Weeknotes 24:05

February 6, 2024

Week of January 28–February 3

  • I put some more polish on the Toyota Policy Drivers Game Hub project. We soft-launched at mid-week and then it officially launched at the end of the week when an email went out to Toyota employees. Over 400 employees indicated they had listened to a podcast to earn points for the Adventure Quest game and over 300 of those opened a door to earn a relic. I hope to write a post about the project later this week or early next week.
  • I had lunch with a new friend on Tuesday. We have been getting to know each other over the last year. He is the assistant pastor at our church. I joined a small group that he facilitates in September. I have enjoyed that community. And I have enjoyed getting to know Thad. Lunch was full of great back-and-forth conversation.
  • My wife tested positive for COVID-19 on Thursday night. This is the third straight year she has gotten sick with it in January. I woke up with a bad headache on Friday morning and feared that I also had it. But I tested negative for it and the headache went away. But we were very cautious, meaning everyone confined themselves in their rooms starting Friday.
  • I took the day off on Friday and laid low because I thought I might be getting sick. Once again, I am very grateful for our unlimited PTO policy which gives me the freedom to do that. I had to postpone a Campfire presentation I was going to do with my team. I was planning to share several sources of inspiration for animation.
  • Some things came together as God provided for me to be able to afford to travel to Europe in April. I will fly over and meet my son in Barcelona at the end of his study abroad program. We will fly to Budapest and spend four days there. And then we fly back to Barcelona for three days before flying home together. I am excited to be able to spend time with my son. I will get to show him a place that has been important in my life (Hungary) and he will get to show me around Barcelona.

What I wrote

I had quite a busy week with writing. As I mentioned in my reflection about my December writing challenge, writing has begotten more writing. I have found it easier to sit down and get the ideas out of my head. I have been more motivated to do the hard work of bringing the concepts to life. I feel more freedom to write and not worry as much about what others might think about what I write.

The confidence I have gained empowered me to try to tackle a case study that I have wanted to write for about 15 months. I spent about 3 days last week writing a case study for the Kauffman Foundation Real World Learning site I built between May and October 2022.

I benefitted from notes that I put together in Evernote shortly after we completed the project. I was also helped by the different things I wrote in my weeknotes while working on the project. It was very satisfying to press the publish button late in the week.

I also published two different unfinished posts from 2017 and 2019. The first post was about coming up with a better solution for a project I built in Craft CMS. I summarized the new solution section of the post that had not been written in 2017. It was not quite as robust as I had originally envisioned it. I no longer have access to a working copy of the project and was unable to create the screenshots that I envisioned when I was documenting it in 2017. It may not have much value for others but I did it mostly for me, which as I have mentioned before is my primary audience.

  • Blogroll – I accepted Matthias Ott’s challenge to help make good content more visible and discoverable. I am starting by sharing several links to people I follow in this post.
  • Blogroll (page) – I created a dedicated page on my site and added some more links to people I read on a regular basis.
  • What if…? My online handle – A musing that came out of a drive to the bank. As a follow-up to my post last week about the origin of my online handle, I wondered “What if?..” What if the Internet had come into existence 10 or 15 years earlier? What would I have chosen for an online handle if that were the case?
  • Choosing HTML elements is hard – I had the idea for this post about three weeks ago. In that time, I read two other articles that addressed concerns I had. I took some time on Friday to compose my thoughts on semantic HTML and why choosing which elements to use is hard. I also included a lot of links to articles dealing with HTML semantics.
  • Locations Organized by State in Craft CMS – The unfinished post from 2017 that added to a conclusion.
  • Pain Point: WordPress Image Sizing and Responsive Images – My other unfinished post which combined several weeknote writings into one place.

Articles I read

Books I am reading

What I watched

What I played

  • MLB The Show 23 (Rays) – I played two games. I won the first one and got creamed in the other. I finished that homestand 2-4 which allowed Toronto to catch up with me on top of the AL East.
  • FIFA 23 (Manchester City)

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