After running on a DigitalOcean droplet for some time, I made the decision to migrate this portfolio site to Google Cloud Run. This wasn’t just a technical exercise—it was driven by practical considerations around cost, scalability, and operational simplicity.
Gary Gigabytes Website
A technical portfolio and a central hub for documenting my engineering journey.
Mission Objective
Develop a high-performance, responsive workstation for documenting CS and Engineering projects with a focus on modularity and technical aesthetics.
Project Overview
This portfolio site serves as a central hub for documenting my engineering journey — from CS coursework at CSUMB to personal robotics and trading projects. Built with Jekyll and deployed on Google Cloud Run.
Technical Architecture
- Static Site Generator: Jekyll with custom layouts for projects, posts, and course pages
- Styling: Custom CSS with a “blueprint grid” aesthetic and Engineering Amber accent palette
- Deployment: Dockerized Jekyll build, served via Google Cloud Run with a Global Load Balancer
- CI/CD: GitHub Actions triggers Cloud Build on push
- DNS/CDN: Cloudflare for caching and SSL
Key Milestones
- DigitalOcean → GCP Migration: Moved from a $6/month always-on droplet to serverless Cloud Run, paying only for actual requests
- Portfolio Overhaul: Complete visual redesign with blueprint grid backgrounds, consistent spacing, and modular layout system
- Project Showcase System: Custom collections for projects and courses with auto-linked post feeds
Project Log
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2026-02-10
Portfolio Overhaul: Engineering Aesthetic & Structural Integrity
It was time for a structural evaluation. While this site has always served its purpose as a digital lab notebook, the underlying “codebase” (the CSS and HTML) had become a bit of a patchwork. Over the last few days, I’ve performed a complete overhaul of the site’s architecture and visual language.
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2025-04-09
Project Template
I’ve been working on improving the structure and design of my website to make it more user-friendly and visually appealing.
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2025-04-01
Initial Setup
This is the initial setup for the Test Project. It includes basic configurations and layout testing.
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2025-03-26
Tweaking Styles
Hope y’all enjoy the website refresh! I’ve been messing with CSS styles and figuring out ways of styling this blog. I’m glad I was able to finish my little roadmap below. I think the next steps to improve the site will be: