Need a browser extension for email that replaces:
"We are updating our subscriber agreement"
with:
"We are altering the deal; pray we don’t alter it further"
Microblog
One of my goals this year is getting better at CSS. I joke that my CSS skills peaked in 2015. But CSS has gained a ton of new, really cool things and browser support has been moving quickly compared the days of old.
This talk by Dylan Beattie from NDC London 2026 is a great introduction to what CSS is capable of these days.
I’m also slowly working through a course called CSS for JavaScript Developers by Josh Comeau, which is fantastically done.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhbYveaV0pk
https://blakewatson.com/links/2026-02-10-video-do-it-with-style-rethinking-css/
The CSS Working Group publishes a page with all of the things that they'd like to fix in CSS but can't because the "mistakes" are already in the wild and changing them would break the web—an unforgivable sin. Here are a few of my favorites:
- z-index should be called z-order or depth and should Just Work on all elements (like it does on flex items).
- The alignment properties in Flexbox should have been writing-mode relative, not flex-flow relative, and thus could have reasonably understandable names like align-inline-* and align-block-*.
- It shouldn't be !important — that reads to engineers as “not important”. We should have picked another way to write this.
- Not quite a mistake, because it was a reasonable default for the 90s, but it would be more helpful since then if `background-repeat` defaulted to `no-repeat`.
- Box-sizing should be border-box by default.
And finally, the funniest one:
- Table layout should be sane.
https://wiki.csswg.org/ideas/mistakes
https://blakewatson.com/links/2026-02-10-incomplete-list-of-mistakes-in-the-design-of-css/
I brought my music library over into Doppler. Most of it is stuff that I either ripped or bought back before I started using streaming services. I miss buying and owning music and I think I might start doing that again instead of streaming everything.
She should be allowed to speak to that AI to request reconsideration. I bet she could get that sycophantic clanker to give her 24/7 care in one prompt.
I met a disabled woman who was having her allotted in-home caregiver hours slashed because her state used an AI tool that redetermined her care needs. She is taking them to court, as she should (but shouldn't have to). That is absolutely ridiculous. A horrible use of AI.
When I first learned about D&D, I spent a long time not having anyone to play with. Next week I have not one, but three D&D sessions with three different groups!
This post brought to you by my web app: https://minimalcharactersheet.com/
To anyone that marked the third option, you can totally make a personal website without learning to code. But if you are interested in learning to code, check out my free web book HTML for People. https://htmlforpeople.com/
Do you have a personal website? If so, are you paid to develop software? I know this won't be academically robust, but I'm curious about the number of people who have a personal website and are not themselves professional or semi-professional software developers, compared to the number of those who are.
For purposes of this poll, "professional developer" means have been paid to make software. Boost if this is interesting to you too!
New year, new blog, new RSS feed!
Over my holiday break I played a solo TTRPG for the first time. This is how it went.
https://blakewatson.com/journal/i-tried-solo-rpg-with-ironsworn-starforged/
Sometimes you need graph paper, whether it’s for a digital background or to print out and draw on. Rather than scouring the internet and settling for something subpar, this neat little home-cooked app from @davatron5000 lets you generate a variety of different types of graph paper.
https://grid-paper.daverupert.com
Superwhisper has been my speech-to-text daily driver for over a year now. But I'm constantly seeing other neat ones. This one in particular is cool because it is open source and free to download. https://handy.computer/
Anybody have a go-to (heh) resource for learning Go? I'm mostly considering it for web backend projects.
Every Risk player knows if you want to protect North America you don't stop at Greenland. You grab Iceland too so that whoever has Europe doesn't get their continental bonus. /s
Health care in America is obviously very screwed up. That said, there are resources out there available for people, but it's hard getting the word out about them.
For instance, people with a disability have access to a special savings account called an ABLE account. If you or someone you know is losing benefits because they have too much money in savings, this account is their way out of that problem.
https://www.ablenrc.org/what-is-able/what-are-able-accounts/
I say this as someone who really enjoys writing JavaScript.
https://social.lol/@bw/115901138426144070
No problem exists in this world that can’t be exacerbated by JavaScript.
I've been getting into a solo TTRPG called Ironsworn: Starforged. I have a goal of doing more creative writing this year. I wanted it to be at a slower pace than the normal, tight-deadline, NaNoWriMo-style writing that I often attempt.
I don't usually publish my creative writing, but I decided to publish my playthrough of this game as a website, partly for funsies but also to keep me motivated. This isn't great fiction, mind you. It's a game, so the pacing is a bit different than a normal story.