Posted 2 days ago

Week of November 23–29

I decided to take 3 PTO days this week to combine with the 2 days that my employer gives us for Thanksgiving. It was nice to have the week off from work. It gave me time to enjoy spending time with my family, playing video games, watching movies together, and time to read books and catch up on some articles in Instapaper.

I appreciated Thanksgiving Day more this year after spending last year isolated from my family with a stomach virus. It was so good to be back with my family and celebrating our normal traditions.

Here is what Thanksgiving looks like for us:

• My youngest makes muffins on Wednesday so that we can eat muffins for breakfast on Thursday morning
• We start the day by watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. My wife and daughters really enjoy the musicals and the Rockettes.
• Next, we watch the National Dog Show. I remember watching the first one when my oldest was just a year old.
• The dog show ends around 2 p.m. We usually eat our Thanksgiving meal within an hour of the dog show being over. We enjoyed our feast of turkey, stuffing (Stove Top), cornbread dressing (what my wife grew up with), mashed potatoes and gravy, green bean casserole, pasta salad, corn, yeast rolls, and Hawaiian rolls.
• After the meal, I help clean up. After that, everyone usually scatters for a couple of hours.
• Depending on how long people scatter for, we will either start putting up our Christmas tree or eat dinner or switch the order if it is later in the day. This year we did a catch what you can dinner (I had a turkey sandwich with stuffing and potatoes. After dinner, we put up the tree.
• After the tree went up, we usually watch a movie together. We use to have a tradition of watching Miracle on 34th Street (1994). This year, we watched Frozen: The Hit Broadway Musical.

On Friday, we ended up splitting up. My son and I went to a college basketball game at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. That has become a tradition for us these past four years he has been in college. My daughters and wife went to see Wicked for Good. We came back together and ordered Cava and then watched Robin Hood, the animated Disney movie. It was one of my favorites as a kid and I had been wanting to watch it again recently.

Watching youngest in Charlotte’s Web My son made a protest sign for one of his classes. He traced a printed version and used paint markers.

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Articles I read

• Studio Notes #59 (Dan Cederholm)
• Blue Beanie Day (Awareness Days)
• Evangelism Tips from Romans 1-2 (Darryl Dash)
• Essentials (Chris Ferdinandi)
• The line and the stream. (Ethan Marcotte)
• Trimmed and Set on Fire (Tim Challies)
• In Prayer, Structure Serves Spontaneity (Trevin Wax on The Gospel Coalition)
• The New Lab Rats For Gender Drug Tests (Stephen McAlpine)
• The Danger of Defensive Sanctification (Tim Challies)
• Knowing Jesus Should Make Us Better Stewards of Creation (Sam Allberry on The Gospel Coalition)
• A garden in bloom (Chris Ferdinandi)
• Leavings (Doc Searls)
• Background Image Opacity in CSS (Jim Nielsen)
• Keyframe Offsets (Adam Argyle)
• The Global Church Needs More than American Worship Songs (Trevin Wax on The Gospel Coalition)
• The Secular Liturgy of ‘Goodnight Moon’ (Dan Olson on The Gospel Coalition) – On a separate note, I found out that the Boston Sheraton Hotel has a Goodnight Moon Suite.
• Infinite Marquee Animation using Modern CSS (Temani Afif on Frontend Masters Blog) – I wish support for these features was more widely available. I built this type of component several months ago and I had to repeat the content three times–two for the marquee animation to run smoothly and a third for a pause functionality that the client wanted.
• Using @starting-style and transition-behavior for enter and exit stage effects (Adam Argyle) – I played around a bit with this using a dialog Codepen I forked from Kevin Powell (back when dialogs became widely supported). Still trying to figure out how to animate the dialog on close when clicking the backdrop. The positioning is off. And had trouble animating the backdrop when closing the dialog closes. (same link)
• Why use React? (Jeremy Keith)
• Are You Still Gospel-Centered? (Jared Wilson on Desiring God)
• Writing, Context, Cleverness (Joe Crawford) – An interesting article sparking thoughts of how much context should we give in our writing to be more inclusive to newer readers. I also enjoyed exploring Joe’s site (I read his articles with RSS) and thinking about incorporating some more pages on my site like Now or Colophon.
• Treat People like Adults (T. M. Suffield)
• It’s been a very hard year (Andy Bell) – I appreciated Andy’s vulnerability in this post. I wish I had done more to promote his courses during his Black Friday sale. I bought JavaScript for Everyone earlier this year and highly recommend Piccalilli’s courses. I would love to work at the sort of agency that Andy has built with Set Studio.
• Internet Handle (Dan Abramov)
• Telling a Better Story (Todd Pruitt)
• light-dark() isn’t always the same as prefers-color-scheme (Stefan Judis) – Good to know. I would like to switch over to using light-dark() on this site.
• Everything Is Television (Derek Thompson)
• Television is the Worst (Jonathan Snook)
• Is Artificial Intelligence Demonic? (Stephen Steele)
• You Are Not Paid to Write Code (Tyler Treat)
• Installing web apps (Jeremy Keith)
• Studio Notes #60 (Dan Cederholm)
• One thing churches do well (Dave Rupert)
• Getting Creative With HTML Dialog (Andy Clarke on CSS Tricks)
• Move Modal in on a… shape() (Chris Coyier on Frontend Masters Blog) – I like this interaction.
• When to Use Modal vs Dialog Components (Team A11Y Collective)
• Use overscroll-behavior: contain to prevent a page from scrolling while a <dialog> is open (Bramus) – I am excited about this. At some point in the near future, we are not going to need any JavaScript to use the dialog element.
• Open Source Pledge – I like the idea behind this initiative. “Open Source Pledge is a group of companies with a shared commitment to paying the maintainers of the Open Source software we all consume. Our goal is to establish a new social norm in the tech industry of companies paying Open Source maintainers, so that burnout and related security issues such as those in XZ and Apache Log4j can become a thing of the past.”
• Snotmotion’s squidgy stop-motion shorts reenact the slapstick qualities of sport (Sudi Jama on It’s Nice That) – Another golden find from Dan Cederholm. Watch their shorts on their YouTube channel.

Inspiration

Dan Cederholm shared several links in his Studio Notes this week that I enjoyed.

• Modern Illustration Archive – An archive of illustration from c.1950-1975, shining a spotlight on pioneering illustrators and their work. I shared the link with my son (a graphic design student) and he was really excited about it. He may use it for inspiration for several projects for his senior show that he is working on.
• Flowers of Fire: Illustrations from Japanese Fireworks Catalogues (ca. 1880s) – This is pretty cool to look at how they illustrated what the fireworks would look like when exploded.
• All Aboard! (Vedad Siljak) – A collection of TYCO catalogue illustrations. I had a TYCO race track when I was younger. I also like the one of the “Chattanooga Choo-Choo.”

What I watched

Forevergreen (YouTube)

How to use Web Components, and why you’d want to (Kevin Powell on YouTube) – Watching this got me excited about Web components. I plan to start Scott Jehl’s course in the new year. Already have an idea of making something I built recently into a Web component.

• You didn’t lose your attention span. It was stolen. (Jared Henderson, YouTube)
• Snortmotion Short ? 3 (YouTube) – I relate to the last one as my club went flying into a water hazard on my first hole the first time I played golf.
• Everybody Loves Raymond 30th Anniversary Reunion (CBS) – My wife and I watched most of the episodes of this show. It was also fun to see Phil Rosenthal in his element.
• Watson (CBS)
• Dancing with the Stars finale (ABC) – I was more engaged with reading articles on Instapaper but I did stop and watch some of the dances. My oldest was the most excited about it as she has been watching this season.
• The Muppets (2011) (Disney+)
• Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade (NBC) – This is a family tradition. I appreciated it more this year after being sick last year and being isolated from my family on Thanksgiving day.
• The National Dog Show (NBC) – Another family tradition. I watched the first one the year my oldest was just a little over a year old.
• Frozen: The Musical (Disney+) – I enjoyed the Broadway show adaptation.
• Robin Hood (Disney+) – This was one of my favorite movies as a kid. I have been wanting to watch it again recently.

Books I am reading

• Sunday Matters (Paul David Tripp) – I read one devotional a week.
• Everyday Gospel (Paul David Tripp) – Reading through the Bible this year with this devotional.
• Telling a Better Story (Joshua Chatraw)
• Not Old, Not Young, Not Done. (Christopher Ash) – I finished this one on Wednesday. One of the favorite books I have read this year.
• All That Jesus Commanded (John Piper)
• Keep Going (Austin Kleon) – I picked this one back up on Saturday.
• Star Trek and Faith: Volume 1 (Mark Hansard) – Mark is one of my good friends. I am excited to read this as I was along for the journey over the last several years as it transformed from idea to published work. I also helped out in a couple of ways.

Walking

I was hoping to build on the momentum from last week. And with taking time off, I thought I would get out more often. Less structure meant I did not get them in. It rained on Tuesday. And I didn’t make time the rest of the week. I did get out Monday and my youngest went with me.

• Sunday – 4 miles in 1 hour 14 minutes
• Monday – 3.75 miles (estimate) in 1 hour

What I played

• MLB The Show 20 (Twins) – I went 4-1 this week.
• NBA 2K25 (Nuggets) – I went 2-1 including a comeback win against the Celtics. My loss was a 3 point loss to the Suns. I had tied it but was unable to keep them from scoring despite tough defense.