Consuming to Produce
As the clock turns over an arbitrary time boundary that marks one year from the next, many reflect on their past and make promises of change for the future. Not one to want to feel left out in such reflecting, I, too, have made promises for the year (and, really, years) ahead. Well, one in particular: be more creative. Being more creative was purposely vague so as to leave numerous avenues ...
Travelling Man
As one might expect in trying to go to numerous restaurants around the world, much travel would ensue. And sure enough, that happened. In 2019, I travelled to: Montreal (twice) Toronto (twice) Pittsburgh Portland (thrice) Phoenix Austin Atlanta San Antonio San Francisco (twice) Napa Valley London Lima Paris (twice) Amsterdam, with a drive to Zwolle and Ghent, Belgium Barcelon...
A Year of Restaurants
It’s been an interesting year, to say the least. Started a new job. Left that job. Ended a relationship. Have a newfound affinity for Islay Scotch. (Those last two things aren’t related, surprisingly.) Throughout this tumultuous year, there has been adventures to many amazing restaurants around the world. The main goal was to continue on the quest to eat at 50 of the World’s 50 Best Rest...
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...