Kobo-pilled | Adam Stoddard
On switching from Kindle to Kobo.| aaadaaam.com
My latest obsession is a very pretty, very shiny Pro-Ject Audio Carbon Debut DC turntable. Listening to music on it has quickly become my favorite way to listen, and not just because I get to use words like “plinth” in casual conversation.| AAADAAAM
I was Twittering away the other day, and Prettier came across my feed. Prettier turns the conceptual moorings of linting on its head. Instead of “Well, actually”-ing you when you make a commit and forcing you to fix whatever pedantic issues it’s complaining about, it just… fixes them.| AAADAAAM
Not too long ago Jason Fried wrote about his experience shopping at Apple Stores, in which he described the common occurrence of walking into a store and being immediately set upon by a too helpful Apple rep (the “bouncer”).| AAADAAAM
For many many many people, the term “marketing” is interchangeable with words like “spin,” “flim-flam,” “malarkey,” and of course, “bullshit.”| AAADAAAM
You hear a ton of different advice on the right and wrong way to go about designing an app or website.| AAADAAAM
A generalist designer, axiomatically, is someone who doesn’t specialize in any particular area of design. They’re not UX designers, UI designers, content strategists, illustrators, product designers, copywriters, graphic designers, front-end developers, or animators, even though their work may touch every single one of those roles. The proverbial “jack of all trades, master of none”.| AAADAAAM
Across the clients and companies I’ve worked with, more often than not I’ve had to sell the value of hard to measure stuff like branding and designing for emotion. Chances are good I’ll have to keep selling folks on this subject, so I thought it’d be handy to have a link I can send folks that outlines my thoughts. This link, specifically.| AAADAAAM
The pendulum swinging back from “recreate everything in [insert SPA framework]” to “multi-page apps are pretty good, actually” is a timely reminder that focusing your energy on mastering the fundamentals is usually a smart bet.| AAADAAAM
I’ve had my eye on Astro, so I thought I’d take it for a spin by re-building this here website. I stuck with 11ty in the end for a variety of reasons, but the experience inspired me to see if I could replicate a few Astro niceties in 11ty. Turns out yes, thanks to 11ty’s page variable.| AAADAAAM
Personal sites are great venues for exploring those half-baked and high-contrast ideas that are illuminating, but impractical for commercial work. No funnels, no customers; just a blank canvas and the freedom to explore it.| AAADAAAM
The thing about complexity is that the cost rarely seems obvious upfront. It usually starts as a reasonable desire, with a reasonable set of initial tradeoffs that make you think the benefit of taking on more complexity is worth the cost.| AAADAAAM
“Consistency” is a word you hear a lot in tech. Designers talk about it (do not play the “drink when you hear this word” game with this word at a design systems conference), developers talk about it, everyone! But when it comes to consistency, it’s important to recognize that consistency comes in different flavors.| AAADAAAM
For a long time I didn’t know what to do with web components. There wasn’t a lot of writing around them outside of the spec, all the stuff around shadow DOM and templates made it feel inaccessible, and I just didn’t see a compelling reason to bother with any of it (something something PWAs).| AAADAAAM
Designers and product-folk like to think of ourselves as craftspeople. We care about making things great. Is it possible to do it at scale? Shot and chaser:| AAADAAAM
Software — and software companies — break down into two distinct modes:| AAADAAAM
A great thing about the multi-page view transitions spec (read this post from Dave Rupert for an intro) is that it’s pure progressive enhancement. If a browser doesn’t support it, things work the way they’ve worked since Mosaic.| AAADAAAM
I wasn’t a Tailwind fan. Between the heavy-handed approach, the needlessly antagonistic marketing, and a community prone to dog-piling valid criticism, I didn’t see much to be a fan of. But life comes at you fast, and I found myself starting a job at a company that was wrapping up a migration to – you guessed it – Tailwind.| AAADAAAM
Something that’s been on my mind lately is the value of not encapsulating html, css, and javascript into singular components. Sometimes – if you value keeping things simple – teasing apart behavior and presentation into composable pieces makes more sense.| AAADAAAM
Tech companies are scrambling to stake their claims in the AI gold rush, and — on top of the legal and ethical woes they’re leaving in their wake — a lot of them are shipping surprisingly bad product. The tell? If the name focuses on “✨AI”, brace yourself.| AAADAAAM
The Vision Pro has arrived. With it, came a splashy Vanity Fair piece featuring Tim Cook reclining at his desk, stoically indulging in some spatial computing. The moment I saw the shot, I was reminded of the iconic photo of early Apple designer Susan Kare, also reclining at a desk, with a smile on her face and a Mac perched behind her. I posted about it, because I thought it was an interesting juxtaposition of two points in Apple’s history.| AAADAAAM
I’m a fan of side-quests; professional tangents that fuel your interest, sharpen your craft, and pay long-term dividends towards whatever your main quest is. I tend to have a few running at any point; some might last a few weeks, some off and on for years.| AAADAAAM
Our house has one of those old, giant whole-house fans that looks like it was ripped out of an airplane and grafted into the ceiling. We love to run it on cool nights when we can leverage Sacramento’s fabled Delta breeze to maximum effect. The steady current of cool, citrus and jasmine-scented air it produces is deeply satisfying after a sun-scorched day.| AAADAAAM
My journey with 11ty’s global data went something like this:| AAADAAAM
I haven’t touched the design of this website in a few years, and I’ve mostly been content to let it collect a patina of dust and cobwebs. One of my explicit goals with this iteration of my website was to make it re-design resistant after all.| AAADAAAM
The older I get, the more I find myself drawn towards seasonality and cyclicality. I find that it both gives structure and meaning to the present while satisfying that deep seated human need for change.| AAADAAAM
While putting the finishing touches on the latest release of Grease, the words “5 years ago” caught my eye in GitHub. 5 years? Working on this? Of all the things I could do with my free time, of all the side-quests that fizzled out, why am I still working on this?| AAADAAAM
the personal website of Adam Stoddard| aaadaaam.com
There's only directly useful defaults, or not.| aaadaaam.com
Going “full CSS Zen Garden” with modern CSS.| aaadaaam.com
