Hi! I’m Aaron.

I am a graphic designer and web developer who loves to learn by taking on new challenges and solving problems.

Posts

February 7, 2025 – 8:38pm

Note to self: when using the min() and max() functions in CSS, values have to have units. You cannot write something like min(0, calc(400px - 100%)); it has to be min(0px, calc(400px - 100%)).

February 1, 2025 – 9:41pm

Today I discovered Hotei and it's a good day. Currently jamming to the "Strangers" album.

January 31, 2025 – 10:02pm

Okay, a piece of really poor UX design is driving me mad: in the Apple Music app, I cannot tell, just by looking at it, if the "Favorite" button is showing that I have 'favorited' the song or not. Worse, I think the button has a different appearance depending on whether or not you are in the app or in the control center. It is a little trivial detail in a very big app but it is nettlesome.

January 29, 2025 – 2:43pm

It is a useful reminder that the best creative work often occurs as a result of project constraints that initially seem quite limiting. Constraints are guardrails protecting against a lack of focus and a substrate for crystallization of ideas.

January 26, 2025 – 9:48am

If I am using ChatGPT or Google Gemini or GitHub Copilot to get answers to code questions or examples of code – which I always check against documentation before using – am I learning new code techniques in the process? Or do these tools serve as a crutch that will ultimately make me a weaker programmer?

January 25, 2025 – 5:13pm

If my website starts to look more and more like Daring Fireball, well... I guess I am probably doing something right.

January 24, 2025 – 10:09pm

I was thinking about how the show Severence lives in the shadow cast by David Lynch and Twin Peaks. I hope that the Severance show runners draw some wisdom from the past and choose not to give us all the answers. Let Lumon keep some mysteries. It’s what he would do.

January 24, 2025 – 3:55pm

Was reading about CSS text-box (from Friday Front-End) and I can see isolated cases where it would be useful. But my own framework is all about creating a useful baseline grid. Using text-box would seem to make that an impossible goal. I’m not a fan.

January 20, 2025 – 5:49pm

Some wisdom I am borrowing to share here: “We live in a society, not an economy.”

January 20, 2025 – 5:43pm

Does Storybook really require you to be building an app from some sort of framework? Is there no vanilla HTML/CSS implementation? What an immediate turn-off. I was considering replacing Fractal (which might no longer be maintained?) but hard pass on Storybook.

January 16, 2025 – 3:30pm

I am weeping into my black coffee and sobbing over my cherry pie.

December 21, 2024 – 10:22pm

I rode a stationary bike this morning for my workout instead of going outside to ride because of snow and salt and wind and sub-freezing temperatures so my hands and feet were nice and toasty but *damn* it sucked. I could use some warmer weather (just a little warmer) or a real solution to frozen toes.

December 19, 2024 – 12:51pm

What I want for Christmas is Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool reviewing the new Superman trailer.

December 18, 2024 – 11:56am

Basic driving skills and common courtesy are severely lacking. No one can signal before turning, stay in their lane, park in a single space. No one obeys the speed limit, stop signs, red lights. It’s gotten really bad.

December 13, 2024 – 1:29pm

Google Gemini Deep Research and related tools are going to have a significant impact on academia. Hard o say right now if that will be a good or bad thing but our track record with technology is – to be kind – mixed.

December 9, 2024 – 5:35pm

Why is it that YouTube video reviews of cycling gear are mostly presented by people in the UK? Does no one in the US care as much? Is all the good cycling gear made for European consumers?

December 5, 2024 – 2:16pm

Nice win today at work using spaCy and Flask on macOS to build a quick web app for running named entity recognition.