Oatmeal
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** Valentines, patron saint of bees, plague, and sushi **
Hot on the heals of recently being interviewed by Manu, I was interviewed by Kristen Foster-Marks from the Developer Success Lab. It was a lot of fun! We had a wide ranging conversation, but often came back around to the importance of“learning … ⌘ Read more
** Two good stories **
I just finished reading The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi. I loved it. When I finished A Memory Called Empire I assumed it’d be my most favorite book of the year — it has already been unseated!? I mean, if I kept track of favorites. As I finished The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi I immediately wanted more, so looked to see if there is a sequel (alas, no (or not yet, I hope!?)). I’ve got a gigantic l … ⌘ Read more
** Arkady Martine and Virginia Woolf **
As an undergrad and a grad student I was obsessed with Virginia Woolf. Woolf’s writings appeared in my citations pretty much regardless of the class or subject area I was writing on.
I have recently finished reading an engaging and lovely novel by Arkady Martine,“A Memory Called Empire.” Of course, I was excited to pick up the sequel, but, also, I had this feeling, this Woolf’s scent — I’ve always felt that Woolf’s nonfiction was more lucid and p … ⌘ Read more
** 📸 Photo **
It’s been very damp. It was, however, recently sunny for a bit. Here is the proof of the sun’s continued existence. ⌘ Read more
** A scrappy fiddle **
I’ve had fun playing at implementing a very basic visual programming system over the last few days. I like the direction I’ve s … ⌘ Read more
** New year **
The last weeks of 2023 have been very enjoyable. Other than having to deal with a cascade of car issues, there’s been a lot of time to hang out with the partner and kids, wander around outside, and poke at fun personal projects…and I mean, work, too, but…you know.
The other evening I pulled together a fun Markov chain toy. It isn’t anything fancy, but I wanted the ability to feed a madlib style script to the program and have it use that as a template to fill in. The resulting program is beak and … ⌘ Read more
** Accessibility-first **
Whereas mobile-first design and development invited folks to think more expansively about the physical reality of the devices people use, accessibility-first design and development invites folks to think more expansively about the lived experiences, and physical reality of actual people. ⌘ Read more
** an approximately programmer-shaped person **
I was recently interviewed by Manu for his People and Blogs series! It was a great honor to be suggested by Piper for that, and I had a blast responding to all of Manu’s questions.
The December Adventure is in full swing. There are so many fun adventure logs this year. I’ve been mostly focusing on building toys with [Decker](https://beyondloom.com/ … ⌘ Read more
Political speech is something I shy away from. But, of course, that is political.
Sometimes there are things that you can’t ignore. There are, perhaps, many such things…right now there is one that I’m particularly close to, close enough that I am made to look because I am in some way directly implicated in it.
I am Jewish. I was raised so, and live so today.
Being raised a Jew I was constantly taught to“never forget.”
There seems to have been a forgetting.
A genocide is being perpetrated against Palestinians. I r … ⌘ Read more
** Updates from the end of summer **
Today was the last real day of summer for us. Tomorrow the kids go back to school.
You know those last few weeks before the dark of autumn — the ones that hold the last bursts of summer? Those days where you try to squeeze in as many chill summer vibes as humanly possible?
I’ve bee … ⌘ Read more
** summer’s lease hath all too short a date **
After the excitement of last summer I was hopeful for a chill one this year. So far, so good.
We visited the island where we used to live and started our family. We saw a few friends, and visited some fa … ⌘ Read more
** of vast distances, connection over them, and being made to feel alone; of water catchment, soil, and bits **
Anomie, a word for your consideration.
The dictionary of cyborg anthropology defines anomie, in part, with this anecdote:
In everyday life, the modern vehicle and the daily commute is one of the most isolated moments an urban human can experience. T … ⌘ Read more
** week notes **
Last year I set out to rekindle my reading habit. That went well. This year’s reading has been enjoyable, but I’m not cozy with the ratio of non-fiction to fiction I’ve read this year…non-fiction (especially of the computing persuasion) far out balances the fiction I’ve read. I think this is mostly because I’ve been mired amidst a fiction book that I’ve found to be a slog…but enjoyable, too. I’d have abandoned it and moved on, elsewise. Onward!
Spring is quickly making way to summer h … ⌘ Read more
** of array programming, lightsabers and some thoughts on permacomputing **
A bit of this and that, some kind of mishmosh.
Over the last few weeks I’ve been reading a lot about array programming systems like J, K, Q, APL, and BQN. I’ve been intending to add a page to the wiki about them, but havent gotten to that yet. Consider this a little promise that I’ll do that sometime soon. I’m interested in array programming less because I think it’s particularl … ⌘ Read more
** week notes **
Some things of note, links mostly:
First and foremost, I found a suitable pinboard replacement in link hut! Shout outs to my buddy Bruno for the tip.
Here’s a bookmarklet I wrote to make it a bit more ergonomic for how I like to roll,
javascript
javascript:(<span class="hljs-function"><span class="hljs-keyword">function</span> (<span class="hljs-params"></span>) </span>{
<span class="hljs-keyword">const</span> tags = prompt(<span class="hljs-string">'A space separated list of tags.' ... ⌘ [Read more](https://eli.li/2023/03/31/week-notes)** week notes **
I’ve been experimenting. I’ve been concocting a recipe for vegan kugel, and rediscovering little features and edges of my website I’d forgotten I baked in. Like chocolate chips hidden in an oatmeal raisin cookie.
One chip most recently re-discovered: support for per-page custom styles?! All I gotta do is include an optional bit of meta data, bespoke-css, that points to a style sheet. I may play with this feature more. I do love myself some css. I can tell exactly when in my life I added this feature because th … ⌘ Read more
** Ideas for making accessibility and equity a core part of the software development lifecycle **
In accessibility and the product person I said
we need to make accessibility a core part of our processes
Here, I want to talk about that in more detail. I want to briefly explore what making accessibility a part of core processes looks like, and how that is different from centering access … ⌘ Read more
** Moon maker **
I recently re-read Peter Naur’s“Programming as theory building”. Afterwards I set out to write my own text editor. The paper posits that it’s really hard, if not impossible, to fully communicate about a program and sort of gestures at the futility of documentation…what spun around inside my head as I read was that our primary programming medium — text files — is silly. Like, some folks would totally 100% s … ⌘ Read more
** Accessibility and the product person **
This post is a slightly modified version of a talk I presented to the product practice at my work. It presents a few ways that product designers and managers can help to move accessibility forward. It is a little bit different than what I normally share, here, but, I thought it may be interesting to some folks.
[. The good news is that the repair has officially cured my brain bleed! The bad news is that they saw another vessel that looks primed to bleed; I’m due for another repair procedure sometime in October. I’m pretty bummed to not be done with this ordeal, but trying to remain optimistic that this new one was caught before it bled and because the surgeon s … ⌘ Read more