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.
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.”
On Writing 1,000 Poems
A story of venturing into an entirely different genre.
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.
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…
An Ode to Smashing Magazine
Excitement about a success story.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Scientific Irony
There’s no proof that life has meaning; therefore, life is meaningless. Wait, what?
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.
5 Reasons Against Resets, Normalizers, Reboots
A word about one of CSS’s horsemen of the apocalypse.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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).
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.
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…
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.
CSS @-Rules, an Overview
From @charset to @viewport. Or from @bottom-center to @top-right-corner.
In Defense of Bad Luck
There seems to be something to luck, and bad luck.
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?
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…
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Perhaps my most interesting book: 100 Things I Learned as an Everyday Adventurer (2013). During my time in the States I started trying everything. Everything. Then I noticed that wasn’t only fun, it was also useful. Available at Amazon, Apple Books, Google Play Books, and Leanpub.
Perhaps my most personal and also most unusual book: Journey of J. (2015). A freestyle documentary of 557 days of travel across 6 continents and 48 countries. Available at Amazon.