Overview

Over the last few days, I’ve been focusing on bringing a more “Industrial Lab” and terminal-centric feel to the MickTheLinuxGeek website. This dev log summarizes the last three major updates merged into the codebase.

1. Dynamic Lab Console & Custom 404 Page (PR #3)

The first major update introduced a dynamic Lab Console component. This component is designed to emulate a terminal-like interface directly on the home page, providing an interactive feel from the moment a visitor arrives.

It’s been a busy few weeks for the Developer Issue Tracking System (DITS). We’ve hit several major milestones that significantly improve both the user experience and the long-term maintainability of the project. Here’s a look at what’s been happening in the last six pull requests.

Keyboard-First Navigation

For power users, efficiency is everything. We’ve just completed a major push for keyboard command navigation. You can now navigate through issues and board views with ease, reducing reliance on the mouse and keeping you in the “flow” state. This completes a comprehensive set of keyboard commands designed to make DITS feel more like a high-performance terminal.

Happy New Year – 2026

Happy New Year! It has been a while since I last posted. I have been busy working on the DITS issue tracker application.

I am currently finishing the last groups of development tasks for the web application. After that, I have a list of things I need to go back and add or complete. I am hoping to have this work done by the end of January; then, it will be time for testing and fixing issues. I am looking forward to getting back to it, as I have taken a little break to work on some other things.

One day awhile back, I was working on developing a blog application using Python and Django. I came to a point where I needed to keep track of bugs, issues, and items that needed research. How was I going to do this? I could use GitHub issues, as I keep the project in a repository. That would work fine, but I would have to keep switching context from my IDE to GitHub issues. Eventually I would need to start tracking issues on GitHub, but I felt where I was at in the development process, that was not the way I wanted to go. So, what I ended up doing was creating a project.its file and dumped issues and whatever else that needed researched into it. Although this worked, the file ended up being an unformatted mess and difficult to track issues, especially if there were a lot. What was I going to do?

Website deployed! I finally have my own website; My own space on the web. For the last few years, I have wanted to build a website to showcase the projects I am working on, and have a place to blog. Like I said in my first post, I tried to use Hugo to build a website before, but always struggled with the templates and how all files fit together. I tried a couple different times, and I still have the GitHub repositories from those attempts. I tried to modify one of Hugo’s templates to fit my use case, but could not achieve something I liked, and starting from a blank canvas was not going to work either, as I am not that creative with these kinds of things.

Well here it is. I finally built my first website, my own place on the internet. I have always wanted to build a blog and post interesting stuff, but could never find a good way to accomplish this. I have tried building Hugo sites before, but it never worked out. I tried using one of Hugo’s themes, but trying to modify one of those to suit my needs turned into a nightmare. Well, here I am again using Hugo to build a website and a blog, this time with the help of AI. Starting from a blank slate or trying to use one of Hugo’s themes just didn’t work for me. If I can get something I like to start with, then I have no problem taking off from there. What I have so far looks good and I like it. This is a work in progress and I’ll be making changes as I go along. I’ll see how it goes.