Weeknotes 26:31

August 5, 2026

Week of July 26–August 1

Front End Study Hall #55

I attended Front End Study Hall on Thursday. I had not been in awhile. It was good to join. I didn’t contribute to the discussion. There were some interesting topics that I might explore through writing in the future. I would be interested to think more about longevity on the web and dealing with dead links. It is something I have been thinking about as I add to my memory keeper and link to the Internet Archive for articles and sites that are no longer around. And some of my own projects.

New Instapaper interface

Last week, I noticed that Instapaper updated its web interface. I am not a big fan. It made me think of Terry Godier’s Phantom Obligation article. He asked, “why do RSS readers look like email clients?” Instapaper feels more like that now. I liked the previous design. It was simplier and different than most everything else I use. Now the interface is similar to a lot of the tools I use.

The new Instapaper interface that greeted me last week
Instapaper interface that I have been use to since switching back to Instapaper last year

Read later apps already feel like an obligation. There was a reason that I saved all the articles. But the reality is that I do not have the time to read everything that looks even the slight bit interesting. From time to time, I would go through and purge the articles that I had not read yet. I tried to purge back to about two pages, still knowing that was probably too much.

Not only does the new Instapaper take on the inbox look. It also adds number to all the folders. This just increases the “guilt” that Terry talks about in his article. But it is a phantom obligation.

I liked the simpler design of Instapaper, which had more breathing space, that didn’t look like so many other app interfaces I already use, and that didn’t tell me how many unread articles, likes, notes, or other things that I have accumulated. It has lost its uniqueness.

I would recommend Terry’s article. I love the use of animations in his storytelling.

Around the workshop

  • I worked on a lot of small projects this week. I added features and popup ads for August. I updated the hero image on the homepage. And I helped my teammate with some tasks related to migrating our South African ministry’s site into Django.
  • I finished up a project that animated video dialogs based on what I learned from Chris Coyier several weeks ago. The changes got pushed to production later in the week. But when I did QA on it, the dialogs were not animating. I determined that the minifier in our build process was ignoring my @starting-style rule. I worked with our backend engineer and he updated our build process to use a more modern tool.
  • I built out a HTML email template for the Study Through the Bible project that we will launch in 2027. We have MJML baked into our build process so it is very easy to build new email templates. MJML became my favorite tool for creating HMTL emails that work across clients.
  • I revisited the Mujer Verdadera ’27 microsite. The Spanish team were ready to add a sponsor section to the landing page. I added a new section and had to rethink some things to fit in a new piece to the new design. I ended up updating one of the sections with a photo background that I was using on a secondary page. It helped to keep the rhythm that I had created in the initial design.
  • Our ministry had an AI overview meeting with an outside consultant that works with our ministry. He talked about AI and how they have taken a human-centered approach within their digital agency. We also had a smaller group meeting with our digital team to ask specific questions of our guest.

Articles I read

What I watched

What I listened to

S2 E9 – Ana Rodrigues (Codebar Stories) – I enjoyed hearing Ana’s story of how she got into tech and her passion for her personal site.

Books I am reading

Walking

  • Monday – 1.80 miles in 35 minutes – I took a walk before a meeting to get out of the house for a bit and to spend some time praying about some things on my heart.

What I played

  • MLB The Show 23 (Orioles) – I went 4-1 in games I played this week. I came back in several of them to win.
  • FC 26 (FC Barecelona) – I played 5 league games and a Champions League game. I won all 6 of them.

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