Weeknotes 23:12

April 27, 2023

Week of April 16–22

The Gondoliers

This past week, my youngest daughter performed in the CSTHEA’s Homeschool Player’s production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Gondoliers. This was her first year being involved with this talented group of young people. They performed 6 shows over 4 days this past weekend. It is the culmination of nine months of hard work.

My daughter was part of the chorus. She was able to draw upon over a decade of ballet dance experience as one of the featured dancers. She added so much to the overall atmosphere of the production through her acting. Many in the audience thought she was really crying in several of the scenes. I love watching her perform as she leaves everything on the stage.

All three of my children have been a part of Homeschool Players. My oldest daughter, first performed in The Gondoliers seven years ago. She also was part of the cast for Princess Ida.

My son was part of four different shows: The Pirates of Penzance, The Yeoman of the Guard, Iothane, and The Grand Duke. He served on the set team for Pirates and Yeoman and performed as part of the chorus for The Grand Duke. But his greatest contribution has come through his graphic design skills as he created the branding for each of those four shows as well as this year’s production of The Gondoliers.

Spending time with my dad

My dad decided to visit us in Chattanooga last week. His primary purpose for the trip was to see my daughter perform in The Gondoliers. He also got to spend time with my oldest as she came to see the performances on Saturday. My dad also spent some time with my son in Murray, Kentucky on his way back home to Kansas City.

My dad and I had a couple of different adventures while he was in town. On Friday, we visited Point Park on Lookout Mountain. The park is part of the Lookout Battlefield from the Civil War. We enjoyed amazing views of the Tennessee Valley as we walked through the park and considered what it must have been like to fight there.

On Saturday, I had a spur-of-the-moment idea to visit Chickamauga Battlefield in Northern Georgia. The battlefield was only ten minutes away from the venue that The Gondoliers was performed. After the show and dinner with my oldest daughter and her roommate, we made the trip to Fort Oglethorpe and drove through the park just before sunset.

We tried to imagine what it must have been like to fight in the fields, to charge against the other side, or make their way through the trees.

Work Highlights

• I worked on several smaller projects this week like helping to quality assurance test (QA) our new agency site and updating content on existing sites.
• I continued working through the SVG Animation with GreenSock course on Creative Coding Club. It has been good to polish off my GreenSock skills as I build out solutions to the homework Carl gives after each session.
• I did WordPress training for the Principal Media team on Wednesday. I walked through the backend of the interactive film catalog we launched this week (April 26).
• I took PTO on Thursday and Friday to spend time with my dad and help transport my daughter and her friends to and from the venue during the week.

Articles I read (from the past two weeks)

• CSS Text balancing with text-wrap:balance (Ahmad Shadeed)
• GSAP’s Bread and Butter, from(), to(), and fromTo() Animations
• Designing for Reduced Motion – The main question I still have is what instances to not remove motion on a page. This article gave me some ideas but still thinking through this because it is “reduced” motion, not “no” motion.
• Your Interactive Makes Me Sick – And this is why thinking about applying reduced motion is so important. I don’t want to make users sick. I see so many sites on the Web featured in showcases that are not thinking about this and respecting user preferences for reduced motion.
• The WebAIM Million The 2022 report on the accessibility of the top 1,000,000 home pages – It concerns me that top pages are not getting significantly better when it comes to accessibility.
• Ask LukeW: New Ways into Web Content – Some thoughts on incorporating AI for better Web experiences.
• On Hope, Hate and the Most Radical Claim of the Easter Season (NY Times Op-Ed)
• In Nashville, Death Hangs Over Our Doorways
• What Is a Man? What Is a Woman? How Our Laws Should Define Male and Female
• Beauty in the Whole and the Parts (Tim Challies)
• Heaven Celebrates Every Repentant Sinner
• Browser history (Jeremy Keith)
• My Local Birding Patch (Jon Hicks) – I enjoyed reading about Jon’s hobby. I wish I had something that I looked forward to doing as he does.
• Psychology’s Culpability in the Transgender Movement
• Marriage Anarchy In the UK: Nothing Rotten About Johnny
• Solving the CSS layout and source order disconnect – I like the direction of where this solution is going. I am glad that this is being addressed.

What I am reading

• AI 2041 – I finished this book a couple of weeks ago. I am not sure if I feel more optimistic or pessimistic about the future of AI. I definitely have concerns after reading this book, especially about how AI will affect jobs and to what degree. I think governments will need to be planning ahead for the disruptions that this technology will bring.

What I watched

• The Mandalorian (Season 3 finale on Disney+)
• Bourne Identity, Bourne Supremacy, and Bourne Ultimatum (Netflix)
• Clone Wars Final Season (Disney+) – We rewatched these as a family.
• Full Swing (Netflix) – We decided to try this after hearing good reviews from my LGND teammates.
• Rennervations (Disney+)