Jonathan Snook's Blog, page 8

Social Media Presence

I’ve been taking some time to rethink my relationship with social media.

Over the years, platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr have provided usefulness in connecting with hundreds and thousands of likeminded people around the world. It has helped me in both my professional career and personal life, introducing me to lifelong friends, work partners, and dating partners.

Each platform, however, developed more and more downsides. With Facebook, it was intrusive advertising, an addictive and manipulative newsfeed, or private data violations. With Twitter, it was a deterioration of the API for 3rd-party developers, an increasingly poor handling of toxic behaviours, and the exodus of people onto a plethora of similar platforms. With Instagram, it was unhealthy personal relationships turning the platform into a battleground for recognition and control.

Social media makes private things public to a potentially large audience that wouldn’t have been easy or likely 20 or 30 years ago. While there are many benefits to that, there are also many downsides. If I no longer have the need for the benefits or the benefits have disappeared, why would I post when there are only downsides in doing so?

Which leads me to wondering what benefits there are for me to get back into social media?

Creative Outlet

The primary reason for me would be the creative outlet. I enjoy photography, and writing, and have been thinking about animation and video production. Many platforms would be well suited for sharing this type of content.

Personal Connectedness

Many of my friends are people that I only talk to once every few months, or once a year, or even less. Like the occasional letters I’d receive in the mail, social media platforms are a way to stay loosely connected with other people on a less frequent basis.

I know some people that send out a yearly or quarterly newsletter about themselves. These days, that’s usually an email and I’ve considering doing something similar with a seasonal update or two. But that’s unidirectional.

Social media, on the other hand, has become the primary way for people to maintain those connections and avoiding those platforms means missing out on those points of connection with others.

Starting Fresh

If I am to get back onto these platforms, I wonder if I should clean the slate. If I start my Twitter account again, do I need all the followers? Do I follow the same people? What about all my old tweets that are, at this point, irrelevant? If I start my Instagram account again, who am I following? What content am I posting and where?

Do I want to turn my hobbies into a social media machine that has to be oiled and maintained? Each hobby with its own account? Or everything under just my personal account because these are personal hobbies? As mentioned in my last post, there’s also the fact that if I want to focus on specific projects, posting on social media means dealing with the restrictions of those platforms instead of the flexibility that a personal site gives me. But I can use social media to promote my personal projects. But I don’t necessarily want to use social media as some promotional business engine. I want to share things that are fun and exciting to me.

As you can see, I’m feeling somewhat wishy-washy about the whole thing.

Impermanent

In reality, none of this needs to be permanent or perfect. It can evolve over time, be destroyed, and built again. This is life and I’d like it to be filled with joy and be okay with the impermanence of it all.

I know that I often have a habit of picturing the end goal and trying to work towards that goal. (Which is why a project is so satisfying. There’s an end I can execute towards that end.) But I also know that I can resist starting because I feel the need for many things to be set up perfectly from the outset, when in reality, it can be more organic. If people don’t know the plan, they won’t notice when things aren’t going according to said plan. People also tend to be busy with their own lives to notice the minutiae of other people’s lives.

All that to say that I’ll find myself back on social media. Hopefully, in a healthy way that makes me feel like I’m enjoying the process instead of second-guessing everything.

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Before Fifty

A month ago, I turned 49. A week before that, I was in Pocantico Hills to visit Blue Hill at Stone Barns. It was the 50th of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants I have eaten at before I turn 50.

The journey that began five years prior had come to a close. It took me a few weeks to finish writing up the summaries, editing and posting the photos, and putting it all together for the site.

The idea of having a project with a definitive beginning and end feels good. It’s not a product that needs to continually evolve, be redesigned, be rewritten, added to, and removed. It is complete. Like a television show with a proper series finale.

Of course, the question I am frequently asked now is, “what comes next?”

I am still working on figuring that out. Being a “content creator” like blogging, or conference talks, or whatever, seems like a never-ending treadmill and, for me at least, gives me a feeling of disappointment when I get off that treadmill or am inconsistent in creating content.

The idea of a project having a definitive start and end is very appealing. So as I look through my list of current interests like restaurants (still), whisky, photography, or animation, I wonder how I can share my joy of those interests while also being able to package those things up in a way that feels… complete.

Until I figure out the next adventure, I hope you enjoy reading my Fifty Before Fifty adventure.

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Getting Personal

For years this has been a blog about web development. I no longer have any desire to talk about it and that is evidenced by the lack of posts in years.

I’ve been unsure what to do with this space. I believe in maintaining personal links and don’t want the long history of tips and tricks to just disappear. My colour contrast checker is still used to this day. My articles on various topics have been linked to throughout the years and while much of what I wrote is now completely irrelevant, some of it isn’t.

My personal journal of web development—documenting the things I learned along the way—has come to an end. My personal journal—of just me—is about to start. The smattering of posts during the pandemic were a hint of that.

If you are still subscribed to my feed in hopes that more web development articles will appear and have no interest in anything else, then now is probably a good time to unsubscribe. It’s unlikely I’ll write more on the topic.

Welcome to whatever comes next.

I say “whatever” because I am still unsure what that looks like. Questions I’ve been asking myself a lot recently are about how much of my personal life do I want to make public. What stories are appropriate to tell? How much of my travels, of the restaurants I go to, of my dating are relevant to the world at large?

Part of me thinks that being open means that others—partners, friends, acquaintances, strangers—get a truer sense of me. Part of me thinks it’s none of their business and if they want to know, I can share my life with them individually. What a partner should see is very different than what a stranger should see.

All of this is an effort to get to know myself better and while I can spend the whole time in my head, writing it down might help me process what I’m currently struggling with, whether it’s my actions, reactions, ego, self-doubt, or figuring out what the future might look like.

Time will tell what this eventually turns into.

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Dot dot dot

The ol’ ellipses. That punctuation that denotes a pause. If ever there was something that could be used as a placeholder for the past year, the ellipses may fill that void. It marks a transition and leaves unsaid the unspeakable. It represents the digital conversations about to be had, waiting on others to say their piece, waiting on you to say yours—conversations that would be more pleasurable, or at least more palatable, in person.

And while I am likely premature in raising my glass to mark an end to this grand pause, I’ll do so anyway. I’ll do so in hopes of the many questions, exclamations, and interrobangs to come.

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Waited

Just a few days after writing about the expectation of not getting a vaccine anytime soon, the provincial government seemed to be getting pushback and suddenly they announce availability of the AstraZeneca vaccine for people aged 40+.

The news got announced on Sunday. I signed up for half a dozen waitlists on Monday—because a centralized, well-managed system for vaccinations doesn’t exist for some reason. Then heard that it’s better to go into individual pharmacies or call. On Tuesday, I walk into the local pharmacy and get an appointment booked for Wednesday. Sure enough, it is now Wednesday afternoon, less than a week after lamenting the inability to get a vaccine, and I have had my first shot.

I spent much of yesterday thinking that I must’ve misheard or that there was a step that I must’ve missed along the way. I wasn’t actually going to get a shot today. But I did.

And now I wait for the second shot, which will likely be in June or July. This feels like a huge step and at the same time, nothing changes. Kids are still doing remote learning. Restaurants are still closed. Cases are still high. I’m still staying home. We’re still in a pandemic.

But instead of being filled with dismay, I’m filled with hope.

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Wait

Throughout much of this pandemic, while traumatic, it was comforting that we were all in this together. Now, as many of my American and UK friends get their first vaccinations, they are starting to return to a normal life. They are travelling, they are visiting family, and they are making plans for the summer.

In Canada, however, vaccines have been slow going and cases are on the rise. Cases per 100,000 has exceeded that of the US for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic. And it is unlikely I’ll be able to receive a vaccine before July. Even receiving one before the end of summer could be questionable, which is disappointing to consider. And now a new stay-at-home order just as the warmer weather has arrived.

I am demoralized and demotivated and all I can do is…

wait.

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Uncanny

I’m standing in line at the grocery store. My hands are full of products I don’t recognize but should be sufficient for the next couple days here. I place things on the conveyor belt, hoping the cashier doesn’t ask any questions. Of course, she does. I assume she’s asking if I want a bag and shake my head no. Thankfully, that seemed to answer her question.

The few items are rung up and she tells me the total. Again, I don’t understand a word. I glance quickly at the screen to see the total and I pull out a bill large enough to cover it. I have a pocket full of change but it’s going to take me forever to figure out which is what and I don’t want to hold up the line any further. I’ll end up leaving all the change at the hotel before I head home.

I head off into the street, checking my phone to confirm directions back to the hotel.

I’m standing in line at the grocery store. I’m six feet back, on a marked circle, but shifting forwards and backwards to let those moving from aisle to aisle get by.

My glasses fog up ever so slightly and then clear up. They fog up again and then clear. I start holding my breath so as not to have them fog up completely. Maybe if I breath through my nose. Maybe through my mouth?

I’ve grown up in cold winters, scarves wrapped around my head. I usually just take my glasses off. I do so again, careful not to get my hands close to my eyes. I’ll grab some hand sanitizer on the way out. I’ll wash my hands again when I get home.

“Let me spray and wipe down the belt first, sir.” Right. Old routines keep wanting to creep back in but I have to wait. I think to myself that I’ve read studies of how fomite-based virus transfer might not be a big concern. It’s all about the air. Who knows, said more as a statement than a question.

I stand to the side of the tall plexiglass barrier with my bag at the ready to quickly bag my own groceries. Cashiers aren’t allowed to do it themselves anymore.

I no longer leave my cart at the exit, allowing others entering the building to quickly grab my cart. The entrance is now fully separated from the exit, forcing specific lanes of traffic. I take my cart to the mid-lot receptacle to keep the lifecycle of collect-and-clean in check.

The bags are placed into the back of the car and I hop into the front. I carefully peel the mask from my face.

Everything feels surreal. Most things are the same but plenty of things are not. They’re just different enough to create a generalized anxiety. It’s not unusual for me to feel this anxiety when I’m travelling.

Now I feel it when I’m at home.

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That’s Pretty Clever

I was over at my friend’s place—in the backyard, outside—playing some games. Thankful for the warm summer nights and not looking forward to a pandemic lasting through winter.

One of the games we played was a dice game called That’s Pretty Clever. We each had our own piece of paper and pen to mark off various items to be scored at the end. The scorecard is very specific to the game and I imagined the pad supplied with the game eventually running out. To which, I wondered, could I build an online version of the scorecard? Even handier would be if it could calculate the scores at the end of the game.

So that’s what I did.

In another one of my personal challenges, I gave myself the goal of building this scorecard in under a week.

What did I learn?

With personal projects, the fun is often in the constraints we give ourselves. The first of which was time. I probably could’ve completed the task more quickly than the four days I had given myself. Many things, like scoring, turned out to be easier to do than expected. But Parkinson’s law comes into play: projects fill up all of the time allotted to them.

Progressive

Another constraint I gave myself was making this work progressively. If JavaScript is turned off, the page will continue to work as an equivalent of the paper version as all of the boxes are just HTML and CSS. It’s checkboxes, text fields, and radio buttons. Then you add up your score just as you would if you did it on paper.

If you do have JavaScript turned on, then a click of a button will give you your score.

All in One

Next up was deciding to do this as a single page. That meant embedding the CSS, JavaScript, and any assets—in this case, all SVGs—into the HTML. Not really a big deal but to keep size down, I used SVG <defs> and used them throughout the page. I needed to do inline SVGs so that I could easily change the colour based on what section they’re in.

I relied on simple text and CSS wherever I could, such as using a recycle icon in place of the circular arrows icon from the original game. I ended up with 3 SVGs: the fox, the starburst, and the meeples.

Keeping everything in one page meant saving time and bandwidth not having to make multiple requests. The page is only 5.44kb compressed which leaves most of the overhead in the initial handshake with the server versus actual delivery.

Scoring

I originally thought the scoring was going to be a sizeable part of the project. I projected the number of lines of code to exceed all of the HTML and CSS put together.

As I got into it, though, I noticed some patterns that I hadn’t seen in my cursory glance that allowed me to use a simple loop for a couple sections.

I could’ve cut down the size by a few lines but I would’ve lost clarity. I appreciate the simplicity, even if a couple forEach loops are repeated.

Sloppy

Unlike many of my other personal projects like my blog, this particular project is a one-off. I don’t expect to ever come back to this project to update it. As such, the idea of maintainability went completely out the window.

I think the HTML is reasonably decent—although, I do make some assumptions along the way and I really didn’t take accessibility under consideration. In my defence, the project was for me and not intended for a wider audience, so my apologies to those attempting to use my rather clunky development.

As I was writing the CSS, I’d say to myself, “you should probably name this differently,” but I didn’t listen. Honestly, I was surprised at how few issues I had putting it together. I attribute this to the small size of the project, preventing things from getting out of control.

And then in the final minutes of development, it happened. I needed to add !important. And then another one. And another one. Whoops. Guess I was getting a little too sure of myself.

Oh the things we do to get a job done knowing we’ll never have to deal with it again. (But will curse myself if I ever do.)

Grid

CSS Grid was quite handy. Much of this design was in a grid and it was great to just set up some repeat() declarations and have everything aligned.

Probably the biggest “trick” I used was using grid within a cell to layer all the positional elements within the center and then shifting them as needed.

This part of the game is just a checkbox. Click on it to mark it as “completed”. But the starburst, the badge at the bottom, and the greater-than rule are all relational to that checkbox.

.check {
display: grid;
place-items: center;
}
.check > * {
grid-row: 1;
grid-column: 1;
}

Anything that wasn’t the checkbox also got a pointer-events: none added to it so clicks could still get through to the checkbox.

Then, I’d use a bit of positioning to move things around.

.starburst {
position:relative;
top: -32px;
}


Anything else?

It’s easy to fall into a trap of scope creep. So many features I could add. This scorecard doesn’t stop you from making incorrect inputs. Where something is unlocked elsewhere on the board, it could highlight those moves. Where a move can automatically be made, it could make that move. I could set up the scorecard to be made available offline. I could even create a dice roller. Which leads to my final constraint…

I didn’t want to replicate the game entirely online. If people want to play the game, I hope they buy the game from the publisher and support their work. My project is intended to replicate the scorecard and just the scorecard.

The scorecard.

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Reply via Email

While I don’t blog nearly as often as I used to and while I removed comments from my site a few years back due to lack of use and the constant barrage of spam, it is nice to hear from people that either have something nice to say, have a helpful critique, or want to have a dialogue on an interesting topic.

As others have done, I’ve added a “Reply via email” mailto link at the bottom of each article in my RSS feed to making conversation a little bit easier. (I also added the same thing on The Nook, for you whisky-minded individuals.)

I’m still a fan of RSS, even if I’m not as prolific as I once was.

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An Exploration of Flavour

I came across a screenshot the other day that had a list of projects that I had built over 10 years ago. There was a Flickr app, a Twitter app, a job site, an ad platform. I had forgotten how prolific I was at one time.

I definitely fell into a rut there.

Lately, though, I’ve been getting back into exploring design and flexing my design and front-end skills on some personal projects. Last year, I launched Fifty to document a food adventure. I played around with CSS grids and took inspiration from magazines to create a design I was proud of. Months later, I’m still loading up the site just to stare at it. Feels good, y’all.

Along those lines, I’ve jumped heavily into the world of whisky. I’ve attended Web Whisky Weekend for the last fives years, which has been a fantastic way to explore whisky. Last year, we had 150 different bottles. Crazy.

Over those five years, I’ve been buying bottles and growing my collection at home. I’m up to about 60 bottles. Crazy.

I decided to build a site to track my personal library: The Snook Nook.

It’s been fun playing around with new CSS features like clamp() and trying different grid techniques. If you’re on desktop, check out how “The Snook Nook” font size and letter spacing grow and shrink as you resize the page to ensure the title always stays on the same line and feels balanced with the page.

Once again, I borrowed heavily from print magazines and I’m really happy with how the design is coming together. Yes, there are still some rough corners and I’m continuing to iterate on the design. I did the same thing with Fifty.

I went through two other designs before I settled on this one and found myself hesitating to build it until I thought the design was done. Of course, perfection is the enemy of done, so I was happy this design was good enough to feel okay putting out something that wasn’t perfect.

If you enjoy whisky, I’d love it if you followed along. If you don’t, maybe you’ll enjoy me fumbling over words trying to describe what this golden liquor tastes like. Come visit The Snook Nook.