Cedeless is the personal project site of Reuben Dalke. That’s me. Hi.
This isn’t a résumé site, but it exists in public largely to demonstrate my ability to build web pages. If I didn’t need to appeal to potential employers, all this stuff would be running on localhost.
Who do you think you are, putting on such airs?
I’m a human who appreciates video games, peanut butter, and websites that let the back button do its job. I like watching ice hockey, but it stresses me out. I go for long walks, during which I concoct new things to worry about and try to let go of old ones. I like to read, mainly fiction.
I don’t do social media, so this is where I exist online. If you want to talk, you can send me email.
OK, but ‘cedeless’?
As origin stories go, this one is pedestrian: I bought a bag of seedless lemons once that was labeled in both English and French. I saw the C in citrons out of the corner of my eye and thought for a moment they’d somehow misspelled “seedless”. “Ceedless” led to “cedeless”, and within an hour I was registering a domain name.
I like this kind of homonym play. It’s not funny, exactly, but I think it’s fun. “Cedeless” doesn’t really mean anything.
Except…
I do think “cede less” kind of describes my approach to personal projects. I don’t like shortcuts. I don’t like frameworks. I want to make things myself, without relying too much on someone else’s work.
I’m not writing my own web server, and I’m unlikely to, say, fell a tree myself for a woodworking project. I’m not inventing the universe so I can make an apple pie. But, when practical, I’m going to roll my own stuff rather than implement someone else’s. I want to cede less control of my projects to platforms, services, and packages.
What is Infinite, Worthless Time?
Infinite, Worthless Time is a blog. There’s not a ton I want to share with the internet, but what I do have is there.
Blogs and content sites are good personal web development projects, because they encourage you to build a system that can gracefully handle arbitrary input. Did you handle the case where a post starts with a ul? Does your pagination scheme make sense when there are only five posts? It’s more interesting than a static brochure site, even if the content is less than profound.
What is Shelf?
Shelf is a tool for keeping track of my video game library. I have an Airtable base that performs this function admirably, but I wanted to try my hand at creating something on my own.
Shelf is a simple table with a surprising degree of underlying complexity. I have plans to make it more than that, but progress is slow.
Keeping track of my games is something I think about a lot.
So did Copilot make all this or what?
Nope. I did not use any large-language-model tools in the development of this site, at least not directly or intentionally.
A colophon of sorts
This site is built using Eleventy.
I’m using Matthew Butterick’s Valkyrie and Triplicate typefaces.
Some colors are derived from these Dieter Rams palettes collected by Chad Ashley.