Website / Resume / Writing Portfolio

Hey there! 😄 My name is Brennan, I'm a 30-year-old Queer Métis JAMstack developer at Berry House and full-time writer from Winnipeg, Manitoba and currently reside in Calgary, Alberta. In April 2025, I graduated from Mount Royal University with a Bachelor of Arts majoring in English Honours, and have also completed both the Full-Stack Developer Program at InceptionU in 2020 and the Growth Marketing Bootcamp at OnRamp in 2022. Now, I'm looking to help those that need web development work done, or searching for ideas and management for their next content project.

I would also love to volunteer my time to contributing to open-source projects! I love creating and tinkering with small, static websites and projects. I'm a big proponent of putting an emphasis on accessibility and the A11y project in web development.

I'm always looking to work with people that are hopeless idealists like me, as well as who are interested in creating and working on cool, interesting, and meaningful projects! Shoot me an e-mail if that sounds like your cup of tea.

• Downgrading to macOS Catalina: A Sermon on Obsolescence
• Building My Blog From Scratch: IndieWeb, New Features, and Three Months of Iterations
• Introducing Ⓜ️ Meddler! A Medium Export Converter
• Announcing Three New Free JAMstack Blogging Themes: IndiePaper, Newsprint, and brennan.jp.net
• What I Have Learned Being on the IndieWeb for a Month

A selection of other technical write-ups from brennan.day:

• How Webmentions Work on brennan.day
• A Guide to Becoming a Rogue Scholar
• Publishing My Eleventy Blog to the ATmosphere with Standard.site
• Homelab For the Beginner: Self-host Your Own Server on $50 Hardware
• Introducing writer-cli: a Bash Tool Built from Scratch to Blog in the Terminal
• Creating a Digital Garden in 11ty: Tracking My Daily Word Count with URLminder

From: 18 August 2017 - To: 02 September 2026
Total Time: 1,404 hrs 3 mins
Markdown 729 hrs 31 mins █████████████░░░░░░░░░░░░ 51.96 %
HTML 145 hrs 40 mins ██▓░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ 10.38 %
JavaScript 132 hrs 23 mins ██▒░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ 09.43 %
CSS 78 hrs 34 mins █▒░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ 05.60 %
Python 63 hrs 19 mins █░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ 04.51 %
YAML 44 hrs 57 mins ▓░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ 03.20 %

GitHub and Microsoft have demonstrated a pattern of decisions that conflict with the values of the independent, ethical web. Here are the key concerns:

In August 2025, GitHub's CEO resigned and the platform was fully absorbed into Microsoft's CoreAI division, ending operational independence. This coincided with mounting complaints about declining service quality.

The Zig Software Foundation publicly quit GitHub, citing Microsoft's AI obsession as having "ruined the service." Critical infrastructure bugs like the safe_sleep.sh issue that caused runners to hang indefinitely went unaddressed for over a year while Microsoft prioritized AI features.

GitHub Copilot was trained on billions of lines of code from public repositories without respecting open-source license requirements. A class-action lawsuit filed in November 2022 alleges that Copilot violates the terms of 11 popular open-source licenses (including MIT, GPL, and Apache) by:

• Removing copyright management information and attribution
• Suggesting code without including required license terms
• Monetizing developers' work without permission

Most copyright claims were dismissed, but breach of contract and open-source license violation claims continue.

Microsoft Copilot leaked thousands of private GitHub repositories from major companies including IBM, Google, and Microsoft itself. Over 16,000 organizations were affected, with sensitive data including access keys and security tokens exposed through caching mechanisms.

GitHub's privacy policy is deliberately vague regarding training data. While Business and Enterprise customers reportedly have protections, free and Pro tier users face uncertainty about whether their code is used for training. Users report that privacy settings have been mysteriously re-enabled without consent.

User requests to disable or block Copilot features have been the #1 and #2 most popular topics on GitHub's community page for over 12 months—and remain completely unanswered. Users report that disable buttons are ignored by the interface.

In December 2025, GitHub announced plans to charge $0.002/minute for self-hosted Actions runners, charging developers to run GitHub's software on their own hardware. The backlash was so intense that GitHub postponed the change within 24 hours.

You don't have to stay on a platform that doesn't align with your values. Here are ethical alternatives:

A non-profit, community-driven platform run by Codeberg e.V., a democratic German organization. It's powered by Forgejo and funded entirely by donations. No investors, no ads, no corporate roadmap.

Features:

• Free Git hosting for open source
• CI/CD via Woodpecker and Forgejo Actions
• Static site hosting with Codeberg Pages
• Migration tools built-in

Forgejo: The software powering Codeberg. Lightweight, runs on modest hardware (like Raspberry Pi), with a familiar GitHub-like interface.

Gitea: The original project Forgejo forked from. Still actively maintained, written in Go, easy to install.

GitLab: Full DevOps platform with comprehensive CI/CD. Can be self-hosted or used as a service.

1. Create accounts on your chosen platform(s)
2. Use built-in migration tools: Most alternatives can import directly from GitHub, including issues, PRs, and wikis
3. Update your README: Add a notice about the migration with links to new locations
4. Archive GitHub repos: Mark them as read-only with clear redirection
5. Update local remotes: git remote set-url origin <new-url>

Detailed migration guide for Codeberg

I maintain a mirror here for three reasons. Discoverability, as many developers still only search on GitHub, education as this README can reach people who need to know about these issues, and community, by helping others migrate and that's better than just disappearing.

→ My GitLab → My Forgejo → My Codeberg