Subscribe via XML-RSS
Subscribe via JSON-RSS

Filter by Tag

Archive

Thoughts on design & technology

This is the space I use to talk about my interests, ideas, and projects. Most of the time, this will be focused on front-end web design and development.

I am, however, a creative with many interests. I may occasionally write about traditional art, illustration, printmaking, book making, productivity, organization, accessibility, ethics, and inclusion in design.

Latest Posts

  1. Skip template evaluation in code blocks

    · #11ty #tutorial

    In my last post, I needed to show some njk syntax as a code example, but 11ty kept trying to evaluate the njk instead of displaying it. In this post, I'll show how I got around this with shortcodes

  2. 11ty - Previous and Next links

    · #tutorial #11ty

    Linking to pervious and next post in a collection is a somewhat common feature that I didn't need until recently. It took me a little bit to work out how to do it since the docs were a little ambiguous, so let's build it together using 11ty collections.

  3. Displaying Git info on the command prompt

    · #tutorial #command line

    Let's look at how to display Git information as a part of the ZSH prompt.

  4. Customizing ZSH

    · #tutorial #command line

    Creating a custom terminal experience is something of a rite of passage for software developers, especially those who use the terminal every day. In this post, I take a tour through my current setup.

  5. Code Comments Revisited

    · #process

    Back in 2019 I made a post about a code comment plugin I had found for VS Code, and how I configured it to fit my needs. Today I wanted to expand on that to show how I go about commenting my code in general.

  6. Resizing a MacOS window with the Shortcuts app

    · #tutorial #process

    If you ever record or share your screen you may have wanted to get the window you were sharing to be a specific size or aspect ratio. Let's look at how to achieve this with Shortcuts.

  7. Working with 11ty Collections

    · #11ty #tutorial

    Create complex and nested collections to handle multiple taxonomies in a site built with 11ty

  8. Making a leather discbound notebook cover

    · #tutorial #bookmaking

    My custom discbound notebook has been a project of mine for a few years. I’ve tried all kinds of covers, both homemade and store-purchased, but none of them ever felt special or personal. Making a leather cover had been in the back of my mind for quite a while, so let's make one.

  9. Website Redesign 2021

    · #personal

    My website has always been a testing ground of new ideas, a place for me to experiment and learn new things, so it’s only natural I do a major redesign every other year or so. However this design marks a shift in how I talk about myself and my work.

  10. Custom Discbound Notebook

    · #bookmaking

    Today I share one of my personal labors of love, a project I’ve worked on for a few years, and one that continues to evolve - my notebook.

  11. Writing Smarter CSS

    · #css

    Authoring more robust CSS with smart selectors

  12. Getting Started with Plausible

    · #analytics #tutorial

    Plausible is a fantastic alternative to existing JS based analytics solutions. Inexpensive, lightning fast, and build around privacy.

  13. Approaches to Web Typography

    · #typography #design #css

    There are a handful of ways we can use what we learned about modular scales when creating the typographical system of our website, from simple single scale systems to fully fluid typography. This article will take a look at each style and implementation, but all of these systems aim to address the question of how to handle text on both small and large screens.

  14. Vertical Rhythm

    · #typography #design #css

    Vertical rhythm is a concept in typography that aims to keep vertical spaces between elements consistent with each other. This creates repeatable patterns that readers subconsciously understand and use to read faster and more accurately.

  15. Typographical Scales

    · #typography #design #css

    In any form of design, one uses a series of measures to plan and layout the product. Measurements create precision, consistency, and promote trustworthiness. In print, common measurements are inches, centimeters, points, and picas. In the world of digital and web design we use pixels and more relative measurements such as percentages.

  16. On a Modern Grid

    · #css

    Back in October, Marvin Danig made a fantastic blog post on the state of responsive web design and the future of CSS frameworks. I wanted to continue some of his points and see how a responsive first grid system might look.

  17. CSS Organization

    · #css #process

    While researching best practices of CSS organization this past year for a huge UI project at work, I ran across several ideas and strategies to solve this problem. My goal here is to digest these ideas and formulate a more comprehensive approach to organizing CSS.

  18. Code Comment Anchors

    · #process

    One of the really cool plugins I found for VS Code is this tool called Comment Anchors. It’s a way of adding more visible, meaningful comments to your code. I’m a really big fan of writing documentation in the code itself, so its nice to have a way to highlight the most important notes.