About Me

My name is Gavin Shrader and I'm a self taught programmer, I'm currently working as an iOS engineer and web developer.

I live in Richmond, VA, when I'm not working on new projects I like to spend time running, hiking, and going to the gym.

About My Site

I custom built my website using NextJS and I'm hosting it on the Vercel edge network. All of these buzz words come together to form a super fast website that loads almost instantaneously, no matter where you find yourself on planet Earth.

The blog you are currently reading is completely custom built. I have a system that allows me to create a new markdown file, with built in HTML for styling and images, and then my website will generate a NextJS/React component at build time that is viewable in a browser. I also have an automated build script that takes the file path for my blog post and appends it to my site's sitemap.xml so web scrapers can properly map my site.

Here is a screenshot of what a markdown post looks like before my site turns it into a new page:

I also have a custom header at the top of each blog post that my site uses to generate things like SEO data, a title/description, the publish date, and a showcase image:

Anyway, that's a basic introduction to my site and my experience. Thanks for reading!