From Dashboard to Deployed
A Chromebook Learns to Ship
Mid-January, I installed Claude Code on my Chromebook Plus just to see what would happen. The first ask was simple: build me a system dashboard. Within minutes, a single PHP file appeared, dashboard.php, showing CPU stats for my Intel Core Ultra 5, memory bars filling in green, disk usage, network interfaces. It auto-refreshed every ten seconds. No frameworks. No dependencies. Just php -S localhost:8080 and there it was, alive on screen. That was the moment I understood this wasn’t fancy autocomplete. This was something that could actually build things.
So naturally I pushed harder. Take my local “On This Day” script, the one that pulls posts from twenty years of Substack archives, and put it on the actual internet. Simple enough, right? Except Vercel doesn’t speak PHP. So we rewrote everything in Next.js. Then Vercel shuffled Postgres off to paid partners mid-project, forcing a pivot to Turso. The 4.5MB upload limit meant reimagining how to import 4,000+ posts through batched uploads and client-side zip extraction. Timezone bugs showed tomorrow’s posts when Vercel’s UTC servers got confused. React hydration errors broke buttons in ways that felt personally vindictive. OAuth callbacks demanded exact URL matching or nothing worked at all.
Fifteen sessions later, 8i11.vercel.app is live. Dual authentication, automatic RSS sync, a “Generate Story” button that calls Claude’s API to weave posts across years into shareable narratives. We built an archive, a markdown converter, admin tools, even roughed in Frogger. The PHP version still runs locally with full feature parity. What started as a dashboard became something I didn’t expect, a working partnership where code gets written and I actually learn why it works.
On This Day
February 6 has shown up 10 times since 2003. A day apparently reserved for sickness, solitude, and the occasional mountain retreat... plus whatever chaos is happening at 830 Cleveland.
2003: Sick Day – Battling a wicked head cold today, an unwelcome companion that’s thrown a wrench in my usual routine. Despite the sniffles and the fog of feeling under the weather, there was a small victory: I got...
2008: Hello From 7,200 Feet – Nestled in the serene embrace of Little Saint Joe Mountain, the RM Cabin offers a respite from the world below—a place where the night whispers through the trees and the crackle of the fireplace...
2009: Butte Bike Summit – Taking the first step, I’ve registered for the 24 Solo World Championships in Canmore, Alberta, Canada, happening July 24th – 26th. So, what’s next?
2011: Relaxing on the weekend – Dawn approached and I stuffed myself with blueberry scones and coffee. One of my favorite “off season” things to do. It was cloudier then the day before and that meant a storm was fast approaching. I...
2012: Solo – I watched her lights fade into the night, then dashed up to my place. “Brrr... chilly,” I muttered. I grabbed my work gear and left for another Bozeman Monday. My bike felt strange as I pedaled to...
2016: Winter Crash – So I was fat biking home after work. On board inside my frame bag I had a pound of pork, a bushel of celery, a bunch of rosemary, and a half pound of butter. Kind of loaded down but on a fattie I...
2018: The Map – My partner came into the room with a winter trail map. I haven’t seen this thing in a long time. Not since the Buck Ridge Incident anyway. She unfolded it out and we went to the ground to check it...
2023: Cedar Grove – 12 miles from the Lolo Pass in northeastern Idaho along the Northwest Passage Scenic Byway and All American Road, a stroll down this accessible interpretive trail and memorial to Bernard DeVoto. The...
2024: Shifting Gears: Beyond the Madness of Bill Martin – Deep in the heart of Montana’s whispering pines, where towering larch whispered secrets to the wind, lived DW, a mountain bike unlike any other. He wasn’t your typical thrill-seeker; instead, he...
2025: Balcony Blues at 830 Cleveland – At 830 Cleveland, Apartment 2,A tale of chaos comes into view.The awning leans, a wooden crutch,A fragile fix, but not by much.