Weeknotes 24:09

March 5, 2024

Week of February 25–March 2

Life has felt incredibly full these days. There are so many things to take care of and not enough time each week to address everything I would like to do. I took a big step in addressing an area of growth in my life this week and my taxes are ready to be filed. I am glad that I am making progress but I still feel the weight of some things that are still hanging over me, like securing housing for my upcoming trip to Europe in late April.

Work highlights

• I worked on several small projects this week on a variety of different sites. It is nice sometimes to be able to address a small issue and get things accomplished.
• I worked on a prototype for a component on the LGND site. It gave me the chance to apply things I have been learning in the ScrollTrigger Express course on Creative Coding Club. Carl has often stated that the best way to learn is to get into the code and try it yourself. I got some help from my teammates as I ventured into new territory that the course didn’t cover. My idea did not work out quite how I envisioned but with the help of my teammate Ross, we were able to figure out a solution for the component we needed to build for a case study on the LGND site.
• I gave a presentation at our LGND Campfire on Friday. I shared several sources of inspiration for scroll animation. I shared the different sites and talked through the specific elements that inspired me. The presentation sparked some good questions and discussions with my teammates as we thought about how to use some of these techniques to enhance the storytelling of our projects. I shared several of these sites in a post in January.
• I spent the afternoon on Friday building out a new template for the Connect2Canada site. We built out a page several years ago that highlights different ways that the trade partnership between Canada and the United States impacts individual states. The page includes an interactive map where the user can click on individual states to read more about how the trade relationship impacts that state. For many years, the Canada team wanted users to be able to access the individual state trade fact sheets through search. I built a new template that will allow each state to have its page to access through the search results. We have talked about this for several years but other projects always took priority with their budget.

Road trip

I took a road trip with both of my daughters on Saturday. My oldest, who lives in Nashville, was adopting a couple of guinea pigs from East Tennessee Guinea Pig Rescue. I told her a couple of weeks ago that I would help her to pick them up and transport them to Nashville. She got the approval she needed from her apartment complex earlier in the week.

When I had first planned the trip, I was going to drive to Nashville in the morning and then we would drive on I-40 to pick up the piggies near Lenoir City. But then I had the bright idea to have my daughter take a shuttle down to Chattanooga on Friday and then we left from here. That cut 4 hours off of the trip and meant that I was able to sleep a bit later on Saturday morning.

We arrived at the guinea pig rescue just before noon. We hung out there for a little bit as my youngest held some of the other pigs and we talked with the couple that runs the rescue. And then we were off for Nashville.

We stopped for lunch at Buc-ee’s near Crossville, Tennessee. It is the first time that I have experienced this place and it was a bit overwhelming. We grabbed some lunch and ate in the van with the piggies. We all enjoyed some time holding the pigs before setting out for our final destination in Nashville.

We made it to Nashville around 3:00 pm and got the piggies settled in their new home in my daughter’s apartment. We enjoyed interacting with them. And I enjoyed getting to spend the day with both of my daughters.

My youngest served as the DJ of the trip. She put together a Spotify playlist of 60s, 70s, and 80s (targeting me) music along with Stray Kids (K-pop), Laufey, and some other of her favorites. It was the evolution of another playlist she had put together when she took a trip with my wife earlier this year.

Articles I read

• February 2024 Bookmarks (Michelle Barker)
• WebAIM Screen Reader User Survey 10 – This post highlights some of the findings from this survey.
• My WebAIM 10th SR User Survey Takeaways (Adrian Roselli)
• Reasonable WCAG Additions
• Don’t care about accessibility? Resistance is futile! – A personal journey to embracing accessibility as a Web professional.
• The internet used to be fun – A listing of articles of why have a personal website or remembers when the Internet was fun.
• Your site, your home, your web
• Why I use Firefox
• CSS Functions that work with arguments (CSS Tip)
• The Perfect Storm? (Geoff Graham) – Geoff wonders if 3 distinct Web moments could converge.
• Where I’m at on the whole CSS-Tricks thing (Chris Coyier) – I wrote a post in response to this post from Chris after I had published this weeknote.
• Thinking About Your Health as a Remote Worker – I skimmed through this article.
• God Doesn’t Owe Me Kindness – A great reflection from a husband walking through the valleys of grief and the kindness and goodness he has received from God in the midst of it.
• The Subversive Hyperlink (Jim Nielsen) – Ode to the most powerful tag on the Web.
• If Jesus Triumphed Over Sin and Death, Why Does Our World Still Contain So Much Evil and Suffering? (Randy Alcorn) – This article fits in well with the lesson for my small group that we discussed this week.
• Open Letter to Tim Cook, Sabotaging Web Apps Is Indefensible – I signed this letter expressing my concern over Apple’s decision to remove Web Apps (PWAs) from iOS and Safari in the European Union. I have not been happy with how Apple has responded to a recent court decision in the EU.
• Rumblings of Revival Among Gen Z? (Trevin Wax on The Gospel Coalition)
• Addition by Subtraction – A good article about contentment.
• The Wax and the Wane of the Web (A List Apart)
• Generative. (Ethan Marcotte) – Some different thoughts about AI.
• How to get on a podcast (Dave Rupert) – Some good advice for one of the hosts of the Shop Talk Show.
• More Files Please (Jim Nielsen)
• Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule – A teammate sent me this article. I appreciated the perspective of how a maker needs a different schedule that includes longer spaces to work on things. I think it helped me to understand why I have periods of angst when I don’t have a lot of longer stretches to stay focused on my work.
• The Possibility Bridge (Cloud Four)
• Getting to an accessibility strategy
• The ‘greenest’ car in America might surprise you (Washington Post – paywall)
• A New Chapter for A Book Apart – Sad to hear that Book Apart will no longer be publishing any new books. I am very grateful for this independent publishing house. I learned about a lot of important ideas (responsive design, mobile-first, and CSS new layouts) through the pages of their book.
• Are Evangelicals Too Hard on Men?
• Where the people are (Jeffrey Zeldman) – A reflection on the tension between building your own thing and going where the people are (social networks).
• Why the Chiefs and owner Clark Hunt ranked so low in the latest players survey (The Athletic)

Books I am reading

• The God of the Garden – I read a chapter in this book each day of this week. I enjoyed this reflective work. Several personal journal entries were spawned from different things I read in the book throughout the week. I drove by some of the places (Century Farms) he was describing in the chapter I read on Saturday as we were leaving Nashville on Sunday.
• Mere Evangelism – I just got started with this early in the week.

What I watched

• Cowboys and Aliens (Netflix) – I would probably not have watched this one unless it had the star power of Harrison Ford, Daniel Craig, and Olivia Wilde and involved Jon Favreau. It lended enough credibility for us to at least try it. A bit bizarre with the blending of sci-fi and the Old West.
• The Franchise Episode 11 (YouTube)
• The Franchise Episode 12 (YouTube)
• Avatar: The Last Airbender (Netflix – animated)
• Break Point: Season 2 (Netflix)
• All Creatures Great & Small Season 4, Episode 5 (PBS on Prime)
• A Chef’s Life (PBS)
• Kim’s Convenience (Netflix)
• Somebody Feed Phil (Netflix) – We watched some older episodes early in the week. And we watched two episodes from the new season–Orlando (where we once lived) and Kyoto.
• Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One (Prime)

What I played

FIFA 23 (Manchester City)