What I'm Working On Now
Last updated 23 June 2026.
Projects
The biggest — and most obvious — project is moving my site over from mattrife.com to the new Atomic Box Studio brand. It's pretty much the same thing, but I got really, really tired of all the spam and idiocy in my inbox. I've taken down the wall of shame, as it doesn't really apply any more, but the craziness was just getting to be too much. Check out the fan mail blog post if you want a mild sample.
But I also feel as though a name change might encourage me to change things up a bit in terms of layout and content And finally, I need to better showcase my design work, so I've gone back to using the Semplice theme. However, this brings me to my next project!
I've been using Wordpress for a long time, but would like something lighter, faster, and more customizable. So I've decided to build my own. I've been dabbling in (very) basic HTML/CSS front-end code for years, but have wanted to learn modern front-end development. What better way to do it than by building out a new website? I plan for it it to be an ongoing learning project, and probably not something that I'll just build once and call it good. I'm currently working on a proof-of-concept version and hope to have an MVP out sometime in late summer. My main issue is how to handle the blog backend; I could simply move to Ghost and display the content via an API call, but that is pricey and I very much prefer to host things myself if possible.
If you don't know, the world of NPM has totally gone to shit recently, so I've been a little bogged down solving some infrastructure issues: namely, trying to not get hosed by a supply chain attack. I've gotten the base model Socket scanner working and have made some tweaks to my bun config but still trying to muddle my way though that clusterfuck.
I've been using LLMs to help me out in certain areas, though not writing code because asking a clanker to write my code would not help me learn. I have, however, found it helpful with unit tests and running accessibility audits on my Svelte modules. It's picked up a few things I either missed or didn't know, which allowed me to brush up on the topic and update my code. I've been using both Devstral and Codestral with good success, and have also been trying out Kimi K2.6. But that said, I do not use AI in any of my writing or design work, including AI editing and proofreading tools.
I decided that if I was learning a language why not pick an easy one like Mandarin? So yeah, I've just started on that and it's going OK. I'm still dabbling in Tagalog, since that can also be useful.
Constantly refining my RSS feeds.
What I'm Reading/Playing
I'm about 16 40 80 hours into my second Cyberpunk 2077 playthrough. Last time I played Streetkid and focused on the tech tree; this time I'm a corpo working on the Cool/Intelligence trees. I still need to go play Alan Wake 2 before the Control Resonant drops later this year.
I'm not really reading anything right now, aside from The Complete Developer, which I recently purchased to help with my coding endeavors.
Some Links
Some More Links
Atomic Box
Studio
Design, tech, and general nonsense
©2026 by Matthew Rife. Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
