(jw) Joe Whitsitt

Screen-Free Spring Break*

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 10:00:00 +0000

My wife's bold plan for a screen-free weekend trip over spring break, and how it went.

2025 "zero bag" trip to Washington, D.C.

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 01:11:45 +0000

A brief overview of my zero-bag trip to Washington, D.C.

My Daily Lunch Ritual: Cold-Soaked Oatmeal for 6+ Years

Sat, 21 Feb 2026 10:00:00 +0000

What I eat for lunch almost every day.

My wish list

Sat, 25 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In case you want to get me something..

2022 Switzerland Pack List

Fri, 08 Jul 2022 01:11:45 +0000

A brief overview of my trip to Switzerland and the things I packed.

From Android back to iOS: Why I bought the new iPhone SE (2022)

Sat, 02 Apr 2022 15:10:35 +0000

I am one of the ten people* that bought the iPhone SE

Moved to Hugo from Gatsby

Sat, 26 Feb 2022 19:00:03 +0000

Thoughts and notes about moving to Hugo from GatsbyJS

RAGBRAI XLVIII Recap

Sat, 07 Aug 2021 21:45:12 +0000

I just got back from another year of RAGBRAI. Wasn’t sure if it would actually happen because of the new wave of COVID-19 cases. It was cancelled last year. I only did three and a half days of riding from Parkersburg to Clinton.

Originally, I was going to bike out to the route and back and meet up with my team, but when my friend Mike said he was going to come all the way over from Switzerland, I adjusted my plans so that I could help him get to the route/team and share any gear with him that he may have needed.

2021 Boundary Waters Canoe Area Trip

Sat, 07 Aug 2021 19:48:43 +0000

At the beginning of June this year, I went on a five-night canoe camping trip with family members in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA), specifically the Shell Lake area off entry point 14.

This was my first canoe trip and my first time visiting the BWCA. Because of that, I had a lot of questions going into the trip.

Normally, on canoe trips, folks have a tendency to pack more similar to a car camping trip because the hikes, or portages, are short and the canoes instead carry most of the weight.

2020 Ski Trip Pack List

Sat, 29 Feb 2020 01:00:00 +0000

I went on a short weekend ski trip to Park City, UT. I don’t have a photo of my items, but if you have seen my North Face Recon backpack, it was completely stuffed. Zippers were hard to close and it barely fit under the seat on the plane. Packing the items in a particular order was the element of success.

North Face Recon backpack
North Face Jacket Shell
North Face Down Jacket
Columbia Snow Pants
Thinsulate mittens
North Face e*tip gloves
Dorky stocking hat with ball on top
Scott Ski Goggles
Smart Wool baklava
Buff * Merino Wool
Patagonia long underwear
Under Armour 1/4 zip shirt
Tees (3)
Underwear (4)
Wool Socks (4)
Swim briefs
Hospital Scrub Pants
Pants
Patagonia R1 hoodie
Trucker hat
Keen Boots
Bluetooth ear bud headphones
Mini battery bank
Charging cords, wall adapter
Phone
Wallet
Hanky
Snacks (shelled sunflower seeds, raisins, dark chocolate)
Travel coffee mug
Deodorant
Toothbrush
Toothpaste
Beard comb
Ibprophen
Daily vitamins
Dr Bronner’s soap samples
Zip-Lock baggie (toiletries)

Worn on the plane

A case against social media timeline widgets

Sat, 07 Dec 2019 01:00:00 +0000

We get it all the time at my work. “Can I put my Facebook timeline on my website?”

Absolutely not. Here is why.

They are generally inaccessible

At work, we strive maintain websites that are WCAG 2.0 compliant. Most of these timeline widgets lack the neccessary accomodations to make them accessible to all.

They don’t blend in with your website’s look and feel

They are usually difficult to design around and stick out like a sore thumb unless your site uses the same color scheme.

2019 NYC Pack List

Wed, 30 Oct 2019 01:00:00 +0000

Going into Labor Day weekend, Abby and I traveled to New York City to attend my buddy’s wedding as well as celebrate our 10-year wedding anniversary.

All in all, with travel to/from, we spent 5 nights, went carry-on only and had a wide range of events dictating dress code. Weather sunny in the high 80s. Urban sightseeing, broadway theatre, casual to fancy dining, a formal wedding and Ultimate Frisbee in Central Park.

So I Became a Vegetarian

Sat, 19 Oct 2019 01:00:00 +0000

My wife heard it from the mayor.

Two weeks ago, I jumped right into it. I became a vegetarian, but kept it to myself. For breakfast and lunch I didn’t share a meal with anyone and I didn’t tell my wife about it.

In the same day my family and I walked to our town’s fall festival in the nearby park. The mayor was grilling up hotdogs and was offering them out to anyone nearby. My son walked over and got one so I followed after him to make sure he didn’t get ketchup everywhere. The mayor started to hand out another hotdog to me and without thinking I responded, “no thank you, I am a vegetarian.” I could have just said, “no thanks,” I thought, but I didn’t think much more about it. The mayor shrugging my comment off, walked back to the grill and I turned my attention to my son which had ketchup all over his face and hands. Later on, I caught up with my wife. She seemed a bit upset and she pulled me aside. “I just talked to the mayor, you are a vegetarian now?”

Hello Gatsby

Mon, 07 Oct 2019 03:00:00 +0000

Jekyll has served me well for several years, but I am interested in trying something new. GastbyJS has caught my attention because it uses Node instead of Ruby which is what I have been using for work and Gastby has plugins that integrate with Drupal, something I might look into later.

The first step has been to migrate and familarize myself with Gatsby. To aid in this, I am using a starter kit that works with Netlify and Forestry.

We have a budget

Sat, 05 Oct 2019 01:00:00 +0000

This is a re-write of a post I authored back in 2017. Our situation has changed enough since I first wrote about budgeting that I didn’t feel like it was useful anymore as-is.

The job, house, wife, kids, dog, car and beer drinking all caught up with me a couple years ago. We were spending more than we were making, forcing us to budget for the first time. Previously, we were lucky to have enough for our lifestyle, but overtime, we were having troubles paying down the debt and money started to become an uncomfortable part of life.

Optimizing GeoJSON

Fri, 22 Jun 2018 01:00:00 +0000

I have been working with some GeoJSON files lately for work and at first I was having issues with the large size of the files. For the web (displaying it on a map), this is not good so I went in search of some ways to reduce the file size.

Trim (Truncate) Coordinates

I read that, “for most web maps, decimals after the 5th decimal point are essentially meaningless,” so using the find and replace functionality in Sublime Text:

Follow-Up: RAGBRAI XLV (2017) Pack List

Fri, 21 Jul 2017 01:00:00 +0000

Here is a follow-up to my previous post, 2017-ragbrai-packlist. Based on this year, I made some last minute decisions on what to pack. Here are some factors that changed what ended up on the ride:

Supported by my team bus.
Riding/camping with my wife.
Riding my single speed.
Only camping four nights (22nd-25th) and only riding three days (23rd-25th)

In addition, the weather is looking pretty decent for July in Iowa. For the portion that I will be riding the highest is 88 and the lowest is 58.

RAGBRAI XLV (2017) Pack List

Thu, 08 Jun 2017 01:00:00 +0000

I have been on RAGBRAI (Des Moines Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa) several times since 2005. Over the years, I’d like to think I have figured out a pretty good list of gear. In general, this list is usually what I start with when planning a bicycle touring trip, not just for RAGBRAI.

An asterisk denotes a “luxury” item that I only take when riding supported (team bus). Otherwise, everything can pack on the bike (except the bike itself of course).

Sprucing up Jekyll

Mon, 17 Oct 2016 03:00:00 +0000

i finally had a chance to mess with jekyll a bit more and added a few features to the site:

bootstrap css/js
fontawesome
archive page
disqus comments
google analytics
categories/tags

feel free to checkout my repo to see how i did it all.

Hello world

Sun, 24 Jan 2016 03:00:00 +0000

giving jekyll another go.

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

date: 2017-02-01T01:00:00.000+00:00 author: Joe Whitsitt title: Converting a website from Drupal to Jekyll category: web development tags:

drupal
jekyll
gh-pages
github
cloudflare
dropbox type: post comments: false aliases:
/2017/02/01/converting-drupal-jekyll
/blog/converting-drupal-jekyll
/posts/converting-drupal-jekyll image: “pfalcons.png” relative: true

These days, I don’t always have the personal time to maintain a bunch of Drupal sites. Heck, it has taken a while for me to even find time to write this post.

A Drupal site is rarely a “set it and forget it” type site. There are updates, security vulnerabilities, tweaks and major releases with weak upgrade paths.

Tubing

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Below is some pretty good pointers if you ever find yourself on a river with a tube and beer in hand.