Weeknotes 24:25

December 7, 2024

Week of November 17–December 7

It is hard to get back into the habit of writing these weekly notes once you get out of it. I am going to jump back in today. But this post will cover three weeks because there are things over the last three weeks that I would like to write about.

Getting reacquainted with Craft CMS

I have been reacquinting myself with Craft CMS over the past three weeks. I completed several courses on Ryan Irland’s CraftQuest platform. I first learned to use Craft through Ryan’s earlier learning platform, Mijingo. I used Craft for a couple of years while I was freelancing with dboy creative. I have wanted to getting reacquinted with Craft for many years and had a good reason to motivate me recently.

Read more about me getting reacquainted with Craft

Amazing CSS in 2024

Three weeks ago, I watched Adam Argyle’s presentation from DevFest Nantes on Amazing CSS in 2024. The talk reminded me of a talk I watched Adam give at the hover Conference a couple of years ago. It was a great tour of newer CSS features that are now available in all browsers or some to get familiar with that are only available in Chrome and Edge (and Safari in some cases).

I am inspired to give several of these things a test drive. I was able to implement one of the features Adam highlighted at the end of the week. I added an easy view transition between pages of this site that works right now in Chrome and Edge. Find out more in John Allsopp’s article on the HTMLHell Advent Calendar, Smooth Multi-Page Experiences with Just a Few Lines of CSS.

Anchor positioning and <details>

I learned about anchor positioning by playing Anchoreum a couple of weeks ago. It is a game that teaches you about using anchor positioning. I had played the creators previous games, Flexbox Froggy and Grid Garden. I made it to Level 39 (out of 40) but got stuck on the solution.

I also watched Kevin Powell’s video, CSS Popover + Anchor Positioning

I learned about new options for styling <details> to use for accordion content. Bramus shares a creative demo that takes advantage of these new features. Support in Chrome and Edge.

Trying out Bluesky

I finally decided to give Bluesky a try. I signed up for an account in the middle of November and started to post regularly starting right before Thanksgiving. One of the things I like about Bluesky over Mastodon is that a wider circle of people are using Bluesky versus Mastodon. It reminds me more of what Twitter use to be and what I enjoyed about that community before it went downhill. You can find me at bsky.app/profile/webcraftsman.bsky.social

Read more about my first impressions of Bluesky and comparisons to Mastodon

Learning React

I have also been spending time learning React. I took a break from Josh Comeau’s The Joy of React course and having been working through the Learn React tutorials on the React site. It has been good to review a lot of the foundational concepts and complete the challenges.

Thanksgiving

I had been looking forward to Thanksgiving for several weeks and having our two older kids home for the week. I was a bit disappointed to have gotten sick on Thursday. I was glad that it was not COVID. I think I had a mild flu or stomach flu. I thought it best to isolate myself so that I did not infect anyone else in the family. It was disappointing to miss out on watching the Macy’s parade and the National Dog Show and miss the time around the table with my family enjoyed our Thanksgiving meal. But I kept a good attitude and had a pretty good day.

I really appreciated my wife who took the time to take care of me throughout the day by bringing me food and other things I needed. This was on top of cooking the meal, for which I always appreciate her hard work to provide that for our family.

I was glad that they decided to wait to put up and decorate the Christmas tree until I felt better. I felt better on Friday and enjoyed the time with my family observing one of our Thanksgiving traditions, just a day later.

Blue Beanie Day

I celebrated Web Standards by celebrating Blue Beanie Day on November 30. I posted this picture to social media wearing the blue beanie I got from Adobe several years ago. I would like to write a post about why I think Web standards are still important today.

What I watched

My son and I attended a University of Tennessee-Chattanooga basketball game on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. It was fun to hang out with him and enjoy watching a sporting event together, which we have done a lot of through the years.

• NCIS (Netflix)
• Captain Phillips (Netflix)
• Rez Ball (Netflix)
• The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (Digital)
• The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (Digital)
• The Great British Baking Show: Collection 12 (Netflix)
• Starting Five (Netflix)
• Meet Me Next Christmas (Netflix)
• Man on the Inside (Netflix)
• Bluey (Disney+)
• Laufey’s A Night at the Symphony: Hollywood Bowl (theater)
• Chiefs-Bills (CBS) – It was disappointing that the Chiefs lost their first game of the season but the matchup delivered a close game as it usually does.
• The Bonhoeffer Film Has a Big Problem (YouTube) – Gavin Ortlund shares some of the problems he has with this new film.
• A variety of StrayKids videos on YouTube (with my daughter and wife) – My daughter is a huge fan and we have been watching several videos at night when she winds down before going to bed.
• A flexbox trick to improve text wrapping – Kevin Powell (YouTube)

Walking

• November 18 – 4.21 miles in 1 hour 20 minutes
• November 20 – 3.64 miles in 1 hour 7 minutes
• November 21 – 4.27 miles in 1 hour 18 minutes
• November 22 – 3.34 miles in 1 hour
• November 26 – 4.16 miles in 1 hour 16 minutes
• November 29 – 2.68 miles in 47 minutes (with my son)
• December 1 – 4.24 miles in 1 hour 17 minutes
• December 2 – 3.3 miles in 1 hour
• December 4 – 4.12 miles in 1 hour 14 minutes
• December 6 – 4.49 miles in 1 hour 20 minutes

Articles I have read

• I don’t have time to learn React (Keith Cirkel)
• Make creative borders with background-clip border-area (Jen Simmons) – A new feature available in Safari Technology Preview.
• Not That Different (Daryl Dash) – An encouragement to Christians that we all have a role to play and need to humbly accept our gifts and weaknesses from God.
• Web Accessibility and the Second Trump Administration (Converge Accessibility) – Not all doom and gloom.
• Expressing Gratitude Is a Holy Habit (Randy Alcorn)
• Education Needs Teachers, Not More Technology (Michelle Barker)
• Anchoreum: A New Game for Learning Anchor Positioning (CSS Tricks)
• Wicked Culture Will Trump Politics (Stephen McAlpine)
• On Bluesky
• CSS Web Components for marketing sites (Hawk Ticehurst) – This is an interesting idea.
• More options for styling <details> (Bramus)
• Thankful (Tyler Sticka)
• Ella’s First Website (Brad Frost) – Brad’s account of teaching his 6 year old daughter to build her first website. My son will be building his first website when he takes a Web design class in the spring semester.
• Futureproof Forgiveness (Stephen McAlpine)
• The Post-Christian Morality of ‘Wicked’ (Brett McCracken on The Gospel Coalition)
• Is Watching Wicked All That Wicked? – a counterpoint to the Gospel Coalition article (written by teacher in UK)
• One Year After Goodbye (Andy Stearns) – A reflection by a pastor on the year anniversary of his wife’s death from cancer. I have followed his story for over a year.
• Britain votes for death (fourdiscoursemen.com)
• No Other Options (The News Atlantis) – Article from January 2023. Takes a look at Canada, assisted death, and how many see no other option due to lack of support.
• Trains are offices (Hidde de Vries) – I enjoyed reading on trains when I lived in Hungary for a year.
• A Liturgy for Rest (Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation)
• Modesty Requires Looking Away (Tim Challies)
• We need Advent (T. M. Suffield)
• Nearly There, Nearly Home (Ruth Clemence)
• Contrast Is Clarifying (Jim Nielsen)
• Me and Skiing (Chris Coyier)
• Missing My Izzy – A father’s reflection on missing his daughter.
• I’m A Grandfather (Tim Challies)
• The web, community, and UX (Chris Ferdinandi) – Chris jumps more into the difference in tech, user experience, safety tools, and community between Bluesky and Mastodon.
• On not using copilot
• The English Premier League’s Identity Relegation Battle (Stephen McAlpine)
• WordPress Alternatives: Stick With PHP or Pivot to JavaScript? (Richard MacManus)
• Of Books and Conferences Past (Jeffrey Zeldman) – Jeffrey’s reflections on endings.
• Produce something average – I was not sure if I would agree before reading this but I understand the point of needing to keep producing things that increases quality over time.
• The code complexity journey (Chris Ferdinandi)
• Smooth Multi-Page Experiences with Just a Few Lines of CSS (John Allsopp)
• Is Biblical Counseling for You? Let the Goal be the Guide. (Guest post on Tim Challies’ site)
• Thinking About Bruce Willis and Jesus (Ryley Heppner)
• Lay Aside the Weight of Discontentment (Jon Bloom) – I reread an article by one of my favorite authors that I had seen in my memory feed on Facebook.
• Weird is back: Get with it Christians! (Stephen McAlpine)
• CSS Wrapped 2024 (Geoff Graham) – Another overview of CSS features that became a part of the Chrome platform in 2024.
• Knowing CSS is Mastery to Frontend Development (CSS Tricks)

Books I am reading or read

• The Art of Rest
• Humility by Mike Austin (finished) – I enjoyed reading this book. It was written by someone I know. I spent a summer in Hungary and saw him almost daily even though he was not on my team. We also served together with Campus Crusade for Christ in the same region and would see each other at conferences.
• Design for Real Life
• Practicing Thankfulness – I was glad to see that Hoopla had the ebook available. I listened to the audiobook a couple of years ago but wanted to read it and absord more of the content.

What I listened to

• GIANT by StrayKids
• A Night at the Symphony: Hollywood Bowl by Laufey
• Christus Victor (Amen) by Keith and Kristyn Getty
• Whatever God Ordains is Right by Sovereign Grace Music

What I played

MLB The Show 23 (Rays) – I played a couple of games during the week of Thanksgiving. I am still playing through the season and have 6 games left. I still have a chance to win the division. I am currently a half game out.