Weeknotes 25:39
September 28, 2025
Putting on an art show*
My wife and I traveled up to Murray, Kentucky on Friday to attend the opening of my son’s solo art show, Of Methods and Madness. Ryan was the recipient of the “MAGpie Award” at the Murray State University OMAS group’s Annual Student Art exhibition last spring. This award consists of a cash prize, a pie, and the opportunity to exhibit at the MAG (Murray Art Guild).
He started thinking through the pieces for the exhibit over the summer. We are both very proud of his hard work in putting this together. It included several pieces that were very personal and an exploration of the 9–5 workday.
We enjoyed getting to see him talk with peopl…
Weeknotes 25:39
September 28, 2025
Putting on an art show*
My wife and I traveled up to Murray, Kentucky on Friday to attend the opening of my son’s solo art show, Of Methods and Madness. Ryan was the recipient of the “MAGpie Award” at the Murray State University OMAS group’s Annual Student Art exhibition last spring. This award consists of a cash prize, a pie, and the opportunity to exhibit at the MAG (Murray Art Guild).
He started thinking through the pieces for the exhibit over the summer. We are both very proud of his hard work in putting this together. It included several pieces that were very personal and an exploration of the 9–5 workday.
We enjoyed getting to see him talk with people about his work and bask in the joy of his accomplishment.
The artist posing with one of his pieces. He scanned his face with plastic wrap between him and the scanner. He did this everyday after he got up and before he went to work in the morning. The piece consists of the different images printing on transparent film over acrylic. The panels are removable and you can try different combinations. It also looks different based on the angle you are viewing it. 
The piece that won him the award was a video he made for one of his classes.
* Based on the lyrics of Twenty One Pilots new song, Drum Show
- I continued to work hard on editing and updating content for the True Woman ’25 conference which happens later this week. I have built 5 different livestream pages for English, Spanish, Portugeuse, German, and French. Each of the pages have different content and I worked with the different teams to update content and images throughout the week. I have also built five different forms pages that will be part of the the conference takeaway. We are challenging women to join other women to read through the Bible together in 2026.
- We really felt the loss of our guinea pig, Teddy, this week. It is so much of my routine to go to my daughter’s room each day and talk to Teddy or give her a treat. It is hard to believe she is no longer with us and it is hard to retrain the impulse to want to go and see her knowing she is no longer there.
- It was nice to get out of town for a couple of days. I enjoyed being able to roadtrip with my wife. I am glad that we were able to travel up to Kentucky and be part of our son’s special night.
Whimsical animations
The one week registration for Josh Comeau’s course, Whimsical Animations opened this past week (registration for the early release access ends on Tuesday, September 23). I have been following along with the progress since Josh first announced it. I am very interested in web animations and have used them quite a lot in my work. I even referenced a recent article I read on the subject, You Don’t Need Animations, in last week’s weeknote.
Although I am interesting in the course, I have struggled with the decision about buying it or not. I bought Josh’s course, The Joy of React. Josh is a great teacher. But I didn’t finish the course. And I have a history of buying video courses and not finishing them. And although I would like to give some more focused attention to animations, I am leaning toward not purchasing it.
I just don’t think it would be wise stewardship at this time. I recently bought Javascript for Everyone through my employer’s development budget and I have a couple of other courses that I have purchased or have access to. Another contributing factor is the nature of my work has changed. I am not building new sites that offer the opportunities to add purposeful animations to improve the user experience and add delight. So given all of those different factors, I have made the decision to pass on the course for now.
Articles I read
- Anti-*: The Things We Do But Not All The Way (Jim Nielsen)
- Flies (Chris Coyier)
- Chris’ Corner: Little Bits of CSS (Codepen Blog)
- Transitioning from being a developer to a manager (Liam Egen on Piccalilli) – I have thought about making this move several times but my heart was never in it. I like being a contributor.
- Single-colour gradients (Kevin Powell, HTML & CSS Tip of the Week) – I have used this trick/tip several times over the past two weeks. Great solution for when you have text over an image and don’t want to add shading on the image in Photoshop.
- Some well-made things. (Ethan Marcotte)
- In the Future All Food Will Be Cooked in a Microwave, and if You Can’t Deal With That Then You Need to Get Out of the Kitchen (Colin Cornaby) – Psst. It’s not really about microwaves.
- Failures and Open Doors (Geoff Graham)
- Studio Notes #51 (Dan Cederholm)
- Our Daughter Is Getting Married Today (Stephen McAlpine)
- My tongue must tell of a better King (Andrew Roycroft)
- Hegseth puts us all at risk (Timothy Snyder)
- How to Have Courage Instead of Recklessness (O. Alan Noble)
- Another AI reading list: these books are worth your time (Hidde de Vries) – I scanned this more than read it. I am familiar with several of these books though I have not read them. I am not sure I want to invest any more time in this subject.
What I watched
It might be time to rethink box-sizing: border-box (Kevin Powell) – I am not sure I am convinced yet. Kevin started wondering about this after reading Miriam Suzanne’s Don’t Inherit the Box Model.
- Chiefs-Giants (NBC) – Chiefs looked more themselves in the second half.
- Tucci in Italy, Episode 5 (Disney+)
- No Taste Like Home Episode 6 (Disney+)
- Project Runway, various episodes (Samsung TV)
- Ant Man (Disney+) – I love the first two installments of Ant Man. Love the cast and the music.
- Ant Man and The Wasp (Disney+)
- Matlock (Paramount+) – My wife signed us up for Walmart+ and Paramount+ comes with it. We watched this show up until Thanksgiving so we have enjoyed catching up with episodes we missed.
- KU-Arizona State volleyball – We watched the final 3 games of the match on Friday night after getting back from son’s art show and dinner.
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.
- All That Jesus Commanded (John Piper)
What I played
- MLB The Show 20 (Twins)
- NBA 2K25 (Nuggets)