
Hello!

Welcome to James Calingo’s blog version x.0!

I’ve tried having SEVERAL blogs in the past, and while I had varying amounts of “success” with them, they all kinda fell by the wayside.

So what makes this one different from them?

While I can’t guarantee that there will be consistently be content here, I can safely say that this one represents a major shift from the other blogs I’ve had.

Why? Because I built it 100% from scratch.

To give some context as to why that’s important for me, let me delve a bit into my blogging history.

My first blog was on tumblr WAY back in the day. For those of you who are too young to remember tumblr, it was a popular site in the late 2000s where people made “blogs” about things. I use quotations there because while tumblr was technically a blogging site, content was mainly just “someone makes a popular post and then everyone just reblogs it” (think modern day Twitter without the character limit). Technically, tumblr IS still around, but unless I’m mistaken it’s WAY less popular these days (partly due to a change in their content policy involving…the art people usually posted).

Then, I moved on to WordPress, using that for several years through college and then a few years after that. When I started learning how to code, however, I realized that if I was to become a developer, then it might be a good idea to move away from WordPress and move towards something else. Yes, I know WordPress is still widely used, but I feel like I have a lot more control over my blog this way.

My last blog, which features a grand total of twelve posts, was the first time I had tried making my own blog using my own coding skills.

Here’s the thing, though: it was essentially a copy of something else. I found it when trying to find a “tutorial” for making a blog, and while it was nice having more control over the whole thing, I’ve always wanted to try building the entire thing on my own. There's also another reason that I wanted to do this, but it's a bit weird: that blog was forked from something, and for whatever reason, whenever it updated, the updates were not reflected on my GitHub.

…And that’s where this site comes in. It’s something I’ve built from the ground up.

Mostly.

This blog is largely based on [this tutorial I found online](https://www.kalopilato.com/blog/how-to-build-and-deploy-your-personal-blog-with-next-js). Unlike the last version, however, this one involved me writing all of the code myself (minus copying a few RegEx things).

If you’re reading this on the day it comes out, odds are that things here look a little…rough. That’s largely because I finished a lot of the HTML/JS last Friday and was kinda busy this past weekend, so I haven’t really had time to get into the “nitty gritty” of CSSing this thing. That will come soon, however, and hopefully it'll be good (unlike a lot of people, I actually kinda like doing my own CSS)

If you’re wondering about when I’ll be updating this, I don’t think giving a hard answer is really that great of an idea. My HOPE is at least once a week, but we’ll see how much I can keep that up.

That's enough for now I feel. Talk to you soon!


Where I introduce something I've already introduced in the past.

Hello World...Again!


This is a draft of a post that was originally to be posted in March 2022. I'm not really sure why I never posted it (or why I mentioned McDonalds), but it was intended as a quick update on what I was doing at the time:

> *It sure has been a while since I updated this.*
>
> *I'd love to tell you that it's because I spent the better part of the last few months trekking across the vastness that is North America, visiting the West Coast, Rocky Mountains, Great Plains, Deep South, Canada, and seeing how many McDonalds I run into along the way...*
>
> *...But that would be false - and also probably something I would never think to do with highly contagious COVID floating around. Instead...I just never really updated this blog. I had some ideas for posts, and they may come to fruition soon, but the last few months were me focusing on learning and the job hunt...*
> 
> *...and then I got a job.*
>
> *Yes, the thing that this blog was intended for ended up happening without the assistance of this blog - if that makes sense.*
>
> *Honestly, it caught me by surprise. I didn't even apply for my job - someone from the company found me on LinkedIn, sent me a message, and then a few interviews later I was hired.*
>
> *So what now?*

> *Well...I'm not sure. As you may expect with a developer job, I'm usually busy with code all day. However, due to some...circumstances, I'm currently the only U.S. based dev at my company.*
> 
> *I will, however, try and update this blog somewhat.*

So what brings me back to my blog today?

Well...things have happened since then, the biggest one of which is the fact that __I am no longer at the job I mentioned here__.

I won't get into what happened or why I left said job here - maybe at a future time.

So the big thing, in my mind, is this: what's next for me? 

For starters, I'm looking for work. I'd like a new job sooner rather than later (for MANY reasons), so I know I need to be on that ASAP (though that's been a bit more difficult than I had anticipated - I'll get into that soon).

As for this blog, I'd like to get back into a somewhat regular posting schedule. I don't know exactly what that would be, but I'm hoping for at least one post a week.

I'm not sure how exactly to end this, but like I said, I'll try and update again soon.

It's been a while...

Oh hai bloggy


One of the biggest challenges about blogging: coming up with ideas for content. However, I figure that since I'm currently in job hunting mode, I'd discuss this:

What was I going to do with this blog?

I do have a TON of drafts saved in my Notes app (and on Google Docs), but in my attempt to "tell the harsh truths" about trying to get a job in the software market, I ponder if some of my thoughts may have been too harsh.

Yes, there's a lot of Chicken Little-ism amongst students of both bootcamps and colleges right now - layoffs, downsizings, AI, and the ever-looming spectre that is the economy make it feel like "getting in" is impossible now. I'd argue that the reality is that getting in is more difficult than most people seem to anticipate, but it is possible.

...Unfortunately, the sheer volume of prospective candidates has shifted the goalpoasts quite far back. Realistically, there's no easy way to solve this, and the potential "solutions" for this could easily be (and, in some cases, have been) harmful to those currently in the industry.

However, we're in September, and traditionally, hiring picks up for a little bit, so now is an opportune time for job seeking (which is what I'm currently doing).

Anyway, back to the original question: this blog.

I'm pretty sure it's largely going to be "variety" content. Sometimes it'll be thoughts on the tech industry, sometimes it'll be stuff I've learned so I can make sure I actually know what's going on, and other times it'll be completely random. In any case, I hope it'll be employable...I mean enjoyable (why did I do that). 

The first of what should be weekly updates

September's First


One of the big things I've realized in the past week:

The way forward is important. 

I know that sounds obvious, but what I'm trying to figure out is what exactly "the way forward" is - especially as it pertains to job seeking.

I was never really a fan of trying to "spray and pray" applications, and with the market the way it is, it seems likely that trying to "spray and pray" is merely an invitation to exhaust yourself for no gain.

Of course, if you're not going to "spray and pray", then that means that you have some form of a strategy in mind - which I do...for the most part.

I know I need to start working that strategy into motion now.

I'm still figuring out how.

Forward

In my never ending quest to learn as many of the things as I can (within reason), I like to try doing small projects to see how I do with them. 

This time, I decided to do something I’d been meaning to do for a while: a simple game.

The “Psychic game”, as I call it, is one of the first “real” programming things I did in a coding bootcamp back in the day. The idea is that a letter is randomly selected from the alphabet, and the player has to guess which letter. You can check out my original (HTML/JavaScript) version [here](https://jamescalingo.dev/PsychicGame), complete with probably-inspired-by-Chandler-Bing pithy comments that are probably not necessary at all (RIP Matthew Perry).

Many moons ago, I did a Python version of it inspired by something I saw on LinkedIn. After I finished that, I even attempted to do a version in Rust using the Rust book’s tutorial for a number game (I haven’t gotten it past that point, however, because Rust is not a great beginners language). However, there’s one language that I’d been meaning to check out that I hadn’t yet: Go.

Until last Friday.

I decided to try making the game in Go to see how I would do with a 100% blank slate: No guides, no tutorials - just googling things and trying them out to see what stuck.

Today, I’d like to talk a little bit about the process of doing this. I’m going to be a bit broad about this because I think it's better for those learning coding to see a broader picture of what it is rather than specifics.

**STEP 1: Identify the pieces you need**

The first thing you need is a “platform”, if you will, to play the game on. Yes, you’re playing this on a computer, but the “how” is what I’m trying to talk about here. This is part of why HTML/JavaScript are popular for newcomers: there’s a super easy way to see code work because it runs (almost) natively in the browser. Go, on the other hand, isn’t natively supported by most web browsers, so I had to find something else to run the game in, and that something is known as a command line interface. I won’t get too deep into what that is, but if you’re using a Mac, it’s the Terminal program (I know there are equivalents for Windows and Linux, but I’m not sure what they’re known as).

Next, you need the letters and a way of selecting one of them. Typically, you’d use an array with all the letters of the alphabet - preferably in one case for VERY IMPORTANT reasons I’ll get into in a sec (I typically use lower). Generally, you’d want to use an array that contains the 26 letters of the alphabet, but I believe some languages would let you use a string if you so chose (though I’d argue an array is easier for multiple reasons).

You also need some way of selecting a random letter from said array. Thankfully, some programming languages (or at least the ones I’ve used save for maybe SQL) come with a way to generate random numbers, and thus make the randomization part of this game quite trivial.

The last few things you need for this are, like the number randomizer, generally standard with most languages: ways to guide the player via print statements, ways to accept player input (more on this later because Go does something rather unique in this regard), ways to tell the program what to do based on the guess (i.e. if statements), and a way to “run” the game, so to speak, which brings me to…

**STEP 2: Design the game loop**

 When a player inputs a guess, one of two things should happen: Either the player will have guessed correctly and the game ends, or the player guessed incorrectly and the game continues. Some form of loop is required for this, as without it, the player gets only one guess.

However, there’s one thing I forgot to mention in the last section that we need to consider: whether or not we want the player to have infinite guesses. My original version of this game had a 10-guess limit which I’ve carried to subsequent versions, but in writing this post I’ve realized that maybe a 5/13 chance of “winning” isn’t so great. If we are going to use a guess limit, though, it’s important to remember that numbers can go negative, so we need to make sure the game stops once the player hits 0 chances left.

In any case, most programming languages use something called a <code>while</code> loop to facilitate this, but in doing this project, I found out that the <code>while</code> keyword doesn’t exist in Go! Instead, Go uses the <code>for</code> keyword and you can simply put your condition in (i.e. our guess limit in the form of <code>guesses > 0</code>).

However, if we tried running this, once the player either wins or loses, the program doesn’t actually stop running! This leads to something that’s we need to stop our loop: the <code>break</code> keyword. This tells the program to get out of the loop after whatever is before it in its code block is executed. For our purposes, this is how we’re going to end the game when the player either wins (guesses the correct letter) or loses (runs out of guesses).

So we have our pieces, and through loops and <code>if</code> statements, have at least some of our logic down. However, I’d like to go a bit further.

**STEP 3: “Idiotproofing”**

This is something I feel like a lot of newer programmers would potentially overlook, but I think it’s important: some people are either going to not understand your game at all, or try REALLY HARD to break it because why not. Therefore, I like to try to “safeguard” the game by checking if something potentially gamebreaking happens and being ready for it. Here are a few of the ways a player could end up going outside the intentions of the game:

1. Putting in a number or symbol like 9, +, or even ñ.

Personally, I’d rather not penalize the player for guessing the number 0 instead of the letter O.

2. Putting in a capital or lower case letter when expecting the other.

For those of you learning coding, upper case and lower case letters are considered completely different things in just about every programming language due to something known as The Unicode Standard (imagine an echoey voice saying that). This standard provides unique identifiers for characters in different languages (i.e. things like accents typically found in Spanish or French but not English), but also provides identifiers for other characters such as [the logo of that website whose owner wants you to forget used to be Twitter](https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+1D54F).

Upper and lower case letters have their own Unicode identifiers, and since the game is actually checking those identifiers rather than the letters themselves, it sees “A’, and “a” as two different things, which would mean that should one be the answer and the other was the guess, would be considered incorrect.

To “get around” this, many languages have methods that change the case of letters in a string (i.e. a "to*Other*Case" method). 

3. Putting in more than one character.

We’re expecting only one letter as an answer, so we should account for if the player “fat fingers” an answer (like “we”), or worse, tries to somehow cheat by doing something like trying to guess “thequickbrownfoxjumpedoverthelazydog” since the answer’s gotta be in there somewhere, right?

For all of these cases, I put in a statement that tells the player that these are not going to work without penalizing them, and for the most part, this works!

Keyword “for the most part”.

Notably, Go does something interesting where multiple inputs separated by whitespaces are evaluated individually - if you put multiple single letters in separated by spaces, they will ALL be evaluated for whether or not they’re correct. This poses an interesting quandary for our game - and one I’m still trying to figure out how to “solve”.

Finally, there’s one other thing I’m still trying to figure out: protecting against guessing a letter that’s already been guessed - I have this in other versions but am still trying to get it to work in Go. If you know how to do this (or see something important that I missed in this version), let me know!

Anyway, that's been quite a bit, but I hope it gives some insight on how learning how to code works.

(Also, yes I know I'm publishing this on Halloween)

Or how to be a Go getter

Go Go...Something Something


I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned it here, but I'm always looking for new things to learn and know about in technology.

In the wake of having a bit more free time, I decided that I'd (finally) take a serious look into Go. I chose Go largely because of the Google factor, but also because I'd watched CS50 and thought that it was 

Go offers an introduction on its offical website known as "A Tour of Go". Rather than just go through the tour myself, I decided I'd share my notes from it - especially where I saw connections/differences between Go and other languages (such as C, Python, and JavaScript).

Without further ado...

## Intro

We start with the obligatory “Hello, world” program (or Hello 世界 as it’s done in Go). I’m not going to get too deep into this section as it’s mostly just an introduction to various resources, but one of the important things here is the Go playground, where you can play with bits of code.

...This ended up being REALLY long, and I couldn't seem to figure out how to hyperlink to the various sections, so I've broken down each section into its own page:

- [Part 1](https://wikipedia.org)
- [Part 2]()
- [Part 3]()
- [Part 4]()
- [Part 5]()
- [Part 6]()



A tour of A Tour of Go

Tour de Go


Today, we’re going to dive into the tech industry.

By now, you probably don't need me - a so-called "software developer" who's seemingly on the verge of a second career change in less than six years - to tell you things aren't so hot right now. You've probably seen the headlines of how tech companies are laying off people left and right - I can't even begin to list off the companies that had layoffs in the past few years. Meanwhile, companies like Alphabet (Google and YouTube), Meta (Facebook and Instagram), Microsoft, and Amazon are still raking in money - which makes it a little weird that they're saying stuff like this:

(Youtube link)

So tonight, let's take a look at how the tech industry has been faring for the last few years - how it got so big, why there's so much chaos now, and what the future may look like ()

## That O'Jays song ruined by one of Mark Burnett's business partners

Let's start with why tech jobs were so popular anyway, and you can probably guess the main reason:

(salary image)

That is quite a lot of money. However, it gets even more impressive when you consider this:

(graph of tech job locations; highlight NY, SF, SEA, BOS)

Now, there are two ways to look at this data. One is that . The other is that these are widely considered some of the most expensive places to live in the United States, so even if you're making "bank", you're still living in some weirdo's closet in the woods eating day old cup noodles.

However, there's another reason tech jobs are so popular: because all you really need is a computer to do your job, you could feasibly do it from anywhere. The pandemic, of course, exposed us to the possiblities of remote work, but the tech industry knew about them well before then.

However, said pandemic also exposed an uglier truth: CEOs don't like not having control over employees. 

## Prehistory

Now before we continue, I need to make one quick note: this is not the first time this has happened.

Around the turn of the millennium, there was a massive market crash in tech which became known as the "dot-com burst". What 

Of course, these types of things happen.

## Gotta go back, back to the past

The first coding bootcamps sprang up somewhere around 2011. There was a shortage of talent in the tech industry, and bootcamps sprang up as a way to fill that gap. The concept was simple: teach people the skills needed to fill the gaps in the market, watch them get hired into the industry and fill the gaps, and everyone wins! 

Many coding bootcamps angled themselves as a way for just about anyone to get into the industry. For a fraction of the cost of a college degree (both in terms of money and time), you would gain the skills needed to become a successful software developer or data scientist (among other things; these were the main options at the coding bootcamp I went to).

Websites that host reviews and advice for those considering a coding bootcamp used to publish annual “state of the market” reports. These were largely puff pieces that stated that bootcamps were doing better than ever, more students were enrolling in bootcamps year after year, jobs were bountiful for graduates, and that you’re considering a bootcamp, FLICKING DO IT. 

It’s been a few years since I’ve last seen a report on bootcamps like this, and there’s several potential reasons I think that is, but I don’t think we need to wait for someone to release “State of the Bootcamp 2024” - it already exists:

(This is fine image).

To put it lightly, things have gone so far south for the bootcamp industry that it feels like we’re almost about to come back around the other side of Antarctica - all we have to do is jump into the frigid waters of the Antarctic Ocean and hope the hypothermia doesn't get us before we meet the penguins.

By one expert’s estimation, at least eight coding bootcamps have shut down, restructured, or gone on hiatus since late 2023, while many others have had layoffs. One bootcamp put out this statement:

*“(R)ecent trends present a more complex challenge. The influx of new bootcamp programs, coupled with an increase in experienced developers seeking new opportunities due to layoffs and hiring freezes, has created a saturated market. Hiring managers are becoming more discerning, and unfortunately, some have developed negative experiences with bootcamp graduates from other programs, which impacts how they view all bootcamp graduates, regardless of program quality.”*

There's a few things there to break down.

### They're not half bad...they're ALL bad!

There's something that, for my money, isn't 

At the same time, college students, seeing how they could turn their college degree into a six-figure salary within three years, began turning to Computer Science en masse. Between this mass influx 

Many would argue that the "saturated market" mentioned in the quote above happened well before 2023 (at least at entry level). Once you got past that, however, the belief was that things

For many experienced developers, that has not been the case for a while, and there's a lot of reasons why.

## Everyone is hit

For example, let's look back at the Silicon Valley Bank saga.

Silicon Valley Bank (or SVB since abbreviations are the future apparently) is, as you may have guessed from its name, a bank based in Silicon Valley (i.e. the part of California where a lot of the big tech companies like to "hang out").

In 2023, companies were being told by their financial advisors that capital was about to run tight, so liquid assets (i.e. real cash in hand) was going to be important.

Outside of all of THAT, there's other things going on in Tech that have put the squeeze on bootcamps.

## “We’re not talking about the game, we’re talking about PRACTICE.”
I know a lot of people have a lot of opinions about Allen Iverson, but the thing you gotta realize is that he’s still one of the game’s all time greats. He literally dragged a team on his back to the NBA Finals, was a multiple time All Star Game MVP, and was one of the most dynamic players at the turn of the millennium.

…wait, that’s the wrong AI. Sorry about that.

Anyway, artificial intelligence has become a massive talking point. Probably one of the best known controversies involving THIS AI has been in the arts, where lazy CEOs have tried using it all over the place because they think paying artists and actors sub-minimum wage is STILL too much apparently.

## Made in...somewhere

I am a collector of baseball hats. In the past, the company that makes the hats for Major League Baseball made all of their hats - the ones that the players wore and the ones sold to the fans - were made in a factory in the United States (Buffalo, NY to be more specific).

I don't remember when exactly it happened, but the company announced that production of many of the hats would be moving overseas. This outraged other collectors similar to myself, and when we got the "new" hats, we found out that they were, as expected, not as good as the old ones (case in point: you can have two hats of the same size and they wouln't fit consistently).

I mentioned the rise of remote work as a pandemic era , and from the looks of things, American CEOs have taken two sides on it: they either hate it and wish they could have all their , or they've leaned heavily into remote - in a different way than you'd expect.

A number of American tech companies have chosen to at least partially move their software departments overseas, and while it hasn't been 100% "great", a number of companies have found ways to make it work. There are a number of reasons for companies to (try to) outsource their software teams, but easily the biggest one is money.

Think back to that distribution of software jobs and salaries. Many software jobs in the U.S. are concentrated in some of the most expensive 

For example, one of the "most popular" countries for software outsourcing is India, where for a lot of people, even the lowest of U.S. salaries is a MASSIVE boon for them. 

The first company I worked for in tech more or less did this; I was in the 

## The impact

So 

As mentioned earlier, there was already concer about the entry level market even BEFORE everything started spiraling downward.

Take, for example, this LinkedIn post from 2021:

*"This morning, I woke up to another rejection letter. Just in time for Christmas. I am grateful for what I have and I work for a great company, but I am still not working as a software developer.*

*I’ve been looking, applying, and interviewing for 867 days. I was laid off from my job of 10 years in 2016 and learning how to code gave me hope for the future. I already had a Graduate degree in another field. I’ve slowly been losing hope.*

*I am currently in worse shape than I was in 2016, before I was laid off. I have overwhelming school and bootcamp tuition that I can’t afford to pay. My credit score tanked and I have lived with my sister for 1 1/2 years.*

*At what point do you cut your losses and realize that there isn’t an entry level developer job out there for (age and gender redacted)?"*

This was something I saw on LinkedIn one day. This person had 

There are two ways to look at what this is doing to 

**1. More stressful job hunting.**

The 

**2. Alleged pay cuts (keyword: alleged)**

They say that in order to make more as a developer, you have to job hop. 

There's tons of stories out there of people who left a job for one reason or another, tried to find another one, but had to settle for being paid LESS than their old job.

WHEEE!

The tech industry in 2024

What's going on everyone?

I realize it's been...a little bit since I last posted on this blog, but I figured now was the time to light the fire again.

For starters: I am job searching. I will admit that part of me returning to this blog is this job search, but also because I felt like I really wanted to give writing another go. In fact, I've actually been writing about the sporting events I've gone to (another hobby of mine), and I actually spun the code of THIS blog into another website entirely! You can read about my sporting adventures at <a href="http://sportventures.blog" target="blank">my sports-focused blog</a>.

Things have happened in my personal life, however, that have complicated a lot of things. I won't get into deep into it, but long story short: I had to move from Massachusetts back to New Jersey. However, I've realized something important within that:

## What is more important: Location or Community?

I'll be honest: I feel like I prefer Boston as a locale. I've always felt that the ease of access to the city was a huge boon over New York, and was eagerly awaiting a chance to get back to some of the things and places I'd come to enjoy. In fact, <a href="https://go-gogoat.net" target="blank">I built an app based on Boston's local subway system</a> (but work to expand it is on hold for...reasons).

However...there's one big thing I've only realized in retrospect: I was lonely. Part of the reason I moved to Boston in the first place was because my friends from my old community were getting married, having kids, and becoming busy with parenthood. I went back to visit my old community a few times recently, and sure enough, I felt VERY out of place seeing people I had watched grow up become the faces of that community.

In Boston, however, I had few friends my age or close to it (most of them were either at least five years older or five years younger), and the more I met new people, the worse that problem got. I was still attending a few things in Boston every so often after coming back to Jersey, but the truth of the matter was that I kept meeting new people - not a good sign. Heck, even the people I had met through those groups started disappearing, and that's when I realized that trying to build community there was becoming much more difficult. Making things more challenging: the few friends I had who were close to my age, by and large, (also) moved away to pursue other things.

One of the ways this truth revealed itself to me was through...pickleball. Back in October 2024, I met a new group of folks who I quickly became friends with. In a sense, some of the problems I mentioned about finding people my age still rang true, but for some reason it felt...different. I'm not sure why.

Anyway, fast foward to this past June, and I started playing pickleball with those friends. Not only has it been a very bonding experience, but it's a way to stay healthy as well. In light of this (plus other things), I made the decision to stay in Jersey for now.

With all that in mind, I should probably clarify a few things:

1. Again...I am looking for a job. I've been trying to work on a few skills things in the intervening time, so hopefully that will be useful for me (i.e. stuff like the aforementioned transit app plus my sports blog).
2. I am now, more or less, in the New York City area. In some respects, this is a better market for me as it's MUCH bigger than Boston, which means that there are more options (and network opportunities, which seem to be the way in nowadays). I will note, however, that I'm trying to focus on North Jersey and the City itself.
3. I cannot promise a regular posting schedule here. I mentioned my sports blog earlier in this post, and that will be updated as I attend events (though I'm currently working on posting a "backlog" of work I wrote earlier in the year). This blog, however, will largely be focused on more "general" stuff, and I will try to have more than one update a month (and also avoid another two year gap).

Anyway, that's what I've been up to. If I don't see you on my sports blog, I hope to be back here soon.

...though I can't say I've thought about us for any length of time

Hello, it's me

I had a bit of an epiphany last night when discussing <a href="http://sportventures.blog" target="blank">my sports blog</a> with friends:

“Your blog is just thoughts put into words.”

In one way, it should be obvious. Part of the reason I titled this blog “Overclocked Overthoughts” is that second word (not necessarily the “over” part, more the “thoughts”), yet somehow, this is a thing that I never truly came to realize.

And I think I’ve let that hold me back for too long.

Writing these posts is not easy. I often cringe at my lack of varied sentence structure, double think if what I’m posting should be said or if its too controversial, write things out of order (start with the beginning, go to the end, and then fill in the middle) and question if any of this writing is actually any good in the first place. In the end, it’s because of those things that I often end up starting posts, losing steam midway through, and then scrapping said posts (so maybe “overthoughts” isn’t a misnomer after all).

However, at some point, they have to be “final”. Sure, I could always sneak some edits in here and there, but that would be somewhat disingenuous. I need to learn to let go of the “nitpicky” editor in me and just accept my writings for what they are: a characterization of my thoughts - ready or not. I feel like if I can do that, then this blog will be able to be what I wanted it to be: a place to share myself with others, and see where that can take me.

\---

And for those who don't know: "Overclocking" is when you try to run a computer beyond its manufacturer specified standards. It doesn't really pertain to this blog or its content as I'm not a big PC gamer, but I was a fan of the alliteration (and because "Clocked Thoughts" is NOT the same).

A random thought that crossed my brain last night

Short Thoughts

One of the most challenging things about trying to maintain multiple blogs:

Focus.

I've realized that this site is basically like one of those memes where everyone celebrates one thing while another thing is forgotten - because for most of the last month, that's kinda been the case. I've put in so much work on my other blog - <a href="https://sportventures.blog" target="blank">Sportventures</a> - which has caused this blog to more or less be left behind (outside of a few smaller updates). However, I want to keep that site focused on sporting content only - this is where I want to post more of my "other" stuff such as thoughts on my line of work (i.e. web and software development). 

The only issue is...there hasn't been much of "anything else" in the past month. I'm still seeking a job, and given how that has been in 2025 for A LOT of people, things on that end have been...slow. Meanwhile, personal situations are RAGING on in the background, which have divided my focus quite a bit and made everything that much harder.

However, I do feel like I need to soldier forward. Some things NEED to be addressed by the end of this year, as I don't know what will happen if they aren't. I feel like it's well within my capacity to get these things done - it's only a matter of effort.

Sorry for getting a bit emotional (for lack of a better term), but I also feel like it's better for me to be open about things rather than trying to hold it in. After all, I did as "how can I increase visibility?" on LinkedIn last Friday.

Focus

*This is an idea that popped into my head a few days ago when I went to a <a href="https://sportventures.blog/2025-09-14_njtitans" target="blank">hockey game</a>.*
 
For a lot of things I do, I feel I have an inner narrative going on in my head. However, this is most especially true for the sports trips I've been writing about this year, as since I write about all of them, it helps me keep ideas organized for when they need to be written down.
 
Recently, this inner narrative has taken on a certain style, and it's largely because of a YouTube channel I watch. It's a guy who goes to various (association) football matches across England, and each of his videos is very structured: footage of him driving to the day's venue, action from the match, and then ratings of his experience.
 
However, in my mind, that begs the question:
 
Why not vlog myself?
 
I do have a history with photography/videography - I was the "guy with the camera" growing up, and I took so many photos and videos back in the day, so why not get back into that?
 
Personally, I have a very simple reason: as much as I like filming things…I don't like hearing my voice. However, before you say "this could've just been a tweet", I'd like to go a bit further.
 
I personally think both blogging and vlogging have their advantages, but I think the advantages of written work are more enticing to me than the advantages of recording video (beyond the aforementioned "having to hear my own voice" thing) - the big one being the "time commitment", so to speak.
 
When making videos, it takes a lot of time for them to be ready. You have to first record the footage, then do any voiceover if you intend on going that route (which I probably would honestly), then edit the footage (i.e. any corrections that need to be made - and there's probably quite a few between copyrighted audio[^1] and visual corrections), compress it down into a video, and then post it. Not only does this take a lot of hours, it also eats tons of space on your computer's hard drive; while hard drives have gotten bigger in the past few years, doing this for each post I've made on my sports blog would STILL eat up space (not to mention the other programs I keep on my computer).
 
I realize that this makes me sound a bit lazy, but there's one other thing you have to consider: you can't really work on a vlog until the event happens. With many of my blog posts (and especially some upcoming ones), I actually start them long before they get posted; and while this technically is possible with vlogging, a lot of a vlog can't happen until whatever the vlog is based on actually happens.

For my <a href="https://sportventures.blog" target="blank">sports blog</a>, I begin writing posts when the idea of visiting a team/venue first comes into my head (i.e. LONG before the event is scheduled to occur). In fact, I've already started work on drafting posts for teams I'm thinking of visiting next year who are not currently in season, and even a few teams who have yet to play their first game! Thanks to this “pre-work”, I’m able to have posts on the games I go to uploaded the literal day after they happen, as the only thing left to do is write about *my* experience - something that is much more difficult to do with a travel vlog.
 
There's also another aspect of this that I think is important, even if it is "less than savory": sensitivity.
 
I saw a YouTube video last week about people who got fired while doing "day in the life" TikTok videos, and for many of them, it was because they broke protocols. For example, someone who worked at a cosmetics store THOUGHT they were clear when they did their "day in the life" video, but then they showed areas of LAX that were not supposed to be shown to the general public, and got fired for that.
 
With blogging, while you CAN technically do the same things and end up with the same results (especially if you include photographs with your blog), it's "easier" to snip out the parts that are sensitive than with a video, as that involves taking the whole video down, re-editing it, and then re-posting it without the sensitive content (and thus runs into the time and space issues I discussed earlier).
 
Blogging and vlogging are, at the end of the day, both important ways to put yourself out there for those who choose to do so. A lot of what works best for a certain individual comes down to personal preference, but for me, I find that I very much prefer written over verbal communication.
 
(Also, it's probably easier to “blog” from the back of a Tesla while it charges at the local gas station - something which I definitely did NOT do for a good chunk of this post...)
 
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[^1]: This is another issue with vlogging: you have to dance around copyright issues (most often background music YOU HAVE NO CONTROL OVER) so you don't end up getting demonitized!

A discussion on creating content on the internet

Blogging vs. Vlogging

_I was originally going to post this to my <a href="https://sportventures.blog" target="blank">sports blog</a> as a bit of a "special feature", but ended up deciding to move it here. Consider it a bit of a "cross-post", if you will, and be sure to check out my sports blog, as that seems to be the one I update WAY more often..._

If you’re of a certain age, you may be a fan of vintage or thrift store shopping. It’s become a massive trend amongst the younger generations for various reasons (at least I think it has), and thrift/vintage stores are quite popular on social media.

Personally, I’ve had my fair share of thrift store trips for one simple reason: it’s one of the more interesting ways of sourcing jerseys. Y’see, modern jerseys are often highly overpriced; for example, hockey and baseball (i.e. the two I’ve collected the most) START around $200, but the super nice ones (i.e. the only ones worth getting for me) are typically >$400. However, at thrift stores, you can find jerseys for a much lower price; sure, most of the jerseys you find at thrift stores are random schools, very clearly fake, or those old NFL/NBA jerseys with ironed on lettering that is peeling like crazy, but every once in a while, you’ll come across an absolute GEM (for example: I once found a GAME WORN JERSEY for less than what most retail jerseys cost nowadays).

This post, however, is going to focus on one specific sport: soccer. I’m here to talk about soccer jerseys (or, as I will be calling them going forward, “football shirts”), as I’ve been using them as workout shirts for when I go for walks or to play pickleball with friends since I’ve found that they’re good for these purposes (plus they turn heads).

Inasmuch as I could just stick to the easy to find clubs at American stores (and I kinda have at times)...it’s not always the most interesting thing to me. Yes, I do have some of the bigger clubs like Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur, and Newcastle United (I have somewhat of an affinity for them because they play at a place named St James’ Park[^1]), and there are some shirts that I’m interested in (like that green Liverpool shirt they just came out with), but I’d absolutely love to rock teams like AFC Bournemouth, Crystal Palace, or Fulham - teams whose shirts I have NEVER seen sold in the United States (before this trip[^2]). At vintage stores...you're going to find a lot of the same big teams sadly. HOWEVER...you can occasionally find a gem, and there are certain stores in New York City that specialize in vintage football shirts, so that's what I'd like to discuss in this post[^3]. I visited them both on November 8, 2025, <a href="https://sportventures.blog/2025-11-09_bkfc_womens" target="blank">as I had plans later that day in Brooklyn</a>, but decided to head into New York City early so I could check these stores out.

The first store I went to, aptly enough, is named "Classic Football Shirts". They're an "import" from the United Kingdom, and have been featured somewhat extensively on YouTube via a video series in which soccer/football content creators search for shirts in their stores. They have locations in Los Angeles, Miami, and obviously New York (plus a few in the UK - internet "weirdness" prevents me from seeing their UK website, but their Instagram implies they have two).

The other one is a place called "Saturdays Football" (which is kinda sorta also fitting as this trip occurred on a Saturday). From what I can tell, it's an American operation with three locations: one each in the three largest cities in the United States (Chicago, Los Angeles, and, of course, New York).

My original intention was to discuss each of these stores separately; however, they ended up being rather similar: both have some "store brand" items, a collection of current jerseys/shirts, and of course...a TON of vintage shirts. One BIG difference, however: Classic Football Shirts had sizes on the hangars, which IMO gives it a slight edge in customer experience. Also, I felt that some of the shirts both stores had were quite pricey, so I tried to limit myself to avoid spending too much - both in terms of number of shirts and "average shirt price".

I was hoping to have more time than I did for each store - my original plan was to arrive at 11 AM when Classic Football Shirts opened, browse that store for a while, and then go to Saturdays when it opened at noon (conveniently, it's only a few blocks away); I likely would have had a good 30-45 minutes at each store, which I felt would be plenty of time to peruse and make decisions. However, my train into New York got delayed for almost an hour, so I ended up arriving at like 11:45 and had much less time than I wanted. This ended up being kinda important, as the MASSIVE selection of teams ended up being kinda overwhelming, and I didn't have the time to go through all the shirts.

I ended up getting one shirt from each store - both of them being teams from England:

- **From Classic Football Shirts: <a href="https://www.footballkitarchive.com/sunderland-afc-2007-08-home-kit/11219/" target="blank">This Sunderland shirt from 2007</a>**[^4] 
 The feel good story of the Premier League as of this being posted, Sunderland have been punching well above their weight in their first Premier League season since 2017 (and having been in the third division as recently as 2022). In fact, the day I bought this, Sunderland played a big game against league leading Arsenal and pulled out an exciting 2-2 draw. It's also apt that the link above includes a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_Yorke" target="blank">Dwight Yorke</a> shirt as its example, as his name and number are on the shirt I got too!

 I thought about getting a Borussia Monchengladbach (from Germany) shirt here, but I ended up deciding against it because I didn't like how the manufacturer (Puma) did the badge (it has rubber letters on it which aren't sewn on)[^5].
 
 I also considered coming BACK here later in the day to check one thing out, but ultimately decided against doing that as well.

- **From Saturdays Football: <a href="https://www.footballkitarchive.com/blackburn-rovers-2006-07-home-kit/12261/" target="blank">This Blackburn Rovers shirt from 2006</a>** 
 With how things have been going for Blackburn recently (having last been in the Premier League in 2012), it can be easy to forget that they're one of two non-Big Six teams to have won the Premier League (back in 1995)[^6]. They're currently (as of the date this is published) languishing near the bottom of England's second division, though they JUST missed out on the chance to return to the Premier League (that Sunderland ended up getting) last season[^7]. While the contrasting half-and-half design is cool, the front of this one has "mesh armpits" which feature "holes" that are rather small (though probably not 4,000 of them), but are the same colors as the sleeves, and it makes this one look a bit awkward...though maybe not as awkward as that reference I tried to shoehorn in.
 
 I thought about getting an Everton shirt as well, but I didn't like how much it "rose up" off of my waist when I lifted my arms.
 
 Also, I got a free Brooklyn FC sticker since I was wearing their shirt!

There are, of course, A TON MORE vintage stores - and that’s just if you’re talking about New York City! Like I said earlier, I didn’t have anywhere NEAR enough time to explore more (outside of a short visit to a nearby store that didn't have anything I was interested in[^8]), but maybe in the future...

Also, thank goodness I realized I (almost) forgot my shirts at the pizza place I ate lunch at almost immediately after leaving it...

One final note for those who don't understand the divisions mentioned in the shirt descriptions: most countries have all of their soccer/football clubs in a singular "pyramid/ladder structure" which is divided into several divisions, and teams can go up and down the divisions depending on if they play well/poorly season by season. There are calls to bring it to the United States, but it's unlikely certain MLS owners (i.e. the ones with NFL teams) would be willing to have their teams sent to the second (or even third) division...

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[^1]: Though the whole PIF thing does make things complicated…
[^2]: Sadly, I did not see either Bournemouth or Crystal Palace shirts at the stores I went to...did see quite a few Fulham shirts though. I should probably also mention that I went to <a href="https://sportventures.blog/2025-10-19_princetonsoccer" target="blank">a college soccer game a few weeks before this trip</a> and saw someone in a Fulham shirt there.
[^3]: I was originally thinking of visiting a third soccer specific store in Times Square that I remembered having vintage shirts (though I think they specialize more in modern stuff), but nixed it for multiple reasons. One of them being Times Square.
[^4]: I realize that saying I have an affinity for Newcastle United and then buying a Sunderland shirt would likely get me in trouble should I ever visit North East England...
[^5]: Though that didn't stop me from getting another shirt at the Jersey Gardens Puma store...for a team I can't mention in case one of my oldest friends reads this blog.
[^6]: The other one was the famous Leicester City squad of 2016. 
[^7]: England's second division is notoriously volitile: there are many teams over the years who have just missed promotion one year only to fall apart the next. 
[^8]: They did have quite a few baseball jerseys, but many of them had been cut into crop tops.

or "James is FORCED to learn some modicum of self-control"

Shirts and the City

I've been looking to "talk tech" more since, y'know, I'm trying to build a career as a software developer...but I've always felt a bit intimidated by it. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7394026042232971264/" target="blank">This LinkedIn post</a> dives into my thoughts on why, but in short: I'm scared to get something horribly wrong while posting and then never be taken seriously by folks in the industry. I realize that may be a bit silly, but the problem is that in a market full of talent, any disadvantages you create for yourself are MUCH HARDER to overcome should you "expose" yourself as "weaker". However, given that I tried to design a new feature for my <a href="https://sportventures.blog" target="blank">sports blog</a> this past week, I figured NOW would be a GREAT time to get technical about something, and I think it's a topic a lot of folks in software development can understand.

For those who don't know, both that site and this blog are, more or less, my own design as opposed. Yes, this does have a MASSIVE disadvantage in terms of SEO versus using something like WordPress or Substack, but I felt it would make a good "skills showcase" (in fact, I've been working on this since at least 2021). With that in mind, here's my rundown on how I added a new feature to a blog: **tags**.

### STEP 1: What should my tags be?

My view on this was that the purpose of tags was to group content by common threads. Especially with sports, there are various "threads" that can tie multiple posts together: going to multiple games from a singular sport/league, visiting the same place for different teams/sports, and so on.

With that in mind, I came up with the following "major" points I wanted to make tags:

- Sport (what sport is being played)
- League (the league the team is in)
- Location (where they are to collect teams in similar locations)
- Level (what level the team is in its sport such as major league, minor league, or college)

I THOUGHT about doing stadium as well (since some stadiums serve multiple purposes), but at least for now, I don't see it being that important (though that may change as this blog grows over time).

The easiest thing to do for this ENTIRE project, far and away, was figure out how to insert these "tags" into the posts. Every post on my blogs has a "header" with metadata (for things like title, date, and whether or not it should appear as a "published post"), so all I had to do was add another piece to that metadata: an array with the tags as strings.

### STEP 2: What should a "tag" look like on the page?

Originally, I felt that I wanted to do something kinda "fun" with the tags: make them look a bit like "buttons". My first idea was to use \ tags, since they're more versatile than \ tags (each p tag takes a new line on the page without specific CSS changes).

However, I ran into a somewhat unusual issue:

![An early image of what a group of tags looked like. For unknown reasons, one tag labeled "High A" is split across two lines despite ample space for this not to be the case.](/images/brokentag.jpg)

<a href="/images/brokentag.jpg">View Larger Image</a>

To fix this, I "leveraged" Flexbox (a CSS layout model) to ensure that this awkward line split wouldn't happen. However, it wasn't perfect for reasons I'll get into later, but I also realized that there would be a MAJOR problem with...

### STEP 3: Mobile

I don't recall where I saw it, but there's a statistic out there that claims that people use mobile devices to access the internet FAR MORE than computers/laptops - and it's pretty easy to see how that can be true. Think about it: If you're in a car/train/waiting room/restaurant, what device are you using to access your internet content?

#### Your phone!

However, it does create an important issue for developers: if you design a website for laptops and completely forget about mobile, it will be an AWFUL experience for much of your mobile-heavy userbase.

For the tags, using Flexbox them would cause them to remain horizontal no matter what the screen size was - a MASSIVE issue for mobile devices. This would add a TON of horizontal scroll to the page, and you'd rather not have your reader accidentally sideswipe while reading and then get horribly lost.

My original idea was to have the tags near the top of the page and then simply not use Flexbox for mobile (i.e. make tags "vertically stacked"), but this creates a whole new problem: page flow!

When the tags are viewed on a larger screen (i.e. a laptop/standard computer monitor), there's no real issues: they can be viewed as a single line, so to speak. However, mobile is a different story. As each tag has its own line now (which, IIRC, is called "inline"), there's a "block" between the title of the post and its content, and I feel like this looks worse - and can lead to mis-clicks dragging the reader away from the content. Because I can't really use Flexbox for mobile, I have to figure out another solution to have the tags without them being disruptive to the reader.

However, this dilemma made me do one other thing I feel like a lot of blogging platforms do: move the tags to the bottom of the page! This way, the tags do not interrupt the "flow" of content in any way, shape, or form.

I also felt that, in order to stay "consistent", the tags needed a cleaner design. I mentioned that the Flexbox solution wasn't perfect, and that was because it would, more often than not, take tags that were multiple words long and put each word on its own line. Since more tags are one word rather than three, it ended up looking making the buttons look very goofy:

![A photo of what the "tag buttons" looked like using CSS Flexbox. Due to the varying lengths of the tags and their words, the buttons are all different from each other.](/images/flexboxtags.jpg)

<a href="/images/flexboxtags.jpg">View Larger Image</a>

Therefore, I ended up using a "plain text" design, where the tags are just plain text separated by a | separator. I will admit that the HTML file for tags looks a little goofy, but it's the only way I found to get the look I'm aiming for, and I think it's more "in line" with most modern blogging platforms[^1].

### STEP 4: How do you display the posts?

Now that we've made a way to display the tags that works for just about everyone (I hope), the next part is where things get much MORE technical.

I think the way to start this section is to talk about what the actual goal is: a page to display all posts that share a common tag. To start, here's the flow I'm trying to achieve:

1. User clicks on a tag
2. User is taken to a new page
3. New page has all posts that share the tag the user clicked on from the prior post

The first step is almost inherently obvious: \<a> tags! However, since I'm using NextJS for this blog, I figured that \<Link> would work better.

For the new page, the layout was, thankfully, already done: back when I originally designed this site, I made a layout for an "archives" page using CSS Grid. Since I felt that this would work fine for a smaller list, I felt no reason to make any major changes. All I had to do was create a new page for tagged posts and then adjust it to tagged posts.

...But here's where things get a little tricky, and OF COURSE it's the final step of this process.

In order for the page of tagged posts to "work" properly, there needs to be a way to "send" the tag to the new page; not only that, there should also be a way to have the URL include the tag.

I wasn't sure where exactly to start with this one or how to go about it, but then I realized something:

This is also something that has been "solved" on this blog before...and by this blog, I mean the one you are currently reading.

The fact that you are currently reading this post, which exists on its own page in this blog, is proof positive that there's a system for making these types of links work (i.e. if you look at this page's URL, everything after .app/). All I have to do now is to figure out how I did it back in 2021, and then rework that for the tags!

...Of course, that's easier said than done. 

...Like, MUCH easier said than done.

I spent two days working on the tagged page, but I couldn't seem to get it to work. This is because not only do you need to send the tag to the page, you also have to send the ENTIRE POST LIST to be filtered - and I'm not quite sure how to do that right now. 

In fact...that's where this feature currently stands. There's a lot of things in Next's routers that I'm still trying to figure out for this, but I felt I needed to take some time to focus on other things (and also to avoid massive merge conflicts, as I have new content coming up VERY SOON). HOWEVER...I did implement ONE feature of this system I thought would take a bit more time done instead: filtering.

I have every intention of continuing to go to sporting events and writing about them, and at some point, that's going to make my blog rather unwieldly for my main "archive" page - in fact, it kinda already is (as Next keeps complaining about how many items are in my posts array). Being able to filter the archives by some factor helps users immensely if they're looking to see just my posts on a specific sport/league. 

I thought that THIS would take a while, but it's just a simple useState/useEffect case (though it also involves a Set created from all the tags of all the posts). There is a little more to this that I'd like to implement in the near future, but I think that will have to wait until the tag page is ready to go.

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This post is getting rather long (my editor tells me this is line 101), so I think I'll end this here. I will also mention that I got a custom domain for the blog as well, but that's a lot LESS interesting to talk about IMO (though as of this writing, the secure version isn't available...).

P.S: I'm not sure if tags (or a custom domain) are going to be coming to THIS blog. Not only do I think there's not enough content (yet) to justify it, I expect a much wider range of discussion points, so the "filter pages" would all be one or two posts - something I don't think is worth the time. Of course, should the need arise, it's a SUPER easy addon.

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[^1]: As an aside, I'm also fully aware that the images on this page are hilariously awful to look at on mobile...

The process of adding something to my platform

Designing a Feature

subtitle

title


*AUTHOR'S NOTE: This was written as a test for content and formatting blog posts. As such, it's super random and not very...useful (for lack of a better term), but I'll leave it here so you can see a bit of "behind the scenes" stuff.*

This has been in the works for WAY too long.

Have

You

Ever
Heard
**lorem**

Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis The Wise? I thought not. It’s not a story the Jedi would tell you. 
It’s a Sith legend. Darth Plagueis was a Dark Lord of the Sith, so powerful and so wise he could use the Force to influence the midichlorians to create life… He had such a knowledge of the dark side that he could even keep the ones he cared about from dying. 

The dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be 


```
unnatural. 
```


He became so powerful… the only thing he was afraid of was losing his power, which eventually, of course, he did. Unfortunately, he taught his apprentice everything he knew, then his apprentice killed him in his sleep. Ironic. He could save others from death, but not himself.

A test!

Testing 1, 2, 3


Hi!

You've 

I've become disenchanted with social media. I'm sure many of you out there have as well.

For example, I still struggle to understand the algorithms that govern what you see on your feed. 