Weeknotes 25:08

February 24, 2025

Week of February 16–22

• I began onboarding with a Florida-based agency and will start a monthly maintenance contract with them in March. As part of the process, I completed paperwork, joined their Slack workspace, and prepared an estimate for a project outside the maintenance contract.
• On Tuesday, a client I worked with four years ago at LGND reached out to me. They were referred by someone I deeply respect in the industry, who was also involved in the project back then. We’ve scheduled a meeting for next week to discuss potential ongoing contract work.
• I reviewed my files from my WordPress-to-Craft project to refresh my memory on the progress I’ve made so far. I’m hoping to write an article about my experience in the near future.
• I continued working through React Hooks in the The Joy of React course. I did not make as much progress this week as I would have liked. But I count it a win that I am staying engaged with it.

Memory Keeper

About a month ago, I mentioned one of the ideas brewing in my head was building a “memory keeper.” I enjoying visiting my Facebook memories each day but I have wanted for some time to be able to collect my memories from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other memories in one place. Years ago, I used a service called Memolane.

This week I finally took action and started building a prototype. I am using WordPress. And I am manually adding entries into my new system. I spun up a new site in my Dreamhost account on Wednesday. On Thursday, I started researching how to display posts from a month and day. I had enough ideas to start building a template and that is how I spent most of Thursday afternoon.

One feature that I have wished the Facebook memory page had is the ability to see memories from other days other than the current day. There are times I missed viewing Facebook memories or I think about a memory I saw earlier in the week that I would like to revist.

I spent a good amount of time on Thursday building the feature and refining it. The component consists of a month select, a day select, and a submit button. I am using a GET request to place the variables in the URL string and using PHP to capture those variables to update my WordPress query to display posts. I am using those variables to update the interface to show the current day request in the heading and also updating the select boxes with the current query.

I grabbed the Facebook memory page header image as a placeholder for now. I have an idea of making my own image for the page. I didn’t make many design decisions. I pretty much followed the Facebook memory page styling and font sizes. I plan to style the select another date input. I am thinking about a calendar button to show and hide the input.

I had a CSS surprise as I was coding this. I am use to writing SCSS and so I nested some declarations as I was writing my CSS for the prototype. I wanted to work without a preprocessor for now. And low and behold, my nested CSS worked in the browser. I knew that CSS now supporting nesting but to be honest I had not paid attention enough to the fact that it is the same syntax as SCSS. I don’t think it was originally but it looks like it evolved to be the same. Wonderful surprise.

Articles I read

• Quality Time (Tim Challies)
• Job applicants are just as lazy as email marketers (Kevin Powell, Newsletter)
• Moving on from 18F. (Ethan Marcotte) – I feel for Ethan and so many others who have lost their jobs or had to leave them (as in Ethan’s case) so abruptly over the past few weeks.
• Some Animal Encounters Offer a Foretaste of Life on the New Earth (Randy Alcorn)
• I Love When You Interrupt Me (Paul David Tripp)
• The Women Who Disappeared (Briana Lambert)
• With Our Eyes on God (Tim Challies)
• Defining Healthy Masculinity: A Response to Louise Perry (Luke Simon, Mere Orthodoxy)
• The Challenge of Masculinity (Alan Noble)
• 4 Ways to Make a WordPress Site Private Access Only (Jeff Starr) – I decided to go with the plugin option.

Books I am reading

• Everyday Gospel (Paul David Tripp) – Reading through the Bible this year with this devotional.
• Sunday Matters (Paul David Tripp) – I read one devotional a week.
• The Call (Os Guiness)
• Forgive (Tim Keller)
• Emotionally Healthy Spirituality (Paul Scazzero) – I finished this one mid-week.

What I watched this week

• Man on the Inside (Netflix) – We watched through this a second time and enjoyed as much as the first viewing.
• NCIS (Netflix)
• M*A*S*H (MeTv)
• American Pickers (Samsung TV Plus)
• All Creatures Great & Small (PBS)
• The Good Place (Netflix) – I decided to try this since I watched Man on the Inside. I also wanted a thirty minute show.
• Zero Day (Netflix)
• KU-Oklahoma State basketball (CBS) – It was great to see the Jayhawks bounce back after two tough losses earlier in the week.

The narrator of this video is way too mellow.

Walking – 12.51 miles

• Monday – 3.26 miles in 59 minutes
• Friday – 4.70 in 1 hour 23 minutes
• Saturday – 4.55 miles in 1 hour 19 minutes

What I played

• MLB The Show 23 (Rays) – I swept the Braves in four games as I played Game 3 and 4 this week. All but one of the games were decided by one run. I finished the season 591 days after I started it, the longest duration of a season that I have played in the game. I enjoyed playing with the Rays again and am a bit sad that the season is complete.
• NBA 2K25 (Nuggets) – I went 6-0 playing with the Nuggets this week including the title game for the NBA Cup.