Weeknotes 2024W51

I got up early one morning and added some snow to my website to get into the winter spirit. I made use of Zach Leatherman’s <snow-fall> web component to do most of the heavy lifting. I added a few lines so that each snowflake is a different color to match my colorful theme. It looked too much like confetti instead of snow so I increased the opacity a tiny bit and it looks like snow again. Very excited about this!

I received a thank-you message from a Peace Corps Morocco volunteer that is keeping my weather report project going. I had a blast doing this for my cohort and I’m glad that the legacy lives on. The best thing is that this volunteer is a woman who had never coded before and used my code and docs to learn something new to do something fun for the group.

I’m back to being an adult. I had to get car insurance as well as register my car and renew my license once I get back to Oregon. That stuff adds up when you don’t have a reliable income.

Zen Browser made the rounds this week and I had to give it a try. It’s a Firefox fork that is focused on privacy and simplicity. As my daily driver for the week, I can squarely say that I love it.

I had an idea that I’ve been sketching and brainstorming this week. I think more blogs and personal websites on the internet is a Good Thing but there is a lot of friction if you want to build one. Either you have to have some technical knowledge or pay for a website builder. What if your entire website was contained in a single file that you write in and click Run to generate? The target user is someone who:

• Wants a simple way to put their stuff on the internet
• Probably hasn’t touched the command line before
• Doesn’t want to pay money
• Doesn’t want to learn HTML and CSS (and definitely not a static site generator)

My current idea is to create a “language” similar to Markdown with a way to delineate pages and posts and give data to each. I have a good model in my head that makes sense to me conceptually—the site is a tree of different components like pages, assets, etc. and each of those might have different branches. But what does a user write into the file to fill it in? What’s the syntax?

Another side project. I’m working on a simple proof-of-concept website for a friend’s business idea. For now, it’s just one page to explain the concept and grab attention from investors and stakeholders. Coding websites is easy for me now but design is so much more difficult.

Links

• SmartHome: An Adventure Game by Steve Pikelny. Fun and incredibly frustrating idler game. Stick with it for a little while and find some great easter eggs.
• Estimating projects sells them short (and that’s okay) by Nicole Tietz-Sokolsaya. When starting a project, you usually need to estimate how long it is going to take. You’re hoping that the actual time to complete it is less than you estimated but there is a risk that it takes way longer. There is limited upside and unlimited potential downsides just like when short-selling on the stock market.
• Fresh new green by Sage. The design process for making a lovely green website inspired by a can of Sprite.
• A decade without a drink by Nolen Royalty (eieio). An engaging and vulnerable piece about recovery.
• Fonts by HEX Projects. There are some real winners in here with reasonable prices. My favorites are Museum Sans, Forester, and Marionette.
• Time Since Launch by CW&T. A beautiful little device that counts up after pulling the pin. Designed to last forever to mark an occasion. They’ve also got a lot of other really cool products worth checking out.
• The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction by Ursula K. Le Guin.

Created: 2024-12-22

Last modified: 2024-12-22