Kit Bashing

Live site: kitapplegate.github.io/Kit-bashing

A public field log of AI, networking, and building in the open — one retired Coast Guard hazmat specialist’s path into network engineering (CCNA in progress), home lab work, and practical AI systems.

Why this exists

Clients and hiring managers rarely see the messy middle of a career shift. This site documents real projects, decisions, and labs as they happen — not a polished after-the-fact portfolio rewrite.

What’s in the stack

• Astro static site
• Markdown content + GitHub Actions deploy to GitHub Pages
• Designed to ship weekly posts without a CMS

Skills shown

Technical writing, static site / JAMstack basics, GitHub Actions CI/CD, networking and AI learning in public.

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Writing a new post

1. Copy src/content/blog/.template.md to a new file in src/content/blog/, e.g. 2026-07-16-first-boot.md (no leading dot — dotfiles are ignored).
2. Fill in the frontmatter (title, description, pubDate, optional heroImage) and write the post in Markdown below it.
3. Run npm run dev and check it at localhost:4321/blog/.
4. Commit and push to main — the GitHub Actions workflow builds and deploys automatically.

Commands

Command	Action
npm install	Install dependencies
npm run dev	Local dev server at localhost:4321
npm run build	Production build to ./dist/
npm run preview	Preview the production build

Deployment

Pushing to main runs .github/workflows/deploy.yml (GitHub Pages via Actions). Repo Pages source should be GitHub Actions. astro.config.mjs sets base: '/Kit-bashing/' so links work under that subpath.