Weeknotes 23:31

September 24, 2023

Week of September 17–23

Walks

I took advantage of the cooler weather to take walks on Monday and Friday around lunchtime. Monday’s walk was a spur-of-the-moment thing when a meeting was canceled and I decided to use the time to get outside and away from my desk. The Friday walk was part of our LGND Campfire to get outside. It was nice to have breaks on both of these days.

I had seen the above graphic in a LinkedIn post. It cited a Stanford study that found participants were more creative while walking, not sitting. I have found that getting outside and away from my desk gives me a new perspective and many problems have been solved as I enjoy fresh air and my body moving.

The Joy of React

I mentioned last week that I was considering purchasing Josh W. Comeau‘s The Joy of React course. It was on sale for a launch price through the end of the workday on Tuesday. I decided to hold off for now. I was originally thinking about buying the entire course but after further reflection, I think I would only purchase the Basic Package to learn the fundamentals of React. I think this would be a better option for me with where I am currently at and where I see future opportunities now.

Girls Who Invest

On Friday, we had a client kickoff meeting with the Girls Who Invest team. I watched the above video on Saturday to learn a bit more about their organization. I am looking forward to working on a website build starting after Thanksgiving and launching in the new year.

TIL

  • I learned that I can control the loading attribute on images in WordPress. My code was using wp_get_attachment_image. However, I found I could only remove the loading attribute entirely by adding a filter to return the loading attribute as false and then adding an attribute to load the image as lazy or eager. I wanted to explore this after reading an article about not lazy loading hero images and also having some other times when I did not want images to lazy load.
  • I don’t believe that you can add containment to an element inside another container for using container queries. I have tried it a couple of times on a recent project and it ignored the nested container and used the parent container for the query units. I still have not been able to find a definitive answer to this observation. I could be doing something wrong or be unaware of how to make it work.

Community

Community has been a longing I have had for quite a while. Like a lot of men, I find myself with few to no friendships in the city where I live. The pandemic disrupted many relationships I was forming and distanced us from the community we were involved in (we had to stay isolated to protect my vulnerable mother-in-law).

My wife and I started attending a church that is in our neighborhood about a year ago. I have wanted to connect with people there but have found it a challenge. Most of the congregation is older or younger and I have really struggled to find someone in a similar stage of life. I need those connections. I need community.

On Wednesday, I was meeting with one of the pastors of the church. I talked to him about my desire to pursue a friendship with him. I have interacted with him on several occasions and observed through the times I have seen him preach or lead from up front that I feel an affinity with him.

He invited me to consider joining a small group that he was facilitating. He thought it would be an opportunity for us to build a relationship with each other and with other men in the church. I decided to step outside my introverted comfort zone and give it a try–just a couple of hours after meeting with him.

The first step is always the hardest. But as I stepped through the door, I was welcomed in by this small group of guys. I really enjoyed our time of interaction and sharing our lives. I came away excited that I may have found what I have been longing (and praying) for. I was so glad I took a chance and pivoted on my plans for the rest of the day to attend the small group. I am looking forward to seeing how God uses these men in my life.

The value of collaboration

I was reminded again of the immense value of collaboration on Friday. I was jumping in to help a teammate, Ross, on a project. I was taking a look at what he built to suggest some animations to help elevate the solid work he had already done.

There was this one element of the layout that felt awkward to me. As I was thinking about it, I had the idea of having one section layer over the previous section to create a nicer transition. The previous section was already “pinned” to the page so that the user could cycle through different slides in that section. The challenge was to have the next section “slide” over that section as the page started to scroll again.

I reached out to a third teammate, Ryan, to ask him some questions. I have found Ryan to have some very valuable ideas over the years and he has a really good eye and feel for animation work. As we talked through some things, he decided to fork the repo and try out some ideas on how to solve the problem with the proposed solution.

After about thirty minutes, Ryan “slacked” Ross and me with a video of his solutions. After some back-and-forth discussion, we modified it a bit more and we were all very happy with the final solution.

I love these moments when we can work together to come up with a better solution than any of us could have done on our own. Ryan was able to build off of my idea and achieve what I was struggling to come up with. We each used our talents to take the project further.

Articles I read

I didn’t take as much time to read this week. I probably read more articles or part of articles on The Athletic than I kept track of.

What I watched

  • Metal Shop Masters (Netflix) – My wife and I enjoyed watching these metal artists compete. I find it interesting to see how these artists are able to come up with creative solutions to the briefs in about ten hours.
  • The Two Towers: Extended Edition (Digital) – After a challenging day on Monday, I wanted to escape into a familiar story. I always enjoy revisiting Middle Earth.
  • Clone Wars (Disney+) – We went back and watched some episodes related to what we watched last week (episode 5) of Ahsoka.
  • Bluey (Disney+)
  • Star Wars: Rebels (Disney+)
  • Band of Brothers (Netflix) – I was so excited to see that this came to Netflix. I had heard good things about it. I am really enjoying it so far.
  • Shark Tank (ABC)
  • CSI: NY and CSI: Miami (Charge)

Books I am reading

What I played

MLB The Show 23 (Rays) – I went 2-3 this week. I didn’t play as frequently as I have in the previous weeks and it was good to take a couple of days off to focus on other things.

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