Week of
June 7th
Interesting Things
- Generate easing gradients for a more natural looking aesthetic Link
Week of
May 31st
Work
- We received our Summer Swag Pack at Wistia so I made an unboxing video Link
Interesting Things
- Making blobs with CSS Link
- How do you figure out the progression past senior engineer? Link
- 40 tips for working remote Link
- "Things I've learned as a Sr Engineer" — Can definitely relate to all of the points in this post Link
- Chrome has a “design mode” that lets you edit on the fly Link
- Some ideas for neumorphic design Link
Week of
May 24th
Side Projects
- Update Work Journal to load from a Notion table. I'm now able to update these entries on the fly from anywhere without needing to re-deploy! Link
- Updated my website to Next.js v10.2 - way easier than expected
- Migrate mdx blog to
next-mdx-remote Link
Interesting Things
- Learned how to create dynamic html elements in React Link
- Yet another email app, Big Mail Link
Week of
February 15th
Interesting Things
- Learned about the
ping tag Link
Week of
February 8th
Interesting Things
- Cool effect created with clip path, now supported in all major browsers Link
Week of
February 1st
Side Projects
- Refining work for number animating component. First time using
useRef and I finally understand when to use it.
Interesting Things
- Capture node screenshot with Chrome dev tools Link
- Mac app that allows you change the app icons Link
- Repository of alternate Mac icons Link
- Configuring event listeners Link
- NPM 7 released with support for yarn.lock Link
Week of
January 25th
Side Projects
- Started working on next video recreating Robinhood number animation
- Using Framer Motion for the first time
Interesting Things
- NextStripe: Simplified server side Stripe + Next.js integration Link
- Tell the browser where to word break, if necessary Link
- You can use
resize: both to make arbitrary elements resizable Link
Week of
January 18th
Side Projects
- Recorded and published YouTube short “Fake Parallax Image Scrolling”
- Recorded YouTube short “Emoji as favicon”
Interesting Things
- Notion icon set Link
- Tool that allows you to create SVGs out of tweets Link
- Use an emoji as a favicon in one line of code Link
- Aspect ratio CSS property coming in Chrome 88 Link
Week of
January 11th
Side Projects
- Pushed new updates to Contact page. Implemented third party form which was a bit tricky in React. Might make a video about this.
Week of
January 4th
Side Projects
- Published video “Building Image Gallery with React and Tailwind”
Interesting Things
- React server component coming to next.js
- Really enjoyed episode of full stack radio with DHH Link
- Really enjoyed episode of Frontend First talking about video editing Link
Week of
December 28th
Side Projects
- Recorded “Building an image gallery” for upcoming YouTube video
- Call with William to integrate with Instagram API
- Built out Film Packages and Meet Will sections of upcoming sarmientomedia.com website
Week of
December 21st
Side Projects
- Working on William’s website—added testimonial cards, research Instagram and Vimeo APIs
- Learned about using
background-attachment to do a parallax scrolling effect with image backgrounds
Interesting Things
- Well something just happened with React Server Component Link
Week of
December 14th
Side Projects
- Recorded new short YT video — “UI Debugging Hack: Use CSS to Create Debug Views” Link
- Discovered the Apple Clips app which is truly a game changer for capturing short form video content AND adding captions all at the same time Link
Interesting things
- Vercel released a conference kit that powered their Next.js conference Link
- Font editor in Chrome dev tools Link
- Building an Image Gallery with Flexbox Link
Week of
December 7th
Side Projects
- Recorded “How I got started” YouTube video
- Recorded podcast episode where we talk about debugging
- Start on React image gallery component
Interesting Things
- How to craft a business oriented developer portfolio that stands out Link
- Interesting to note how other embeddables work Link
- Thread on how to get started in a new codebase Link
- Natural shadows in JS Link
- Tailwind + Next.js rfc Link
- List of Google Fonts Link
- Build a blog with Next.JS backed by Notion Link
Week of
November 30th
Side Projects
- Published first YouTube video
- Record, edit & publish shorts video
- Record and submit “Deploying Storybook” for EmberMap
Interesting Things
- New AWS amplify stuff released
- Gumroad getting rid of location based pay Link
- Open source Firebase alternative Link
- Recap of hooks over the past two years Link
- Some interesting things happening in the space of build tooling (ie sky pack)
Week of
November 23rd
Side Projects
- Start on marketing website for William
- Record and edit first YouTube video - “Adding Persistent Headers to a Next.js App” Link
Interesting Things
- Sticky heading padding Link
- Trick for fading in modals more cleanly Link
- Sizing tap targets for mobile Link
- Three line config for VSCode Link
- TypeScript 4.1 released Link
- Curated list of Google Font sLink
- JavaScript ES12 features coming in 2021 Link
- Notion doc explaining Git and GitHub Link
Week of
November 16th
Work
- Made a month at Wistia 🎉
- Spent some time on the backend side of things fixing a bug in Rails land. Long time since I worked on some Ruby code.
Side Projects
- Recorded podcast episode talking about salary in the workplace.
- Record and edit video on persistent headers in Next.js
- Record video for first PTYA first homework assignment
Interesting Things
- Fancy new Tailwind v2 website Link
- Initial MacBook M1 benchmarks are very impressive Link
- Why have I not been doing all my forms like this? Link
Week of
November 10th
Work
- Replaced some JS code used for dynamic column alignment with a simple
<table/>. Been a while since I needed to use that, but it came in handy. - Working through several bug fixes. Each one teaches me more and more about the codebase.
Side Projects
- Tweaking light/dark mode styling for personal site homepage
- Deployed update homepage Link
- Updated personal site to Tailwind v1.9 and to Next.js v10
Interesting Things
- If you create a separate style sheet for dark mode, you can tell the browser to tell download those separately Link
- Force website into light/dark mode in Chrome developer tools Link
- Icon library for Big Sur Link
Week of
November 2nd
Work
- Did a bunch of pair programming at work. This is hands down the most I’ve done at any job and it’s been great for onboarding.
Side Projects
- Recorded podcast episode talking about take home interview projects and how to get the most out of it
- First time editing a podcast episode! Gave it a shot in Garageband and it worked out reasonably well
Week of
October 26th
Work
- Wistia Podcasts launched to the public
- Paired with several folks on the team most of the week.
- Lots of reading and learning about HLS video
Side Projects
- Signed up for Ali Abdaal’s YouTube course. Excited to get started and learn how to build a channel.
- Self organizing + getting together with Tulio/Boutte to explore launching a podcast.
Week of
October 19th
Work
- First week at Wistia! 🎉
- Deployed my first bug fix
- Getting to know my new teammates
Side Projects
- Recorded next video in the Storybook series for EmberMap: “Working with the Actions addon”
- Messing around with different styles for my personal site homepage
Week of
August 10th
Work
- Figured out a solid abstraction for rendering activity feed text in a way that plays well with internationalized text.
- Researching other activity feed designs. Trying to see what ideas we could pull in to enhance the experience.
Side Projects
- Deployed fixes to work-journal page. Removed card swiping on non-touch devices to allow for text selection. Plus a few other minor fixes.
- Start on revamping my personal website’s homepage. Finally getting rid of that “in progress” placeholder! Made some good progress on the design, but have some tweaking left to do. Gonna keep this first iteration simple.
Interesting Things
- Fortnite kicked off the App Store and responded with epic in game video. Link
- Fall Guys is riding the hype train right now.
- Support for gradients is coming to Tailwind. Link
- CSS trick to avoid jumpy numbers. Link
Week of
August 3rd
Work
- Ember 3.8 upgrade passed QA.
- Found a great use case for the
{{compute}} helper—you can use it inside the yielded block of provider components to access the data before using it in your template.
Side Projects
- Discovered a way to handle auth for LM iOS app.
- Published “Adding interactivity using the Knobs addon” on EmberMap. Link
- Started planning for next video in Storybook series.
Interesting Things
- Tool for customizing your shell per environment. Link
- Use the Lobotomized owl selector in CSS to automate the layout of flow content. Link
Week of
July 27th
Work
- Start work on a new “activity feed” feature. This is the second time I build one of these in my career and I’m excited to tackle the new set of requirements and challenges this time around.
Side Projects
- Deployed blog to my personal site.
- Published “Getting Started with Screencasts” to my personal blog & to Dev.to
- Recorded video for episode 5 of the Storybook series.
Interesting Things
- Bit tech antitrust hearing. It was entertaining to hear these companies talk about how much “competition” they have. Ironically followed up by massive earnings call. Link
- GitHub Codespaces beta invites started going out.
- NASA astronauts who launched with SpaceX return to Earth in splash landing. Link
Week of
July 20th
Work
- Starting Shape Up. I read most of the Shape Up book last week and although I’ve only spent a few days with this new process, it feels like it’s a major improvement. I feel like I’m collaborating more with my team and focusing my time on the work that matters.
Side Projects
- Researching how to build App Extensions for iOS.
- Wrote a post with tips for doing a screencasts. I’ll need to edit it some more before it’s ready to publish.
- Started working on building my blog! Adding it to my existing Next.js site was easier than I expected. I’ll get this deployed at some point within next week.
Interesting Things
- A interesting take on using syntax highlighting to display more information. Link
- Get the best content from your favorite sources, in a daily email. Link
- 18 popular CSS easings. Link
- Code fixer 🤯 This would be a game changer for learning new programming languages. Link
- Houdini custom props are coming to CSS. Link
Week of
July 13th
Work
- Tech debt week: clean up deprecations and upgrade addons.
- Started to learn how to use BaseCamp.
- Read up on Shape Up product development methodology. Link
Side Projects
- Record “Using our first Storybook Addon” video for Storybook series.
- Write up video summary + great writing feedback from Sam.
- Start code and planning for next Storybook video.
- Testing and bug fixes for LM iOS app.
Interesting Things
- Native relative date formatting in JavaScript. Tweet
- Found out about the
<wbr> HTML tag. Tweet - Inline property switching with custom props. Tweet
Week of
July 6th
Work
- Fixing deprecations from Ember 3.8 upgrade.
- Deploy Storybook project to Netlify.
Side Projects
- Planning video order for the rest of the Storybook series with Sam.
- Proof of concept: setting up DocsPage/MDX with an Ember Storybook project.
- Built out transactions view for LM iOS app with Tulio.
Interesting Things
- Neat effect using hover and clip path. Tweet
- Yehuda’s take on people giving up on classes for “largely religious reasons.” OG Tweet Dan/Sophie Respond
- Notion workflow for publishing videos. Looks neat, gonna implement some of these ideas into my workflow. YouTube Video
- Thread on how to write a great cover letter. Tweet
- Robot doing gymnastics. Tweet
Week of
June 29th
Side Projects
- Recorded and wrote summary for ”Working with Context” video in EmberMap Storybook series
- Deployed a placeholder for darindoria.com using Vercel
- Started sketching out UI for work journal
Learnings
- Found out about the
i selector in CSS for case insensitive attribute matching Link - Got up and running with Next.js
- First time using TailwindCSS in an actual project
- First time using React hooks
- I feel way less lost than last time I used
create-react-app - First time using React since hooks were announced
- Still not used to using
className - Rendering lists and conditional elements feels less natural than Ember’s template helpers
- Hooks don’t feel like a natural pattern at first
- Components being just functions is super intuitive
Week of
June 22nd