Microblog

BTC 👀

Web app developers: make dark mode in your app a device-specific setting rather than an account-specific one. Your users might use different devices in different contexts (a light or dark room for example).

Adding an option for defaulting to system preferece is one way to do that.

Who knew watching microbes could be so relaxing. Do yourself a favor and take a peek into the soothing odyssey that is Journey to the Microcosmos. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBbnbBWJtwsf0jLGUwX5Q3g

A site dedicated to coding fonts: https://coding-fonts.css-tricks.com/fonts/operator-mono

I’ve used Operator Mono for several years now. Previously, I used Anonymous Pro. There’s something industrious and nostalgic about monospaced fonts that I just love.

I also enjoy using monospaced fonts for writing. I fell in love with Nitti when I first discovered it in iA Writer. I now use iA Writer Duo often when writing. The iA Writer fonts and the IBM Plex Mono fonts they are based off of are freely available.

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. - /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. /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. /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