Weeknotes 23:36

November 4, 2023

Week of October 22–28

One of the highlights of the week was reconnecting with Mark Boulton. He posted a weeknote on his blog at mid-week. Mark was one of many people who inspired me to start the weeknote habit back in early 2019. I reconnected with Mark on Mastodon last week.

I first got introduced to Mark through his book, A Practical Guide to Designing for the Web. I bought several books through his publishing company, Five Simple Steps, starting in 2009 until they closed the doors in 2016.

I reached out to Mark to let him know that I was glad to see him posting again and thank him for inspiring me to try out writing weeknotes.

Other happenings from the week:

  • I took an action step toward improving my health. I met with a doctor on Monday as I look for a primary care physician. I liked him. I appreciated that he listened and asked good questions. I appreciated that he takes personal values into consideration when suggesting courses of treatment.
  • I took a step toward improving my mental health by meeting with a counselor. It is always uncomfortable meeting someone new and trying to determine if this is a person you can trust and be vulnerable with as you engage in this process.
  • I applied to get a passport on Friday. My last passport expired 13 years ago. My son is going to spend the spring semester in Barcelona. I want to have a valid passport in case he has an emergency. But the main reason is that I am hoping that I can meet him at the end of his coursework and travel with him.
  • I checked out a new community art space‘s website that I found out about through a mailing.

LGND Slack Off

On Friday, LGND had a Slack Off. We came together in the morning for a virtual retreat and then had the rest of the day off. We split up into teams of 3 or 4 and played a Halloween-themed escape quest through Confetti. It was a combination of video and audio clues that we had to figure out to escape a haunted mansion.

The game was more difficult than most of us anticipated. My team overthought a lot of the clues. We were only able to get halfway through the quest in the hour we had allotted. But we had a lot of fun together. It was great to take some time away from the work and just enjoy doing something fun and interactive together. Teammates lingered around on the Zoom call for another half hour after the main event was over.

We got a box of swag delivered to our door. We got a couple of Slack Off stickers (like the graphic pictured above), a Slack Off patch, $25 to buy lunch, and then a choice of swag items. We had a couple of different styles of belt bags (with LGND logo) to choose from or we could choose a swag item from our company swag store. I ended up getting a limited edition LGND Yeti.

My limited edition Yeti. I started using it on Saturday and love it.

I had asked about getting a Yeti rambler for the company store. I have a stainless steel one but wanted one with a color-coated texture. I was not interested in the belt bag because I knew that I would not use it. Connie, who is in charge of our swag went ahead and purchased a limited number of these ramblers for the store and I got one as my Slack Off gift. Thanks, Connie.

A Christmas gift

It looks like I will be getting a Christmas gift from Firefox. :has selector support is now available in Firefox Nightly (121) which is two versions ahead of the regular release. Firefox 119 just dropped recently so we can expect :has support near the end of December, which will complete evergreen browser support.

The :has selector is the tool that I have been most excited about. I have used it several times in projects as a progressive enhancement. I have also identified other times when I wish I could have used it in a solution but decided against it because the evergreen browser support was not complete.

I confess I have been annoyed that it has taken so long to get browser support in Firefox, which is my browser of choice. It has been supported in most other browsers for over a year (September 2022).

Many have dubbed it the “parent” selector because it will allow you to style a parent element by checking to see if a condition on a child element is true. But the :has selector allows you to do so much more than apply styles to a parent. Its chief superpower is allowing us to select elements based on conditions being true and then styling elements differently when those conditions are met. It will be a very powerful tool that can replace Javascript solutions that we have used in the past.

I need to put together a post of links that I have collected over the past few years about the :has selector.

Articles I read

The Athletic

Books I am reading

  • The God Who Gives – I finished this one mid-week. I really enjoyed reading it and it helped me to think more about a topic that a recent article had started me thinking about. The topic is God’s ownership and what that looks like for how I live my life. I recognize a need to live more as a steward and less as an owner. The Bible study in my small group has also been addressing this topic so I have had exposure from multiple places. But this book gave me the most significant material to think about.
  • Think Again – I decided to buy my own copy so that I could mark it up. I found Chapter 7 about motivational interviewing very interesting.
  • Making Sense of God – I keep picking this one up and putting it down. I have enjoyed reading it. A lot of good ideas to think about.
  • Invitation to the Jesus Life – This is another good one that I keep putting down and then picking back up.

What I watched

Subgrid & Container Queries change how we can create layouts (Kevin Powell)

  • The Great British Baking Show – Collection 11 (Netflix)
  • Beckham (Netflix)
  • Star Wars: Rebels (Disney+)
  • Bluey (Disney+)
  • Project Runway Season 2 and started Season 3 (Prime)
  • Loki (Disney+)
  • Chiefs-Chargers game (CBS)
  • World Series (DiamondBacks-Rangers) – I watched parts of both games 1 and 2. I watched the sixth inning through the end of the game on Friday (Game 1) and the first 4 1/2 innings on Saturday.
  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (Disney+)
  • This Old House (PBS and Prime/freevee)
  • KU-OU game (FOX) – I watched about 10 minutes of the beginning of the second half of this game. I wish I had thought to turn it back over to see the exciting finish. It was exciting to see that the Jayhawks beat the Sooners in their last Big 12 meeting. It was a big win for the KU football program.

What I played

MLB The Show 23 (Rays) – I went 2-2 this week losing the first two games of the week and winning the final two.

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