Leggo My Pattern Library Analogy
When you think of a pattern library (or design system), what analogy comes to mind? Lego? If I had a Lego piece for every time somebody used Lego as a pattern library analogy, I’d be able to build the Death Star. Lego is pretty awesome but also difficult to replicate a design without detailed piece-by-piece instructions. Someone hands you a box of Lego and tells you to build an interface ...
Why Did I Have Difficulty Learning React?
Just over six months into a job doing React development, I’ve been trying to figure out why it has taken me so long to feel comfortable with it. (Comfortable feels a bit too ambitious of a word. Maybe competent? Unexceptional? Whichever.) For me, I think it has come down to four different things: All the Technologies Writing JS differently Deep Hierarchies Evolving Approaches All...
Understanding the Albatross
This morning, I read Heydon Pickering’s post on switching from a multiple column flexbox layout to a single column layout without an intermediate step. I spent a bunch of time figuring out why it works. Go ahead and read it first, if you haven’t already. Everything I’m going to talk about builds on what he has. You’re back? You haven’t left? You grabbed coffee because why not? Wh...
Coming Home
I travel quite a bit. I enjoy travel. I can sleep on planes. I get to see new places. I get to enjoy new experiences. And then I get home. The house is quiet. My cat used to greet me upon my arrival. Then I think his hearing started to go. And then he died last year while I was on a trip. The house is quiet. I’ve developed a routine when I get home. No matter the hour, I unpac...
Deploying an 11ty Site to GitHub Pages
I am building a new personal site. The idea behind it is pretty simple: it’s a blog that will have a total of 50 pages added to it over 5 years. Not much content and not much complexity. I debated about just coding the entire site by hand, each and every page. But this seemed like an opportunity to try a static site generator. The last static site generator I used was MovableType back befor...
Le Pigeon
Le Pigeon has been on my list for a little bit. On a previous trip to Portland, I had managed to get reservations to its sister restaurant, Little Bird, situated downtown. Le Pigeon, however, has been constantly booked and I could never get a reservation for when I’d be in town. I gave them a call and discovered that they have a handful of bar-style seats sitting around the kitchen that are ...
50 by 50 for 2018
2018 comes to a close with a formidable first year of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants. Only one North American restaurant remains: Blue Hill at Stone Barns. Tackling the North American restaurants was an “easy” way to kick off this challenge. The rest of the list may prove more difficult, needing more time to travel farther to reach the other restaurants on the list. One technique is...
Pujol
Quick on the heels of Quintonil, was a popover to Pujol. They are in the same city, after all. The two restaurants are merely blocks away from each other. And fun fact, the husband and wife team that own Quintonil used to work at Pujol. Pujol was the 9th restaurant on my quest to visit 50 of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants. It ranked 20th on the list in 2017 and 13th in 2018. I signed us ...