Weeknotes 25:31
Posted 3 days ago
Week of July 27–August 2
New Roof

Our house got a new roof on Thursday. It was a very noisy day working from home. My daughter let me borrow her noise canceling headphones and I was able to get some work done on the couch in our living room. We are really happy with the roof tile we choose. It compliments our house very well. We were able to get it replaced through our insurance due to a hail storm in May.
Hero question
As I was considering how to improve the hero element on our ministry website, it launched me into a question of whether or not the hero element of a page should be contained in the <main>
element. I asked some people on Bluesky to weigh in. I did not get quite as big as response as the parent element sizing question but the feedback that I got was helpful. I captured some of my thoughts from going down this rabbit hole on Wednesday.
Refactoring CSS
I spent most of the day on Friday working on a CSS refactor for the hero elements on our site. The task had started out as thinking through how to write a template for the hero that could be used across the site. The pages that have a hero on the site each have the code for that in their own templates. But after examining the templates on the site, I realized that there would not be much of an advantage to trying to come up with a base template. There were just too many variations and there would not be much code saving. But I did determine that a refactor of the CSS was worth taking on. A refactor could cut down on the amount of duplicate code in different stylesheets throughout the site.
Articles I read
- A social media ethos (Dave Rupert)
- It’s a Package Deal (Tim Challies)
- The ‘Accessibility’ link is a Lie: My Adventures in Weaponizing Corporate Virtue Signaling, Sightless Scribbles (Robert Kingett)
- We need to talk about your accessibility statement (Bogdan Cerovac)
- Why I’m Writing Pure HTML & CSS in 2025 (Joel Dare)
- Over-optimized. Under-optimized. (Chris Ferdinandi)
- How to Make Websites That Will Require Lots of Your Time and Energy (Jim Nielsen)
- Reflections on OpenAI (Calvin French-Owen)
- Ansel Adams, AI, and the Essence of Creation (O. Alan Noble) – This resonated with my soul.
- Celebrating 20 years of MDN (Joe Walker, MDN Blog)
- Responsive video is (almost) easy now (Koos Looijesteijn)
- Tired of Hard Things (Muddy Water Mama)
- Abolishing Ourselves (Carl R. Trueman, First Things)
- Scottie’s Secret (Daniel Darling)
- June 2025 Baseline monthly digest (web.dev)
- Boats and Community (Chris Ferdinandi)
- Creating a scroll-spy with 2 lines of CSS (Una Kravets) – Article about
scroll-target-group
. - “Totems”: Trollface and Heart-hands (Joe Crawford)
- “Don’t Get Left Behind” (David Bushell)
- Don’t Reduce Faithfulness to Neutrality: A Response to David French and Chip Gaines (Joe Carter, The Gospel Coalition)
- The Beauty of Old Paths (Melissa Edgington)
- How I built custom post designs into my blog (Andy Clarke)
- The article element (Heydon Pickering)
- Before I go: Always buy the $200 Yamaha (Dave Rupert)
- Why beginner CSS advice might be limiting you (Kevin Powell, newsletter)
- I’ve been speaking around about refactoring CSS! (Ana Rodrigues) – I enjoyed watching her presentation at CSS Day.
- The Weird Web (Chris Ferdinandi)
- Studio Notes #43 (Dan Cedarholm)
- Work Hard, Be Humble (Paul David Tripp)
- Remote to who? (Mandy Brown)
- The Economy? He died five years ago. (Dave Rupert)
- Companies Are Discovering a Grim Problem With “Vibe Coding” (Futurism)
- Web design inspiration from retro wrestling (Andy Clarke, Envato)
What I watched
Is HTML the hardest language? (Kevin Powell, YouTube) – I agree.
My Take On Cru’s Future (Brad Bright, YouTube) – I appreciated these thoughts from Brad Bright about the future of Cru. I was encouraged. Cru played a significant role in my Christian life and I am glad to hear the positive things from this year’s staff conference.
- Quarterback, Season 2 (Netflix) – I finished watching season 2 this week.
- NCIS (Netflix)
- Somebody Feed Phil, Season 8 Tblisi and Amsterdam (Netflix)
- Project Runway (various seasons on Samsung Plus TV)
- Stray Kids video blog from Atlanta concert (YouTube) – My two youngest attended this concert so I enjoyed watching the video blog.
- Instant Family (Netflix)
Books I am currently reading
- Sunday Matters (Paul David Tripp) – I read one devotional a week.
- Everyday Gospel (Paul David Tripp) – Reading through the Bible this year with this devotional.
- Universal Principles of UX Design (Irene Pereyra)
- The Basketball 100 (David Aldridge & John Hollinger)
- On Tyranny (Timothy Synder)
- All That Jesus Commanded (John Piper)
Walking
I went for a 30 minute walk on Monday night but I did not record it in Strava.
What I played
- MLB The Show 20 (Twins) – I went 3-1 this week, playing 2 games on Saturday.
- NBA 2K25 (Nuggets) – I lost to the Lakers in a game I played on Saturday.
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