2025-04-01 23:20:06
A number of year ago, I watched Jiro Dreams of Sushi. Here is a man that has devoted his life to creating the best sushi in the world. I admire someone so dedicated to the task. Jiro sought out the best fish and the best rice and refined his process. New employees spend years working on just a single aspect of the sushi-making process.
Maybe with some clichéd inevitability—and not unlike so many other people that have watched the documentary—I’ve thought about how this relates to my own craft of web development.
What does it mean to master the craft of web development? Can something that changes so frequently ever be mastered? Can mastery be attained when we’re changing jobs every one, two, three years? Can mastery be attained when we’re rewriting codebases every few years?
Perhaps mastery is when the result serves its audience in the best possible way.
Of course, that goes down a rabbit hole of whom the audience is and what best means. Does McDonald’s serve its audience in the best possible way? Would anybody say they’ve mastered the art of food or service?
The imagery of a master of craft is that of a lone creator, toiling away for years, perfecting every facet of their creative output.
As a web developer, I imagine having an intimate knowledge of each of the layers of development: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. To understand each one also means understanding how much or how little of each one is required.
Where sushi—more specifically, nigiri—has its rice and fish, there’s also the rice seasoning, the soy sauce, and the wasabi. Perhaps a yuzu kosho to enhance the bite? Or aburi-style?
It’s one thing to build something with HTML. It’s another to know how to effectively add CSS and JavaScript without overdoing it. A master should also understand the user experience. How do we interact with the page?
Any part of development that improves the end result leads to mastery. The end result is what people “consume”. It is the product. It is the experience.
Using a framework or switching frameworks or using a bunch of tooling doesn’t in and of itself lead to either of these. They might help you build more quickly but that doesn’t mean mastery if what you’ve built frustrates the people that use the product.
Therefore, when it comes to web development, mastery comes from understanding how people use your product and the different contexts in which they do, whether that’s desktop, tablet, mobile, finger, keyboard, mouse, screen reader, day, night, over fast or slow speeds. Are they a first time visitor or do they frequent your site?
If we were to follow Jiro’s and his apprentices’ journeys and imagine web development the same way then would we ask of our junior developers to spend the first year of their career only on HTML. No CSS. No JavaScript. No frameworks. Only HTML. Only once HTML has been mastered do we move onto CSS. And only once that has been mastered do we move onto JavaScript.
And yet, going back to the point of how quickly our industry changes, spending a year on CSS would require another year to master the new stuff that came out requiring another year to master the new stuff that came out and so on. Not very practical when, at the end of the day, we need to build things that people use and we need to get paid. Bills don’t just pay themselves.
Perhaps, as Hamid says, “iterating, tending, evolving, and continuously improving—results in a collection of work that embodies their creators’ intentions and aspirations for care.”
Running a personal site can be a way to practice mastery. It allows me to focus on individual facets, improving my knowledge and skill to achieve mastery. With an ever-changing technology landscape, there is plenty of opportunity to continue that journey and build on top of the skills that we have, creating new techniques.
I think of the web that we had in the naughts when our curiosity and explorations seemed to create an explosion of new techniques and approaches shared to the world at large.
I would enjoy seeing a return to more people curating their own garden, mastering their craft, and sharing it outside of the capitalist hellscape that is modern social media.
I originally wrote most of this post back in 2020, including the Jiro reference. I was reminded of this draft while reading Hamid’s thoughts on craft.
I am also reminded of John Allsopp’s Dao of Web Design that is a week away from a quarter century old.
I also read Greg Storey’s post on nostalgia and careers and my takeaway was perhaps a return to new creative explorations can lead us into new possibilities.
2025-03-25 01:47:14
It’s been a long, cold winter.
Most winters have included some travel that have allowed me to escape the winter doldrums. It’s not that I specifically tried to escape but it was always a nice break. The winter of 2021 was the first time where, due to lockdowns, I really noticed the effects of sticking around all winter. It gets a bit claustrophobic.
This particular winter, I had thought I might plan a trip somewhere warm, looking at places like Brazil or Australia. Life happened instead and I’ve been mostly managing a teenager dealing with school, work, driving lessons, and sewing lessons—chauffeuring him from place to place. It’s his last year of high school and I am enjoying this extra time with him before he is likely to move out in the fall for college.
For spring break, we took a trip to Paris and even the brief couple days of 15° weather upon arrival was enough to lighten my mood—and my clothing, choosing to sport shorts for the comparatively balmy weather. (Considering all the Europeans still wearing their long jackets, my Canadian-ness stood out.) The temperature dropped below 10° for the rest of the trip but remained above freezing and that too was enough to feel excited in anticipation of summer warmth to come. My fashion-conscious kid preferred the cooler weather to be able to layer properly. While I bask in the summer, that kid is definitely a spring/fall kind of kid.
I feel the ice is slowly melting.
Ottawa is making sure to not let us forget about winter, though. Just this morning, we were gifted with a few centimetres of snow and possible another dozen or so may find its way our way by week’s end.
With quips of becoming the 51st state, on-again-off-again tariffs, and other unexpected world events, I’m grateful that the weather is perhaps the worst of my complaints. (Although, getting an infection and losing my hearing in my right ear is something I could complain about but even that feels like a mild inconvenience for the time being. Hopefully my hearing returns in a week or so.)
In the meantime, I’ll continue with my routines. Sunny days will return and I will say, it’s all right.
2025-03-24 11:37:19
I have many memories from when I was a child of road trips with my mom. We lived in Calgary and would head off in whatever direction. Maybe to Drumheller, where I’d indulge in my love of dinosaurs and gawk at hoodoos. Or towards Banff, into the Rocky Mountains.
My mom said I always made a fantastic road trip companion as I usually fell asleep along the way. When I wasn’t sleeping, I was doing invisible ink activity books or listening to music. Lots of music. Road trips were filled with music.
Due to my parents divorce and him being nearly a decade older than me, I didn’t grow up with my brother. While I didn’t really get to know my brother, I did learn of his love of music. He made mixtapes that we’d listen to.
Many of the songs have been hardwired into my brain. I Don't Like Mondays. Senses Working Overtime. Yes’s Roundabout, in particular, often echoed the very drives we were on.
“Call it morning driving through the sound and in and out the valley. In and around the lake, mountains come out of the sky and they stand there.”
I haven’t been back to Calgary since we moved when I was 13. It would be nice to revisit and see the mountains come out of the sky again…
2025-03-23 05:15:40
I’ve been enjoying blogs a lot more, especially as a way of staying connected and up to date with friends, a slew of which have been tagging each other to write up their answers to some blogging questions. Susan tagged me and thus, here’s my entry.
I started getting into developing web sites professionally in 1999 and would write down solutions to problems I had run into. In 2001, when the .CA domain became open to all Canadians, I registered and moved my technical articles over. It wasn’t until 2003 before I discovered that “blogging” and blogging platforms was a thing.
I started with Blogger but very quickly moved to MovableType to manage my blog.
From what I remember, MovableType had wanted to start charging for their platform, which quickly drove people to other platforms, leading to the quick ascent of WordPress.
(It’s been 15–20 years since then so my apologies if I’m misremembering things. Sure, I could look up the details but let’s just pretend we’re shooting the shit in a cafe somewhere. [Also, shooting the shit is an odd colloquialism.])
I had shifted into PHP development and chose CakePHP as my framework of choice. As such, I built my own blogging platform on top of CakePHP and have been running on that ever since.
I write everything in Markdown first, then convert to HTML and paste into a web interface for my server. It’s not ideal because I need to upload my images via FTP. Ugh. There’s a reason most of my posts are text only.
I used to be spurred by technical hurdles that I’d do research on and wanted to share. I’d also weigh in on the technical topic du jour. The blog was subtitled “tips, tricks, and bookmarks on web development” and that’s what I did.
These days, it’s whenever creativity strikes me. Travel often triggers my creativity and so I’ll take notes so that when I’m back at home, I can refine my thoughts.
Ninety percent of the time, I publish write away. I’m not overly precious about my writing. Things will sit as a draft when I have a post that has a bunch of thoughts but seems to lack a good conclusion or a good thread for all the thoughts to hang on. Eventually, I’ll either find some inspiration to tie it altogether or I delete it for good.
On a scale of technical (10) to personal (1), my current writing sits around a 4. It’s not so personal as to talk about intimate details about my life. It’s not a personal journal; I have an offline journal for that. But it’s no longer about web development and as such, the stuff I’m writing about is often personal but still reaching into my history of web development. An example is my post on Rituals where it’s a general post but connects to my love of web development towards the end.
At this point, I’m writing for me. Kinda sorta. I know other people read this. Friends and foes, lovers and haters, colleagues and confidants. I’m getting older. We’re all getting older. Perhaps my stories amuse you. Perhaps they’ll make you consider an idea one way or another. Perhaps they’ll distract you from the world for a brief moment. And if nobody reads my words, that’s okay, too. So, I say again that I’m writing for me—but I’m writing to you.
I’m really proud of my post on the Creative Use of Bitwise Operators. That post is 16 years old and in that time, I seem to have misplaced the images. But I was and am very proud of the solution I came up with for laying out the events. I revisited the concept 8 years ago by redoing it using CSS Grid.
I’d love to simplify things as I’ve done with a number of my other sites and switch to using Eleventy. The “problem” with having a nearly 25 year old site is the level of cruft I’ve built up over that time. This site is a mishmash of dynamic and static content. I’ve found remnants of things recently that I had long forgotten about, like a resume from 2009. Revamping this site is so daunting that I’ve avoided it.
I would like to redesign it, though, to stretch my design skills some more, and play with browser goodies. The popularity of my blog really took off because of those experimentations. I used CSS fixed positioning in a creative way. I love seeing people—like Lynn—do really cool things. Perhaps it’s time to bring back Flash loaders.
2025-02-20 11:21:41
I just read through Kevin Kelly’s 50 Years of Travel Tips and it’s a solid list.
I don’t know that I have any tips. People travel differently. My ex loves cruises. I see the appeal but it’s not my preferred type of travel. Neither is sitting on a beach (“earning 20%”) for a week. Although, in this -20º weather, sipping margaritas at a swim-up bar is very enticing.
My preferences (which you can call tips, if you’d like):
E&E (engagement and experience) over R&R (rest and relaxation).
Organize around passions, not destinations. That has been restaurants, bars, coffee, cigars, and photography. Doing so has pushed me to locations I might not have gone otherwise, like the Faroe Islands or a train station on the outskirts of Munich.
Be a tourist. Do all the tourist traps. I’ll take the bus tours. I’ll do the guided tours. Give me the lay of the land. Give me some history. Give me some context.
Take photos. It’s a way to document the trip but it’s also a way for me to be creative. They’re also a way for me to enjoy being a tourist and enjoy my passions.
Airbnb ain’t want it used to be (and as I write this, news of an Airbnb exec joining the American Govt’s DOGE isn’t great). But I like the concept and I’ve had great success with using them in the past. There’s VRBO and other platforms. My rule of thumb has generally been a hotel for short stays and Airbnb for longer ones or where the sleeping arrangements are more complicated. I’ve even done just a room in somebody’s place, if I really need a bed to crash on for a night or two.
Pack light. I’ve done three-week trips with a carry-on. I have no problem hitting up a laundromat. Throw the clothes in, go grab a bite to eat, then come back, throw everything in the dryer, grab another bite to eat. Or hang out and read for awhile. Or find a hotel or Airbnb with a washer and/or dryer.
Skip the souvenirs. I don’t want a house full of knick knacks. Almost all of the souvenirs I’ve brought back for my kids have been lost or broken. The photos and memories are my souvenirs. (That’s not to say I’ve completely avoided souvenirs but they’re few and far between and I lean on artwork to fill my spaces.)
Don’t be afraid to repeat locations. Clearly a privilege of having travelled as much as I have, there’s a charm to visiting the same place more than once. I’ve already learned the lay of the land and can take a more relaxed approach the second (or third or fourth) time around.
Travel should be fun and I recognize that it can be stressful. Flights get delayed. Reservations get cancelled. Travelling with kids is parenting in another location, often with less supports.
2025-02-10 01:01:15
I recently subscribed to Robb Knight’s blog and came across a post on utility knives. In a small bit of serendipity, I recently rediscovered my favourite utility knife.
Having a little knife for opening up boxes and whatnot always felt like an unnecessary purchase. I usually just flip open a pair of scissors and use a side to slice through the box. It’s mildly unwieldy but sufficient.
I’ve been slowly cleaning the house, getting rid of things that aren’t needed anymore. With one kid having moved out and the other on the cusp, their toys and clothes from when they were ten no longer needed to be taking up space in the house. A collection of boxes had also accumulated under the basement stairs, many of which were placed under there when I moved into the house 11 years ago and then never touched again. You know, like that box of serial cables and phone cords. Or a box of random paper and pens that were once an office drawer quickly dumped to be moved but never sorted.
In amongst all of these artifacts was an old knife. A 30 year old knife.
This is my old knife from when I used to work at Toys R Us all those years ago. To me, this is the perfect utility knife. I enjoy its simplicity. A quick tap on either end extracts or retracts the blade. New blades are easily replaced. It’s small and unassuming. And the Fisher-Price stickers give it just the right amount of je ne sais quoi.
