Letting the System Decide: Why keg.dev Follows Your Lighting Preference

October 27, 2026 - Reading time: 3 minutes

Hearth Intro

Your eyes already know what kind of light you're working in. Your operating system probably does too — and now, so does this site. With a single CSS media query (prefers-color-scheme), keg.dev reads the dark or light mode preference you've set at the system level and responds accordingly, no toggle required, no account needed, no friction whatsoever. It's a small technical decision with a surprisingly meaningful payoff: a site that feels native to the environment you're already in, whether that's a sun-drenched desk at noon or a dim setup at midnight. This isn't a trend feature or a cosmetic checkbox — it's a design philosophy rooted in respecting how people actually use screens.

Read more

I Built a Home Inventory App for My Vinyl Collection

October 26, 2026 - Reading time: 7 minutes

And then it turned into something I actually care about.


Hearth Intro

The premise is embarrassingly mundane. I have a vinyl collection that had gotten out of hand — spread across multiple shelves, crates, and boxes with no real system. I knew roughly where the records were. What I couldn't do was find a specific one without digging through everything. I'd buy an album, get home, and discover I already owned it. I'd lend one out and have no idea where it went. I wanted to know exactly what I had, where it lived, and whether I already owned something before clicking "buy" again.

I'd tried spreadsheets. I'd tried notes apps. What I actually wanted was something that understood the physical hierarchy of how stuff is stored: this record is in this crate, which is in this room. I wanted to photograph the album art, tag it by genre or era, and find it later with a search that didn't require me to remember exactly how I'd named it.

So I built Hearth — a Progressive Web App for home inventory management. What started as a weekend itch-scratch turned into a months-long project with more interesting engineering problems than I expected. Here's what I learned.

Read more

Check out my CV!

July 28, 2025 - Reading time: ~1 minute

It's official: I'm Adobe Certified!

October 29, 2021 - Reading time: ~1 minute

Ahhh, technical certifications; you hate getting them but you love having them. As of yesterday, I am officially an Adobe Certified Expert - Adobe Commerce Front-End Developer.

New Job and a New House

July 29, 2020 - Reading time: ~1 minute

I am pleased to say that two very awesome and exciting life-changing things have happened in the past month:

  1. I have accepted a position with Human Element as a Senior Magento Developer effective August 3rd. After 12.5 years at one company, I am forever grateful for my time at EBSCO and I look forward to stretching my legs at a new company.
  2. Oh... and if that wasn't awesome enough: I just bought a house! My hand is still stuck in the 'pen holding' pose from all the paperwork I had to sign for a mortgage!

So, moving and prepping for a new job has eaten up my free time as of late. I'll be back to my usual shenanigans soon enough!

Stay tuned.

Creating A Media Source Animation

June 23, 2020 - Reading time: ~1 minute

Time to spice things up a bit with the camera frame on my Twitch channel. In my drive to learn Adobe After Effects, I created a subtle 'line snake' effect that traces itself along the inner border of the video frame.

Read more

About

Hi there! My name is Kevin Earl Gardner. I am a Development Manager and Web Developer and (very) Amateur Content Creator based out of Birmingham, Alabama. I like to blog about coding and streaming.