Dev Log: May 12 Wrap-up

Overview

Today was a bit of a whirlwind across different projects. I spent most of my time hopping between cleaning up SEO configurations, fixing some rigid backend logic, and refining the UI for a chat component. It felt good to touch different parts of the stack, even if some of the fixes were smaller than others.

What I Worked On

Cleaning up the Sitemap

I spent some time on the portal project today fixing a few issues with the sitemap.xml. We were using hash-based routing in the URLs, which isn't exactly ideal for SEO. I went through and stripped out the hashes to ensure search engines can crawl the clean, direct paths. It’s a small tweak, but it makes a big difference in how the site gets indexed.

Bulletproofing the Scheduler Logic

I ran into a bit of a snag with our internal scheduler service. The way we were parsing scheduler levels was a bit too brittle—using a standard valueOf call meant that if the case didn't match perfectly, the whole thing would blow up. I implemented a more robust lookup helper that handles case-insensitivity and provides a much clearer error message when a level isn't supported. It’s one of those "quality of life" fixes that prevents a random crash down the road.

Refining the Chat UI

I’ve been iterating on the chat embed component, specifically focusing on the user experience around settings. I added a new settings panel so users can actually control things like voice feedback and auto-play toggles. I also tied the layout together with some conditional classes so the whole widget feels more cohesive when it's open versus closed. It’s starting to feel like a more polished, professional tool now.

LaTeX and GitHub Actions Struggles

I decided to update my resume automation, and as usual, LaTeX decided to be difficult. I spent more time than I’d like to admit debugging font issues within the GitHub Actions runner. I ended up writing some font redirections in the class file to ensure it wouldn't crash when it couldn't find specific system fonts. On the bright side, the pipeline now successfully builds and uploads both my Resume and CV as separate release assets.

Wrapping Up

Most of the heavy lifting for the scheduler and the chat UI is done. Tomorrow, I’m planning to double-check the deployment on the portal now that the sitemap URLs are updated. Hopefully, no more font issues for a while.