Microblog

I try not to complain about apps too much because software is hard, etc, but Apple Music, the app, is so bad.

• It’s clunker than Spotify, which is saying something because Spotify is an Electron app.
• For years iTunes and then Music has been plagued with the whole randomly-skips-songs bug.
• The UI is inconsistent to the point where it’s not always clear whether you’re searching your library or the AM catalog.
• Various UI is horrible—just now the app took focus away from the search input three times whilst I was typing in it (wtf)

Guess it’s back to Spotify for me. It’s a damn shame because iTunes on Windows XP was my favorite app and the reason I eventually became a Mac user in 2006.

This might not be useful to anyone else but my SSH key on my web host, NearlyFreeSpeech.NET, recently quit working. I first noticed it when my deployments on DeployHQ were failing. Long story short, it seems that OpenSSH recently invalidated certain (weaker) RSA keys. I made a personal note about how to create a custom keypair and upload it to DeployHQ.

I wanted to share the note with someone so I published it. I haven’t shared this yet but I recently created a system for publishing my plain text notes to an 11ty site. I wrote the code in a very this-is-just-for-me manner (home-cooked you might say). Maybe eventually I will cleanup the code and release it. Plenty of apps have this note-publishing functionality but I like the idea of my notes being on my own website that I control.

I’m thinking of doing GitHub Game Off again this year. Web game idea—an idle game where you control a money printer and the goal is to print more money in order to buy upgrades for your money printer.

Come to think of it, this game probably already exists (I mean other than the IRL “game”).

This UI is a hot mess:

Got hit with an annoying yellow alert screaming at me as well as an obnoxious subscription modal that has a lot of weird shit happening within.

For starters it’s extremely disruptive. The design is chaotic (evil). And what kind of pricing choice is this? I can choose $1.99 a month or, inexplicably, $290 a year. You have to click around and read the gray print to realize it’s a 3-month offer.

No way I’m paying for Bloomberg though because, among other reasons, The Big Hack.

I started using Craft toward the end of last week when a coworker shared it with me. After playing with it over the weekend I am very quickly becoming a superfan.

• As a designer I’m impressed with the beautiful, snappy UI.
• As a developer I’m impressed with the control over data and ability to export to many formats.
• As a user with a pretty severe mobility impairment, I appreciate the first-class support for working in a mouse-oriented manner or keyboard-oriented manner, depending on which is easier in the moment (referring to the Mac version).

Two ideas I live by:

• People are weird.
• Everything is complicated.

I have been writing CSS for 15+ years but I only recently started using user styles via the Stylus browser extension. I don’t know why I haven’t done this sooner. It’s really an amazing perk of the web. Don’t like something about the way a website looks? Change it!

Playing Universe Sandbox inevitably ends with dropping Sagittarius A in the solar system just to see what happens. Spoiler: everything gets eaten.

I constantly have theme music from various Mario games stuck in my head. I blame the Stream Doctors.

I’m fascinated by this book, The Top 10 Games You Can Play in Your Head, By Yourself: Second Edition. Yes, this is a real book that you can actually purchase.

The original was 14 volumes published in the late 1980s and early 1990s by an author writing under the name J. Theophrastus Bartholomew. I don’t know how widely it was distributed originally, but at some point it went out of print. It was discovered at a yard sale in 2014 in Minnesota by Sam Gorski and D.F. Lovett. They were able to contact the original publisher to get a list of Bartholomew’s ten favorite games and the rights to an unpublished volume.

As far as I can tell, we don’t know the identity of the original author. But after reading this¹, I’m salivating for more content from him. I heard that another book may be coming out. We’ll see.

The games themselves aren’t really games like you would imagine. They are more like creative prompts for you to imagine your own story. It’s an intriguing concept. I’ve struggled with it in the few attempts that I tried it (I’ve only tried Space), but I’m planning to try again because the concept is so fascinating to me.

If you know anyone who likes role-playing games, storytelling games, or who are just particularly imaginative, you might consider recommending this book to them.

Sometimes I think to myself, “I wish Simplenote had [feature].” Then when I play around with a note app with lots of features I think, “Why can’t it be nice and simple like Simplenote?” Ugh… why am I like this?

I bought a computer that connects one computer to another computer. https://tinypilotkvm.com/

I’m essentially using this as an accessibility tool. It will let me operate other computers without having to install all of the software and hardware I need for accessibility.

There are two types of people:

• People who acknowledge that Nacho Cheese is the best Doritos flavor
• People who are wrong

I created a dummy async function (JS) to use when testing out ideas. I love to pop open CodeRunner and mess around with different patterns and syntax and having a ready-to-go async function available is really handy.

function doingStuff(stuff = 'stuff', ms = 2000) {
  return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
    setTimeout(() => resolve(stuff), ms);
  });
}

I set up my site’s WordPress theme to automatically strip all CSS styles on April 9th in celebration of CSS Naked Day.

The point of the silly exercise is to celebrate semantic HTML and web standards. The idea is that if your website’s HTML is well-written then your website should still be generally usable—even without CSS styling. I’m sure my site isn’t perfect, so let me know if you find anything completely broken.

I really dislike this trend of web services that are only available via mobile app (ie, don’t offer a web version). I’m not really able to access my phone easily so I’m all-in on desktop and web apps. I’m not saying companies shouldn’t go mobile app only. I’m just personally annoyed by it.

Update for Minimal Character Sheet. You can now choose to make your character sheet publicly available as a read-only version. https://minimalcharactersheet.com

Launched d20 v3 today! After about 2 years in the making it’s finally out. Here’s the “official” tweet.

https://twitter.com/blakewatson/status/1361340608384753664

Get it here: https://d20app.me/

Hey Nova users! I made a color scheme for you. Tomorrow Night Eighties, based on the Base16 Tomorrow Scheme “eighties” variant. Here’s a Nova link: nova://extension/?id=blakewatson.TomorrowNightEighties&name=Tomorrow%20Night%20Eighties

I added CoinMarketCap to my A Fine Start page so I can ratchet up my anxiety level in one click.

Whenever I want dark mode on a website that doesn’t have it, I use the Stylus extension to add this CSS, which works surprisingly well:

html {
    filter: invert(0.85) hue-rotate(180deg);
}

Nova by Panic is so buttery smooth. Been using it for work (and play) for a few days. Fast as lightning. I hit a rough edge or two but no showstoppers.

I always misspell the word “habit” by putting 2 Bs. But I just thought of a mnemonic device to help me remember: You can put a B in habit, but don’t make it a habbit.

Not too bad for a WordPress site.

d20’s icon evolution…

I didn’t think I was going to like macOS Big Sur but I’m kind of into it.

I’ll be releasing d20 v3 very soon. Here’s a sneak peak. Big new features: 1) you can group your presets, 2) you can roll attacks and damage at the same time. 🗡 🏹 🔥

Oldie from a few years ago… this is article about what football will look like in the future is a mental trip you will not see coming. https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football

If you need a last minute gift for the developer in your life, check out these programming zines by @b0rk. Or you can just buy them all for yourself, which is what I did 😄. https://wizardzines.com/

PSA: If you are trying to capture a website or social media post for proof, don’t screenshot it. Images can be altered so no one can really trust that it’s accurate. If it is public, grab the URL and archive it with @waybackmachine.

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. – 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

I have this fear that governments will ruin the web and in the future we’ll have to tell stories to our grandchildren about how awesome it was.

I just realized that in Firefox and Chrome you can select multiple tabs by holding shift or cmd/ctrl and perform actions on multiple tabs at once. #TheMoreYouKnow

One way definitely not to get me to signup for your [WHATEVER] is to pop up a large, garishly animated sign-up box right in the middle of the page while I’m trying to use your website.

I don’t always write webpack configuration files, but when I do, I… wait, actually I never do. I just use @laravelphp Mix. – https://laravel-mix.com/

I see a lot of “jQuery sucks” or “don’t use jQuery in 2020” to which I say: use whatever works for you. If jQuery helps you make a better website or app, use it. It’s hardly a terrible choice. If anything, it’s battle-tested and reliable.

Web dev is so complex these days. Feels wrong to say all the complexity is bad. But it feels wrong to say it’s good. I use it but it never feels right to me. I feel this essay by @bastianallgeier 💯 https://bastianallgeier.com/notes/simplicity-part-2

I can’t stop watching this video by @cassidoo. Cracks me up every time. https://twitter.com/cassidoo/status/1216871876192088065

I’m scared to upgrade to Catalina. I’ve heard a lot of people complain about bugs. Anyone have anything good to say about it?

I just created an IFTTT service to automatically tweet microblog posts from my WordPress site. Let’s see if it works! #testing

I really love this simple CSS stylesheet. I would love to see a curated collection of these kinds of minimal, typography-focused CSS “frameworks.” – https://uglyduck.ca/typesafe-css

A lot of people think that the Y2K bug was all hype. While it wasn’t world-ending, it was a problem that could have significant consequences. Fortunately, we saw it coming and had time to fix it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGrKKrsIpQw

I can’t stand reading Twitter threads. Such a disruptive, distracting reading experience.

I thoroughly enjoyed this look at JavaScript history and how the language progresses in a way so as to preserve backward compatibility. This is the tale of “Smooshgate.” https://css-tricks.com/yet-another-javascript-framework/

I loved this idea ever since I heard it, and it’s one of the things I love about the web—the idea that you can have your little lemonade stand on the Internet, as it were. https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/

Figures out a couple of complicated components; gets stuck naming them. #hardproblems

PSA… You can subscribe to all my posts with the following RSS URL: https://blakewatson.com/feed/

If you would like to subscribe to my microblog only, use this RSS URL: https://blakewatson.com/feed/?cat=6

Following up on my search for typographically minimal WordPress themes, I found two fantastic ones by Anders Norén: Davis and McLuhan

I really like the (past) work of http://plaintxt.org/. I would really love to see a modern version of it. If anyone is working on quality typographic minimalism in WordPress themes, I would love to know about it.

I’m so sick of ad-block shaming. “We noticed you are using an ad-blocker…” Here’s my response: “I noticed you have been tracking me all over the Internet and exploiting my personal data for commercial gain.” I get that not every website has the same level of tracking. But I don’t see how a user has any choice but to just block everything. I can’t vet everyone’s advertising practices. Instead of shaming me into turning off my ad-blocker, I think websites should pitch why they deserve an exception. You want me to turn off my ad-blocker? Tell me what you are doing to protect my privacy. A great example of this is Daring Fireball:

For readers, these are ads that, again, are visually unobjectionable, and which offer the most privacy you could hope for. Not only is there no tracking involved, there is no JavaScript involved. They’re just images, text, and HTML links.

— New on Daring Fireball: Display Ads