Weeknotes 23:43
December 19, 2023
Week of December 10–16
Work continues to be slow as we wind down the year. Here are a couple of the highlights:
- I had several 1:1s with teammates.
- I skinned a new badge generator.
- I updated some different elements in the Toyota Policy Driver’s gamification project.
- I had my second-half review on Friday. The conversation was very productive and gave me some ideas for 2024.
- I used my time to read many articles that are referenced below.
LGND Secret Santa
On Friday, my LGND team gathered to open Secret Santa gifts. We had drawn names several weeks ago and I think for the first time, everyone got their gifts in time to open. And I think everyone identified the gifts as from Secret Santa so people knew to put those aside to wait to open.
Several of my teammates are great at remembering details that teammates share in our standup casual conversations or other team meetings. Several of those gifts reflected that stored knowledge. I received a book about the KU mascot, the Jayhawk, that I had put on my wishlist. I also received a Jayhawk scarf.
I drew the name of one of our designers. I got him some sketching pencils, Micron pens, a couple of sketchbooks, and the book The Secret Lives of Color. My art school son helped me out.
As tends to happen every year, the last gifts had to be opened in a hurry as several teammates had a client call just after our Campfire. Someone made a note to add a half hour to our time next year.
Update: Post each day challenge
A lighter workload allowed me to give time to writing different posts and I was able to continue to meet the challenge to post something each day. It was more challenging to determine what to write about each day as I had exhausted my lists of ideas from the past. I was able to write one post that I first thought of and made some notes for in 2018.
- Remembering the first trip to Chattanooga
- HTML web components in the spotlight
- My accessibility journey
- Accessibility links and resources
- Think like a front-end developer
- Thoughts on career changes and dramatic moves
Articles I read
- Drawing Near: Loving Your Adult Children and Grandchildren
- Is all sin equal?
- Why the HR Mindset Can’t Condemn Genocide (The Gospel Coalition)
- HTML web components (Jeremy Keith)
- The elevator pitch for Web Components (Chris Ferdinandi)
- Blinded By the Light DOM (Eric Meyer)
- HTML Web Components Are Having a Moment (Cloud Four)
- HTML Web Components (Jim Neilsen)
- Actually ladies, the Roman Empire never crosses my mind … except when it does (Stephen McAlpine)
- 100 People (Chris Coyier)
- Understanding the new WCAG 2.2 criteria
- Joy! Joy! to the World (Paul David Tripp)
- My Top 10 Theology Stories of 2023 (The Gospel Coalition)
- Using date-based CSS to make old web pages *look* old
- You don’t need JavaScript for that (HTMHell Advent Calendar)
- The creation of modern Israel
- One YouTube Embed weighs almost 1.2 MB (Zach Leatherman)
- Does God Owe Us Something Better? (Stephen McAlpine)
- Test-driven HTML and accessibility (HTMHell Advent Calendar)
- A new op-ed: on OpenAI and worker power. (Ethan Marcotte)
- Why the Hollywood strike matters to all of us (Ethan Marcotte) – The op-ed Ethan references in the above post.
- OpenAI is a threat to labor, but its employees staged one of the most successful collective actions in tech (Ethan Marcotte)
- Dialogs, modality and popovers seem similar. How are they different? (Hidde de Vries)
- Popover API (12 Days of Web) – This is a great introduction to this new API from Open UI.
- Anchor Positioning (12 Days of Web) – Another great introduction to an evolving feature.
- My Favorite New Songs of 2023 (Tim Challies) – I skimmed through this and need to go back and sample some of his favorite new songs.
- 15,409 Days: Psalm 90 and Wisdom
- Why I Changed My Mind about Deconstruction
- My Grandfather Died with Dignity
- Greenhouse Gas Emissions From Streaming Digital Content (Michelle Barker)
- Reporting on Website Carbon Emissions (Michelle Barker)
- The Hellish History of HTML: An incomplete and personal account (HTMHell Advent Calendar) – I enjoyed this jaunt through HTML (and Web) history.
- Why Ayaan Hirsi Ali Became a Christian (Carl Trueman)
Books I am reading
- Trusting God
- The One True Light
- Twenty Bits I Have Learned about Making Websites
- A Craftsman’s Legacy
What I watched
How I Use Photoshop’s AI Generative Fill to Change Photo Backgrounds (Chris Spooner)
What flavors are you bringing to your work? (Verbal to Visual)
- Season 42 – The Concord Country Cape of This Old House
- Season 43 – The West Roxbury Victorian of This Old House
- Project Runway Allstars Season 2 (Prime)
- Bluey (Disney+)
- Gilmore Girls (Netflix)
- Tangled (Disney+)
- Across The Spider-Verse (Netflix)
- KU-Indiana basketball game (CBS) – I enjoyed seeing my Jayhawks come back and steal this one in Indiana.