The people who found you in the alley called you Cowboy. We called you Moogs, Moogers, Moogerton, Mr Moogs, Meesta, Two Meestas, Beef, Roast Beef, Roast Beefy Weefy, Kitty, Kitty cat, Long cat, Kitty kitty, Pretty kitty, and Meow meow. Those were all your names. Today we had to s … | Continue reading
I bet if you were someone who could make a hammer that would have been a good stable job for years, centuries even. Almost everyone needs a hammer at some point in their life. “Hey, where’d you get that hammer?” “Oh, you gotta talk to Bartholomew.” Then some guy, Greg, would see … | Continue reading
In this job we need to think a lot about the tools we choose and why, so I cataloged all the places where web components (for me) feel like “the right tool for the job”. Your list may be different and I’d love to read it. And because I don’t want this to be 100% propaganda, I’ll … | Continue reading
School is back in session, sports are in full swing, we’re tossed and turned by the weekly routine. This past month has been a season of fixing and repair and I’m thankful everything went well and we’re (hopefully) through the hard parts. Fixing electrical problems Ramping up to … | Continue reading
Every two-to-four years my body chemistry changes and my armpits start to reject my deodorant with an intense itch. All that aluminum has gunked up the works I guess. Usually cycling out deodorants works fine, but this time it didn’t work because my armpits were overpowering all … | Continue reading
Brian LeRoux posted a few thoughts about forms and the idea of a “good form” resonated with me so I dogpiled some of my own thoughts and experiences on it. Here’s a compilation of those ideas. I’m sure this is incomplete and would love to see your list. Good forms work without cl … | Continue reading
I saw a tweet awhile back that sent my brain to a far off galaxy… Most people are proud of their reading habit. But for many, it’s just an act of productive procrastination. I’m looking at you “I read a book a week” club Here’s how you know: Are you reading to find answers to que … | Continue reading
Weeks ago I was looking in to a performance issue for our animated spinner component and stumbled across a tool in DevTools I hadn’t used before: The Performance Monitor Panel. In you open Dev Tools > More Tools > Performance Monitor you’ll see some helpful high-level charts and … | Continue reading
The temperatures soared over 100ºF and the yard is dead and everything smells roasted. But the ten day forecast shows a ten degree dip and that is cause for celebration. Another school year has started. My son has started middle school and my daughter is now in third grade. It’s … | Continue reading
I’ve become a bit obsessed with how much it costs to fuel my body during the working hours. Item Cost/Serving Qty/Day Cost/Day Qty/Month Cost/Month Snap Kitchen 500cal meal $10.00 1 $10.00 22 $220 Fairlife 42g Protein Shake $3.50 1 $3.50 22 $77 Liquid Death $1.75 1 $1.75 22 $38.5 … | Continue reading
4:05am The windows are open, hoping to capture the faint winds and convert them into a mythical cooling cross-breeze. A gust passes through vacuuming all the doors shut, cancelling hope for a miracle. I’m awake. It’s cool but I’m on top of the covers and not cool enough. The plas … | Continue reading
The algorithm sucked me into another model craft hobby: Mini 4WD racing (ミニ四駆). A Mini 4WD is a 1:32 scale model that is a mix between slot cars and RC cars. You don’t control these cars with a remote control nor do they drive in an electrified slot, rather you place your racecar … | Continue reading
The cicadas hum their ancient alien tune in the treetops above. The asphalt is hot to the touch. Cars and homes fill with the white noise of air conditioning in attempts to keep those inside alive. My enemy, the Sun, beams its photonic radiation at me –only me– and mocks my every … | Continue reading
It’s a secret to everyone! This post is for RSS subscribers only. Read more about RSS Club. Play Mundango I’ve got something for you. Lately I’ve been getting a lot of joy from life’s small moments; like texting an old friend, seeing a cool bug, or a watching the cardinals zip th … | Continue reading
Through stalking the #WebComponents hashtag and my Frontend Masters course, I’m privy to a lot of developers’ first experiences with web components. There’s a wide range of people digging in, but the most common first-time experience I come across is a developer coming from a cla … | Continue reading
Last Monday was my first day as an official employee of Microsoft where I’ll be working on web components as part of the Fluent design system team.. As longtime readers already know, I’ve had a long term relationship with Microsoft – from Paravel’s 2012 responsive redesign of the … | Continue reading
I wanted to experiment with the new CSS function light-dark() and get a sense of how to use it in a CSS architecture of nested (web) components. I think it’s going to be a powerful in the new responsive world of component architecture but I don’t want to recommend a tool unless I … | Continue reading
An unseasonable gloomy spring in Austin, TX. The kids are nearly done with school for the year and summer plans are shoring up. My son goes to middle school next year. Unbelievable. We’ve battled some on-and-off sicknesses these past couple months and with all the holidays every … | Continue reading
A fine post by Ethan Marcotte called The negotiation cycle led me to an incredible essay by Alan Jacobs called From Tech Critique to Ways of Living. It references an old idea called “The SCT1” which is new to me but based on thinking by the likes of Ursula Franklin and Neil Postm … | Continue reading
Matt Houghey wrote a blueprint for his “Dream CMS” and we had him on ShopTalk to talk about it. That got me thinking about what features I’d want in my dream CMS. It’s fun to think of what a modern CMS might have like inline editing, asset serving, monetization/membership functio … | Continue reading
At the end of each MSNBC YouTube video right now they have a 30 second post-roll of Ali Velshi explaining the 5-step process on how to install the new MSNBC app. Tap on the App Store on your phone Hit “Search” on the bottom right corner Type in “MSNBC” Click on the MSNBC app Clic … | Continue reading
I bought a 40 pound weighted vest for $40 dollars on Amazon. The workout term for this is “rucking” and has connotations with being outdoorsy and/or in the military. Load up a backpack full of weights (or in my case, a vest full of sand bags) and head outdoors. The marketing bene … | Continue reading
“You know those body builders with the big arms and skinny little legs? Your jaw is like that.” My dentist is explaining this to me while both her hands are inside my mouth clenching the left and right sides of my jaw. She explains that my right jaw muscle is three times larger t … | Continue reading
Hank Green posted a video about four lies he believed. It’s a great video because it’s embarrassing to be wrong on the internet and here is smart person™️ Hank Green admitting he believed some bullshit. As you travel through the internet you’re constantly working against a lot of … | Continue reading
A couple weeks ago I joined a conversation about John Romero and prototypes. Tyler posted some thoughts about Romero’s autobiography, Matthias shared a quote from a Tim Ferris podcast where Romero chided prototypes, and Matthias looped me in because I love prototypes. No prototyp … | Continue reading
Howdy. It’s March already. Let’s catch up. In January, Austin had a freeze but thankfully uneventful. Brings up a lot of “my dumb hyper-capitalist ultra-Libertarian government has created failed state” trauma though. In February, my family and I have been battling sickness on and … | Continue reading
I’ve been co-hosting a weekly podcast for nearly 12 years with over hundreds of guests and I want to tell you the secret to getting invited on a podcast. Are you ready? Here it goes. Already be talking about something. If you want to go on a podcast and talk, the best thing you c … | Continue reading
Duolingo does a great job capturing the novel delight of learning a new language. You hop on, take a short quiz, and a little green owl waves at you and hops towards a trophy. You can add friends, join group challenges, and there’s a weekly ranking system to compete with users al … | Continue reading
It’s been a couple years of working full-time on Luro and we’ve travelled through at least three (or four?) different distinct architectures. If that sounds like a lot, I’d agree. It’s been educational to say the least. I think it’s interesting to think about how apps grow and ad … | Continue reading
I’ve read the entire internet so you don’t have to and here’s some links I found. Is this the start of a newsletter? 🤷♂️ I tried this two years ago. Anyways. Here’s some links. Web platform news CSS Working Group resolved to add Mixins - Styles, now even more reusable Cu … | Continue reading
“UI is a function of state” is a pretty popular saying in the front-end world. In context (pun intended), that’s typically referring to application or component state. I thought I’d pull that thread a little further and explore all the states that can effect the UI layer… First-p … | Continue reading
AI. It’s the talk of the town (or at least this year, that is). I’ve been in dozens of conversations about AI in recent days. The likelihood that the next big feature or product I build involves AI seems to be going up. No idea where it’s all headed – and reserve the right to cha … | Continue reading
Two years of working on Luro full time has taught me a lot about #startuplife. While I could probably fill a book with what I’ve learned so far, the biggest takeaway is you’re always busy if you’re on a small team. Here’s a list of jobs that you always need to be doing when creat … | Continue reading
CoraQuest is a “family cooperative dungeon crawler” created by adorable dad-daughter duo Dan and Cora Hughes from Huddersfield, UK. Feeling the boredom of pandemic lockdown, Dan and Cora (8yo) decided to design a board game and put it on Kickstarter. I’ve wanted an easy “Dungeons … | Continue reading
You and I are partaking in something magical. The electric meat inside my cranium told my fingers to punch mechanical keys to send signals through an electric rock and encode these thoughts on a magnetic rock. Then through radio waves, beacons, and wires I create a copy of this m … | Continue reading
Often when I talk with folks who know me from my podcast they will say something along the lines of, “I used to listen to your podcast!” Then they blush because their statement implies they don’t listen anymore (Exhibit A). And I just wanted to say… I get it. It’s fine. I take no … | Continue reading
The EU Digital Markets Act is making waves in the Apple ecosystem. For the first time ever you’ll be able to install a browser other than Safari/Webkit on iOS (as long as you live in the EU). While there are other browsers on the iOS App Store, they’re all Safari/Webkit under the … | Continue reading
Hi Dave Rupert LLC, I liked your latest blog post Quick toughts on chips and see you are a business leader in accessibility, Doritos®, and Jekyll blogging software. I thought we should connect. I would like to inform you of an exciting opportunity. I scraped or stole your email a … | Continue reading
One thing I love about the new’ish :focus-visible pseudo-state is that it allows me to create bigger, bolder, and more obvious focus states for my keyboard users than I normally would with a :focus pseudo-state that might flash or linger on a click. For example, my default :focus … | Continue reading
The heart of Luro has always been a tool to enable deeper collaboration in a broader team context, so we architected it that way (a few times). It’s important that teams working on the same app are able to look at the product with the same lens of understanding, not just through … | Continue reading
Last year, an investor we were talking to sent us a tweet that expressed her hesitancy about investing in products in the design systems space that went… #DesignSystems are a zero-interest rate phenomenon I dismissed this criticism as meme-of-the-day fodder. The idea behind the “ … | Continue reading
Sarah Hendren’s What Can a Body Do? is a beautiful meditation on disability and the different ways bodies meet the physical world. In a word, there’s often a “mismatch” between how the world is designed and how people interact with it. There’s a chapter in the book where Hendren … | Continue reading
It’s so easy nowadays to get up and going on a project. I can burp some npm commands into my terminal, burp some more to setup a deployment pipeline and blam! Website. The time to product demo is so low. You can get far on your own… very quickly… but then… you’re on your own. And … | Continue reading
I often feel overwhelmed deciding what to do with my spare time. It’s a problem with volume moreso than ambition. When the feeling hit the other weekend I scribbled down seven ideas rattling around in my head and stared at the list blankly. I’ve used different prioritization syst … | Continue reading
More than making money… more than that feeling of launching a new product, feature, website, or app… the idea I am coming to value most in my professional life is the feeling of “play”. Sometimes play is being on my own with high autonomy and low consequences, sometimes it’s gett … | Continue reading
A post from Jason Velazquez called “Where have all the websites gone?” crossed my socials. It’s a good lament about the dearth of interesting content on the internet and how we’re stuck in the same boring content silos. The question reminded me of a song by Pete Seeger called “Wh … | Continue reading
For years the latest articles list on my homepage had a neat little CSS trick where each post had wobbly “rough boxes” around them. To create the effect I used a script from css-houdini.rocks aptly named Rough Boxes. One minor problem, CSS Houdini paintlets aren’t – and probably … | Continue reading
You might look at my office and the 32 plastic robot models on my shelf and think “This guy is a collector!” Or you might look a the bass guitar, electric guitar, long neck open back banjo, closed back resonator banjo, tuba, saxaphone, ukelele, and shamisen in my office and think … | Continue reading