2017

On Meeting and Leaving People

Humans are social. Cooperation got us where we are. There are several ways to get to know new people, and, in relationships, to leave them. A few thoughts.

Post from December 30, 2017, filed under .

What We Know

On some days, if you asked me about what we know, with absolute certainty, I’d respond with “only that something exists.” And if you asked me what that meant, then I’d add “to appreciate and work with what exists.”

Post from December 24, 2017, filed under .

On Writing 1,000 Poems

A story of venturing into an entirely different genre.

Post from December 17, 2017, filed under and .

Privacy Experiments: How to Auto-Generate Random Web Traffic

I believe that privacy, which has never been about “hiding something,” is a fundamental civil right, one that is but must not be infringed on; so I once more played with randomizing personal web traffic.

Post from December 15, 2017, filed under .

Expert Web Development: A 3rd Key Differentiator

As web developers we have decisions to make and our decisions depend on a few variables. Two that have become much more important over the years are the one of code for research or production, and the one of web site or app…

Post from December 13, 2017, filed under .

An Ode to Smashing Magazine

Excitement about a success story.

Post from December 6, 2017, filed under .

Performance of CSS Selectors Is Still Irrelevant

From my upcoming book on CSS optimization: Selector performance is not something to optimize for as the price we pay for it is terrible: We micro-manage our work for gains that aren’t noticeable.

Post from November 29, 2017, filed under .

On Big Picture Thinking in Web Development

Thoughts on thinking outside the box, in tech, with examples ranging from selector performance to a general development vision, to illustrate how very different issues can all reach beyond their perimeter.

Post from November 22, 2017, filed under .

CSS: The Reason Why Selectors Should Be Ordered, Too

We’ve talked a lot about declarations as declarations are at the heart of our work with direct consequences for the quality of our style sheets. We’ve not talked much about selectors, though, and that may be a mistake.

Post from November 17, 2017, filed under .

Static Site Generation with Grow: How to Set Up Syndication Feeds

Grow is a static site generator that I’ve slowly been switching to on my own projects. Here I wish to lay out how to do something with Grow that’s not overly difficult, but also not well-documented—to set up syndication feeds.

Post from November 13, 2017, filed under .

The Scientific Irony

There’s no proof that life has meaning; therefore, life is meaningless. Wait, what?

Post from October 31, 2017, filed under .

DRY CSS: How to Use Declarations Just Once, Effectively

Using declarations just once is one way to control repetition in style sheets. It’s not a silver bullet, as we’ve seen with recent data, but it’s so powerful as to make for a key style sheet optimization method.

Post from October 26, 2017, filed under .

5 Reasons Against Resets, Normalizers, Reboots

A word about one of CSS’s horsemen of the apocalypse.

Post from October 19, 2017, filed under .

The 3 Levels of Code Consistency

Consistency is a factor for code quality and one of the key reasons why we need coding guidelines. Interestingly enough there are three levels of consistency: individual, collective, and institutional.

Post from October 16, 2017, filed under .

Understandable-Simple vs. Minimal-Simple Code

Code simplicity seems to be a goal quite worthwhile, contributing to better understanding, greater robustness, and higher quality. That’s at least what comes to my mind when looking at the matter…

Post from October 6, 2017, filed under .

On Enforcing Coding Guidelines

Surprisingly a snippet from The Little Book of Website Quality Control, not the one of HTML/CSS coding guidelines, a few thoughts on enforcing coding standards.

Post from October 2, 2017, filed under .

What Happens When You Email the Companies That Are Responsible for 71% of All Greenhouse Gas Emissions

A few months ago I ran into an article referring to data from the Carbon Disclosure Project. I realized that the data may have been inaccurate and incomplete but also that it presented an avenue for us to actually do, a little.

Post from September 28, 2017, filed under .

What Happens When You Email Each of the 1,380 Members of the German and European Parliaments

Over the last couple of months I have emailed, each individually, all the 631 members of the (departing) German Bundestag as well as 749 members of the European Parliament (I was short two MEPs).

Post from September 27, 2017, filed under .

Freedom = ƒ(Money)?

No, this question is not new. However it’s one I want to ponder with you because it much seems like something truly terrible has happened over the centuries.

Post from September 25, 2017, filed under .

Why It Would Be Bad If Jesus Was Here

Arguing is something we have to learn. I observed this particularly in recent years when I started studying philosophy and went through courses for logic and argumentation theory. These courses…

Post from September 20, 2017, filed under and .

The Cost of Frameworks, Illustrated

A visual attempt to show how for everything built for the long run, external frameworks are a pricey crutch that has to be avoided or be thrown away at the earliest time. The reasons: quality—and cost.

Post from September 14, 2017, filed under .

CSS @-Rules, an Overview

From @charset to @viewport. Or from @bottom-center to @top-right-corner.

Post from September 11, 2017, filed under .

In Defense of Bad Luck

There seems to be something to luck, and bad luck.

Post from September 6, 2017, filed under .

What We Should Teach Up-and-Coming Developers

Evidently, learning is important, and learning strategies are, too, and how to generally work on ourselves, absolutely, but what else to aim for apart from understanding computer science fundamentals, reading the specs, and—coding?

Post from August 31, 2017, filed under .

What Kills and What Will Save Content Management Systems

Imagine you just moved into a new place, and realize that you lack a screwdriver to put up some of your furniture (it’s not from IKEA). You ring at your neighbors’, find one who’s home, and she…

Post from August 29, 2017, filed under .

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