Weeknotes 22:18

July 16, 2022

Week of July 10-16

Resources page and FacetWP

At the start of the week, I built the resources listing page for the Real World Learning project. I had already built the layout for the resource listing because it shares that layout with the blog listing page. The design called for filtering through search and custom taxonomies I had already set up. I needed to add some introductory content and filters to complete the page.

I had become familiar with the WordPress plugin, FacetWP, while working on a project last year. The plugin makes it really easy to add filtering and sorting to a listing page. I have done some hand-rolled filters in the past but we wanted a much more robust solution.

I was able to create several “facets” for the page in no time. I just had to style the filter inputs, the pager, and the “show how many posts per page” input. It is nice to have a solution in place that I feel confident about and is robust enough to add more functionality in the future.

Roadtrip

I took the day off on Wednesday to go up to Nashville with my oldest. She will be moving to Nashville this next week. She needed to take care of a couple of things in Nashville to prepare for her move. I decided to go with her since she is recovering from pneumonia and is not quite at 100% yet.

I really enjoyed spending the day with her. We laughed at things we saw on the trip (Tater Peeler Road) and just had fun being together. I am so glad we got to build those memories and enjoy each other’s company as she prepares to move away from home.

My daughter Katy posing in front of Mt. Juliet Middle School, where she will start teaching in a couple of weeks. She works for West Wilson Middle School, which is temporarily sharing space in this school.

While in Nashville, we set up her utilities, stopped by her apartment complex, went by the school she will be teaching at, and then took care of some business for her teacher onboarding.

The Turtle Sundae at Culver’s

In the middle of all that, we stopped at Culver’s for lunch. I discovered Culver’s when visiting Murray, KY with my son last spring. They have really good burgers that remind me of Winstead’s in Kansas City. Cluver’s also featured frozen custard desserts that I did not get a chance to try in Murray. We had about two and half hours so we ate lunch and then after our food settled, we enjoyed dessert. I really enjoyed the Turtle Sundae. The one scoop option was just enough.

We finished up in Nashville around 3:30 CDT and headed back to Chattanooga. I decided to take another route home. We ended up going east on I-40 and then took Highway 111 down to Highway 27, which is just north of our house. My son and I had taken this route home from our trip to Bowling Green, KY in March. It is a beautiful drive and has a lot less traffic than I-24. We decided to stop at a scenic overlook of the Sequatchie Valley. I had wished that I had stopped at it when traveling with my son. It was well worth the stop and was a breathtaking view. It was a great end to our day together.

Sequatchie Valley Overlook, photo by Andrew Steele. My phone had died and our USB charger was not working so I could not take my own photos.

District Map and WordPress REST API

After putting some finishing touches on the resources pages, I started working on an interactive map of the school districts in Kansas City that are part of Real World Learning. My colleague, Ryan, had built out a map in MapBox with the different district outlines and locations of several charter schools in the area. He set up a demo page in the WordPress theme with some examples of event listeners that I would need for the map functionality.

The map is accessed by clicking on a button on the homepage. I wanted to animate the map into the page as another layer. I got some inspiration from an article on CSS Tricks, Animating with Clip-Path. I played around with a “shutter” effect and then made it horizontal instead of vertical. But in the end, I chose to go with a circle clip-path because it fits into the theme of the site better. One of the features of the site design is geometric shapes which are used as background elements. In development, I added motion to those shapes so they are floating around in the background.

On Friday, I started working with the WordPress REST API to add the functionality of showing data for the different districts and charter schools once a user clicks on the district or school on the map. I have built a couple of other things with the REST API so there was not much of a learning curve. I just had to refer back to an earlier project to remember how to pull the data from the API.

It is such a joy to see this come together. I have been thinking about it from time to time over the last 3 months. I worked late on Thursday night because I was having a lot of fun playing with clip-path animations. I enjoyed getting to work with the REST API again.

Articles I read

What I Watched

  • Demystifyingish SVG paths | HTTP 203 – Cassie Evans joins Jake Archibald to demystify SVG path code. I did an animation workshop with Cassie two years ago and always appreciate her writing, speaking, and teaching.
  • Revenge of the Sith (Disney+)
  • Thor: Love and Thunder (Theater)
  • Ms. Marvel (Disney+) – I really enjoyed this series. Very well done.
  • The Bernie Mack Show (Peacock)

Books I read

What I played

  • MLB The Show 21 (Braves) – I played two games of the divisional series against the Cardinals. I lost the first one, 6-5, and then the second one, 3-2 in 10 innings. Things are not looking good for me as I face elimination.

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