Accessibility Improvements: What We Fixed
A comprehensive summary of accessibility improvements made to ensure WCAG 2.1 AA compliance
Blog Archive
58 posts exploring economics, technology, design, and development spanning 6 years (2017–2025). A comprehensive collection of tutorials, essays, research notes, and technical documentation.
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All Posts by Year
2025
Fixing Heading Hierarchy Without Breaking Typography
How I solved the semantic HTML vs visual design dilemma by rebasing heading styles
Performance & Accessibility Audit Plan
A systematic approach to fixing font loading, image optimization, contrast issues, and heading hierarchy
SEO & Structured Data Maintenance Guide
How to maintain and update the structured data implementation for better SEO
Accessibility Testing Checklist
Comprehensive testing checklist for accessibility and performance improvements
Comprehensive Site Maintenance Guide
Complete guide for maintaining and updating all aspects of your Lane website
SEO & Structured Data Maintenance Guide
How to maintain and update the structured data implementation for better SEO
Webmaster Guide
Complete guide for managing and deploying the website after production readiness improvements
Documentation Audit Plan: Updating After Major Refactoring
A comprehensive plan to audit and update all documentation after major typography system, baseline grid, and spacing refactoring in the codebase.
Baseline Grid Code Review: A Developer's Response
Reflecting on senior engineer feedback about our baseline grid implementation and what I learned from the review
Baseline Grid Refactoring Complete
Documentation of the successful baseline grid enforcement across all core layout components
Understanding the Typography & Spacing System
A comprehensive guide to the fluid typography and mathematical grid system that powers this website's design
Baseline Grid & Semantic Tokens - Complete
A comprehensive guide to our newly implemented baseline grid and semantic token system, featuring a 6px grid unit and intuitive spacing tokens for...
Color System Documentation
Complete guide to the refined color system with warm neutrals and sophisticated palette
Design System Documentation
Complete guide to the typography and spacing system built on mathematical foundations
Font System Documentation
Complete guide to the font implementation, loading strategy, and usage patterns
Grid System Optimization Plan
Comprehensive plan for transitioning from 4px to 6px grid system with typography-driven vertical rhythm
Documentation Index
Complete documentation for the website's design system, implementation guides, and technical references
Typography System Implementation
Complete documentation of the typography system implementation phases and current state
Baseline Grid Refactoring: Audit and Action Plan
A complete audit of the website's typography and spacing system, and a detailed, prioritized plan for enforcing a consistent baseline grid.
A Comprehensive Design System Audit and Refactoring Plan
A formal prompt for guiding a senior UI/UX engineer through a full audit and refactoring of a project's design system, based on five core principles.
Track 1: Core Layout Refactoring Plan
Detailed action plan for Agent 1 to refactor core layout components (Header, Footer, Base) to align with the project's baseline grid.
How to Create a Font Subset with Transfonter
A guide to using Transfonter to create optimized font subsets
Flexible Theming System
A flexible theming system based on HSL (Hue, Saturation, Lightness) using CSS variables, allowing for dynamic color adjustments and seamless theme management
Remark-Rehype
This post is about Remark-Rehype plugin for Astro
Homepage Configuration Guide
How to easily customize the homepage content sections, including item counts and text
Fixing a Broken CSS Header System
A comprehensive audit revealing critical errors in a CSS header system using Newsreader font, with detailed fixes for typography hierarchy, fluid scaling,...
Guide: Adding Documentation Pages
Step-by-step guide for adding new pages to the documentation
Advanced Typography Components Demo
Showcasing drop caps, pull quotes, and sidenotes for enhanced readability
Building a Semantic Icon Sizing System
How we eliminated icon sizing chaos and built a maintainable, semantic system that scales across an entire codebase with just a few CSS classes.
2024
Setup Citrus
An example second post for Citrus Docs series
Introducing the Lane Site Template
A versatile Astro template for managing blogs and creating comprehensive project documentation
Markdown Admonitions
This post provides a detailed demonstration of how to use the Markdown admonition feature in Astro Citrus, showcasing its ability to highlight important...
Astro Best Practices for Static Sites
Essential best practices and conventions for building performant static sites with Astro. A guide for newcomers to the framework.
A post without tags
This post is for testing the functionality
Fixing Tiny Headers: Fluid Typography Debugging
How a seemingly simple issue of 'headers appearing as small as body text' revealed deeper problems with fluid type scales, font weight implementation, and...
Perfecting Code Typography with IBM Plex Mono
A comprehensive guide to optimizing IBM Plex Mono for code blocks and inline code.
Astro Best Practices Audit
A comprehensive audit of our Astro site's adherence to best practices for static content management, performance optimization, and modern web development...
Refining Colors: From Basic Black to Sophisticated Neutrals
How subtle color adjustments transformed the reading experience through warm blacks, pure whites, and sophisticated link colors
Content System Improvements Roadmap
Making our content predictable, type-safe, and future-proof with enhanced schemas, media handling, and SEO optimization.
Font Loading Optimization Implementation
How we optimized font loading performance with preconnect hints and font-display strategies for better Core Web Vitals.
From Chaos to Harmony: Optimizing Our Grid System
A comprehensive report on transforming our spacing system from a partially-implemented 4px grid to a typography-driven 6px grid with perfect vertical rhythm
Homepage Content Collection Implementation
How we migrated hardcoded homepage content to Astro's content collections for better maintainability and non-developer editing capabilities.
Optimizing IBM Plex Sans for Perfect Body Typography
A deep dive into typographical refinements, optical adjustments, and performance optimizations for IBM Plex Sans as a body text typeface.
Implementing Astro Image Optimization: A Step-by-Step Guide
How to migrate from native HTML images to Astro's optimized Image component for better performance and user experience.
Optimizing Newsreader: A Deep Dive into Header Typography
A comprehensive guide to refining and optimizing Newsreader as a header font, covering visual hierarchy, technical implementation, and typographic best...
TypeScript Prop Interfaces Implementation
How we added explicit TypeScript interfaces to all components for better type safety and developer experience.
Deepseek Code Assistant: My Features and Examples
This post introduces my capabilities as a Code Assistant with practical code samples
2023
Adding Webmentions to Astro Citrus
This post describes the detailed process of adding webmentions to your own site, including setup, configuration, and integration with webmention services.
Example Cover Image
This post is an example of how to add a cover/hero image
This post doesn't have any content
This post is purely for testing the table of content, which should not be rendered, and the toggle button next to the post title should not be displayed
A post of Markdown elements
This post is for testing and listing a number of different markdown elements
Example OG Social Image
An example post for Astro Citrus, detailing how to add a custom social image card in the frontmatter
2019
Industrial Policy - A Round Up of Historical Case...
A short literature review of recent papers on industrial policy (and related topics), focusing on work coming from economic historians.
2018
Saying the Quiet Part
It's often revealing when someone when someone "says the quiet part loud." I thought this was particularly resonant:
A Delightful (Informal) Romp Through Implementation Theory
As an undergraduate suffering through a graduate PhD micro course, I recall my professor bringing up the "hot new thing" that was implementation theor...
2017
Building a Dataset from UN Comtrade's API
The following is a simple program for building data sets using the United Nation's COMTRADE API.
Quick Note: Writing large .csv files in R with fwrite()!...
Quick Note: Writing large .csv files in R with fwrite()! and beyond