Image Generator Updates & Life Changes

I spent a lot of time troubleshooting why the DALL-E image generator hasn't been working. Seems to be frequent rate limiting issues, so I decided to solve it by adding Stable Diffusion via Replicate as the default model. It's far more reliable, and the images tend to be better anyway - highly recommend! Also added CAPTCHA in case bots want to hit my submission forms.

Started a new contract this week for Dogchild.co. They're a very niche company with a strong, growing community of dog-moms who like to make home-cooked meals for their dogs. I'm their only developer right now, so it's a bit of a learning curve. They're primarily powered by Shopify, so I'm learning Liquid (Shopify's templating language). It's an interesting mix of "no-code" development and custom tweaking when things are too limited with the no-code pre-builds. So many apps and extensions! It's going well though, and it's a fun gig so far.

Considering adding a bit of humor to the site, maybe by making the entire website's theme about my cat. Is this a good idea? I feel like it would be funny for me and my friends, but I'm not sure how that would look to other potential employers. They might think I'm just genuinely obsessed with my cat. Or maybe they'd get a chuckle out of it too. TBD. We'll see, lol.

Life update: I'm planning to move to Europe in May, looking at different cities. Amsterdam was my first choice, but it's really expensive. Milan is my next choice - still expensive but not as bad. Lots of work to do to make it happen: gotta figure out visa, cat passport, flights, travelling with a cat, finding a furnished short-term place (that will allow a cat too) so I can get there and then find a more long-term solution. But it's exciting nonetheless!

That's all for now!