Xander Gottlieb

Xander Gottlieb smiling at the camera
I'm Xander, a software engineer in Sussex, UK.

Blog


Dad Shopping

Since becoming a parent, my wife and I have been grappling with the wide disconnect between science and marketing when it comes to products aimed at children...

They’ve Outlawed Cameron Diaz

"Can you get us to the nearest rental car place?" We asked the taxi driver, eyes bleary with tears. "We still have 10 minutes before they close."

Deploy a Flutter Web App on GitLab Pages for Free

How to launch your Flutter web app online — in a matter of minutes. In this tutorial, we'll be using GitLab Pages to host your PWA for free.

Playing Cards at a Safe 2m-20,000km Distance

During lockdown, I missed playing any old card game with friends… So I built Stir Crazy: an app to play any card game online.

Don't Freelance in Luxembourg

After freelancing in the UK for several years, I recently emigrated to Luxembourg. Since then, I’ve been forced to learn far more about tax, health insurance, and the crushing weight of bureaucracy than I ever wanted to.

overflow:scroll and The Right Padding Problem — A CSS Only Solution

If you’re using absolute children, you’re probably already simulating padding on the top, left and bottom of the parent by adding margin to the children. But, annoyingly, browsers ignore the right margin…

Matter.js — The Missing Tutorial

Matter.js is an absolutely fantastic 2D physics engine built on HTML5 Canvas. Unfortunately, while it has comprehensive documentation and plenty of cool demos, there is little introduction for absolute beginners. This tutorial aims to fix that.