Weeknotes 25:17

April 28, 2025

Week of April 20–26

I felt much more comfortable and setttled after putting my first week of remote work with Revive Our Hearts behind me the week before. This week was filled with more introductions as we met with the design team, the Aviva Nuestros Corazones (Spanish) team, the Réveille Nos Coeurs (French) team and others. I got to participate in my first biweekly chapel service, where I heard ministry updates and an encouraging and challenging message on faithfulness, one of Revive Our Hearts‘ cutting-edge commitments. I also had the opportunity to work on a variety of tasks—some completed in just a few minutes, others spanning several days.

Timeline Component

On Monday, I was asked to come up with a new solution for a timeline element on a page highlighting an exciting six-year initiative by Revive Our Hearts called Wonder of the Word. The current element was an image that came from a print piece. It was just a placeholder that they wanted to replace with an interactive element. I was asked to think through some ways to do this.

I thought through a couple of different approaches to the problem:

  • a carousel
  • recreating the look of the image and clicking on the year to bring up a modal of the content
  • an accordion
  • a scroll animation where the content would move horizontally on scroll or the content would fade in and out on scroll
  • tabbed content

I initially wanted to do the scroll animation where content faded in and out. I figured the best way to communicate the concept was to build a prototype. But I bumped into the limits of my knowledge of GreenSock. I am a bit rusty not having used it in over a year. I tried a couple of different things but they were just not working out. I had wanted to “pin” the timeline section to the top of the page on scroll and then have the content panels fade in and out triggered by scrolling. I also decided that it would probably be best not to introduce a new third-party solution to the site at this time.

The next day, I decided to approach it with simpler solution. I was inspired by a demo by Michelle Barker. Her solution was a draggable ScrollTrigger timeline. I decided to simplify that idea into a tabbed content solution. I used my favorite prototyping tool, Codepen and built out my idea. Having the prototype helped me to sell my concept to the Marketing Director. It is much easier to show someone a “model” of what you want to accomplish than to try to explain it to them.

The concept got approved and I worked on implementing my prototype by moving it into our codebase on Friday. I also polished the solution, adding functionality to make it accessible, and modifying the solution from my rough idea. After quality assurance from my team leader, my solution was published to the live site today (April 28).

From inspiration, to sketch, to prototype, and finally implementation.

Solutions are always shaped by constraints of one type or another. Time, knowledge, skill, and other factors will always shape our final product. Being a wise craftsman means knowing how to take all these things into account and coming up with the best solution that you can given the different constraints.

What Easter means to me

I wrote a short reflection on what Easter means to me on Sunday. It was an idea that came to me in the morning during our church service. When I was younger, Easter primarily meant baseball cards. As an adult it means something much different.

Articles I read

Books I am reading

What I watched

  • Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, 20th Anniversary (Theater) – I enjoyed seeing this again in the theater with my youngest.
  • M*A*S*H (MeTV)
  • Formula 1: Drive to Survive (Netflix) – I finished watching season 7 this week.
  • NCIS (Netflix)
  • American Pickers (Samsung Plus)
  • The Clubhouse: A Year with the Red Sox (Netflix)
  • Andor: Season 2 (Disney+)
  • Warriors-Rockets, Game 3 (ABC) – I watched part of the third quarter to the end of the game

Walking

I did not walk this week. I need to figure out when I am going to walk now that I am employed again. I miss walking around my neighborhood and the fellowship with God that I enjoy on most of them.

What I played

  • MLB The Show 20 (Twins) – I went 2-1 this week. I played a couple of games on Sunday and one during the week.
  • NBA 2K25 (Nuggets) – I only played one game this week but it had a fun finish. I was behind almost the whole game against the Timberwolves. I was down by 7 at the end of the first quarter. I got within 1 point at the half. And then fell behind by 8 points at the end of the third quarter. I didn’t give up. I tied the game with a three-pointer with less than 40 seconds. The Wolves were able to score and I called timeout with 1.6 seconds left. I inbounded to Jokic at the top of the key and just got off a shot and tied it at the buzzer. I trailed most of the overtime but pulled it out in the end winning 113-109.

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