Weeknotes 20:08

May 11, 2020

Week of May 3 - 9

  • I worked on a variety of different things at the beginning of last week. I was able to jump in on some small things on a couple of different projects and help out as I waited on some content and updates to another project. I was able to close one issue that I have been trying to solve for a couple of months. It was dependent on someone else and I finally heard back from them and was able to close it out. I also revisited a project with the goal of helping to prevent fatal ship collisions with whales. The client had asked for some design changes to some of the pages. I went back and updated one of the content pages and refactored the CSS for that update.
  • The rest of the week was spent on adding new photography to the Greater Washington Partnership project, editing content on the site, and getting it ready to show the client on Friday. The client was very pleased with the work and will be doing QA on it this week. As we did the walkthrough, I noted several different things that I want to refactor which will make it easier for the client to manage and add new content in the future. Looking forward to shipping this site at the end of the month.
  • I finished The Madness of Crowds. I really enjoyed the book and the perspective the author brought to the issue of identity politics.
  • I read Rachel Andrew’s article Does masonry belong in the CSS Grid specification? I had mentioned last week that Firefox was playing around with a potential implementation of masonry as a part of CSS Grid. I appreciated Rachel’s thoughts and tend to lean toward her viewport that it could be problematic for the future of the CSS Grid specification if masonry is a part of it. I am not sure quite where masonry would be better placed. It is sort of a grid layout. I can understand why Mozilla would make it a part of the Grid layout. It will be interesting to see where this all ends up.
  • Excited to see that the Chrome team is working on an implementation for gap. I have been looking forward to using gap with Flexbox ever since Firefox implemented it last year.  It would do away with the need to put width on a flex item and use justify-content: space-between.
  • I started reading Atomic Habits over the weekend. I had bought the book at the beginning of the year but did not start it right away so I could finish up some other books. Then life happened and I was not in the right place to read and, more importantly, apply a personal development book. I suggested to my team that we read it for our next book club and there was enough interest that we will be reading it this month. I really liked his concept of identity-based habits: habits based on the type of person we wish to become rather than focusing on what you want to achieve (outcome-based habits). Looking forward to progressing through this book and beginning to make an application to my life. Shout out to Rachel Andrew who mentioned the book in a Smashing newsletter in October.

Watching

  • The final episode of Clone Wars – our family really enjoyed season 7.
  • Be Our Chef (Disney+) – my wife and I have enjoyed watching this cooking competition between families.
  • Prop Culture (Disney+) – been enjoying this series as a movie prop collector tracks down artifacts from his favorite Disney movies. It is fun to get some of the backstories behind the making of these movies.
  • Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian (Disney+) – A look behind the scenes of the series The Mandalorian. Combination of roundtable discussions and individual interviews with those who directed and were involved in the making of this series. Looking forward to the future episodes, they are releasing 1 or 2 a week.
  • I started watching The West Wing on Netflix over the weekend. Been thinking about rewatching this series for a while. It really is well written with very likable characters. I love the smart dialogue and banter.

Video Games

  • I am continuing to play Madden20 with the Chiefs. Not doing as well as the real team did this past season but enjoying playing with Mahomes, the receiving corps, and the Sack Nation.
  • I started a new season of FIFA20 with a new team, Borussia Dortmund. I had played a few games with RB Leipzig but was not doing well. I like the speed of Dortmund and dynamic players like Marco Reus and Jadon Sancho.

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