Weeknotes 23:04

February 12, 2023

Week of February 5–11

Maritime project

I continued working on the project that I started last week for a maritime innovator. I built out two pages, added some animations, and then refactored the layout for small screens. As I have mentioned in the past, my approach to layout is desktop-first and then I refactor my CSS for a mobile-first approach.

Refactored flexbox border solution

I refactored my flexbox borders solution that I mentioned last week to use generated content to add the borders instead of adding two empty divs to the HTML. I like the solution better because I am not adding extra markup in the HMTL when it is not really needed. I decided to refactor my solution after reading Ahmad Shadeed’s Flexbox Dynamic Line Separator article. I plan to pull the content out the weeknote post and into a separate article and expand it by discussing the refactored solution. Update: I wrote the separate article, CSS Trick: Flexbox Borders.

CSS Image Manipulation

I came up with a CSS image manipulation solution using filters and mix-blend-mode to apply a specific style to images uploaded into the CMS. I also plan to write a post about that solution. Unfortunately, the client decided against this image treatment but it was fun to be able to reproduce the effect in a way that new content could be added by the client in the future without needing us to manipulate the image in Figma.

Empowering a client

I empowered a client to make some edits to the site we built two years ago. Some of the content could be edited in the Gutenberg editor. Other content needed to be updated in the WordPress menus and in one of the templates we built. After meeting with the client, I spent 10 minutes detailing what edits to make and where in an email. And then they were able to take it from there.

Updates to Energy Efficiency Hub

I updated the Energy Efficiency Hub homepage layout to use a carousel instead of a multi-row grid to list and link to the different task groups. I also created an article template so they could add articles to their resource center.

Gutenberg versus ACF flexible content?

I had a great conversation with one of our new developers, Ross, about using Gutenberg versus ACF flexible content. It was good to talk through the subject and evaluate how we are doing things. I have really enjoyed more of these types of discussions in the last two years as our development team has expanded from 2 to 6 people. It is great to get some more diversity of thought as we approach our solutions.

A day of reading

I enjoyed a day of reading on Saturday. I had the chance to read 4 chapters in the book, We Need to Talk. I really enjoyed reading these more practical tips chapters. I also enjoyed reading through several articles in Pocket.

Articles I read

• Midnight is a Terrible Time for Coffee – An interesting article about the failure of defaults.
• Day 100: it’s over, or is it!? – I have enjoyed following Manuel Matuzovic’s journey of learning modern CSS. I enjoyed reading his thoughts about his experiment. I still have a lot of his posts bookmarked to read in Pocket.
• My CSS Wishlist (Ahmad Shadeed)
• Aging for God’s Glory – I appreciated this article as I have spent a lot of time recently reflecting on my own mortality after my mom’s passing and the fact that 2 of my 3 three kids are no longer living at home.
• Home stream – Some interesting thoughts from Jeremy Keith about homepage content.
• Change (Jeremy Keith)
• Healthcare, Selling Lemons, and the Price of Developer Experience – Several developers have written about Javascript frameworks and user experience recently. Geoff Graham reflects on three recent perspectives.
• More Random, Granular Tips for Bloggers
• 2022 in Review (Elliot Jay Stocks)
• What tools would you miss the hardest if could use NONE to build a website? – I have experienced some recent frustrations with build tools and have been tempted to consider building a site without them.
• The West Was Post-Christian: Until It Wasn’t. – I enjoyed this article because it supported some things that my pastor talked about in his sermon on Sunday. A good challenge and reminder about God’s sovereignty and the need to trust in His timing.
• The Deathwork of Devilish Dance: What a Grammy Performance Reveals about Secular Thought – I liked the observations from this article, especially about how Christians use social media after a controversial performance.
• Why do Christians address sexuality and gender issues all the time?
• Will You Be Our Valentine?
• Love Is Not a Finite Resource?
• The Importance of Theological Pairs – I found this one helpful and thought-provoking.

Books I am reading

• Basic Christianity – I am almost done with this one.
• We Need to Talk – I have not picked this one up since before my mom passed away. I really enjoyed the 4 chapters that I read this week. Some really practical ideas for becoming a better conversationalist.

What I watched

• All Creatures Great & Small: Season 3 (Prime) – I really enjoyed this week’s episode as they finally addressed a storyline that has been developing since the beginning.
• The Great British Baking Show (Netflix)
• New Amsterdam (Netflix)
• Bad Batch (Disney+)
• Assembled: The Making of Black Panther: Wakonda Forever (Disney+)
• Somebody Feed Phil (Netflix) – rewatching early episodes.
• C.S Lewis: The Most Reluctant Convert (Prime) – We really enjoyed this one. It is like a one-man show and not quite what I expected. But I really enjoyed it.
• The Franchise: Season 3 (YouTube) – A series that documents the 2022 season of the Kansas City Chiefs. I really enjoyed watching season one about their Super Bowl championship year.