Want to read: Design That Scales: Creating a Sustainable Design System Practice by Dan Mall, ISBN: 9781959029212 📚
Eager to read Dan’s new book on design systems. Looks promising, based on the title and table of contents.
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Want to read: Design That Scales: Creating a …
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Mapping blog posts
Bookmarked Travelers’ Map by .
Travelers’ Map looks like a nifty WordPress plugin. I’ve been interested in adding some location-based functionality to my site, mainly with my posts and notes that are using location based tags, or the Places category.
Now that it is not terribly hot in the Southwest, I’m itchy to travel a bit locally and explore our new home some more. We got back from Arizona this past weekend, and travel with a toddler is not much fun at all. But long term, I’d like to document more of my travels and discoveries with my blog. I’ve especially been thinking of ways to showcase my “place posts” on an interactive map, and this could be one possible solution.
The plugin uses Leaflet and OpenStreetMap data, which I’m familiar with from using Mapbox a few years ago. You can see this in action on Camille’s own hiking blog.
I should also look into the IndieWeb checkin and venue concepts a bit more, and see how others are doing this kind of thing on their personal sites. I particularly like the way Jeremy Keith displays a map for each of his checkins, and Katy DeCorah displays a map (almost as an art direction feature) around the post title with her adventures.
I’ll plan a fall weekend afternoon to install the plugin and play around with this idea some more. In the meantime, I have events like the International Balloon Fiesta plus a solar eclipse to look forward to.
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Likes Crawlers by Jeremy Keith. Updated my robots.txt …
Likes Crawlers by .
Updated my robots.txt file to block a few additional crawlers from training large language models (AI) today.
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Started reading The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow …
Started reading The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War by Jeff Sharlet, ISBN: 9781324006497 📚
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Bookmarked Keeper of Time. I saw the trailer …
Bookmarked Keeper of Time.
I saw the trailer for this a while back, and would like to watch this…somehow. Apparently in North America, I need to be a member of AARP?
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Likes The 3 secrets to Font Pairing by …
Likes The 3 secrets to Font Pairing by .
Some trustworthy tips to keep in mind when you’re putting two or more typefaces together in a design.
Jake’s been on a roll lately with his Make Type Work project. I’m following with a mixture of admiration and envy (I’m working on my own personal type resource: nowhere near as good as his yet).
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Likes Parenting in the age of the internet …
Likes Parenting in the age of the internet by .
I think responsible use means dialing up the ratio of creation to consumption for me, too. If I’m to convey that it’s better to be an active part of shaping the world than just being a passive consumer of it, that’s what I have to do. This is true in all things — a core, important lesson is that there isn’t one way to do things, and life is richer if you don’t follow the life templates that are set out for us — but in some ways I feel it most acutely in our relationship to technology.
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Testing the implementation of Micropub on my relaunched …
Testing the implementation of Micropub on my relaunched website. I drafted this post with Quill, a web app created by Aaron Parecki. I refined it with the WordPress editor and published from my site.
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Likes Inclusive Sans. Inclusive Sans is a text …
Likes Inclusive Sans.
Inclusive Sans is a text font designed for accessibility and readability. It is inspired by the friendly personality of contemporary neo-grotesques while incorporating key features to make it highly legible in all uses.
Check out the background and specimen images on GitHub, or try it out yourself on Google Fonts.
Discovered via Mike Haynes’ blog.
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Likes The Loved List by Ankur Sethi. I …
Likes The Loved List by .
I do like this idea. A short (very short) list of favorite media (books, music, games) on one’s own website.
Everything on the list has either had a lasting emotional impact on me, or changed the way I think in a significant way. A few pieces of media are listed here because I believe they represent the best example of a certain genre or style.
This list is constantly changing. Some things don’t pass the test of time, while others become more important to me as I change and grow as a person. Regardless, this list is a good snapshot of my tastes and interests in the present moment. -
Thanks to WordPress, Hum, and iwantmyname, I now …
Thanks to WordPress, Hum, and iwantmyname, I now have a personal link shortener for my website.
Now I can do dumb stuff: like http://nicks.im/son redirects to my about page.
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Want to read The Age of Insecurity by …
Want to read The Age of Insecurity by Astra Taylor. 📚
In this urgent cultural diagnosis, author and activist Astra Taylor exposes how seemingly disparate crises—rising inequality and declining mental health, the ecological emergency, and the threat of authoritarianism—originate from a social order built on insecurity. From home ownership and education to the wellness industry and policing, many of the institutions and systems that promise to make us more secure actually undermine us.
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Hello WordPress, my old friend.
With the latest version of my site, and this latest post, I’m announcing that I am now running on WordPress.
The last version of my site was built with Eleventy, a tool I still love, and will be using plenty of in the future. My goals for my site just were not aligning with my current technical limitations. As much as I love to tinker, I’d like to spend more time writing and designing than figuring out how to implement Webmentions on Netlify, for example. And since this site is mainly a blog these days, why not run it on the most popluar blogging engine around?
I first downloaded WordPress in fall 2007, which was version 2.3 (Dexter Gordon) or 2.3.1. I began using WordPress as a professional around version 3.3 and I have followed the software through its many iterations ever since. I never tried running my own site on WordPress before this year, but came close a number of times.
How I Built This
This time around, I started out by spinning up a fresh, blank WordPress install with Local. I then exported my Micro.blog posts into a WordPress compatible file. I imported these and used the Post Type Switcher plugin to convert these posts into shorter Notes and Likes post types, courtesy of Jan Boddez’s IndieBlocks plugin. Then I began uploading the markdown files from my personal site using the Ultimate Markdown plugin. With a ton of content in the site, it was time to think about a custom theme, or at least a customized theme.
I got frustrated with the Site Editor back when it was an experimental feature, but like the block editor for posts and pages, it has come a long way since. Carolina Nymark’s FullsiteEditing.com is an invaluable resource for learning your way around this new approach to templating and theming. I tried out every flavor of the theme generator, but found what I really wanted/needed in Nymark’s Jace—a gorgeous theme built to be accessible-ready and ready to show off the site editor too. I customized this further with the Create Block Theme plugin, which has the best tools for local fonts I’ve seen in a long time. I’m using Hanken Grotesk for most text, and Bricolage for the headings.
I didn’t run into too many snags until I moved my site from Local to a production server, and discovered a weird bug with WordPress 6.3’s
_transient_wp_core_block_css_filesfeature. This bug screwed up the layout I spent hours lovingly obsessing over, and is documented on the Local site, and in WordPress core itself. Keeping an eye on this, and hopefully its fixed in future 6.3 releases.New and Upcoming Features
Thanks to WordPress and IndieBlocks, I have multiple RSS feeds you can subscribe to. You can subscribe to a separate feed for each post type:
Or, you can subscribe to the main RSS feed which gives you all of the above, in reverse chronological order.
I’m also adding support for IndieWeb building blocks. In addition to microformats, my website is running the IndieAuth plugin (web sign-in), and I’m currently trying to see if I have Webmentions configured correctly.
I’m still getting used to this setup, and not sure if I have everything 100% to my liking yet, but feel free to have a look around. In addition to my posts, notes, and likes, I have a handy index page to other sections of my site.
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Finished reading The Family by Jeff Sharlet 📚
Finished reading The Family by Jeff Sharlet 📚
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Watched The Mystery of Chaco Canyon (1999), a …
Watched The Mystery of Chaco Canyon (1999), a documentary about the ancient site in the Southwestern US, about 100 miles from where I live now.
I haven’t visited or read much about the site before, so I was fascinated by the archaeoastronomy: together the structures form a gigantic solar and lunar calendar.
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Our little one hit 18 months earlier this …
Our little one hit 18 months earlier this week, and is putting short words together, sometimes up to three, into coherent sentences and ideas. I’m pretty sure we heard her say “What’s up, baby?” this afternoon. 🤣
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Shout out to Microsoft Teams, for making the …
Shout out to Microsoft Teams, for making the most unappetizing cookie, pizza, taco, and other food emojis. Play-Doh.
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I never met or corresponded with Molly Holzschlag, …
I never met or corresponded with Molly Holzschlag, but her work and advocacy has had a profound impact on my career. I’m saddened to learn of her death, and moved reading the tributes being posted across the world wide web today.
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Likes Pluralistic: Naomi Klein’s “Doppelganger” (05 September 2023) …
Cory Doctorow has an intriguing review of Naomi Klein’s new book “Doppelganger” and will be featured in conversation with the author at her book event tomorrow, livestreamed on YouTube.
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Finished reading Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. …
Finished reading Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel 📚
I didn’t realize there would be pandemic themes going into this one, but it was interesting to see characters and settings from the earlier book, The Glass Hotel. Overall, I enjoyed the plot, pacing, and time travel elements.
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Bookmarked the Washington Post’s guide to the best …
Bookmarked the Washington Post’s guide to the best regional pizza and interactive map/locator (U.S.-only) for future travels. 🍕
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Started reading Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. …
Started reading Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel 📚
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🎵 Missing out on seeing the Breeders at …
🎵 Missing out on seeing the Breeders at Ghost Ranch Music Festival tonight.
Listening to Bite, the new LP from A Giant Dog. 🎵
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Visited Title Wave Books, Revised this morning and …
Visited Title Wave Books, Revised this morning and found a copy of ‘Killing the Buddha’ for 25 cents. This is the original hardcover with ❌ dust jacket by Paul Sahre.
Also picked out some picture books with the kiddo.