Recently updated blogs

The holidays are upon us once again. Maybe it’s because I’m getting older or maybe it’s because we’re much more settled in Chicago this year and not dealing with moving or Covid as we had been for the last few years but I think it snuck up on me faster than I can ever remember it in the past. Usually the holidays are one of my favorite times of year …

I was back in hospital today. I needed an echocardiogram to check my heart was OK and that my lungs were clear of blood clots. It was, and they are, so all good. This is the account – primarily for future me – of how I ended up there. Read more.

Most of my multi-page designs are typically created in Adobe InDesign, but for simpler layouts, I sometimes opt for Illustrator. While InDesign offers more advanced tools for managing text styles, the key advantage lies in its use of Master Pages. However, Illustrator also supports threaded text, allowing you to link text areas and have the content flow from one frame to another, along with several useful options and features. Create …

In a previous post, I said that a web component’s connectedCallback and disconnectedCallback should be mirror images of each other: one for setup, the other for cleanup. Sometimes, though, you want to avoid unnecessary cleanup work when your component has merely been moved around in the DOM: div.removeChild(component) div.insertBefore(component, null) This can happen when, for example, your component is one element in a list that’s being re-sorted. The best pattern …

Agrivoltaics can increase grape yield by up to 60%French agrivoltaics company Sun’Agri says that two of its facilities increased grape yields by 20% to 60% in 2024, compared to areas without solar panels. The PV modules helped regulate temperature fluctuations, reducing summer heat peaks and winter temperature declines.

This is a rough transcript based on my notes for the sharing session I presented at the online Groove meetup in June. I've shared the slides before, but I think it's worth putting the content in writing. The full slide deck is accessible on GitHub. css-doodle is a project I started many years ago. Initially, it was used to draw some simple graphic patterns, but over time, it evolved into …

The examples used here are from the weekly challenge problem statement and demonstrate the working solution. Part 1: Contiguous Array You are given an array of binary numbers, @binary. Write a script to return the maximum length of a contiguous subarray with an equal number of 0 and 1. Let’s not concern ourselves with any particular efficiencies and just analyze all the subsets of the given numbers! The main loop …

In past seasons, I've written holiday gift guides focused on what you might buy other people. These are always tricky; you should usually not buy other people clothes, since you probably don't know what fits them or their style as well as they do. I also listed out some good black friday sales, generally, but you might want more specific guidance. But Jake Woolf inspired me. He showed me the …

I got myself a coffee advent calendar and I have to admit it was more aspirational than anything. I don’t drink enough coffee. But the packaging is nice. Web developers around the world have for years given a nod to Saturnalia solstice Isaac Newton’s birthday Yule wassailing mummering end of Gregorian calendar year Christmas with advent calendars covering web-related topics. As a result, you may (should) recognize some of the …

In our 86th episode, we talk timepieces (again), and then we somehow segue to bees. Brace for it. Enjoy it now, or download for later. Here’s a handy feed or subscribe via Overcast or iTunes. https://traffic.libsyn.com/rands/theimportantthing0086.mp3

Thanks to the excellent Why Don’t YouTube, over on Bluesky, I was made aware of another short-lived Noel Edmonds curio. Noel Edmonds' first new series after The Late Late Breakfast Show's enforced cancellation was Whatever Next?, as seen today in 1987, a single series light oddity in which two pairs are challenged to predict the outcomes of street dares, queries and stunts.— Why Don't YouTube? (@whydontyoutube.bsky.social) 2024-11-30T19:00:02.086Z Coming so soon …

The city is a map of stories, and in them we are both the inhabitants and the explorers. Zadie Smith (from NW) At Psychogeographic Review I write about the books, poems, maps, photographs, paintings, films and music that help us to construct a living map of the places where humans live. The following is my personal and very subjective list of some of the books that have informed this discussion …

(⏱️ ~10 min read) Another month, another collection of shiny objects (stuff I found in the the past month that were valuable/inspiring). See also, previous Signal Boosts for Oct/Sep, Aug/July, June, May 🩸 Kurzgesagt gets to the bottom of a science myth ↪ 😭 Paper: AI poems are now "more human than human" ↪ 🇺🇸 U.S. Election-related analysis ↪ 👄 The Substance ↪ 🩸 Kurzgesagt gets to the bottom of …

I’ve played 186 games of Forest Shuffle this year. I like it a lot. Here are some new games I’ve played during the past few months. Fishing. Friedemann Friese’s latest curious trick-taking game is a lot of fun. This is an evolving game with a lovely ebb and flow to it. The game starts simple. You play a normal game of trick-taking and score a point for every card you …