Happy Thanksgiving, hope you had some time to enjoy a meal and time with family. Year of Code is closing in on its first year, and this month was more about a few projects than many small projects.

Tek4.Me

Tek4.Me has been a major focus this month, from creating a fully custom website, and building up the brand/project. I used Gemini 2.5 in the CLI to learn more about building with Entity Framework. I used to hate the idea of giving up control over database creation and CRUD stored procedures, but I found that stuff was making me bored with dev.

This big change in my opinion on EF came with the "Price Per Calculator" using EF and SQLite, and how easy it was to build the Save it for Pantry using code-first databases. I fully implemented this, along with the built-in Blazor login system, for the T4M website. I don't want to go back to all the database SQL work unless I need to, especially as EF keeps improving.

That said, the site has a lot of new things. I created many new things, mainly using S3/R2 for image and file storage. This allows me to host my files off the web server and in a location that serves them quickly. With R2 offering a nice free tier and no limits on public access, it is a good option for small web projects or even bigger ones. I still need to learn more about how to store files with access restrictions without making a bunch of ops calls.

Shortz XP

Shortz XP app has really grown into being the key to making the short videos for Tek4.Me. It now uses AWS Polly to generate TTS audio, and FFMPEG has been great for fast video generation. I did add a few more settings for Polly, but the app has been solid day in and out. I expect to add the ability to open a PDF, generate text with an LLM, review it, create a video, and post it to the website. Maybe a further goal is to post on YouTube and X, but I do like to have some control over the content and being involved in the posts.

SCS.MDScribe

Markdown Scribe emerged from my need for better Markdown-generated text for the Tek4.Me Shortz XP. I was also testing the new GPT 5.1 Instant. I wanted this to be a library I could use in multiple projects, so I went all in on creating a NuGet package. It's nothing fancy, but I learned how to build the package, create some good documentation, and make something simple but useful available to others. Below is an example.

var md = new MDScribeBuilder()
    .H1("My Document")
    .Paragraph("Generated using MDScribe.")
    .H2("Features")
    .BulletList(new [] { "Simple", "Fast", "Fluent" })
    .CodeBlock("Console.WriteLine(\"Hello\");", "csharp")
    .ToString();

File.WriteAllText("output.md", md);

Year of Code App

I finally got my server configured correctly so I could log in with Auth0, along with a few other auth updates. I was also trying to get drag-and-drop working with project boards, but after some code cleanup and realizing that Blazor FluentUI drag-and-drop is still under development, I removed it. Project Boards should look better in both the public and admin pages as part of all this. I don't need the drag-and-drop feature since I don't use boards every day. It will be something I need for my project management app.

Continue Year of Code In 2026

I have been thinking about what to do with this project, Year of Code, as the year comes to an end. The main takeaway has been that it has helped me explore new things and build code projects I probably wouldn't have taken the time to finish, or that I never would have done. So I will continue to try to write code every day in 2026. But after Thanksgiving, I realized I wanted some flexibility, so 2026 will be a best-effort every day I code plan.

Next month will have some gaps during Christmas and New Year's. I will create a page dedicated to recapping what I built and how the Year of Code 2025 went. YOCA will get some updates to handle multi-year, and keep expanding my development and learning. If I get a more full-time gig, that won't be a slowdown, as I still think, long-term, having my own apps, sites, and business is the way forward.