basic home

Weak Notes

Weaknote 2024-07-25 (a tab amnesty)

I am inspired by Ross Wintle blogging away his open mobile tabs, and FND’s Readcently (which was apparently inspired by these very Weaknotes, love how these things cycle around) - so here we go, I’m finally closing some browser tabs on my smartphone and sharing them with you!

I may add notes to some of them later - otherwise I’ll just let the mostly-descriptive URLs do the talking :)

Interesting Articles

Dev Blogs and Tutorials

Products

Cool stuff

Permalink

Weaknote 2024-07-14

How is it July? Halfway through July, really?

Wish the weather would perk up a bit…

Conf-tastic times

I went to two within a month!

In 2023 I had asked around for the best ‘cosy’ web development / front end conferences, because I had been with my colleagues to a large one (or two, React Summit and JS Nation - held on 2 consecutive days in the same venue and sold in a single ticket deal) where I did not quite feel at home.

I had managed to meet several Mastodon contacts at the above, anyway - people who I wouldn’t actually expect to see at those events. And I enjoyed a few of the talks - but it still felt weird and a bit too big.

Some of the same colleagues are considering Web Summit in Lisbon this year - or WeAreDevelopers World Congress and I’m like, nope. Exhausting. More power to them!

There were several recommendations, but these two events stood head and shoulders over the rest in terms of people singing their praises:

Beyond Tellerrand - Düsseldorf 13-14th May

The name of this one comes from the German phrase “über den Tellerrand sehen” meaning something between thinking outside of the box, looking beyond the horizon, and seeing further than the end of your nose - the Tellerrand meaning the edge of a plate.

I booked it before I saw the speaker list on the pure strength of recommendation, and honestly as the speaker list filled up I was unaware of many of the names, and felt unsure I had done the right thing. But I was booked! And committed to looking beyond said Tellerrand, of course, and I’m so glad I did.

This conference is broad, with speakers from design, development, research, education and the arts. Some talks were very specific, others incredibly broad, some neutral, others extremely politcal - but they all felt relevant and I was riveted.

https://beyondtellerrand.com/events/dusseldorf-2024/speakers

CSS Day - Amsterdam 6-7th June

I didn’t need to be recommended CSS Day. I WANTED to go, oh my - I’d seen it was a thing and immediately knew I was going to need to go to it.

Oh I was - well in German I would say ‘begeistert’ - enthralled? Rapt? Nerding out together with ~350 other people was just great. CSS Day sounds like it would be really narrow - and yes of course it mostly revolved around the cascade - BUT somehow the talks still ended up extremely varied.

I was particularly fascinated by the talks given by people who work or have worked in the W3C, thrashing out the details of how our web platform should behave.

https://cssday.nl/2024/speakers

The people

Talks aside though, these events were a social joy for me. I was in my element. These are my people. I came away with such warm and fuzzy feelings and a good number of new friends.

I never imagined I could work in an industry where I could get paid to attend things and meet people like this. I am very privileged indeed.

New members in the CSS JOY webring!

Welcome <3 - it’s getting harder to make sure the ring stays complete and unbroken (I try to traverse it now and then to make sure)! So many of you now :)

Permalink

Weaknote 2024-05-12

Oh yeah, week notes. I do those! Sort-of..

It’s been a while - about time I wrote a little catch-up.

I am a people, I have a blog

After some email chat about guestbooks, I was invited by Manu to be an interviewee for his People and Blogs series: manuelmoreale.com/thoughts/pb-sara-joy

He encouraged me not to curtail myself too much, after I had ummed and ahhed about how long to make my responses. I had started long, then pruned back, hard, and finally added some personality back into my answers.

I decided there was some purpose to my interview - to embolden people to strike out for new career territory if the current situation isn’t working. I hoped I helped someone feel like they weren’t alone.

I have been 11typilled

I don’t use 11ty. Yet. But the shiny new 11ty conference issued a call for proposals, and I figured there was nothing to lose by submitting.

Um. And I got in, and then did the thing! It was a variation on my CSS color-scheme blog post, called “Why not both? 🤔 - Light mode vs. Dark mode”

The community is lovely. And the audience was lively in chat. And so wholesome. I say I’m 11typilled because just based on the sheer force of lovely people who love using it, I can’t not try it out 🎈❤️

Video links: Whole conference stream (find linked timestamps for the speakers in the description, I’m near the end)

New CSS JOY webring members!

There are tons of you this time, and there is so much CSS joy in these sites!

Permalink

Weaknote 2024-01-30

I’ve found some time from who knows where to make start some cool stuff!

No-class CSS:

I think it’s quite cool, but found it really hard not to get too opinionated. Especially around buttons. Then I started styling the range slider to try and keep consistency, and after that I stalled.

https://codepen.io/sarajw/pen/xxBGmRZ

I might revisit it another time, but try and keep it (even) simpler. Also as I was just playing, it’s full of somewhat inconsistent and pretty unneeded CSS nesting.

While I have been messing with it however, both Egor and Daniel completed and published their own, which are both excellent!

  • Egor bases his system.css on using CSS color-mix() and the browser-native System Colors.
  • Daniel’s Ssstyles is opinionated and striking with some optional extras.

An easier web:

fLaMEd and I had a great exchange on Mastodon after reading their article about helping people get a leg up with building their first websites, so I made a couple of things so that maybe some of the more adventurous non-devs could just give it a go.

Each page has a section where you can copy or download the code, ready to paste or upload to a free hosting service, just to try it out.

A simple (blog?) website: https://sarajoy.neocities.org
Codepen: https://codepen.io/sarajw/pen/oNVzvgg

An elegant linktree thing: https://linkfae.netlify.app
Codepen: https://codepen.io/sarajw/pen/rNRWgVv

I still need to make a sort of introduction website for them both, to wrap it up. I commented the code heavily, and as visually as possible, to show people where they can make their edits. There are quite a few inconsistencies.

RSS Joy!

I was reminiscing about how I used to like iGoogle for keeping up with RSS feeds. It was a portal with the Google search bar at the top, and lots of fun panels you could set up. I generally just picked RSS panels and would have them show a few of the latest posts from all my favourite blogs.

Welp, I decided to roll my own: https://rs.sjoy.lol

A nice sibling-subdomain for CSS Joy :) It doesn’t really have all my favourites, for now it’s just a sample.

I got lots of help from Darius who built the web-component for it! I’m slowly starting to piece together how those things work, but I still find them mysterious.

Because I was grabbing RSS feeds client-side, most of the domains I was calling them in from refused because of CORS. I ended up doing a workaround, that I briefly detail here: Bypassing CORS using Netlify _redirects

A blogroll:

First I asked whether it would be crass to use a roll of toilet paper as a blogroll icon, because that is what “bogroll” is British slang for!

I mean, I would probably have gone ahead with it anyway…

The icon can be seen at https://sarajoy.dev/#goblog if you scroll past all the posts. The page itself is at https://sarajoy.dev/blog/roll/ - it isn’t really populated yet.

Yeah, I let an AI image creator make that title image, the prompt was “A toilet roll with an water color image of a friendly-looking person’s head and shoulders on each sheet”. I think it’s cute. I carry a little bit of shame for using ‘AI art’, though.

That’s it!

Well, that’s plenty for now. Offline life has been happening too, as usual: We’ve enjoyed some more snow. We’ve had a very soggy yard after some drains blocked. All of us have been a bit under the weather. But we’re all OK :)

Finally, please welcome:

New CSS JOY webring members!

Permalink

Weaknote 2023-12-31

Byeee, 2023!

I have simultaneously lots and not very much to say about the year.

Maybe I’ve already said most of it - in fact, these two blog posts bookend things quite nicely:

January: How ‘Senior Generalist’ Sara Side-Stepped

December: This Is My Church.

On the family side, things have been fraught as usual, but full of love ❤️

✨ Happy New Year everyone ✨

New on the CSS JOY webring:

Permalink

Weaknote 2023-12-12

Time flies

Gah, how are we halfway through Advent already? Happy Holidays!

I’m limping both physically and spiritually to the end of this year (thanks, plantar fasciitis. Yep still got it). As of next week I’m on vacation until the new year. I’m not sick, just feeling that seasonal malaise.

It’s time for a rest (if having the kids home 24/7 for a fortnight is actually a rest, but eh!).

Work

Good! Been there over a year, now! It’s occasionally a little frustrating (I had lots of friendly feedback for my year-end meeting with the CTOs), but I think that’s the nature of work. If it was all easy going, it wouldn’t be work and wouldn’t be worth paying for, no?

We’re just embarking on a big accessibility project - I was thanked for pushing the issue - first Florian will audit our app, and then next year he’ll help us refactor the bits that most need work to get them accessible. There may need to be a few rounds of this kind of work, I’m so happy that the ball is now rolling!

We just had one of our quarterly 3-day events which was good but also - despite being asked to test every day, people caught COVID left and right. I’m glad we (family) got ourselves jabbed last month. I’m still testing negative 🤞

Oh, I also got a nice raise for the coming year 💸

My lefty soul is like YOU’RE MORE THAN YOUR JOB and YOUR WORTH ISN’T YOUR SALARY which is all true. But it really helps to feel valued, even if it’s THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM which is telling me this is what it means to be valued…

Fambly

Kids are OK. Snotty. They’re loving the Advent treats and twinklies, as am I :)

These are the people it’s important to be valued by, and here I thankfully and happily feel secure - even if I worry that I’m not fully earning it and could always improve the mothering and wife-ing!

Sundries

That’s it, brain go ‘muhhhhh’. As always, you can find me on Mastodon and read and/or respond to the nonsense I spout there :)

New additions to CSS JOY

Permalink

Weaknote 2023-10-22

Family

We went on holiday - it was good, all-inclusive so minimal effort! But even at an all inclusive resort, parenting 2 young kids 24/7 for a week is still somewhat tiring without the “rest” of the day job while they’re at Kindergarten 😅

But it was lovely just to have easy warmth, easy food, and no clearing up to do for a week. A+++.

Youngest has now had the operation to reduce tonsils and adenoids and insert ear grommets. The reaction on first wake was “it’s so noisy! I want to go home!” so that was a great sign that the grommets did the trick.

After a few weeks speech is already more clear - and loud! I suppose if your surroundings suddenly get louder, you increase your own volume to match or overcome it. And background sounds that went unnoticed before, are now being commented on with “what’s that?”, like the dishwasher cycle and aeroplanes flying overhead.

Work

I was somewhat discombobulated after the holiday. Feels like I’m still easing my way back into the codebase. I’m always doing so much research for what seems like only small code additions or changes - but maybe that’s just the nature of the beast I’m working with.

I’m very rarely building something entirely new, rather I’m taking something that already exists and adapting it, or fixing bugs, or finishing off something that has been partially built.

Last week I took two days off with absolute exhaustion and a headache. Home life had been really busy, work confusing, and world events horrifying. I was so deeply tired that I knew I would barely be able to look at the screen much less understand the code. Hoping tomorrow will be better.

HHTML Meet-up

I gave a talk on CSS color-scheme! The 3rd HHTML meet-up happened for the first time in person, and I was allowed by Lea to be one of the speakers 💜

Watch “Easy dark mode with color-scheme” on YouTube

It was a smooshing together of two blog posts, and ended up being given in rather a less polished fashion than I had hoped. Because of the way the room was set up, it was much easier to present from my work MacBook than my personal ThinkPad - but I’m really not so practised and navigating around MacOS! So please excuse the fumbling…

Manuel (who has been tolerating me on Mastodon for months, ahaha) was there! It was lovely to meet him, finally :)

His talk actually made me think I might like to play with web components, which is no mean feat - I’ve been very confused and maybe even mildly scared by them:

Watch “Web Components are for everyone” on YouTube

Newsletters

Normally I’m sort of allergic to newsletters. They add up and I just don’t have the time to read them all - but I’ve given these three a pass, because they’re worth it:

New additions to CSS JOY

Welcome, both!

Permalink

Weaknote 2023-08-22

These are becoming more like month notes 😄 I knew I was right not to call them week notes!

Anyway, this time we’re doing it in unordered-list-style - I started roughing out a post in bullet points and there were so many (despite thinking “I have nothing to tell”), that it can stay that way:

Kids

  • Half birthday party success! No fights or tears even with 11 2-to-6 year olds!
  • ”DOM” is the name of the big 3-times-a-year funfair that comes to town. We went. It is loud. Overstimulated (me)!
  • Tonsils and adenoids reduction and grommets prescribed for the youngest. Hearing improved but still not great, and tonsils are huge, setting off coughing fits at night.
  • Gave away the old baby clothes for midwives to give to poorer new families.

Life

  • Upcoming holiday in 3 weeks, yay!
  • Climate worries, while also feeling flygskam.
  • Sophie from Mars video about the world not ending is very good. Also very long.

Health

  • More squishy Oofos shoes bought for sore foot. Would never have bought them at full price, thank you eBay!
  • Finding online advice for plantar fasciitis is either “go barefoot” or “all the supportive shoes” - why is everything in life so polarised!
  • Massage gun was also a nice purchase, though. Make foot go brrr.
  • Considering getting COVID vaccination booster again. Off-Label (not currently recommended by national health authority) for the kids?

Nerdry

  • HHTML meet-up plans for end of September! Very looking forward to meeting people :)
  • Keycap covetousness. Trying not to buy more as I really don’t need them.
  • Captcha from Netlify hastly added to website guestbook. Needs the dark mode configuring.
  • Letting a hobby-web-dev lull happen. It’s cool, no need to stress out about hobbies, they’re supposed to be the opposite to stress.

Talk to me

Permalink

Weaknote 2023-07-31

Hello! Weak Note IV incoming:

Kids

Bought the kids three different kinds of new footwear for various reasons. Trainers (a.k.a. sneakers), wellies (a.k.a. rain boots) and sandals (rubber/plastic ones, also for use by pools/swimming). I also bought them swimming goggles recently. They’re about to have a half-birthday* party next week, so they’re having a whole period of gifts - let’s hope they don’t get too used to getting new stuff all the time!

We’re taking our annual holiday in September (because they’re not school age or beholden to term times yet, so it’s cheaper), but I’m starting to feel some mental tiredness, and I think they’re pretty tired of Kindergarten too. We might try and take some random days soon just as a rest for all of us (not that having kids at home is much of a rest, but eh!).

Edit: It’s now Monday, I’ve taken a day off and kept them out of daycare as they’re both clearly run down.

*They both have winter birthdays, as do lots of the family - we get a bit present-fatigued and out of ideas, and it’s just blah having a party for their friends around then too. So we have opted so far to run them a joint party in the summer, when we’ve had time to think of things they might actually need, and the kids can all run around outside if need be :)

Personal

I’ve treated myself to a few bits and pieces too lately, most notably a massage gun for my poor sore foot with the angry plantar fascia. It feels pretty good, hope it does me some good!

Finally I picked up my big crochet project again after a good 3 year hiatus. I have crocheted other smaller things in the meantime, but it feels nice to just let my hands do some non-typing work that’ll evemtually become a gorgeous scarf.

The “meadow” area in our garden had grown very unruly, so I decided to attack the most gangly area with a pair of hedge shears (our strimmer couldn’t touch the woody wildflower stems that were growing there, and everything was too tall for our lawnmower). I’ll do the rest… another time.

Work

I invited Florian Beijers to speak to my colleagues about his experiences working as an accessibility manager, auditor, advocate and user. A person of many hats! He was very straight with them about how things are trying to navigate the web and developer tools are they are, and pulled no punches.

If your colleagues could do with the honest input of a real human being who requires and actively uses accessible tech, and who also speaks the language of developers - I recommend him wholeheartedly.

Nerdry

New on the CSS Joy Webring

Permalink

Weaknote 2023-07-17

Life

Seen some very variable weather since the last weak note. Storms, hot days, colder days.

Swimming

We finally got to try out the neighbour’s pool after 6 years of living next to it! The previous neighbours were old, unfriendly and litigious (!) and NEVER even used the pool. They aged further, and died leaving no descendants. Then they left their home to their lovely gardeners!

The gardening couple are totally quids-in now, the value of the land the property is on is already worth a very pretty penny (we know how much it cost us to buy a semi-detached place on just 1/3 of the same sized plot), so they’re going to enjoy an excellent retirement :)

Light Reading

Through Bluesky I discovered Sarah McIntyre, the illustrator of the AdventureMice and promptly bought the first in the series, “Otter Chaos”. It’s super cute and just the right balance of text to pictures, to read to our 5.5 year old!

CSS Joy!

New on the Webring

Old on the Webring

Temani Afif already has two sites on the webring, but this week I discovered a treasure trove of further content on dev.to!

Enjoy :)

  • @ppk is busy ploughing through writing a CSS book, and his poll and the ensuing conversation about attribute selectors had me going to look them all up. Now you can remind yourself too :)
  • I finally did something about my modifier key muscle memory problem, because of switching between Windows and MacOS. I have had a version of Windows Powertoys installed probably since using win98 or something - so much good stuff is included that I just forget how handy it all is.
  • Go look at this handy list of places to find personal websites at https://sizeof.cat/post/website-discovery/
  • Jared White has just set up That HTML Blog and it’s off to a great start already! Looking forward to updates :)

Permalink

10 Weaknote 2023-07-05

11 Weaknote 2023-06-27

chevron pointing up

← back to blog index