Weeknotes 23:37

November 9, 2023

Week of October 29–November 4

• I sat in on CSS Cafe’s live event on Monday. Stephanie Eckels talked about Weird Things You Missed About CSS. It was an interesting talk that I would recommend for any developer working with CSS. One of the things she covered was how custom properties are computed and a pitfall she encountered.

• I jumped into a project that one of the other developers on my team built last year. I needed to update an image size in WordPress so that the images in a feed looked good on higher resolution screens. I had to add an image size and then run a “regenerate thumbnails” in the WordPress backend.
• I reskinned a badge generator for one of our clients. The user uploads an image and then can download a badge for social media. I cloned a GitHub repo from another badge and then reskinned it. I also made some updates so that the downloaded image was larger so it would look good on higher-resolution screens.
• I sat in on several meetings related to projects that will be moving into the development phase later this month and another that I will start building before the end of the year.
• I really enjoyed working on a prototype on Thursday for an upcoming project. The designer wanted to use a cover flow style of a carousel for an interface. Another developer thought it would not fit into the budget to come up with a custom solution for that. I have used Swiper JS for several projects in the last year and found that they have a cover flow option.
  
  My colleague directed me to a Codepen example using cover flow and I forked that pen. I added some new graphics and adjusted several of the Swiper settings to make it look more like our designer’s solution. I had a lot of fun playing around with it and figuring out how to manipulate it to fit our solution. I look forward to building out the solution in the next few weeks.
• I updated the editor view of several pages in WordPress as I prepped for training with the client. I added image hints to different image fields throughout the site. I really like the control over the backend interface building with WordPress blocks. This is the first site where I have not used ACF to build custom Gutenberg blocks. The WordPress Block Creator Course was extremely helpful in learning how.

Juggling

We learned how to juggle on our LGND Campfire on Friday. Ross very patiently walked us through how to get started. He has been juggling since 2007 and has mentioned his talent on many of our standup calls. We had a similar Campfire last month where Matty taught people to make pizza (I was not able to attend that one).

We have a very talented team and those talents extend outside of strategy, client services, design, development, and video production. It is fun to be able to come together and try to learn new skills and see the depth of talent our team has outside the work we do.

We all had a lot of fun. Several people picked it up very quickly. I did not have my “aha” moment during the Campfire but have been encouraged to keep at it. My family enjoyed peeking in and watching me try.

Articles I read

• When Death Starts to Take Our Friends (Stephen McAlpine) – A Christian reflection on death.
• Broncos snap 16-game losing streak to Chiefs behind 3 TDs from Russell Wilson (The Athletic)
• Company Celebrates Disability Employment Awareness Month by Awkwardly Demanding Staff Reveal Personal Medical Information – This is bizarre and yet another example of the disconnect between companies and the human beings that work for those companies.
• border:none 2023 (Jeremy Keith) – Jeremy’s reflection on a conference he recently attended. The original conference was in 2013 and they did a follow-up ten years later. The interesting thing was how different the second one was from the first.
• No Borders (Matthias Ott) – Matthias’ reflection on the same conference.
• Three Years Later: What I Miss Most (Tim Challies) – Tim reflects on the third anniversary of the death of his son.
• What Exactly is “Modern” CSS? (Geoff Graham) – Geoff reflects on the dilemma of being able to describe/document this moment in CSS development because we do not have a label for it as we had in the past (CSS3 for example).
• What is “modern”? (Chris Coyier) – Chris shares some thoughts about Geoff’s article.

What I watched

I discovered last week that Meg Ryan has a new Rom-com with David Duchovny. You Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle, and Return to Me are among my favorite Rom-coms that my wife and I enjoyed in our first years of marriage.

• What’s The Deal With Large Language Models? – Heydon Pickering is back with a brief video about large language models.
• The Great British Baking Show – Collection 11 (Netflix)
• Project Runway Season 5 (Prime)
• Bluey (Disney+)
• Loki (Disney+)
• World Series – I watched parts of the games last week. I did see the last pitch when the Rangers clinched the title.
• It Ain’t Over (Netflix) – I enjoyed this documentary about Yogi Berra. It is a shame that most people are unaware of how great a player he was (including myself before watching this film).
• Field of Dreams (Netflix) – I needed to watch something familiar and feel good late last week.
• WHAM! (Netflix) – I started to watch this but did not finish it.
• Gilmore Girls (Netflix) – I decided to revisit this familiar favorite.

Books I am reading

I did not do as much reading as I have in the past few weeks. I have had some trouble sleeping which leads to me being sleepy at night when I would normally try to read. It was a bit frustrating because I am enjoying several books that are in process.

• Think Again
• The Loveliest Place: The Beauty and Glory of the Church – I just started this one.
• Making Sense of God

What I played

MLB The Show 23 (Rays) – I only played one game this week and I lost. I am trying to decide if I want to continue playing the season that I started. I am over halfway through but have lost some interest. Plus the time I spend playing could be used for other things that I would like to give more time to–like reading and talking walks.