actions\/","description":"An overview of how in addition to using Brid.gy and Webmentions.io I'm adding GitHub Actions and soon Webmentions.app (or its closely related CLI tool) to automate updating my website with the latest Webmentions and sending outgoing Webmentions to other websites.","pubDate":"Fri, 14 Mar 2025 18:12:21 GMT"},{"title":"Delete Your Code and Other Reflections from Coderetreat Day","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/code-retreat-reflection\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/code-retreat-reflection\/","description":"Some of my reflections from participating in the 2019 Global Coderetreat Day where I solved Conway's Game of Life various ways with different people and principles each time.","pubDate":"Sun, 17 Nov 2019 02:43:13 GMT"},{"title":"Conquering the Command Line","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/conquering-the-command-line\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/conquering-the-command-line\/","description":"When I was first introduced to the command line I really had to adjust to navigating my computer in a black box with just text. So I avoided the command line as much as possible. I was accustomed to\u2026","pubDate":"Tue, 05 Dec 2017 17:11:11 GMT"},{"title":"Gradients with Lerp","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/crafting-color-gradients-with-lerp\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/crafting-color-gradients-with-lerp\/","description":"This tutorial walks through how linear interpolation (or lerp)  can be used to automagically generate gradients","pubDate":"Thu, 05 Sep 2024 13:12:21 GMT"},{"title":"How to Add Search Functionality to a Gatsby Blog","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/create-gatsby-blog-search-tutorial\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/create-gatsby-blog-search-tutorial\/","description":"This tutorial will walk through how to create functionality to allow users to filter posts on a Gatsby site by description, title and, tags. ","pubDate":"Tue, 26 Nov 2019 02:43:13 GMT"},{"title":"Creating New Supabase Users In NextJS","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/creating-new-supabase-users-in-next-js\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/creating-new-supabase-users-in-next-js\/","description":"This article walks through how to create new users for a Supabase database with an API written in NextJS","pubDate":"Tue, 09 Mar 2021 12:01:39 GMT"},{"title":"Creating Protected Routes In NextJS With Supabase","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/creating-protected-routes-in-next-js-with-supabase\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/creating-protected-routes-in-next-js-with-supabase\/","description":"This articles walks through how to create protected routes on NextJS with Supabase's user management.","pubDate":"Sat, 13 Mar 2021 23:27:48 GMT"},{"title":"Custom ZSH Startup Message","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/customizing-zsh-startup\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/customizing-zsh-startup\/","description":"This post discusses how to customize the ZSH startup message that appears when opening a new terminal window.","pubDate":"Wed, 28 Aug 2024 13:12:21 GMT"},{"title":"Getting Started with SVG Animation","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/getting-started-with-svg-animation\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/getting-started-with-svg-animation\/","description":"Guide to programmatically animating SVGs","pubDate":"Tue, 13 Apr 2021 02:48:42 GMT"},{"title":"Getting Started With Webmention and NextJS","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/getting-started-with-webmention-next-js\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/getting-started-with-webmention-next-js\/","description":"An overview of setting up Webmention on a NextJS site to collect comments from across the decentralized social web (i.e., Twitter, GitHub, Pinterest, Reddit) in a centralized place.","pubDate":"Sat, 03 Oct 2020 16:51:30 GMT"},{"title":"git is hard, but time travel in git is easy.","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/git-time-travel\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/git-time-travel\/","description":"This article explains how it's possible to commit code that is dated in the future.","pubDate":"Sun, 24 Mar 2019 02:43:13 GMT"},{"title":"Give Your CSS Superpowers with CSS Variables","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/give-your-css-superpowers-with-css-variables\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/give-your-css-superpowers-with-css-variables\/","description":"This post will introduce what CSS variables are, how to use them and why to consider using them.","pubDate":"Fri, 22 May 2020 13:41:29 GMT"},{"title":"Grey's Anatomy Lorem Ipsum Generator Tutorial","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/greys-anatomy-lorem-ipsum-generator\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/greys-anatomy-lorem-ipsum-generator\/","description":"This tutorial is going to walk through how to create a Grey\u2019s Anatomy or other-themed Lorem Ipsum generator with React and Netlify Functions","pubDate":"Sun, 02 Jun 2019 11:43:13 GMT"},{"title":"Hello, IndieWeb!","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/hello-indie-web\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/hello-indie-web\/","description":"Some thoughts on tinkering around with my digital playground and getting more involved with the IndieWeb.","pubDate":"Mon, 17 Mar 2025 22:22:11 GMT"},{"title":"Hide Your API Keys","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/hide-your-api-keys\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/hide-your-api-keys\/","description":"If you plan on programming any applications and storing your code in a public GitHub repository then it is important that you protect your API keys \ud83d\udd11 by ensuring that they are not searchable or\u2026","pubDate":"Thu, 26 Jan 2017 01:23:25 GMT"},{"title":"How to Change Repo Language in GitHub","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/how-to-change-repo-language-in-github\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/how-to-change-repo-language-in-github\/","description":"I recently started working on a Weather app in Flask to auto-detect a user\u2019s location based off of their IP address. After committing some updates to GitHub my app switched from being labeled as\u2026","pubDate":"Tue, 07 Feb 2017 14:17:11 GMT"},{"title":"How to Check Bundled Netlify Function Size Locally","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/how-to-check-bundled-netlify-function-size-locally\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/how-to-check-bundled-netlify-function-size-locally\/","description":"Is everything working locally but you're having trouble deploying a Netlify function due to it being greater than 50 MB? This article walks through how to use the Netlify CLI to determine the size of the bundled Netlify function locally.","pubDate":"Sun, 02 Jan 2022 19:05:25 GMT"},{"title":"How To Create A GitHub Profile README","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/how-to-create-a-github-profile-readme\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/how-to-create-a-github-profile-readme\/","description":"Tips and inspiration for enhancing your GitHub Profile","pubDate":"Sat, 11 Jul 2020 11:25:50 GMT"},{"title":"How to Make Your VSCode Sparkle","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/how-to-make-your-vs-code-sparkle\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/how-to-make-your-vs-code-sparkle\/","description":"This article shows you how to customize your VSCode set up to display animated sparkles while you are typing. There's a VSCode extension, Power Mode that adds animated flair while you're typing. It has a few different default animations but none of them quite sparkle.","pubDate":"Fri, 04 Sep 2020 18:14:40 GMT"},{"title":"How To Render Relevant Icons Based on Content","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/how-to-render-relevant-icons-based-on-content\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/how-to-render-relevant-icons-based-on-content\/","description":"This article walks through how I use React to render icons that are tailored to the specific content.","pubDate":"Sat, 12 Sep 2020 13:40:05 GMT"},{"title":"Hanselminutes Podcast: Leaning Into Learning In Public","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/leaning-into-learning-in-public-with-monica-powell\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/leaning-into-learning-in-public-with-monica-powell\/","description":"Monica Powell on the Hanselminutes podcast","pubDate":"Thu, 10 Sep 2020 00:16:13 GMT"},{"title":"Less JavaScript Makes Font Awesome More Awesome","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/less-javascript-is-more\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/less-javascript-is-more\/","description":"Recently, I looked into tackling a rendering issue with Font Awesome fonts used on this site by removing JavaScript...","pubDate":"Sat, 09 Nov 2019 02:43:13 GMT"},{"title":"Migrating To MDX Talk","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/migrating-to-mdx\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/migrating-to-mdx\/","description":"Here's a talk I gave at MDX Conf, sharing more about my migration from Remark to MDX, how you can migrate your site and what problems you might run into. MDX allows you to write Markdown that includes React components and enables a lot more flexibility than Markdown traditionally does.","pubDate":"Mon, 24 Aug 2020 22:22:11 GMT"},{"title":"My SVG Creation Process","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/my-svg-creation-process\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/my-svg-creation-process\/","description":"An overview of my creative process for creating SVG files for CSS animation","pubDate":"Tue, 13 Apr 2021 04:58:13 GMT"},{"title":"Organizing Content with Astro Content Schemas","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/organizing-astro-content-with-schemas\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/organizing-astro-content-with-schemas\/","description":"With Astro's Content Collection Schema functionality, you can enforce structured, uniform tags to keep your content organized and SEO-friendly. In this post, we\u2019ll dive into how you can define and validate tags using Astro\u2019s schema system, ensuring every post follows the same tagging conventions. Whether you\u2019re managing a blog, documentation site, or any content-heavy project, this guide will help you streamline your workflow and maintain consistency effortlessly.","pubDate":"Thu, 06 Mar 2025 18:12:21 GMT"},{"title":"Overcoming the Goldilocks Complex","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/overcoming-the-goldilocks-complex\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/overcoming-the-goldilocks-complex\/","description":"Lately, I\u2019ve felt a bit stuck with my progress on learning how to code as I think I\u2019m comfortable with the fundamentals. As I\u2019m starting to immerse myself in coding, reading article\u2019s like the Viking\u2026","pubDate":"Tue, 18 Apr 2017 00:12:34 GMT"},{"title":"Egghead Podcast: \"Personal Growth From Open-Source And Meetups\"","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/personal-growth-egghead-podcast-monica-powell\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/personal-growth-egghead-podcast-monica-powell\/","description":"This episode of the Egghead podcast gives listeners a better glimpse into my journey into landing my first engineering role and more.","pubDate":"Sun, 22 Dec 2019 02:43:13 GMT"},{"title":"How I automatically created a Twitter List of FreeCodeCampers in 5 minutes","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/programmatically-create-twitter-list\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/programmatically-create-twitter-list\/","description":"Using Twython Twitter API wrapper to add users to a Twitter List","pubDate":"Wed, 17 Jan 2018 17:11:11 GMT"},{"title":"Keeping Server-Side Rendering Cool With React Hydration","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/server-side-rendering-react-hydration-best-practices\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/server-side-rendering-react-hydration-best-practices\/","description":"The purpose of this article is to share some helpful things to keep in mind to render a seamless experience as a Server-Side Rendered (SSR) site transitions from a window-less (server) environment to a browser.","pubDate":"Fri, 14 Aug 2020 20:34:26 GMT"},{"title":"Set Yourself Up For Success During Hacktoberfest","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/set-yourself-up-for-success-open-source-contributions\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/set-yourself-up-for-success-open-source-contributions\/","description":"This article walks through some tips for making meaningful contributions to Open Source software during Hacktoberfest and beyond.","pubDate":"Thu, 01 Oct 2020 13:08:03 GMT"},{"title":"Setting Up Shell with zsh and Autosuggestions","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/setting-up-zsh-with-autosuggestions\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/setting-up-zsh-with-autosuggestions\/","description":"This post is an overview of my recent migration from bash to zsh.","pubDate":"Fri, 14 May 2021 13:12:21 GMT"},{"title":"Initial Thoughts On Migrating from gatsby-transformer-remark to gatsby-plugin-mdx","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/thoughts-on-migrating-from-markdown-to-mdx\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/thoughts-on-migrating-from-markdown-to-mdx\/","description":"Some of my initial thoughts from migrating this Gatsby site from gatsby-transformer-remark to gatsby-plugin-mdx in order to support MDX in addition to Markdown.","pubDate":"Tue, 26 May 2020 11:28:31 GMT"},{"title":"Tips for Debugging Software like a Detective","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/tips-for-debugging-software-like-a-detective\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/tips-for-debugging-software-like-a-detective\/","description":"Strategic ways engineers can approach software with detective-like debugging skills","pubDate":"Sat, 15 May 2021 15:35:06 GMT"},{"title":"6 Transformative Tech Conference Talks","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/transformative-conference-talks\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/transformative-conference-talks\/","description":"Here's a roundup of some of my favorite conference talks that have shaped the way that I think about web development, the workplace, and community organizing.","pubDate":"Sat, 22 Aug 2020 11:59:17 GMT"},{"title":"Working In Public Book Notes","link":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/working-in-public-notes\/","guid":"https:\/\/aboutmonica.com\/blog\/working-in-public-notes\/","description":"Notes for the book Working In Public by Nadia Eghbal","pubDate":"Sun, 09 Aug 2020 19:41:03 GMT"}]}}