Dustin SnellingsSoftware engineer

Beyond the workbench / The other side

Verso

You found the other side. A small workbench for the habits behind the portfolio: measure carefully, inspect the result, and stay curious.

Dustin Snellings outdoors with mountains in the distance.
A little of the world beyond the workbench.

A couple of things to try

From the shop floor: how small is a thousandth?

0.001 inches = 0.0254 mm = 25.4 micrometers.

An exact unit conversion: one inch is 25.4 millimeters. Small numbers can have very physical consequences.

From software: change one letter, change the fingerprint.
JavaScript enables a local SHA-256 calculation here.

Computed with your browser’s Web Crypto API. Your phrase stays on this device. A hash is a fingerprint, not encryption.

What this page costs you

The redesigned portfolio uses Astro, native browser motion, and Phosphor icons. The release budget is 150 KB for compressed HTML and JavaScript plus font files; responsive images are additional. The brain and credential artwork load lazily. Motion respects reduced-motion preferences, and the brain can be paused. There is no analytics script or tag manager.

The checks behind the experience

These checks run locally and in GitHub Actions. Vercel deploys from the main branch, and the deployed site is checked separately. A passing lab result describes the tested conditions, not every visitor’s device or connection.

contrast
WCAG ratios computed from the real OKLCH tokens, all four palettes
semantics
landmarks, headings, names, and roles
glyphs
every rendered character exists in the shipped subset
sitemap
every built page listed, every listing built
dead-code
no selector ships without a match
structure
section order read from the DOM, not the stylesheet
render
overflow and layout shift, every width, both schemes
behaviour
interactive journeys in a real browser
experiences
skill evidence, predictions, validation recovery, and personal discoveries
page turn
corner navigation, history, keyboard, touch, and reduced motion across screen sizes
engines
core journeys across Chromium, WebKit, and Firefox
lighthouse
four categories, no category below 100
live
the deployed bytes, not the local ones

The number I did not hit

The September 12, 2026 local mobile Lighthouse run measured Largest Contentful Paint at 1,663 ms, zero layout shift, and zero total blocking time. All four categories scored 100. The 1,200 ms LCP target remains unmet; the release gate is 2,500 ms. These are lab measurements, not field performance guarantees.

Things that broke

Every one of these shipped, or nearly did. They are written up properly in the notes.

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