Jonathan Hunt

A fit finder and community for selvedge denim, and the first project I shipped. It lines up real size charts for more than 180 models from over thirty makers, draws each fit to scale, and takes five measurements from a pair you already own to rank the closest matches.

The denim on the rail across the room has the longer story.

This room. It is a real-time 3D scene drawn in your browser with Three.js and served by a small Laravel app, with no build step.

It is also a template. Press Fork this room and you get a room of your own at your own address, with its own layout and colours, ready for your words.

This room is my sandbox, and it is never finished. I am always tuning it: making it run better, adding features, and asking the people who visit what they want to see next. Something new shows up regularly.

A few experiments that stuck. Every sound is made in your browser as you move around, with no audio files. The light follows the time of day in the Eastern US, so the lamps come on when it gets dark here. There is a shelf where visitors can leave something small behind, and a pad of sticky notes on the desk for a private word with me.

If there is something you would like to see in here, leave me a note. I am listening.

I'm Jonathan. I live in Connecticut with my wife and our two boys, who are one and three.

By day I sell IT software and infrastructure, working side by side with technical teams. Before that I recruited software engineers. Either way, I have spent years around people who build software.

On nights and weekends I build some myself. I am learning Laravel and PHP by shipping real projects: Menjitsu was the first, and this room is the latest.

Away from the screen you will find me behind a camera, at the coffee bar, tending the smoker or the pizza oven, on a trail I have not hiked before, on an indoor soccer field, or out in the yard with my boys.

Write to me here and it comes straight to me. It is private: only I read it, and nobody else who visits can see it. It is the same as leaving a note on the pad on the desk.

• Every place has tabs you write, reorder, add to and remove
• Swap any item for a different one, with tabs to suit it
• A new room starts with tabs that fit each thing in it
• Light or dark, the same on every page
• In my room: a pad of sticky notes for a private message, and photos at the camera kit

I built forkbranch because I wanted a space online that can be uniquely yours: a room for the little bit of life that most people never get to see. Mine has my desk, my cameras, my records and my boys' drawings in it. Yours should have whatever matters to you.

I care a lot about community and collaboration, so I want to hear from you. I add to forkbranch regularly, and what you ask for shapes what I work on next.

The easiest way to reach me is right here in this room: leave a note on the pad on my desk, or message me from the computer. Only I read them.

Every room on forkbranch has its own layout and colours, and tabs for its owner to write. Yours is waiting.

The room has grown since the first post. Every place now has tabs you can write, reorder, add to and remove. Any item can be swapped for a different one. The gift shelf has ready-made gifts to choose from, and every page comes in light or dark. My own room picked up photos at the camera kit, and a pad of sticky notes on the desk where you can leave me a private message.

All of it serves one idea. I care a lot about community and collaboration, and I wanted to build a space that can be uniquely yours: somewhere to share the little bit of life that most people never get to see.

So fork a room, make it yours, and tell me what you would add. I am listening, and I am adding to it regularly.

I wanted a personal site you could walk around in, so I built a room. The desk, the cameras, the records, the coffee bar and the drawings my boys tape to the wall are all here, and each one opens onto that part of my life.

The room keeps the time where I live: come by at night and the lamps are on. Some corners are still waiting for their words. I will fill them in as I go.

A repository is where a project lives: everything in it, and the history of how it got that way. At some point I started seeing my own life like that. The desk, the cameras, the records, the coffee bar, the drawings my boys tape to the wall. That is my physical repository.

In code, to fork something is to take a copy of it and make it your own. This room is a digital fork of my physical repository. And when you fork my room, you get one of your own to fill with the things you care about.

A branch is where you try something new without breaking what already works. That is how I like to build, and honestly how I like to live: a new lens, a new recipe on the smoker, a first project in Laravel. Each one starts as a branch. The good ones get merged.

So that is the name. Take what is here, make it yours, and keep trying things.

I am new to Laravel and PHP, and I am all in: reading the books, building real projects, and learning as much as I can along the way. It has been a revolutionary experience for me.

What I love most is how easy the platform makes a whole project. The ecosystem is designed so intuitively that each piece leads naturally to the next, and projects come together far more efficiently.

Then there is the community, which is amazing. Being able to collaborate with other builders and get real feedback on what I make has been one of the best parts.

Menjitsu and this room are both Laravel apps, and both run on Laravel Cloud.

• PHP and LaravelWhere everything starts
• BladePages, with no front-end build step
• EloquentDatabase models
• PHPUnit and PintTests and formatting
• Three.jsThis room
• Laravel Cloud and NightwatchHosting and monitoring
• HTML and Tailwind
• JavaScript and Python
• VS CodeEditor

Most of these are still new to me, and I am diving in deep. I learn by building: every project is practice for the next one, and every mistake is one I mean to make only once.

• Laravel: Up & RunningMatt Stauffer
• Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of LessGreg McKeown

The first I am reading as I learn Laravel, alongside the projects I am building. The second is also on my list of books to hand to people, which tells you what I think of it.

• Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of LessGreg McKeown
• Scaling UpVerne Harnish

One is about doing less, and doing it better. The other is about what it takes to grow a company.

Lately the boys have been requesting a lot of holiday music. I suspect my wife has something to do with it.

• WilderadoWilderado
• StrangelandKeane

If you want one song to start with, play Wilderado's “Surefire (Piano)”.

I still like to experiment: try different sounds, follow an idea for a while, and see where it goes.

• Canon EOS 5D Mark IVBody
• 50mm f/1.2Everyday
• 70–200mm f/2.8Reach
• 100mm f/2.8 macroUp close

The 50mm f/1.2 lives on the camera. It is the most versatile lens I own, so it is the one I reach for first. The 70–200mm comes out when I need reach, and the macro when I want to get in close.

My rule is simple: shoot what I want to remember, and anything that strikes me as beautiful or one of a kind.

The gallery in this menu is what that rule has turned up so far.

I am just getting into FPV, and I started small on purpose. The Tinyhawk came as one complete kit, with the quad, the goggles and the radio together, and when I crash it, I am not out much money.

The plan is to move up to something bigger later.

• QuadTinyhawk II Freestyle
• GogglesCame with the kit
• RadioCame with the kit

Footage is coming soon.

• WalletCrash Leather
• KnifeBenchmade Crooked River
• FlashlightOlight
• Keys

The wallet comes from a non-profit and is made in Guatemala.

Everything in the tray has to earn its place. I look for durability, quality and real everyday usefulness. And it has to be cool, at least in my opinion.

Menjitsu helps you find selvedge denim that fits. Every maker names and measures its fits differently, so the site lines up real size charts from Japanese and global denim makers and shows you how each pair is actually cut.

If you are buying your first pair, start with your waist: every chart picks the size that fits you, whatever the tag says. If you already own a pair you love, Match takes five measurements and finds the closest pairs across every model on the site. And the guide walks through sizing on different models, so you can hone in on the exact fit you want.

There is a community too, where people log their jeans, share their fades and help each other buy right the first time.

Menjitsu was my first real venture into using what I had been learning. At some point you have to stop reading and build something. This was that something, and it is the first project I shipped.

Learning to work in Laravel has honestly been a revolutionary experience for me. So much that used to feel out of reach is just there: routing, controllers, Blade for the pages, Eloquent for the database, sign-in, file storage. I got to spend my time on the idea instead of the plumbing.

Two pieces of Menjitsu are entirely my own code. One draws every jean to scale as an SVG from its measurements. The other compares your pair against every size of every model and ranks the closest. Writing those taught me where my own logic belongs inside a framework.

For everything around that, I leaned on Laravel: migrations and Eloquent models for the data, Socialite for signing in, the filesystem for photo uploads, and tests in PHPUnit so I could change things without holding my breath. It runs on Laravel Cloud, with Nightwatch showing me what is happening once it is live.

It is a side project, but it took me from following along to building something from the ground up.

Built with

• LaravelThe framework
• BladePages, with no front-end build step
• EloquentDatabase models
• SocialiteSign-in
• PHPUnit and PintTests and formatting
• Laravel Cloud and NightwatchHosting and monitoring

• Axum Coffee · Brazil roastWinter Garden, FL

My favorite coffee of all time. It is a medium roast and amazingly smooth, and if you care about coffee at all, you have to try it.

• MachineBreville Barista Pro
• Beans in18 g
• Shot out60 g
• RatioAbout 1 to 3.3

From there it becomes an americano, or an iced latte with 2% milk.

I also make my own syrups, with a few fun ones that change with the season. Those are mostly for my wife, though I will sweeten my own cup when I am feeling a little wild.

I use Emerail ceremonial organic matcha. Two scoops and a splash of hot water, whisked until smooth and foamy, then topped up with warm milk or just warm water.

• Fresh garlic focaccia
• Penne alla vodka
• Brisket
• Beef ribs
• Chicken with a creamy mustard sauce, roasted herb potatoes, and asparagus or green beans

Those are the ones I am proudest of. The rest of the time I am experimenting, always trying something new.

• Basil
• Rosemary
• Sage

I love cooking with fresh herbs and fresh ingredients, and there is something rewarding about using your own. The same goes for the pantry: I make my own vanilla extract and vanilla bean paste.

The dough

• Flour485 g
• Water330 g
• Yeast1.2 g
• Salt12 g

The flour is usually a mix: 75% bread flour, 25% all-purpose. That works out to about 68% hydration, and enough dough for two pizzas of roughly 415 g each.

One is usually a plain cheese for the kids. The other, for my wife and me, is pineapple, bacon and jalapeño with homemade ranch. Yes, pineapple on pizza. I know.

If it fits on the Traeger, I will smoke it: brisket, dino beef ribs, pulled pork, pastrami, picanha, steaks, burgers, BBQ chicken, and wet-brined chicken for pulling.

I even cure and smoke my own bacon.

Yard work, a garden, and a Cub Cadet ride-on mower.

Every spring the garden goes in: tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, lettuce, zucchini, snap peas, kale and an assortment of herbs.

I love the local trails and exploring Connecticut. But put me somewhere new, anywhere at all, and I will go looking for a trail I have not walked.

My wife and I have two boys, and everything taped to this wall is their work.

My family is everything to me. My wife and sons challenge me, inspire me and keep me humble. They are always handing me a new perspective, a different way to think about the things I care about most.

My boys' curiosity keeps sparking my own, and every day they motivate me to be better and to keep growing.

Outside, it is playing in the yard, throwing a ball, swinging on the swings and riding bikes around the neighborhood.

Inside, it is reading books, doing puzzles, building Duplo and Lego sets, and jiu-jitsu on the kitchen floor.

I grew up playing soccer, and the game taught me a ton about being part of a team: how to work together, how to push through challenges and pain, and how hard work and conditioning carry you past the hard stretches.

• New EnglandMost winters
• Out westWhen I get the chance

Snowboarding at Heavenly was an unbeatable experience.