Blog
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The Rust ecosystem is unreasonably good
A second pass on the Rust port of my blog. I deleted the chromium PDF subprocess and replaced it with embedded Typst. Notes on axum, comrak, minijinja, and a typesetting compiler that ships as a crate.
Isaac Bythewood
2026-05-09
Rewriting my blog in Rust
I rewrote this blog from Flask to Rust over an afternoon. The result is a single 3.5 MB binary that uses 14x less memory and serves 10x more requests per second.
Isaac Bythewood
2026-05-06
Self-host your fonts
Three reasons every site should self-host fonts in 2026, and why @fontsource makes it a one-liner.
Isaac Bythewood
2026-05-03
Cool URIs don't change, unless an AI rewrites your blog
A short post-mortem on letting an AI port my blog from Django to Flask, and the URL design mistake it cheerfully shipped along the way.
Isaac Bythewood
2026-04-29
Using Vite with Django in 2026
I ran webpack on every Django project I had for years. In 2026 it's Vite, no wrapper package needed. Here's the whole setup.
Isaac Bythewood
2026-04-26
Optimizing SQLite for Django in production
The default SQLite settings in Django are fine for development but will hit "database is locked" errors under any concurrency. Here's the config I use in production.
Isaac Bythewood
2026-04-18
Managing a Python project with uv in 2026
How I set up and manage Python projects in 2026 using uv and ruff. Two tools and one config file replace everything.
Isaac Bythewood
2026-04-05
Capturing screenshots with Chromium using Python
Sometimes you need to take screenshots of the web and Chromium provides an easy way to do that.
Isaac Bythewood
2022-08-06
Code formatting a Python project in 2022
For those who want a quick solution without reading all of PEP 8. The Black Python module has a fully automated solution for you.
Isaac Bythewood
2022-07-30
Finding broken external links on websites using Scrapy
Broken links are a problem for any content driven website as it ages, find them quickly and easily with Scrapy.
Isaac Bythewood
2022-07-23
Minimal automated updates for Alpine Linux
Many Linux distros have a way to configure automated updates but somewhat surprisingly Alpine Linux does not.
Isaac Bythewood
2022-07-16
Make your own new tab browser extension in 50 lines of code
There are plenty of home page and new tab replacement extensions on the Chrome Web Store that you could use, but why not make your own if it's easy?
Isaac Bythewood
2022-07-09
Adding dark mode with automatic system preference selection
Creating a dark, or light, version of your website may seem like a daunting task if you think you need an entirely new color pallet. It's 2022 though and we have the widely supported invert CSS filter.
Isaac Bythewood
2022-07-02
Set up automated server backups with Borg
The Borg deduplicating backup program can automate daily, weekly, and monthly backups with a single script saving space and keeping data safe from mistakes.
Isaac Bythewood
2022-06-25
Creating a PWA with Next.js and next-pwa to improve your websites UX
Turning your website into a PWA, especially if your website doesn't rely on an internet connection at all, can greatly improve its user experience by allowing them to access your web app anywhere.
Isaac Bythewood
2022-06-18
Using CodeMirror to show formatted code in Wagtail
Going through all the steps to use CodeMirror with Wagtail to show formatted code on the frontend of your site.
Isaac Bythewood
2022-06-11
Caddy configuration for Django with some sensible defaults
Caddy is a great web server with sensible defaults but there a few things that I need to configure to have perfect synergy with Django.
Isaac Bythewood
2022-06-04
Counting table row counts in PostgreSQL
An easy way to count the number of rows in a PostgreSQL table and sort by totals allowing you to find what's taking up space in your database.
Isaac Bythewood
2022-05-28
Using EditorConfig to improve coding style consistency
EditorConfig has been around for almost a decade at this point. It is widely supported by many editors natively and many more with plugins.
Isaac Bythewood
2022-05-21
Running a simple Django website in Docker
Using Docker to run a simple production and development environments with a few extras thrown in. Easily customized to your preferred language or framework.
Isaac Bythewood
2022-05-14
Generating a ED25519 SSH key with OpenSSH
OpenSSH has deprecated RSA keys. Time to swap to ED25519 with a few quick commands as well as an easy way to ease into the swap with host key configurations.
Isaac Bythewood
2022-05-07