Ryan Geyer
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ryan.geyer.dev
Ryan Geyer
@ryan.geyer.dev
74 followers 200 following 180 posts
🧑‍💻 Lead frontend dev making cool stuff at https://waymark.com
🐝 Native plant/bee lover
☕ Coffee nerd
🏀 #Pistons fan
🐶 Dog father
📍 Metro Detroit
🌐 https://geyer.dev
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ryan.geyer.dev
Yes. Hell yes
A hardcover copy of the book "Native Plants of the Midwest: A Comprehensive Guide to the Best 500 Species for the Garden" by Alan Branhagen
December 6, 2025 at 5:32 PM
ryan.geyer.dev
Monarch butterfly caterpillars are finally here!!! The absolute best.
A monarch butterfly caterpillar on the underside of a swamp milkweed leaf. Monarch caterpillars have black, white, and yellow stripes and have pairs of black tentacles on their head and rear. I say tentacles instead of antennae because apparently there is a meaningful difference; an antenna is considered to be stiff and rigid while a tentacle is more flexible and soft. A larger monarch butterfly caterpillar on a swamp milkweed plant, wiggling around looking for the next leaf to eat.
August 25, 2025 at 1:41 PM
ryan.geyer.dev
I have long thought that you simply couldn't buy MSG at most American grocery stores. It turns out, maybe you can! They're just so scared of the weird racist backlash against MSG that they just call it "flavor enhancer" and the only evidence that it is in fact MSG is the ingredient list on the back.
A plastic spice jar of Ac'cent "Flavor enhancer". The packaging calls out "60% less sodium than salt" and "Wakes up food flavor!"
August 24, 2025 at 5:13 PM
ryan.geyer.dev
Was just glancing at my resume and laughed because this bullet point is referring to a project from 2019, and I am now in the process of wrapping up another massive ground-up re-design of our video editor in 2025.
A screenshot of my resume: "Worked on several high value projects as the sold developer, including: Executed on a full rebuild of the Waymark video editor UI from the ground up"
August 18, 2025 at 7:52 PM
ryan.geyer.dev
A Texas Leafcutter Bee on a Swamp Milkweed flower. These bees are very cool because they have unique black and white colors instead of the typical black and yellow. As you might be able to guess from the name, leafcutter bees cut little bits off of plant leaves to build their nests with.
July 26, 2025 at 12:30 AM
ryan.geyer.dev
This is definitely one of the best photos I've ever taken. The bumblebees have been loving our coneflowers!
A bumblebee (I believe a female Brown-Belted Bumblebee to be specific?) on a purple coneflower. The bee has a fuzzy yellow mane around its shoulders and back, and a brown-ish patch on its back which is why I think it's a Brown-Belted Bumblebee. The bee has a big grayish-yellow pollen sac on its hind leg. Usually they look more bright yellow/orange, but I don't think it could be anything else. Some bee species' females have "pollen baskets" on their hind legs which pollen accumulates in as they go from flower to flower. The photo is an extreme close-up which reveals a lot of detail; you can see little yellow specs of pollen on the flower and on the bee's face. Very proud of this one.
July 5, 2025 at 3:38 PM
ryan.geyer.dev
A common eastern firefly on a common milkweed leaf. It has a red head and an elongated body. Its wings are black with yellow all around the edges. Fireflies (or as I usually call them when I'm not overthinking it, "lightning bugs") are awesome, they've been really lighting up our yard this summer. Their population is in decline but you can help! They rely on having leaf litter to hibernate under through the winter and spring, so if you want to help them out, leave some leaves for them!
July 1, 2025 at 11:35 PM
ryan.geyer.dev
A Large Milkweed Bug on a swamp milkweed leaf. It has a black head with a small red spot between its eyes. It has 6 legs and two long black antennae. Its back is red with 4 black spots, one in each cardinal direction, leaving the appearance of a red X in the negative space between them. Not to be confused with milkweed beetles, which also eat milkweed and are red with black spots but are definitely different.
June 30, 2025 at 4:04 PM
ryan.geyer.dev
I'm learning a lot about ladybugs. These are ladybug larvae, much less cute than their adult form. They go through a metamorphosis process similar to butterflies and moths! They are also incredibly ferocious predators. The second picture shows one digging into an oleander aphid for breakfast.
A close-up shot of a ladybug larva on the leaf of a common milkweed. Ladybug larvae are a little scary looking. It has a very spiny elongated black body with red markings on either side of its back. They don't have the iconic hard shell or wings of a ladybug at all yet; that will come after it goes through a pupal stage and re-emerges in the much cuter adult form we all know and love. A ladybug larva on a swamp milkweed holding an oleander aphid in its front legs as it eats it alive. The ladybug appears to be young as it's still very small, so it's going to take a while to eat since the aphid is over twice the size of its head!
June 14, 2025 at 2:35 PM
ryan.geyer.dev
An Eight-Spotted Forester moth. This is a very cool looking moth. It has a black body with orange tufts on its legs and yellow spots on what I guess I would call its shoulders? Its wings are all black with 2 white spots on each. It's not visible here but they have an additional set of inner wings which also have 2 spots each, bringing us to the eight spots in the name!
June 10, 2025 at 6:34 PM
ryan.geyer.dev
Bug/plant thread 2025
A red-banded leafhopper on the leaf of a purple coneflower. This is a small but very colorful insect, with a yellow body and incredibly vibrant blue and red stripes on its wings.
June 10, 2025 at 6:34 PM
ryan.geyer.dev
Now THAT'S more like it
A macro shot of a Sunflower Maggot Fly sitting on the leaf of a Sunchoke. I know, "Maggot Fly" does not sound appealing, but it's a very striking looking insect. It has a bright yellow body with ruby red eyes, and its wings are transparent with cool wavy brown bands running through them. They use plants in the sunflower family as hosts for their larvae who feed on the flower's stems, but it's pretty harmless to the plant.
June 9, 2025 at 2:16 PM
ryan.geyer.dev
For any curious, my use case was that I had a custom select input with an icon + text label, but if the select input gets shrunk down enough, I wanted to cleanly hide the text and only show the icon.
A custom select input where the label for the current value shows a "T" icon, indicating a text layer, next to a truncated snippet of the layer's text content which says "This is m..." The same custom select input but shrunk down to the smallest possible width. The label for the currently selected value just shows a "T" icon, indicating a text layer.
May 28, 2025 at 7:47 PM
ryan.geyer.dev
We put out a bee house this year and we already have our first resident!
A close up shot of a bee house filled with cut reeds which native bees can crawl inside to make nests in. A mason bee is poking its head out of one of the reeds.
May 8, 2025 at 9:32 PM
ryan.geyer.dev
I still cannot believe how easy this was to get going. Entirely from one bottle of store-bought kombucha. I got impatient with my first batch and bottled too early but hopefully I can make some good refinements the second time around
A large 1 gallon jar filled with fermenting kombucha. A pellicle is beginning to form on the top (a floating layer of cellulose which is a by-product of the bacteria and yeast doing their thing)
April 3, 2025 at 2:54 PM
ryan.geyer.dev
Hawk moths are amazing. It's a huge moth that looks and hovers like a hummingbird! I have some plants in my garden that are supposed to host them, really hoping I get to see one someday.
A Titan Sphinx Moth approaching some pink flowers.
March 21, 2025 at 2:32 PM
ryan.geyer.dev
We don't even play games in our browser anymore. Addicting Games, MiniClip, Armor Games...

I know these names better than I know my own grandmother's.

Crazy Monkey Games, NewGrounds, Cool Math Games, homegrown stick figure stuff...
A shot from I Think You Should Leave season 1 episode 5 where Tim Robinson is in a clothing store wearing a hot dog suit speaking to a crowd of people after having crashed his car into the store. The original transcript being referenced is "I mean, we don't even... look at pοrn on our computer anymore. We look at it on our phone? PоrnHսb, Xtube... I know these names better than I know my own grandmother's. YouPorn, XXN, RedTube... panty jobs, homegrown Simpsons stuff."
March 8, 2025 at 3:09 PM
ryan.geyer.dev
Our project of the day was replacing the light fixture in our bathroom. The old fixture wasn't properly mounted according to code so this also turned into learning how to install an electrical box. Very painful project, but lots of lessons learned and electrical stuff feels a little less scary now
A bathroom vanity with a mirror above it and a new light fixture above that. The light fixture is fairly simple: a circular base with an arm that extends to either side. The arm has 3 lights hanging down from it with narrow frosted glass shades over them.
February 2, 2025 at 10:14 PM