Weeknotes 23:30

September 17, 2023

Week of September 10–16

It was a slow week work-wise. I worked on several small tasks (30 minutes or less) and addressed some QA issues that began to trickle in from the client on the small businesses training program site I have been working on. Most of the issues have been content-related.

View Transitions

I took advantage of the downtime to invest in professional development. On Wednesday, I read an article that introduced me to the View Transitions API. The article included a lot of helpful demos. The View Transitions API is similar to the syntax used with scroll animations, which I read about last week. I am excited about using View Transitions in the future to create more premium experiences with my work.

Beyond CSS

I took time on Friday to start working through Kevin Powell’s, Beyond CSS course. I am looking forward to seeing how he uses Sass and Post-CSS in his workflow.

WordPress Block Creator Course

I also jumped back into the WordPress Block Creator Course working through the latest lesson at the end of the day on Friday. The lesson dealt with passing data between custom blocks with block context. I am not sure I will need this too often but it is good to know about it and have it ready in the toolbox if needed.

The Joy of React

Josh W. Comeau released a course on React last week, The Joy of React. I have had an interest recently in learning React, after learning about block creation in WordPress.

I had heard good things about this course from the pre-release. I have also heard that Josh is a really good teacher.

He created an open house where you can get a sense of his teaching style and have more information as you decide if the course is right for you. It includes snippets of different lessons from the course so you can give it a test drive. I worked through a bit of it on Saturday.

I am still trying to decide if I am going to purchase the course. I have struggled in the past to finish self-paced courses of this nature. I don’t want to spend a good chunk of money on something that I never get around to working through.

There is launch special pricing for all 3 levels of the course offering to till around midnight Eastern time on Monday (September 18).

Articles I read

• How layout position impacts three big web performance levers (Shopify)
• Key web performance metrics in 2022 (Shopify)
• Render ATL 2023 (Dan Denney) – Dan posts about the Render conference that happened back in May/June
• What is the View Transitions API and how to use it with meta frameworks – A good introduction with demos of the View Transitions API.
• View Transitions Break Incremental Rendering – An interesting article about performance and View Transitions.
• If Satan Wrote a Book on Parenting (Tim Challies)
• Parking Space Violators (Paul David Tripp) – A great meditation on the subject of transgression.
• Dear Molly (Todd Libby) – Another tribute to Molly Holzschlag.
• Reviewing Things That Are Too Big To Review (Chris Coyier) – I had to make this decision recently and decided to jump all in with Shift. And I have been reluctant to jump all in with Notion after using Evernote for so long.
• Multi-page web apps (Jeremy Keith)
• Navigating a Strange New World: Insights from Carl Trueman on Gender Confusion and the Modern Self (EPM)
• How to Pass Data Between Custom Blocks with Block Context (WordPress Block Creator Course – Lesson 8)
• Embracing Oneself by Rejecting One’s Body Isn’t Possible (EPM)
• Speedy tunes (Jeremy Keith)
• Ableist interactions (Hidde de Vries) – A very good article about accessibility and negative attitudes about it.
• Love Your Church Anyway
• Live Coding Interviews (Chris Coyier)
• Stop Lazy Loading Product and Hero Images (Jason Grigsby) – I wish that the image component in WordPress allowed you to choose whether or not too lazy load an image or to set it to “eager”.
• Hey Christians: Let’s All Give Two Cheers For Nominalism (Stephen McAlpine)
• Faith Is Not Certainty – I wish more Christians understood this aspect of faith.
• Performative performance (Jeremy Keith)

The Athletic

• Challenging choices for NL Cy Young; convicted former White Sox exec speaks – I just read about the NL Cy Young.
• Jets’ Robert Saleh on Aaron Rodgers: ‘I’d be shocked if this is the way he’s going to go out’ – I watched the first quarter of the Jets’ game on Monday night and saw Aaron Rodgers go down.
• Kepner: Pulled back to the ballpark, for a day of Phillies-Braves. No, Lefty — it never gets old
• Rosenthal: Momentum matters in American League race and Rays’ bullpen is providing it
• MLB’s billionaire owners leaning on public for wave of new ballparks
• Adam Jones officially retires, passes torch to Orioles’ new generation of players

Books I am reading

• Why We Love Baseball – I am enjoying this book. It has given me many ideas about my moments in baseball that are meaningful to me.
• True to His Word – I finished this one on Friday. Jon Bloom is one of my favorite writers; this one did not disappoint. Full of thought-provoking and faith-fueling content. I am sure I will re-read this one in the future.
• Awe: Why It Matters for Everything We Think, Say, and Do – I have enjoyed my second reading of this book. I read two challenging chapters at the end of the week.

What I watched

• I’ll Have What Phil’s Having (YouTube) – I can never get enough of Phil Rosenthal. These episodes were aired on PBS and were the precursor to his Netflix show.
• Monday Night Football (ABC) – I watched the first quarter of the Bills-Jets game. And I turned back to the game just as the Jets celebrated a punt return for a touchdown to win the game in overtime.
• Star Trek (Netflix)
• Ahsoka (Disney+)
• Rays-Orioles (Fox) – I enjoyed getting to see my Rays win the first game of a four-game series in Baltimore.
• Star Wars: Rebels (Disney+)
• Bluey (Disney+)

What I played

MLB The Show 23 (Rays) – I went 3-4 this week. I started by winning two games on Sunday.