For anyone with `GameObject[]` in their #Unity inspectors and getting "GetName" errors + broken, change the editor font. No joke - getting back into #gamedev and been frustrated by this for a couple weeks. Shocked that just changing the font fixed it. Credit: discussions.unity.com/t/please-tel...

Selling my 2x tickets to Good Things Festival in Melb in Dec - tixel.com/u/3366417 Tool, Weezer, Garbage, Refused, many more great bands in the lineup.

Been under the weather the last couple days, haven't been able to work. So much thinking and planning while idle though. Have a core game loop and progression in mind (hybrid genres), and a direction for aesthetics. Remains to be seen if these are "sick (good) ideas" or "sick (not good) ideas".

One of the dev things I enjoy the most (esp in gamedev) is the transition from extremely rough prototype to actual build. Been working on a headless simulation framework the last couple weeks (w a Unity frontend), and formalising/cleaning that up has been oh so satisfying.

Laravel's LazyCollections + PHP's first class callables and generators is **chefs kiss**

Recently I've been prototyping #gamedev mechanics for something akin to Settlers 2. For years I've wanted to create a minimal/zen settlers game, but I'm curious what sort of theme players might be interested in... Brutally minimal - shapes and chill sounds? Cartoon? Hand drawn?

Yesterday I released a very minimal starter kit for Laravel + my Elide/HTMX package. It scaffolds a simple and lean project which is close to no build and has a dynamic front-end. github.com/danherbert-i...

First day back on the bar in 10+ years. Didn't realise how much I missed it...

Just released v1.0.9 of Elide, my package for #Laravel + #HTMX. github.com/danherbert-i... Small addition - can now specify callback(s) to filter partials returned to the frontend.

Why does *everything* have to have AI or AI related stuff bundled in? Where are the opt in/out options so folks can choose?

New blog post: "I tried AI coding - I still don't get it..." Gave "full AI coding" a solid go. I was disappointed (again). danherbert.io/blog/2025081...

Hold on tight... last night's @phpxadl.bsky.social talk is ready for you. Starting with a clean @statamic.com install and a site design in Figma, I put 40 minutes on the clock to see how much of a maintainable site we can build live. youtu.be/iFNRqy1xuZk

`display: contents` is my new favourite CSS thing. So very handy.

New post: The importance of dogfooding. It's really valuable process which should be employed as much as possible. danherbert.io/blog/2025073...

Rebuilt my personal site using a Laravel package I recently released: Elide - a helper that makes Laravel + HTMX feel a bit like Inertia. No JS, no build step. Just components and partials. 📝 danherbert.io/blog/2025072... 📦 Elide: github.com/danherbert-i... #Laravel #HTMX #PHP

youtu.be/t-hsfvafzdo?... Frisson every time with this one. The last half is especially 👌

Interesting cache issue today (`Vary` header w CloudFlare). Figured I'd try my monthly "what does AI suggest?" Gave up after 2 hours w no solve and suggestions like "duplicate all your routes to serve the req'd responses". The fix was about 5 lines of handwritten js. Know your tools.

Media controls with Google Maps Navigation are officially gone now - all I wanted is a "skip track" button. So in the spirit of "you can just do things", I made a skip track button which can be dragged anywhere on the screen. Problem solved in about 30 minutes.

To get good at something you have to do that thing over and over - practice! That takes time. Paradoxically, you should also put time towards trying new things often so that you can work out what you should be practicing. Things change!

Currently out of action due to a back injury, but the brain won't stop - so much code marinating. Going to be a deluge of commits once I can get back to my desk. Got a Laravel package I'm keen to get out as part of that.

*feels good meme*

My little Laravel Pennant PR got merged 🎉

Gone a bit mad scientist the last couple days - had an idea for a game on my mind for a long time, might just be able to execute it with @nativephp.com. So much fun to experiment with novel things in ways they probably weren't intended to be used.

Any guesses as to when I started working for myself?

I understand why this is necessary, though it feels so dirty every time I have to do it... 🫠

Curious what things would look like in an alternate timeline where humanity almost always focused on quality instead of speed and/or quantity.

In PHP, `glob(...)` might be one of my favourite functions which I almost always forget about. Outrageously simple way to find files on the filesystem.

Getting close to go-live for a small thing I've been working on the last ~2-3 weeks - it helps surface docs to website/app users. I'll be stoked if it gets some traction, though mostly I'll be really happy to get something launched and out there - that's a big thing on a personal level.

Coming up with an SQL only approach for event recurrences (not materialised!) has been one of the most fun programming tasks I've had in a fair while. Paired with #Laravel collections/relations it'll be trivial to queue/list actions for schedules.

Feeling a lot of bookstore nostalgia today. I miss when they had sitting/reading sections. More than that, I miss when they had a solid range of technical books - programming in particular. A great *physical* source of ideas/inspiration/knowledge. Online isn't the same as thumbing through books.

Coming up with a name for this SaaS product might really be the hardest task on the list. 😂 Came up with a couple I was very happy with today, fairly obscure. Alas, both were taken, one even by an actual business here in Aus. One of the .com domains was available though: US$15k via GoDaddy!

House to myself today so a small change of track. Been learning @godotengine.org and getting some groundwork in for a small game idea I'd like to experiment with. Productive! Got a neat turn based "roster" system which pairs with a simple job queue system for everything that happens in the world.

When Garmin tells you your condition isn't good it's because it's actually a drill sergeant and knows you can do it with a little push 🤪

One of the little gotchas with the HTML `popover` attribute is that everything else in the page is still clickable, even with a `:backdrop`. Potential for users to click on other things when trying to dismiss. Easily solvable thanks to `:has()`, and still zero JS

Listening to the episode of @mitchdav.is's podcast where they talk about redundancy. Gotta make sure the project/work can be spun up in a usable state in the shortest time too. Get those factories/seeders, make sure those .env.example files are up to date. Cut that friction as much as possible.

Rediscovered `popover` this week - developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/W... Broadly available as of Jan. Love how much you can do with just markup and CSS now.

Really happy with the permissions/roles setup I've landed on for this build. `Permission` and `Role` string-backed enums; `Role` cases defines sets of `Permission` cases; those are registered with Spatie's `laravel-permissions` `User` pivot model gets assigned to the roles (never permissions).

Slapped in some billing UI and mechanisms today. Intriguing how much more official that can make a project feel.

In #Laravel Cloud, anyone know of a way to reconnect a github repo to an application, and from there a branch to an environment? Mine got disconnected through the process of creating a new organisation (used same GitHub account) and can't seem to find a way to reconnect it...

This is the true and only vibe coding as far as I'm concerned: www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8K6...

Having one of those days where you question why you chose to be a programmer because you're spending all your time fighting/troubleshooting the tools rather than doing your own work. 🫠

Working with arbitrary data which will end up in models for a range of different scenarios - came up with a couple `Collection` macros to help ensure that only valid data ends up in the models. Initially did this to help streamline partial model updates, but will be handy with CSV imports/etc also.

With #Laravel Cloud, any preferred strategy for multi-tenant object storage with per-tenant access restriction/protection? Should not be publicly accessible, <img> and downloads should work when logged in. Temp signed URLs (cached perhaps) with an authorising route in front?

Trying to take photos of kangaroos with my phone aiming through a pair of binoculars - worked better than I expected it to

Deliberately chose not to have posts/articles on my personal site because that's not something I have ever maintained in the past, makes the site look abandoned. 3 interesting things I've worked out/come across in the last week which I could write posts about, so rethinking this...

Migrated my personal site across to #Laravel Cloud today. Get such little traffic the production plan is cheaper than Forge + Linode VPS. Deploying the site was pretty frictionless. Could also use Route::domain() to serve multiple small things from a single app too (a la multiple apps on VPS)

In the middle of a week off before starting on the groundwork for my own business(es). Promised myself: no tech topics, no extracurricular programming, no tech YouTube, nada - instead drive, read, run, get bored. This has been far more difficult to uphold than anticipated 😂

37 degrees, what was I thinking!? 🫠

Laravel blade components with @htmx.org's out of band updates straight up feels like cheating. No JS build, clear separation of concerns, dynamic UIs... And the frontend payload is _lean_.

Just under four weeks until I depart from my job of ~17 years and push out on my own. Lots of things going on in my head, though the biggest feeling right is a combination of excitement and impatience. Keen to get cracking already!