About

I’m Blake Watson, a software developer living outside of Jackson, MS. I’m part of the frontend dev team at MRI Technologies, working on projects for NASA.

I’m mostly a developer these days but in my heart of hearts I’m a designer first. I think good design is powerful, though undervalued. I try to always advocate for the interests of the people using the things I make.

Speaking of which, besides my work, I’m a side project enthusiast and have put various sites, apps, and (bad) games into the world. My hobbies include web-related nerdery, D&D and board games, and writing. I like to participate in National Novel Writing Month, the annual novel-writing challenge, but I’ve downgraded the difficulty level to novella-length stories.

I have a disability called spinal muscular atrophy. For me it means I need help with regular everyday activities like dressing, bathing, and eating. I use a highly customized power wheelchair to get around. I also use a variety of assistive technologies to get things done. My favorite piece of tech is my Mac.

Contact me

I’m not taking on contract work for the most part but if you do have a project in mind that you think I would be well-suited for, please let me know.

If you have any questions or comments or just want to say hey, you can email at [email protected].

If you want to connect on social media you can find me on Mastodon.

Colophon

I used the following projects and tools in the making of this website. This list isn’t exhaustive but includes the more interesting, different, or noteworthy items. Of course this is all made possible because of standards, open technologies, browsers, and the wondrous invention of the world wide web.

• This site is generated by the static site generator, Eleventy using a combination of markdown, Nunjucks, and data pulled from the web.
• Its code is hosted on GitHub and deployed automatically by DeployHQ (referral link) to a server at NearlyFreeSpeech.NET.
• The entire site is regularly backed up to Backblaze B2.
• Search functionality is powered by MiniSearch running on a Cloudflare Workers function.
• Mastodon post previews are powered by the mastodon-post web component.
• Code samples are highlighted with Torchlight.
• The fonts used are Ringside Regular, Ringside Extra Wide, and Operator Mono from Hoefler&Co.
• Icons are from Font Awesome.