Microblog

I added a pop-out player on synthwave.live so you can have quick access to playback controls and info about the current track.

Sneak peek of d20’s new icon and website.

I commissioned a favicon for synthwave.live!

I gave Zoom permission to access my Downloads folder. I’m pretty sure that was a bad idea. Fortunately my Downloads folder is 90% boring screenshots.

That moment when you have to search the web because you can’t remember if the person you’re thinking of is still alive.

Spoiler: Steve Wozniak is definitely still alive. Phew. 😅

Sometimes I have an irrational fear of new code concepts or problems.

Example: I put off learning about JS’ requestAnimationFrame for years just because it looked scary. When I took an afternoon to make a little canvas game, I realized it wasn’t scary at all.

Getting over this irrational fear of new things is one of my tips in Finishing side projects.

I hope that one side effect of the pandemic is a lot of new songwriting by all of our favorite artists.

If you want the Simplenote web interface to make the first line of a note a little larger (like it does in the Mac app) I made some user styles that handle that as well as style the note list’s scrollbar in Firefox.

https://gist.github.com/blakewatson/d55e47e34cd777f43271f6bdb803d4bb

If you use these with a custom style extension, make sure you use Stylus and not the official Stylish extension which is filled with tracking BS.

Side projects are awesome, but notorious for dying out before they get completed. I wrote about some of the tips and tricks I use to stay motivated and ship my side projects. – https://blakewatson.com/journal/finishing-side-projects/

I’ve been using Operator Mono as my code editor font for years, but today I grabbed Operator Mono ScreenSmart and it’s great. It especially improves legibility of light themes in my experience.

Week 2 of learning how to make games with the HTML canvas API. I present to you my (simplistic) take on Space Invaders. https://blakewatson.com/space-invaders/

Here’s 100 ideas for coming up with a story idea I thought of during a brainstorming exercise. https://app.simplenote.com/publish/RmcDcD

I wanted to play with HTML canvas a little bit so I made this simplistic pong game. Making it was a lot of fun. https://blakewatson.com/pong/

Adobe is discontinuing Flash after 2020. No more updates and it won’t even play Flash content after that date. I hate Flash as much as the next person but there are so many great old Flash games that will be made unplayable; which is kind of sad.

Pro tip: if you feel like your DuckDuckGo search isn’t getting the results you’re after and you are thinking of checking Google, add “!sp” to your DDG search. That will search Startpage, which is privacy-friendly Google results.

Made this with #chromemusiclab https://musiclab.chromeexperiments.com/Song-Maker/song/5600990213439488

The crazy thing about the speed of light is that it’s not even that fast. https://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html

“I wanted to walk through the empty streets. And feel something constant under my feet. But all the news reports recommended that I stay indoors.”

Just getting rid of some malware with CleanMyMac X.

TIL VS Code can enable/disable extensions on a per-workspace basis.

Here are @zeldman‘s tools for slow design in an anxious world. 🐢

• Big type
• Hierarchy
• Minimalism
• Art direction
• Whitespace
• Branded
• Authoritative

If your app is gonna support Markdown syntax, then at least support the basic typographical elements. I can’t stand this behavior I see in some apps where bold and italics work but links, lists, and blockquotes don’t.

Lately, I’m really into synthwave mixes on YouTube. I’m compiling them into a playlist. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLs2mlyRcw6kQThkOPNYcKVXlUoYlGyqPN

When I see a well-written error message that not only tells me what’s wrong, but also how to fix it, I’m like… FIX IT YOURSELF if you’re so smart then… sheesh.

No one:

shannpersand: Now you can code in Comic Sans: https://github.com/shannpersand/comic-shanns

Annoying (to me) UI patterns:

• Hidden scrollbars
• Menus requiring sustained mouseover
• Text on top of busy images
• Newsletter signup modals
• DIY form controls
• Infinite scroll
• Autoplaying media
• Cookie disclaimers
• Alerts when leaving a site

No one:

Me: a browser-based Yahtzee clone with personal high score tracking and RANDOM.ORG integration. https://blakewatson.com/rdo3/

I’m still rocking macOS Mojave. At this point I wonder if I can make it to the next major release.

I really love the Rainier – Retro theme for VS Code. https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=joytrekker.rainier