Posted 9 hours ago

Week of August 23–29

Back to work

The past month has been crazy. I served on a jury for a week. I helped my son move up to Indiana and had a long travel day home due to storms in Chicago. And we prepared my youngest to move off to college and helped her move in a week ago. So it was a different experience to sit down to work last week knowing all of that was behind me and I will have a more normal schedule for the next four months.

What I worked on this past week

• I continued working on the Fall newsletter and 25th Anniversary landing page. I added a new section to the Fall newsletter. I also tweeked the layouts to work a bit better on smaller screens. I also applied some different content edits from our editorial team.
• I also continued working on the next phase of Wonder of the Word. My team was finally able to publish some pages to our production server which helped facilitate several discussions with other Revive Our Hearts team members. I ended up doing two rounds of revisions on the “Hub” page which will link out to our different content offerings for studying through the Bible in 2027 and 2028. It was good to clarify some things that I had misunderstood and to steer the project more in the direction that others had in mind.

It was also a difficult week. I felt lethargic and unmotivated. I was able to get work done but it took a look of mental energy. I believe a lot of what I was feeling had to do with missing our youngest child. We now have an “empty nest” and so far, I am not a big fan of this new chapter in life. I know in time that I will adjust and see the positives and new opportunities. But for now, I am a bit tired from all the traveling and preparation and I just miss my kids.

• I did enjoy going to breakfast with my wife on Saturday morning.
• I was glad to get my hair cut on Saturday afternoon. It was getting a bit too thick and hard to control.

Articles I read

• The Index: Issue #195 (Piccalilli)
• Why We Never Speak to Each Other (O. Alan Noble)
• Works & Wonders: Perfect Wisdom, Underground Mail Getty Hymns, Monarchs (Tim Challies)
• Building May Be Cheap Now. Being Wrong Still Isn’t. (Viget)
• Why Fallen Pastors So Rarely Walk Away (Tim Challies)
• How Do You Avoid Cynicism and Distraction During Prayer and Worship? (O. Alan Noble)
• The coming assault on disability rights (Ken Nakata, Converge Accessibility) – This is disturbing. I hate how this present administration is dismantling our society.
• Balancing flex items with flex-wrap: balance (Ahmad Shadeed) – I knew about flex-wrap: balance and have already used it but I was not familiar with flex-line-count.
• Sing the Doxology Every Morning (Paul David Tripp) – I have taken his advice and sung the doxology every day (not always in the morning).
• Hey let’s update websites! (Joe Crawford)
• It’s Not Too Late to Make This a Great Year of Bible Reading (Tim Challies) – I also enjoyed the Bible study tips and prayer tips.
• The Best of Us (Chris Ferdinandi) – Chris’ thoughts/tribute to Dolly Parton.
• A Calendar View For My Blog (Jim Nielsen) – I like this idea. I started exploring how I can do it in WordPress.
• Studio Notes #99 (Dan Cederholm)
• Little Websites Everywhere (Michelle Barker) – I enjoyed reading Michelle write about the Web again. I have missed her voice.
• Friday, variance (Joe Crawford)
• I’ve started a newsletter (Joe Crawford)
• HTML Can Do That (Chris Burnell)
• When Your Child Moves Out as an Unbeliever (Stephen Jones)
• The Quiet Decision Microsoft Made That Devastated Thousands of Nonprofits (Nitish Pahwa, Slate)
• Forever a Student (Jonathan Snook) – Great advice from this forever student.
• Feature Detecting “Undetectable” CSS Features with @supports named-feature() (Bramus) – I am glad to see this added to the spec.
• Creating Web Widgets Using the Document Picture-in-Picture API (Daniel Schwarz, CSS-Tricks)
• Why the Internet is Making Men and Women Hate Each Other (Samuel D. James)
• What New Opportunities and Abilities Will We Experience on the New Earth? (Randy Alcorn)
• How to apply CSS only if there are a certain number of nested elements (Chris Ferdinandi)
• Mix – glamorous (Jeffrey Zeldman)

What I watched

• Quitting AI greatly improved my mental health & enjoyment of work (Brett Codes) – Brett gives an update 3 weeks after his decision to stop using AI in his coding at work.
• Nobody told me CSS could do this (Kevin Powell) – Kevin takes a look at CSS Scroll Trigger animations and staggering animations.
• My new favorite CSS trick (Kevin Powell) – Kevin has a new trick to remove the border-radius from a full-width element on smaller screens.
• Tom Silva on Bucket Talk Podcast – I enjoyed this interview with Tom Silva from This Old House.
• Best Medicine (Netflix)
• Mad About You (Samsung TV Plus)
• American Pickers (Samsung TV Plus)
• Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy (Network TV)
• Timeless Heroes: Indiana Jones and Harrison Ford (Disney Plus)
• Stray Kids After You Music Video
• Phil Goes Behind the Scenes of Hollywood’s Legendary Smoke House (YouTube)
• Phil Tries Molly Baz’s Ultimate Chicken Caesar Cutlet Sandwich | How To Be a Sandwich (YouTube)

Books I am reading

• The Discipline of Grace (Jerry Bridges) 
• Everything Is Never Enough: Ecclesiastes’ Surprising Path to Resilient Happiness (Bobby Jamieson)
• Enjoying Jesus (Tim Chester)
• Desiring God (John Piper)

Walking

• Monday – 1.39 miles in 26 minutes
• Thursday – 2.33 miles in 45 minutes

What I played

MLB The Show 23 (Orioles) – I went 5-2 this week against the Rockies, White Sox, and Diamond Backs.