This site: the refresh
From a static brochure to a builder home base — woodblock paper, neon koi, and a contact pipeline that finally works.
Next.js · TypeScript · Tailwind CSS · WebGL · AWS Amplify · Lambda + SES
The previous version of this site was a brochure trying to sell something. This one just shows what I build. Instead of throwing the codebase away, I re-aimed it: same Next.js foundation, new positioning, and a visual identity worth staying for.
Decisions that mattered
- Re-skin through the token layer. Every color in the design system is a CSS custom property behind a semantic name. The move from the old palette to warm woodblock paper with koi-crimson accents touched the token file — not the components.
- Japanese woodblock × neon. A WebGL scene paints the atmosphere: a dawn gradient over parchment, gilt clouds drifting with the wind, and a seigaiha wave field where neon koi streams glint along the ring paths. City Pop on paper.
- Contact that actually delivers. The old form pointed at SMTP credentials that never existed. Messages now travel through a Lambda function URL to SES — validated, rate-limited, and spam-filtered with a honeypot the bots can't resist.
- Curated, not encyclopedic. Fewer pages, a simpler nav, and a home page that says what I am now: an engineer who builds for the web and teaches his homelab to build back.
Shipped — and being refined in public. The repo history is the real case study.