Weeknotes 24:03

January 22, 2024

Week of January 14–20

Snow Day

Snow days are rare in Chattanooga so we enjoy them when they happen. We (I) even write blog posts about them.

Fresh new look

I launched a refresh to the site design on Tuesday. It went quickly from idea to reality–less than two weeks. I wrote about the “refresh” and some of the things I gained from the experience. I mentioned that I plan to evolve the site in the coming year. I was able to add a theme switcher later in the week thanks to this article by Aleksandr Hovhannisyan.

Other highlights from the week

• I wrote a post about Andy Clarke’s book, Hardboiled Web Design. I had a memory come up on Facebook of the first time I read it thirteen years ago.
• I addressed some issues from our internal QA for the Toyota Policy Drivers Gamification Hub. There were not many so I was very pleased. We handed the site off to the client for QA on their end at the end of the week.
• I was able to optimize several assets on the game hub with the help of my teammates. We switched out some animated GIFs for video in several places. And I went back and optimized some other images and was able to cut the page weight in half with all those improvements.

Components, Wings, and Ranch versus Blue Cheese

For our Friday Campfire, Ross and Matty combined efforts to talk about component design and implementation on the development side in WordPress. They got creative with their presentation and tapped into a team feud of which sauce goes better on chicken wings–ranch or bleu cheese. And a debate about flat or drum for the chicken wing.

Ross built out several Gutenberg components to show how we can add variants to a component to give it a lot of different looks or uses in a site build. He also added some Easter eggs where you can dip the wings on the front end. He showed us the component in the backend editor and showed off the different variants he had created.

One of my teammates suggested the topic a couple of weeks ago in a Team Leads discussion. LGND just kicked off a project that will use a lot of components. The project is one of the largest in scope that we have engaged in. Ross and Matty did a fantastic job in making the presentation engaging and fun. It did a great job explaining how design and development can work together in creating components for our projects.

Articles I read

• We’re All Muzzled Oxen Now
• Dinner Conversation (Jim Nielsen)
• Your code base should look like one person wrote it (even when you have a team) (Chris Ferdinandi)
• Identifying the Root Causes of Shame – I looked this up as I was thinking through what I read in my Bible reading early in the week.
• By the end of his life, Martin Luther King realized the validity of violence
• Mark Boulton’s discussion of transferable skills for designers on LinkedIn
• Idioms as Code (Jim Nielsen)
• I Changed My Mind About Social Media: Why I Decided to Quit
• Vitaly Friedman chat: Cleaner Web design for a better environment (Gerry McGovern)
• We can :has it all
• Promises So Certain
• Designing better target sizes (Ahmad Shadeed) – An interactive guide with guidance on how to improve the target area on clickable UI elements.
• Show Up for What God Has for You
• A Modern way to create octagon shapes (CSS Tip)
• New Year, Old You: Do Liturgical Calendars Help? (Stephen McAlpine)
• From To (Chris Coyier) – Chris’ thoughts on the from-to app.
• The Perfect Theme Switch Component – I used this tutorial to set up the theme switcher on this site.
• Where have all the flowers gone? (Dave Rupert) – A reflection on personal website and content silos.
• This week (Jeremy Keith)
• A Big Problem You Didn’t Know You Had (Tim Challies) – A review of a new book on the subject of envy.
• The road to HTMHell is paved with semantics – I read this article after I had the idea earlier in the week to write a post about HTML semantics.
• The Pride Round (Stephen McAlpine)
• A 2000’s guide to blocking Internet Explorer 6 (The History of the Web – Jay Hoffmann)
• Quick Thoughts on Chips (Dave Rupert), Quicker Thoughts on Chips (Jonathan Snook), and More Quick Thoughts on Chips. (P Mullen)
• Stop trying to recruit unicorns with acorns – Some thoughts about recruiting for accessibility jobs.
• LongLiveWebpages.txt – A call to make web pages not just blogs on personal websites.
• Play at work (Dave Rupert) – Thoughts on prototyping and play between design and development in the project process.
• What Even is a Webmention? (Robb Knight)
• What do you do? (Chris Coyier) – Can you explain what you do? Can you do it well?
• Where Do We Go From Here? (Michelle Barker) – Michelle is asking important questions about her site CSS In Real Life. Should she continue to blog on that domain when her writing is expanding into other areas beyond CSS and she would also like to write some more personal posts? She is asking her readers to weigh in.
• RSS in HTML and RSS in HTML: A Follow-Up (Jim Nielsen)
• Basic accessibility mistakes I often see in audits (Chris Ferdinandi)
• 5 CSS snippets every front-end developer should know in 2024 (Adam Argyle on web.dev)
• Cremation or Burial: Does Our Choice Matter? (The Gospel Coalition)
• “Just an idea” Event Types (Chris Coyier) – Chris would like event types like are like placeholders.
• The decline of React (Chris Ferdinandi) – A response to a recent wave of Reach advocates writing about how React is bad now.

Books I am reading

• Holier Than Thou
• The Loveliest Place: The Beauty and Glory of the Church
• The Practice – I borrowed this from the library on Saturday and read the first chapter. Matthias Ott was giving away a copy to one of his followers for the Own Your Web newsletter. I have read a few of Seth’s books in the past and this one looked interesting.

What I watched

Most people have no idea you can style underlines like this (Kevin Powell)

Best Things To Do in Barcelona Spain 2023 4K – I wanted to see some of the sights from Barcelona where my son is studying this spring. I am hoping to visit him at the end of his semester to see Barcelona and travel to another European destination.

• JAG (Pluto)
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians (Disney+)
• Bluey (Disney+)
• Project Runway Season 12 (Prime)
• Project Runway Season 13 (Prime) – We started this season on Friday.
• Under Pressure: The U.S. Women’s World Cup Team (Netflix)
• What Happens Later (Prime) – I was a bit disappointed with this movie. I was excited to see it but it was just okay.
• I’ll Have What Phil is Having: Barcelona (YouTube)
• I’ll Have What Phil is Having: Paris (YouTube)
• This Old House: Lexington Episode 11
• Avengers: The Age of Ultron (Disney+)
• Packers-49ers (FOX) – I watched the end of this game. I was disappointed that the Packers lost.

What I played

MLB The Show 23 (Rays) – I lost two games at the beginning of the week.