My habit of keeping interesting things open in tabs on my mobile is WAY out of hand. So I’m challenging myself to blog them as I close them down. 10 a day. This is part 2.
I am terrible at keeping up streaks like this. We’ll see how long it lasts.
1. Sh’mallow
Picking up where we left off in part 1, this is the site from which you can buy marshmallow in a spray can. “the first aerosol marshmallow that sprays, tops, and toasts on any dessert, beverage, or whatever your imagination craves!”
2. CSS Selectors Playground
https://selectors.sandroroth.com
This is good. A little playground/reference tool for exploring CSS selectors. Neat! Bookmarked!
3. What Exactly Does WordPress Tell the World? – inter.connect
https://interconnectit.com/news/2011/03/07/who-is-wordpress-talking-to
This is from 2011! inter.connect look into what telemetry a WordPress installation sends back to WordPress central. It’s old. I wonder what has changed. Not bookmarking as something more up to date probably exists.
4. Go by Example
I’ve been wanting to learn Go and Rust for ages. This was probably recommended as a good place to Go. Bookmarked!
5. Automatic Generation of Visualizations and Infographics with LLMs – Microsoft
https://microsoft.github.io/lida
This is not old, but probably from the start of the AI hype cycle. Microsoft wrote a paper on using LLM’s to create visualizations and infographics. Looks like this work was open sourced as the “LIDA” Python library in August 2023.
6. The self-fulfilling prophecy of React – Josh Collinsworth
https://joshcollinsworth.com/blog/self-fulfilling-prophecy-of-react
A pretty good analysis of why you might or might not use React (though from the perspective of a React-doubter I guess). Summary: “React keeps getting picked…because React keeps getting picked.” Even though there aren’t many other reasons to pick it.
7. Why I don’t want to grow my freelance design studio into an agency – Nela Dunato
https://neladunato.com/blog/why-wont-grow-freelance-studio-into-agency/
Nela is in a privileged position (sounds like she doesn’t _need_ to work), but she had been freelance for ten years when she wrote this and it chimed with me. I was freelance for 10 years and the thought of employing others terrified me.
Her article covers many thoughts that I’ve had. Growth doesn’t have top be in clients, revenue, staff or offices. In fact those things can be very unsustainable if you get them wrong. You can grow in other ways. Others may not get it. But that’s OK.
8. Data Structures in PHP – Ryan Chandler (e-book)
https://store.ryangjchandler.co.uk/checkout
I like Ryan. He seems smart and has both broad and deep knowledge. And he’s pretty creative. I care about data structures and algorithms. I guess his book is two years old now. I should at least download the free preview.
9. ‘Privacy Nightmare on Wheels’: Every Car Brand Reviewed By Mozilla — Including Ford, Volkswagen and Toyota — Flunks Privacy Test – Mozilla
This was a scary article from a year ago about the data that is collected by modern cars that can send data over the wire. We were a few months into owning a fancy EV at this point. I did not like it.
10. The Worst Programmer I Know – Dan North
https://dannorth.net/the-worst-programmer
Dan tells the story of Tim. Whose programming performance, on paper, is terrible.
But “Tim wasn’t delivering software; Tim was delivering a team that was delivering software. The entire team became more effective, more productive, more aligned, more idiomatic, more fun, because Tim was in the team.”
Individual productivity metrics don’t tell the whole story.
I hope I’m a bit like Tim.