Weeknotes 26:42

Posted 3 hours ago

Week of October 11–17

Around the workshop

  • The Wonder of the Word templates – I worked on the episode template for the three different podcasts that will be part of this initiative. I had worked on the template early on and went back last week to make updates based on the direction that the other templates had taken me. Most of the work was modifying HTML, refactoring CSS, and adding in dynamic elements into the templates. I also added new images.
  • Wonder of the Word Hub – I am starting to get feedback from our international teams. We had decided to run the English content through AI for translation. Then the language teams could review the pages and send us updated translations. In the end, we don’t expect to keep any of the AI translations but the advantage is that we could show content on the page and have content in our translation file that we could easily find and update.
  • Color scheme updates – I mentioned last week that I asked one of backend developers to update color values stored in the CMS to align with our new color scheme. He was able to do that last week and I only had to update a couple of pages that the find and replace did not match.
  • Be Still – I build out a page on the site where listeners can purchase or stream music from Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth’s piano meditations. This page was requested for an upcoming podcast episode.
  • I created some new social share images for our updated branding.
  • I created some new pages for True Woman ’27. We are going to adding those pages to the event page. I also had a meeting to set deadlines and set up tasks for the remaining pages that we will add to the site at the beginning of the year.
  • I refactored the layout in the first section of the WoW Hub to provide a better solution to linking to resources to study through the Bible.
  • I did several one-off edit tasks for different pages of the site to update content or provide better solutions.

What I wrote

  • My Interop feature ranking – I decided to follow the trend of other developers and give my input into Interop 2027 rankings and then share my results. The Firefox team just added some great share features to help you write your own post.
  • Origin story – The story of how I got interested in computers and later learned to build webpages as a hobby which eventually led to a career.

Caught my eye

This solar system pen caught my eye on Codepen this week.

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A post shared by Tom Boyer (@tomboyer__)

I love this video. This guy built a 3-D printed baseball stadium to display game time data and interact with the game. What a cool way to display data from MLB’s API. If he sold these, I would seriously consider it. These bases light up when runners are on. He had LED lights that put on a show with homers and other plays.

Articles I read

What I watched

Men in tech #YesAllMen – I am appalled at how women are being treated in this industry. I am committed to speaking up and doing my part to make it better.

  • Recreating GTA6’s awesome scroll effect (Kevin Powell, YouTube) – I am inspired by videos like this. I love to see how a creative solution is broken down and to see how easy it is to create really cool stuff with just a little bit of CSS. Kevin had mentioned on Bluesky how he got a lot of negative comments like, “why are you teaching CSS? Isn’t that outdated” and others mentioning using AI to create this. I for one am glad Kevin is making these videos.

Jeff Bridgforth

@jeffbridgforth.com

I love these videos. I am your audience, not these commenters. I echo all the other positive, encouraging comments to keep going. We need you, Kevin, to keep pushing the craft forward and inspiring those of us who do care about the craft of code.

Books I am reading

  • The Discipline of Grace (Jerry Bridges) – I read chapter a very challenging chapter on developing convictions and the discipline of Bible study, meditation and scripture memory. I definitely want to up my game in the area of Biblical intake.
  • Enjoying Jesus (Tim Chester)
  • Desiring God (John Piper) – I am checking out PrayerMate as an application from reading chapter 6 about prayer. The challenge was to put together a prayer plan.
  • The Heart Taken Up (Stephen Yuille)
  • The Bridge at Andau (James A. Michener) – Next week marks the 70th anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. I first read this book before my first trip to Hungary in 1990. I have enjoyed revisiting this and it has been a great way for me to remember this event. I am reading this older version of the book.
  • The American Puritans (Dustin W. Benge and Nate Pickowicz) – I had bought this for Kindle 5 years ago and not touched it. I am reading The Heart Taken Up, which is a devotional of Puritan writings so I thought it would be fun to read these biographies.

Walking

It was a much crisper day on Saturday after cold front came through on Friday. I am ready for Fall and Fall weather.
  • Sunday – 3.72 miles in 1 hour and 8 minutes
  • Monday – 2.83 miles in 53 minutes
  • Tuesday – 1.3 miles in 24 minutes
  • Saturday – 3.72 miles in 1 hour and 6 minutes

What I played

MLB The Show 23 (Orioles) – I played the ALCS against the Twins this week. I won Game 2 to tie the series and then was bummed to lose Game 3. But I won Games 4 and 5 and 6 to win the series. Cedric Mullins homered in each of those last three wins. I started the World Series against the Dodgers on Saturday and lost Game 1 at home.

Cedric Mullins led off Game 5 with a homer.

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