A good way to start the day is by checking for major npm pwnage.
I like to think of myself less like a human and more like a future case study.
On Writing for Publications
Lessons from an incapable fool with a byline.
Notes on experiences and takeaways from writing professionally for a range of publications. Notes on pitching articles, writing outlines, collaborating effectively, taking feedback, ensuring good work, and providing your author details.
https://vale.rocks/posts/professional-writing-advice
Sometimes I feel useless, but then I recall the experience of trying to use npm’s search functionality and suddenly feel extraordinarily capable.
I’m proud to announce that after spending the better part of half an hour painstakingly tweaking and refining an animation, I’ve decided I don’t like it and that I’m deleting it.
All the tech CEOs went from ‘There is no AI bubble’ to ‘When the AI bubble pops’ real quick.
Non-technical folk will (probably) bungle your email on a custom domain.
Emails are centralised to a few major platforms such as Gmail, Outlook, and iCloud. When you have an address straying from these usuals, people oftentimes get confused, which leads to bouncing emails.
TLDs straying from the familiar .com, .net, and .org are a common cause of issues. Frequently, people add one of the TLDs they’re familiar with after the actual address. For example, an email on my domain vale.rocks might be example@vale.rocks, but some people try to send an email to example@vale.rocks.com.
Another common issue is people assuming all emails end in gmail.com, which leads to addresses such as example@vale.rocks@gmail.com or example@vale.rocks.gmail.com.
You must ensure you know your audience. This probably won’t be an issue with a more technical crowd and is less so when people needn’t manually enter an address and it is instead filled for them, but you should be wary when targeting a casual group.
Don’t lose leads and business because of your snazzy email address.
Sometimes weekends on Bluesky are really dead. Other times, they are extremely active.
I’m yet to discern any patterns or otherwise figure out the cause.
Not every day you get a physical e-mail from the United States.
These rad stickers landed in my letterbox courtesy of one Mat ‘Wilto’ Marquis.
Everyone says OKLCH like ‘Okay El Sea Haich’, yeah?
Popped over to SpaceHey to check out discussion of an early 2000s indie musical project, and I loaded a Windows 3.1 Hot Dog Stand-themed group where the first account I saw had a profile picture with the text ‘this man ate my son’ below a photo of David Dixon’s Ford Prefect.
The web isn’t all bad.
My vacuum cleaner broke, so I got a new Next.js branded one which I can be certain will continue to suck for years to come.
One of my photographs has apparently been used in this AOL article about protecting your garden from frost.
https://www.aol.com/articles/protect-garden-frost-too-tips-173139152.html
I’ve obviously peaked. Things can only go downhill from here.
The Attention Is All You Need Paper and Its Consequences
Something I observed while manually reviewing every single site on personalsit.es:
Some people are told that they’re a ‘sight for sore eyes’. I’m often told I’m a ‘sore sight for eyes’.
Most AI integrations are like having a backseat driver you didn’t invite into your car.
The chat platform Stoat already has a wordmark, but no logo. Here are some of the concept designs I put together:
Wrote Leveraging modern CSS color features in your design system over on zeroheight.
Wrote Some practical examples of view transitions to elevate your UI over on Piccalilli.
Zohran Mamdani is a rare case of a politician not simply being the least bad but instead being genuinely good. I am so glad to see him triumph.
Oh, making an accessible website is too complex for you to bother? Sounds like you aren’t very good at your job then, eh?
I have no allegiance to your platform. I do not build my castle on foundations of sand owned by you. I own my content, and it resides safely in perpetuity within my personal website.
‘You’ve read your last free article’ reads like ‘You’ve taken your last breath’.
I painted this skateboard ~6 years ago and I fear this indicates I’ve long since run out of new ideas.
Benefit of Cringe
When reflecting on the past, I, like many others, cringe. However, I’ve come to consider this not as a source of regret but as a positive signal of growth.
I once heard the perspective that cringing about the past indicates growth from that time. You’re identifying that there are things you did at that point which were regrettable and which you would endeavour to avoid now. It is representative of the difference between your current self (your updated models, values, and social calibration) and the past self who performed the offending action.
Much of the time, things we look back and cringe about now we did not find cringe-worthy at the time, indicating a change has occurred.
Thus, cringe works somewhat as a measurement of growth. If you do not cringe at all looking back at past actions, then it implies one of two things:
I consider cringing as valuable data evidencing that self-correction and learning mechanisms are functioning.
Just updated my dev rig. Pretty sweet!
If anyone knows how to install Emmet and LSPs on this bad boy, let me know.
