Today was my kid’s first day of kindergarten. It’s half days this week to help the kids adjust and give the teachers a chance to decide how to split up the classes, then starting Monday it’s full day. O was totally ready. He wanted to leave early for class, and as soon as the teachers told the kids they could go in, he was off. No goodbye, not even a glance over his shoulder. He waddled off with the new Mario backpack he had picked out exclaiming, “I’m walking like a penguin!” (We...| The Darth Mall
Let’s suppose we have a blog built with Eleventy. And let’s further suppose that we want our URLs for our blog posts to be based on the publication date for the post; something like /blog/<year>/<month>/<day>/. Seems perfectly reasonable, right? There’s a footgun1 here. Any time we publish on a day whose date matches the month — 1 January, 2 February, 3 March, etc. — the <day> part of our URL is going to be stripped out and we’ll be left with /blog/<year>/<month>/.| The Darth Mall
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It was last Thursday, folks. Two days ago I utterly failed to put a new bike tire on a bike wheel. I’m 42 years old; I estimate that I’ve been changing bike tires for over 30 years now, and two days ago I failed to get a bike tire onto a bike wheel. I took my wheels, tubes, and tires into my local bike shop to find out if I had somehow managed to buy the wrong size tires (twice), and they got the tire on in under 5 minutes. (Cost me $15.) I was pretty embarrassed.| The Darth Mall
Roughly a year ago, I decided to stop keeping a list of the books I wanted to read — my to-be-read (TBR) list. That decision brought with it a profound sense of relief. I felt lighter, as if I’d set down a burden I didn’t even realize I was carrying. I haven’t missed it. At all. And I never lack for something to read.| The Darth Mall
5-year-old: My Honda Fit is not like a normal Honda Fit; it can go from 0 to… 5 miles per hour in… 3… minutes!| The Darth Mall
For much of my life, taking public transit has been A Choice. I think New York City is the only place I’ve lived where taking public transit was typical. Even in cities like Pittsburgh or Boulder ― which have decent public transit ― people seem to default to driving themselves places. Because even when the transit is ‘decent’ it is still often slower than driving.| The Darth Mall
Because Ben asked…| The Darth Mall
4-year-old: You got shot in the head by radar.| The Darth Mall
Miriam Suzanne wrote a great post that is largely about how readily and easily people ignore the harms of the current crop of AI tools; how frustrating it is to listen to people bend over backwards trying to come up with some way to actually use these things. It’s poignant (and, at times, funny). I related to it a lot. I read it twice. I think it’s worth your time.| The Darth Mall
(Four-year-old yawns)| The Darth Mall
Tracy Durnell published her principles for her website, which I thought was an interesting exercise in self-reflection, and it got me thinking about the principles that guide my own decisions for this website.| The Darth Mall
Heard about this 100 photos in 365 days challenge over on Notes by JCProbably. Sounds fun. Spread the word if you or anyone you know enjoys photography.| The Darth Mall
Me: Let’s go home and I’ll make some lunch.| The Darth Mall
I came across this post from Mark Nottingham on what RSS needs. I’ve written before about my conflicting feelings towards RSS, and I think having a body responsible for interoperability between feed readers as Nottingham suggests could address some of those issues; if there was a standard for handling footnotes and web components, for example. The web is a really rich publishing platform, and the only place the format is more denuded than RSS is email. Of course, this is also a feature of f...| The Darth Mall
Tracy Durnell is starting a new series on her blog about wrestling with this mindset of always wanting more. If you’re not already following Tracy’s RSS feed maybe now’s the time; her’s is one of my favorites. She shares lots of interesting articles and is a generally thoughtful person.| The Darth Mall
Today I learned that Robin Sloan — author of Moonbound — writes software. He has this great story about how he wrote a messaging app for his family. He also articulates very well this desire that many people who can program computers have: that more people should learn to code so that they can write their own little softwares for themselves and be thus liberated from the tyranny of Big Tech and the marketplace.| The Darth Mall
When I first saw this headline from Streetsblog — I Tried to Hate-Ride a Waymo. Turns Out, I Loved It — I was prepared to hate-read it. Normally I wouldn’t bother hate-reading something, but despite my initial reaction to the headline, I do trust Streetsblog, so I thought I’d try to set aside my preconceptions and see what this was about. Then I checked the byline and I saw it was written by Anna Zivarts (bylines in my RSS reader are not as salient as they are on the Streetsblog websi...| The Darth Mall
Erin Kissane, of the Fediversalist Papers, has announced the launch of her new studio, wreckage/salvage. Even though I am off of social media now, I am excited to see what she comes up with, so I’m subscribed to the RSS feed on the site. Personally, I’m pessimistic that it’s possible to have pro-social social media — at least in the sense of social media that is one big network of everybody like Twitter, Facebook, or even the fediverse. But I’m subscribed because I think if anyone c...| The Darth Mall
These Magic: The Gathering cards are gorgeous. I got rid of my Magic cards years ago, but I am genuinely tempted to buy these just because I love Helvetica Blanc’s art so much. I mean just look at “Teferi’s Ageless Insight”!| The Darth Mall
In a contest between specific suggestions and vague suggestions, the specific suggestion wins. This, according to Mike Monteiro, is how to make choices using The Strong Choice Doctrine.| The Darth Mall
“Nature, it just does whatever the fuck it wants when you aren’t looking.” I think that’s the best description of gardening I’ve ever heard.| The Darth Mall
My brother once said of someone, “they strike me as being very intelligent, but not particularly thoughtful.” This distinction has had a profound effect on me. It’s hard for me to pin down what intelligence is, exactly. When I think of someone who is intelligent, I think of someone capable of understanding complex ideas, perhaps someone who has assimilated a lot of knowledge and makes connections between ideas. I also tend to think of speed: someone who can reason quickly, or assimilate...| The Darth Mall
fraidycat seems like a really cool way to follow blogs and other websites. It’s kind of just bookmarks that check the sites for recent updates. It seems like it solves a couple of problems:| The Darth Mall
Over on StreetsBlog, Kea Wilson makes a strong case for how we need consequences, not punishment, for reckless driving.| The Darth Mall
Mandy Brown wrote this lovely, thoughtful piece about attention, social media, and her own creative process. There’s a lot I love about Coming home. In particular, Mandy’s description of how being on social media has come to feel like a distraction so all-consuming that it is like a kind of madness felt familiar.| The Darth Mall
Hollie implores parents to be more thoughtful about the videos they share of their kids. I’ve been very circumspect about the photos and videos I’ve put online of my own kid. But I confess — and am even a little ashamed to admit — that Hollie’s framing never occurred to me. I was concerned about protecting him from corporations now and in the future that might gather up all those photos and videos as part of some profile that they could wield against him for their own benefit. Holli...| The Darth Mall
I appreciated this post by Mike Monteiro on hobbies. The idea that ‘hobby’ is capitalism’s word is intriguing to me, and I think I’m mostly convinced of the truth of that assertion. Certainly, the points Monteiro makes about how we live within an economic system that prevents us from making a living doing things we love — things that matter to us — strikes a chord for me. It echoes some of the points that David Graeber made in Bullshit Jobs: the idea that noble pursuits like nursi...| The Darth Mall
Chances are pretty good that you’ve already seen How to Monetize a Blog, but maybe you haven’t read it yet. I bounced off of it the first time I came across it because in the first couple of paragraphs the satire is pretty subtle, but it’s a fun read. It’s the kind of writing and design I wish I did.| The Darth Mall
I enjoyed reading about Cassey Lottman’s “productivity streams”. I’m kind of a sucker for people writing about the tools and systems they use to organize themselves. Sometimes I’ll come across something I want to try myself. Often I’ll see a lot of similarities between my own organizational systems and the author’s. Occasionally I’ll find something radically different from anything that works for me, which I generally find interesting.| The Darth Mall
Ben Myers shared this very excellent video with me about these tactile maps of intersections (YouTube) that can be installed along with audio crossing signals so that pedestrians with visual impairments know what to expect when crossing the intersection. The video is pure catnip for me. It has everything: mobility infrastructure, accessibility, an (apparently) ideal design process, industrial design sketches, scandinavia.| The Darth Mall
Chances are pretty good that if you're reading this, you know what the fediverse is. You may even be on the fediverse (I’m currently taking a break from it). So it may interest you to know that Darius Kazemi and Erin Kissane have published their findings into governance on Mastodon and Hometown servers. They’ve also published a blog post with a kind of status update on the project, and it looks like they’ll be publishing some findings that didn’t make it into the report over on their ...| The Darth Mall
There are so many mundane social problems with the technology here and now that don’t even remotely range into the territory of Skynet, Paperclip Maximizer/Grey Goo, Roko’s Basilisk or The Matrix. So many huge, conspicuous, world-changing events have to happen before any of those sci-fi situations are even close to plausible, yet those are the things getting the policy attention.| The Darth Mall
I came across this talk a little while back with some great tips for Git (YouTube). I’m a sucker for Git tips (see also Vim). Here are a few of the ones that jumped out at me.| The Darth Mall
I am inspired by Chris over at uncountable thoughts writing about their experiments with RSS to publish some notes as RSS-only. Seems like a good solution for posting links I find interesting or just half-baked thoughts I’m not ready to write about more thoughtfully. I always got a little hung up about the IndieWeb idea of posting notes to my site and syndicating them to social media. It always felt like I was cluttering up my archives. Only making the notes available in RSS solves two prob...| The Darth Mall
Typically, if you make lists, you probably make lists so that you don’t forget something. You make a shopping list so you don’t have to run back to the store for the basil leaves you forgot. You make a to-read list so that when you are looking for something to read, you can remember the name of the book your friend recommended. Because I play traditional Irish music, I know a lot of people who keep a list of the tunes they want to learn. I used to do this, too.| The Darth Mall
Where I grew up, we were a 30 minute drive from anywhere except a gas station and an elementary school; and even those were 6 miles from my house along a road 5 lanes wide with no sidewalks. I could not go anywhere or do anything unless my parents could drive me. Until the summer that I turned 14.| The Darth Mall
How do we create a just, equitable society?| The Darth Mall
First and foremost let me state that this post is not about excluding people from the IndieWeb community. I am not here to be a gatekeeper. Rather, I am trying to call attention to a disconnect I see in how I’ve seen the IndieWeb movement promoted and how the IndieWeb community presents itself.| The Darth Mall
Aperture| The Darth Mall
Aperture| The Darth Mall
Aperture| The Darth Mall
Aperture| The Darth Mall
For my photo gallery I decided to use the JPEG files as templates in Eleventy.| The Darth Mall
Aperture| The Darth Mall
Aperture| The Darth Mall
Aperture| The Darth Mall
I think RSS1 is great, but I sometimes feel like it’s at odds with one of my favorite things about the web. For one thing, I see less of my friends’ cool websites. A lot of the websites in my feed reader are really nice to look at. Some of their owners do periodic redesigns which are fun to see. I feel like I’m missing out a little on these lovely personal websites because I nearly always interact with them through my feed reader, which flattens all of the personality into a minimal, le...| The Darth Mall
My friend Hollie invited me to play| The Darth Mall
Dave Rupert wrote a post about how to handle being accessibility-shamed that’s been making the rounds. It’s got some really solid advice for how to handle criticism (of any kind), so if you haven’t read it, I definitely recommend it.| The Darth Mall
One of my favorite uses of Web Components is as a container for HTML elements that helps manage some aspect of state. In this case, we can wrap a couple of <button> elements to create a set of toggle buttons, like you might use for a theme picker on your website. Let me know what you think over on the fediverse: @darth_mall@notacult.social.| The Darth Mall
Wildfires have been a going concern in Colorado for a long time. When I was in elementary school, we had to evacuate and stay with friends for a couple nights because of a fire up Waterton Canyon. I’ve watched fires burning from my apartment windows while I packed bags in case we were given the order to leave. And it’s getting worse as we warm the planet; fire season seems to last all year now—the most destructive fire in Colorado’s history happened in December of 2021 (about a dozen ...| The Darth Mall
I turned 40 yesterday. I don’t mind getting older, it’s happening all the time. After all, I’m older than I’ve ever been. And now I’m even older. And now I’m even older. And now I’m even older. I’m older than I’ve ever been, and now I’m even older. And now I’m older still.1| The Darth Mall
Alex wrote about his productivity stream, which is something I’ve been thinking about for myself a lot lately. This kind of stuff is a bit like catnip for me, so I couldn’t really resist writing about my own tools and workflow, despite the fact that I’m experimenting pretty heavily with some changes to the process at the moment. I’m not sure how these things will work out, but I also know that there were several ways in which I felt like what I have been doing up until recently weren...| The Darth Mall
The other day, a friend of mine mentioned that they thought they’d discovered a problem with the sorting machine at their local Post Office which might have explained why they had so much mail getting mis-delivered. It appeared that the machine might be transposing two letters in the address and sorting the mail incorrectly. They were wrestling with whether or not to contact the Post Office about this because, they said, they hate to point out problems when they can’t offer solutions.| The Darth Mall
I just noticed that Jimbo Mathus recorded “Long Black Veil.” It’s not a surprise. “Long Black Veil” is a pretty popular song among the folk/roots music crowd. Tim O’Brien recorded it on Fiddler’s Green, and We Banjo 3 did it as well. It’s got a great chorus that’s easy to learn and fun to sing along to. It’s not a surprise that it’s popular.| The Darth Mall
I wrote previously about some changes I made to the design of this site; changes that made text that was previously invisible on the page, but still exposed to assistive technology, visible to everyone. These changes were prompted by a debate in the accessibility community about whether or not it would be good to have a native mechanism to create “visually hidden” elements—that is to say, elements that aren’t visible on-screen, but which are represented to people by assistive technology.| The Darth Mall
I just finished listening to the latest episode of The Joy of Why, Is There Math Beyond the Equals Sign?, in which Dr. Eugenia Cheng discusses category theory. It’s a fun episode. Dr. Cheng’s enthusiasm for her field is infectious. Category theory is a branch of mathematics I’d never heard of before this evening, and it is apparently a very abstract field. So you might be surprised by how much of the conversation centered on sociology. It’s definitely worth your time.| The Darth Mall
If you’re at all involved in web development and concerned with accessibility, there’s a good chance you saw one or more articles recently debating the idea of adding a native way to visually hide elements in the DOM without removing them from the accessibility tree. It kicked off when TPGi published a breakdown of the .visually-hidden class and my friend Ben published an article suggesting that accessibility on the web might benefit from having a native, spec’d mechanism to do this. Th...| The Darth Mall
Generative “artificial intelligence” (AI) seems to have replaced “crypto” and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as the topic du jour. I burned out on this topic long before chatGPT launched and shifted the conversation from image generation to large language models (LLMs), so I’ll keep this brief. It surprised me today when I thought to myself, “if these large language models change software development and design the way some folks seem to think they will, that might be the change that ...| The Darth Mall
Lately I’ve been feeling like my publishing workflow is interfering with my blogging, so I’ve been looking into flat-file content management systems like Kirby.| The Darth Mall
Lately I’ve been feeling that NPM has had a small negative impact on web development workflows.| The Darth Mall
I wonder how many people care about HTTP methods anymore.| The Darth Mall
File this under stuff nobody wants to hear about, but I’m going back to alphabetizing my CSS declarations.| The Darth Mall
Henry Desroches wrote about his decision to leave New York City and move back to Denver.| The Darth Mall
The other day, Andy Bell published a great post about how developer experience is a poor excuse for building shitty websites and it got me thinking, “What even is ‘developer experience’? Is it necessarily at odds with user experience?”| The Darth Mall
Robb Owen had a nice post about how his frontend development process is more like making a bowl from clay than it is assembling Lego bricks.| The Darth Mall
There’s a great bot on the fediverse: TMBG Lyrics.| The Darth Mall
Last year I started buying music again.| The Darth Mall
I have too many interests.| The Darth Mall
I signed up for bringback.blog.| The Darth Mall
For the first time in years, I had occasion to take my 27mm pancake lens off of my camera and use my 90mm.| The Darth Mall
An enormous tiered yellow sphere lit from above; the sphere is made of short, progressively smaller cylinders stacked atop one another| The Darth Mall
A black and white photo of a dense city pocked with skyscrapers; rays of sun shine through hazy clouds over the city, and in the distance sillhouettes that hint at the presence of mountains| The Darth Mall
Andy Bell wrote about how much he’s enjoying being on Mastodon.| The Darth Mall
The topic of content warnings — often abbreviated “CW” — has been coming up quite a lot over on the fediverse1.| The Darth Mall
My interest in Astro has been growing slowly, and it’s causing an absurd reaction in my brain: the more interested in Astro I become, the more guilt I begin to feel because it feels disloyal to Eleventy. It is, of course, absurd to feel disloyal to a piece of software. One might as well feel disloyal to a hammer, but here we are.| The Darth Mall
For the past couple of days we’ve been getting some much needed rain in Colorado — we’re getting quite a lot this morning. Every time I look out our front window and see the rain running down the gutters and pooling on the asphalt in the street I think, “What a waste.” So much of that water is just going to evaporate, instead of soaking into the soil to help alleviate the drought we’ve been in for decades.| The Darth Mall
We just finished watching Netflix’s adaptation of The Sandman.1 I absolutely adored it! It’s been over fifteen years since I read the comics and I had forgotten how much I loved these stories. “The Sound of Her Wings” is as beautiful in the show as I remember it from the comics. What a treat this was.| The Darth Mall
Recently, Chris Fedinandi wrote about the constructor| The Darth Mall
I think it’s hard to overstate the brilliance of Sir Terry| The Darth Mall
A few months ago I started bullet journaling after| The Darth Mall
Eleventy uses the debug package to log debug messages to the console. If something is going wrong with your build, you can set the DEBUG environment variable to view log messages from specific parts of Eleventy, or all of it. The Eleventy docs refer to this as Debug Mode.| The Darth Mall
In the grand tradition of web developers everywhere, I have redesigned my website. Hopefully for the last time.| The Darth Mall
For the last ten years, I’ve been using the same image for my phone’s lock| The Darth Mall
When you're working with Nunjucks (or| The Darth Mall
I don't use Docker for my development environments as| The Darth Mall
Home page of the newly launched Science On a Sphere websiteToday we launched the new website for Science On a| The Darth Mall
Programming isn't hard, it’s just extremely poorly explained and| The Darth Mall
I originally saw this on CSS Tricks.| The Darth Mall
Finally! I'm very excited to have webmentions up and running (I hope). I've been| The Darth Mall
Aperture| The Darth Mall
Aperture| The Darth Mall
I design and build websites, web applications, and data visualizations. I’ve been known to play fiddle from time to time and board games.| Evan Sheehan
I design and build websites, web applications, and data visualizations. I’ve been known to play fiddle from time to time and board games.| Evan Sheehan
This is a clever trick (probably too clever) for setting up Eleventy to manage asset pipelines like SCSS and JavaScript transformations, as well as using hashes in filenames for cache busting.| Evan Sheehan
What am I missing? Why do people still trust Mozilla with their data?| Evan Sheehan
Or, It Turns Out Cool URIs DO Change| Evan Sheehan
What if you used your static site generator to output PHP instead of HTML?| Evan Sheehan