2025-01-29 07:30:41
I came across these Guiding Principles for my website and it has me thinking what my principles or tenets or guiding lights might be for my own site.
The initial tagline for my site was “tips, tricks, and bookmarks on web development”. I like to think that described the site rather well. Casual but professional, where even the personal posts were more often than not about professional matters like going freelance or getting a new job.
With an explicit shift into considering this a personal blog, I changed the tagline to the “life & times of a web developer”, which perhaps implies web development more than it does life, but c’est la vie.
So, what guides what I write here? Using Tracy’s principles as a jumping-off point…
I believe I’ve done just that over the years and intend to keep it that way. I invite conversation but I’ve chosen not to have those conversations on my site. Maintaining comments had turned into a hassle with 99% of them being spam. Each article in my RSS feed has a link to send me an email. (Perhaps I should add the same to each page on the site.)
Share where it may be of value to others. I share my perspective in hopes of enriching others. I learn from others—perhaps others can learn from me. That doesn’t mean every detail gets shared—especially of my personal life. I desire to protect the people I care about. While I may talk of my friends and family, it’s generally done in vague terms.
One thing that I will start doing is being more explicit about asking permission before sharing. Photos taken in public spaces where the people are unidentified feels like a grey area, though. While most of my public photography doesn’t include people, sometimes it happens. I don’t want to inadvertently be adding them to some facial recognition database somewhere. I’ll be consciously thinking about this going forward.
This site has always been a playground for myself—from way back in the day playing with fixed positioning to researching the ins and outs of various CSS properties to learning about different technology.
While I haven’t redesigned this site in a long time, I’ve been using subdomains for playing with ideas and stretching my creative muscles. It’s always been fun to explore different topics and see what I can pull off technically.
There’s no analytics. I’m not trying to drive a bunch of traffic to the site and posting it on Hacker News or Reddit or whatever. There no posting schedule, optimizing for when people are most likely to read and share. Posting is random and it can be consumed at will.
I write about what I want to write about and how I want to write about it. I might be wrong about something. I have biases. I am human. I am imperfect. My writing might be informal but I rarely cuss and I don’t see that changing. I don’t use emojis. Historically, it was because encoding was a hassle. Now, it’s because emojis render differently and may give a different meaning than intended depending on the platform or even depending on what generation you’re from. (Thumbs up emoji gang here.)
In a general sense, I’ve tried to do that and in that general sense, I believe I have succeeded.
From a political standpoint, I’ve been quiet and perhaps even a coward. It’s been easy to hide behind the idea that this is a tech blog and not a political one but as we’ve seen, tech is political. It’s difficult to use or talk about different platforms without acknowledging the ethical and non-ethical uses of those platforms.
I am progressive and believe in caring for people. I don’t have any party affiliations. I don’t believe political parties should be treated like a sports team. I believe in human rights and that includes everybody, regardless of gender or sex.
One of the reasons I’ve moved to publishing more of my content on my own sites is because I don’t want to associate with platforms that are money and power hungry, abusing algorithms and advertising. I also don’t want to abandon friends and lose connections because those platforms are the places where they live.
These six guidelines are just that. They’re not hard rules. They’re just ways that I am thinking about how I express myself, both here and on social media.
2025-01-28 01:42:51
I have a desire to write better.
I’m self aware to the extent that I know—or believe I know—that my writing is simplistic. My sentences are short and direct. There isn’t much flourish.
This can be handy when describing a technical topic in a blog post but not very handy when describing a technical topic in what should be a 500 page book. It’s also not very handy when wanting to evoke deep emotions and painting a descriptive scene that immerses someone into the story.
I imagine people as born storytellers but, in reality, I know that it comes from exposure to good work—just like anything else. It comes from study. It comes from practice. I need to learn more. I need to read more. I need to write more.
Maybe a run-on sentence every now and then wouldn’t hurt. Every sentence doesn’t need to be under twelve words long. Every blog post doesn’t need to be broken down into bullet points to make it easier for a reader to scan, dotted with headlines to make it easier for a reader to skim. Maybe I could stop using first person so much. It feels almost narcissistic in how much I use the word I. On a technical topic, I didn’t want to impose. “You should do this. You need to do that.” No, I did this. Take from my retelling on a technical topic what you want. Your mileage may vary. There are no warranties or refunds or exchanges. Carry on with my experiences at your own risk.
But on any other topic? How do I describe what feels indescribable, ineffable. Others paint a picture and I’m throwing paint on a canvas, frustrated that the splatters haven’t magically dripped and oozed into some masterpiece of pointillism as if that’s how it’s supposed to work.
This was another post from the drafts—this time from January of 2020. Can’t say I’ve done much in those four years since writing this to work on my writing. Every now and then I manage a morsel of wordplay that tickles my brain but creating a larger narrative that turns multiple morsels into an entire meal has still escaped me.
[“Escaped me.” These four years haven’t been like The Fugitive where creative writing leaps off a sewer pipe to evade captivity. No, it’s more like it’s been knocking on my door while I lay in bed with the sheets over my head yelling that nobody is home.]
But perhaps with a renewed interest in stretching my creative muscles, better writing will see the light of day.
2025-01-28 00:28:47
They say success is all about who you know but I’d argue—especially in our loosely connected world—it’s all about who knows you.
One path to success—and I believe there are many—is to put content out there to gain an audience. Some of them are easy to do, some are harder.
Here’s a quick list of ideas:
Early on in my career, I made a concerted effort to get my name (and content) onto sites beyond my own blog. I asked to write for Digital Web and A List Apart and 24Ways. I asked a publisher to write a book. I asked to speak at conferences.
Each of those things led to more and more exposure to the point where I had an audience to leverage into other things. It is this formula that I’ve seen others in our industry use very well. They’ve been able to leverage their work into getting better jobs or other opportunities.
You don’t need to be an expert.
You just need to share your experience.
You might be reluctant to share your experience because you feel you aren’t an expert. In reality, sharing your experience of starting out with something can be useful to those also just starting out and it can be useful to those who have previous experience and are trying to make things easier for those jumping in.
As a result of putting yourself out there in this way, people learn who you are. It’s like advertising or marketing. The more you put yourself out there, the more people see it, the more people are likely to remember you.
Don’t expect success to come overnight. You may have spent hours on that well-crafted blog post but that doesn’t instantly translate into thousands of visitors. You may consider your content to be better than someone else’s content that is getting more attention. It very well might be better. But I believe there is a misconception that more work equals more success and that more success means you must be a better/smarter person—neither of which is true.
I started blogging heavily in 2003 but it wasn’t until I experimented with fixed positioning in 2005 that I started to gain some traction. I co-authored books in 2007. I wrote for A List Apart in 2009. SMACSS in 2011. There was a lot of content and projects launched in between all of that.
Not everybody buys into this path. Not everybody can. Not everybody has the time nor the inclination to crank out content in their spare time like this. Like I said at the beginning, there are multiple paths and this is but one.
As a white male in Western society, I recognize that I come from a place of privilege. I have received very little criticism and push back. Whereas, I’ve seen women and people of colour receive much worse, making it harder for them to put themselves out there.
This blog post has been sitting in my drafts since 2018. I’d like to say it was well before the enshitification of social media services but one could argue they’ve not been good for a long time before that. Do you prop up services that you don’t align with morally to build and maintain an audience to boost your own career? There’s only so many bills that get paid with righteousness. I am not here to judge you.
I closed my Twitter account but would I have been more likely to stay on if I was still trying to sell my book? Maybe.
I enjoyed reading Doing Good Better and perhaps is relevant to how we think of what it means to operate in these ambiguous situations. I also think of The Good Place and how they tried to measure what’s good and what’s bad and wow, nobody was good enough for the good place.
As many services prove themselves to be terrible stewards of decency, the pendulum appears to be swinging to a more grassroots, build-and-manage-your-own platform. (That could just be that many of the people I follow are from an era that started out doing just that. Is that reflective of a larger movement? Time will tell.)
As a return to blogging builds momentum, link often, provide credit, and encourage others to do the same. We can also use more collaboration and fun in our worlds.
Three people that I’ve enjoyed following are Jason Lengstorf, Lynn Fisher, and Ana Tudor.
Whatever path you decide, considering the job and political market at this time, may we all find hope and success.
2025-01-23 23:41:02
I stumbled across an old screenshot of text, heavily aged by its multi-generational jpeg artifacts—like looking at the stippled grain of film, telling the story from a dog’s perspective, living an entire lifetime and only catching a small span of its owner’s life.
From there, I thought of the life of those that far exceed those of human life—like a tree. What must a human’s existence seem like to a tree, slowly aging in place, as life streams around it.
My stream of thoughts continue again to my small collection of plants and how I’ve unexpectedly managed to keep them alive—my orchid continuing to bloom heavily.
Taking care of plants is like taking care of humans: small gestures performed occasionally, with the fruits of those actions only seen months or years later, wondering along the way if those actions had any effect at all.
As a parent, I provide guidance in hopes that my boys are full of the positive adjectives we want for our children. And again, it’ll be years—even decades—before I see the effect I’ve had. How many years of therapy will my kids need, as I myself have needed to understand the effect my parents had on me?
As a manager, I wouldn’t know until weeks or months later whether my direction or guidance was effective for my team. Did I provide them the right information? Did I protect them from the inane bureaucracy?
Perhaps that is one of the things I’ve enjoyed most about web development: its immediacy. I type something in one place and view its effects in another place. The reward is quick and encouraging.
Ah, the comfort of opening up that editor, typing some commands, refreshing the browser, and basking in the immediate glow of success. Or failure. Let’s be honest: lots of failure. But that failure is immediate, allowing us to course correct right away. How do I course correct as a parent or as a manager when the failure isn’t immediate or clear?
Then, your kid is being a kind parent to his kids or your team ships that new feature on time to much acclaim. We are filled with pride in their victories and in our small part in it. Watering, at the right time, when it’s needed, allows things to blossom.
Over my lifetime, I’ve found myself in a repeated cycle of starting as an individual contributor and then moving into management. (I suppose starting a family could be framed the same way!) I always felt uncomfortable as a manager. For many of those times I was pushed into management, I don’t think I was particularly good, either. I didn’t know what to do. Watering, at the wrong time, makes things harder to grow.
Thankfully, there are lots of great resources out there to make us better gardeners, better parents, and better managers—resources that either weren’t available or easily accessible twenty-plus years ago.
I, on the other hand, am happy to be an individual contributor. Just give me a to-do list and I’ll live in my little world of instant feedback while the trees (and perhaps even rocks) look on in wonder.
2025-01-16 23:03:37
Sometimes I wonder if doing these recap posts at this point are masturbatory. Fun for me but probably of little interest or at most, an awkward glance by passersby. It’s nice to have a record but if I need to journal, I have one of those. But here we go anyway…
As I predicted a year ago, 2024 was a year of progress.
The big milestone for 2024 was turning 50. Where I don’t normally make a big deal out of my birthdays, it was fun to go all out for once. Mentally, it felt both the same and different. There’s a different feel to saying I’m 40-something versus saying I’m 50. I know it’s all in my head but I have found myself saying “I’m old” more often. Add in all the noises I make trying to stand up and complaining about my back and I’d say I’m a downright cliché. I chuckle when I go out with my high school buddies and we’re all struggling with our declining eyesight, unable to see the menus in dimly lit restaurants. I find 5pm to be the best time to go for dinner, by the way.
My mental health has been an issue for a number of years and I, thankfully, found a therapist a couple years ago that has been a good fit. But it has taken time to drill down through the issues, where they’re from, and learn how to deal with them. Progress isn’t overnight and it isn’t linear, as much as I would’ve preferred it to be.
However, I have reached a level of calmness that has made it easier to deal with the chaos of life. I mentioned to my therapist this week that this past year was more peaceful and he helped me clarify that it wasn’t that my life was peaceful, but that I am more at peace, emotionally. That lack of reactiveness makes it much easier to be present.
Physically, I’m in about the same place. I haven’t lost weight or gained weight. I keep thinking I’ll exercise more and it doesn’t happen. Not sure that will change in 2025! Although as things possibly settle into routine, I might finally put in the focus I need to not only build a regular exercise routine, but better eating habits, too. An apple a day, keeps the doctor away.
My oldest son moved out in the summer and while I had some trepidation, he’s 20 years old and I trusted him to take on that responsibility—not that I had much choice. Sure enough, he has done well and I’m proud of him. He orchestrated Christmas Day and it was nice to have everybody over for the day for the first time since his mom and I divorced. Divorce means making choices and one of them was for my ex to have the kids Christmas Day and I would have them on New Years. Whether that was a good thing or bad thing is hard to say. We all make decisions that we think are best at the time.
My youngest is in his last year of high school and has turned the weekly back and forth between his mom’s place and mine into month-long stretches. I appreciate those long stretches with him at my place, knowing that he may soon be off to college and out on his own by the end of summer.
I completed a couple bucket lists in 2024 and haven’t created new ones yet, which meant that travel wasn’t nearly as plentiful as it had been in previous years. Where I had 1K status on United for a few years, I only hit Gold status for 2025. Without bucket lists driving me here, there, and everywhere, it means that this year isn’t likely to have much travel, either. And I am okay with that.
At the beginning of the year, I had started diving into Swift development but after some frustration, I set it aside. Instead, over the year, I put together a couple fun personal web projects that were very satisfying to complete.
At the end of the year, I contemplated working with some folks on an AI-related project but being required to be in the office deterred me from accepting the offer. If the right opportunity with the right company happens, I’m open to it.
For better or for worse, I continue to struggle with what to put out into the larger world. In some ways, not needing to promote a personal brand has me questioning what I want to publish. Brief ideas of becoming a social media influencer around whiskey or fine dining have gone to the wayside. I closed a handful of accounts that I was no longer logging into, including Twitter, Flickr, and Glass. Preserving my username on platforms is no longer a concern as it had once been, saving me the energy of jumping onto new platforms by the dozen.
Having my public life turned into private strife has made me less interested in putting myself out there. Vague-booking can be entertaining for some but I think I’d prefer to avoid it.
I like staying connected with friends and family and am unsure how best to maintain those connections, given all the possible ways to do so. It’s not just about where I post my updates, it’s also about where I stay informed of other people’s updates. If everybody could just start up their own blog, I’d be all set.
I can’t predict what this year will hold and summarize it in a word. Change will happen, that’s for sure. I’m excited for the year ahead but know that life can always throw some curveballs.
2024-12-13 01:37:12
I get up, get dressed, and meander into the kitchen rubbing the sleep from my bleary eyes while the morning sun reflects off sides of buildings. I grab the portafilter from the espresso machine, give it a clean wipe, and place it under the grinder. I pull out 18 grams of pre-measured beans and pour it into the machine, turning it on, watching the chocolate-coloured fines shoot out. I spread the grounds evenly—sometimes with my prickly distribution tool and other times with just my finger. Then I take the tamper and adjust my arm to apply even pressure, giving it a slight turn to give the puck a polish.
The portafilter is lifted into the grouphead and given a firm twist into place. The scale and cup are placed underneath and the button is pressed to being the extraction. The slow hiss of the pre-infusion and then the first few drops are followed by a more steady stream of fresh, delicious espresso, forming a nice head of crema. I press the button again to cease the process.
I flip the lever on the steam wand, preparing it for the task at hand: creating a whirlpool of light foamy froth of whole milk I’ve poured halfway up in my carafe. The sound, like paper ripping, starts high and slower lowers as the milk warms and is infused with steam. A flick of the lever turns off the rush and I give the wand a quick stroke to keep it clean.
With carafe in one hand, my cup of espresso in the other, I pour the milk quickly and then slowly in an attempt to create a recognizable design. Perhaps a heart or tulip, but more often than not, an amorphous blob of white.
I have realized that I have established many rituals in my life that enable me to be present in the moment. It’s not about the past or the future—it’s about right now.
When I’m making that espresso, I am present in the process. I am all about what is in front of me.
Cooking a meal helps me to be present. Going to a fine dining restaurant helps me to be present. Sitting on a patio with a cocktail in hand, smoking a cigar helps me to be present. All of these might seem like indulgences and they are but I like them because it gives me time to appreciate them and appreciate the now.
That’s not to say I can’t be present with less indulgent experiences. Tonight, I stopped at a McDonald’s drive-thru to pick up some McNuggets. As I sat at home, eating, I could’ve been present but instead was online, distracted. If I sought to be present, I’m not sure I would’ve enjoyed the meal that was more about sustenance than experience. How much do I want to be aware while eating slightly undercooked fries that taste like the oil didn’t want to let go of the limp and overly salty potato?
But I digress.
I like to seek out moments and experiences that keep me present. It’s like meditation. Perhaps interestingly, since I chose it for a career, web development is like that for me. When I get into the zone, it becomes a form of meditation.
The moment when the drum’n’bass cranks out of the headphones, and my fingers are flowing, with boxes and words and boxes with words popping onto screen, coming together into a cohesive thing. Can’t beat it.
As I’ve done less coding these past few years, perhaps it is becoming more obvious why I’ve been seeking out more opportunities for ritual and meditation and presence.
