Things I Like
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And I begin to understand the nature of the trouble I’m having communicating to my parents precisely why what I’m doing appeals to me. They are asking about a job. I am thinking about identity, community, purpose – the things that provide meaning and motivation. I am talking about my life.
I actually don't like this article very much, I completely disagree with the author. But it's another article in my quest to read and understand more about work. Making work your life is not a great plan for many of us. Time away for rest, relaxation, and letting your mind wander is also really important. When you are always working, when does this happen? This isn't only something to do during our childhoods or during college, but it's a thing that should be done throughout all of life. Wasting time is a good thing.
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Companies have been experimenting for over a decade with social enterprise software, not to mention standard office communications packages like Outlook. Slack is different. It's not designed to supplement your office software; it's designed to replace it. Even more radically, Slack aims to replace the office itself, creating a platform for people who work entirely online. The question is, what will happen to office culture when everything we do and say at work is converted into a string of emoji-laced texts—especially when those texts are logged and searchable forever?
This article was fascinating on so many levels. On the legal implications of all your office chat being logged and saved, on the way in which Slack is replacing all other forms of communication, and the way in which there is push back from this situation. As someone who has worked remote for the past several years, I love Slack (much more than IRC on which it is based). But I also believe it should be OK to close group chat to get work done. I believe that it doesn't replace all meetings, that sometimes a video call is necessary to talk through things. And the snarky part of me wonders if Slack means you don't need an office why does the company Slack not hire more remote workers?
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The problem is that the uniqueness of any given country is a mixture not only of its indigenous practices and borrowed customs but also of its past and its present. Any given photograph encloses only a section of the world within its borders. A sequence of photographs, taken over many years and carefully arranged, however, reveals a worldview. To consider a place largely from the perspective of a permanent anthropological past, to settle on a notion of authenticity that edits out the present day, is not simply to present an alternative truth: It is to indulge in fantasy.
One of my favorite columns in the NY Times Magazine is Teju Cole's monthly column on photography. It always makes me think, and it is filled with words that make me want to be a better writer, thinker, and looker (as in at the things around me).
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Those I love. Being. Living my life without being diverted into things that people so often get diverted into. Being alive is so extraordinary I don’t know why people limit it to riches, pride, security—all of those things life is built on. People miss so much because they want money and comfort and pride, a house and a job to pay for the house. And they have to get a car. You can’t see anything from a car. It’s moving too fast. People take vacations. That’s their reward—the vacation. Why not the life? Vacations are second-rate. People deprive themselves of so much of their lives—until it’s too late. Though I understand that often you don’t have a choice.
No. I really don’t like chitchat. Often when I went places with people I liked, they would chat the whole time. It’s very human, but if there’s going to be talk I want it to be interesting. I don’t want to know that so-and-so spilled milk or how sad it is that she didn’t get the dress she wanted. All of the things that people are shamed by or don’t think they’ve succeeded in—I don’t want to talk about that. I really like to meet people, to be with people, but I don’t want to be chatting all the time. I like it when people talk about things.
I couldn't chose just one from this piece. There is a lot about being a poet in here, a lot about living a life, and a lot about being alone. It's all fairly amazing and enlightening and I'm so glad I'm friends with someone who would link to it.
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I just reviewed a book on accessibility, A Web for Everyone, which is a great book that spans both design and development of accessible sites. Heydon has put together a great list of examples on how to do a lot of different things and code them with ARIA so that they are accessible.
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I wonder how much better we could make online spaces if we took more cues from farmers. Because any farmer can tell you, the deer will never decide to stop being deer. It’s your job to protect your garden. Or, at least, make it inhospitable enough that the pests move on to the next one.
This piece is so wonderful. I love the way Derek talks about his work, his current work and his past work. Tech is such a difficult place to be at times. I struggle with it and I wonder, if I left it where would I go? What would I do? I can't answer that right now and tech is still where I want to be, but I look back and see the path of how I got here and wonder where it will take me next.
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I don't remember now how I came upon this website, but I love it. I love what it is trying to do. I love the sounds which trigger so many memories for me.
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Sometimes programmers think that learning HTML is beneath them because it’s not real programming. But HTML markup is how people actually get the results of your programming. It’s the part of the web that connects your content to the whole world, so it deserves just as much care and attention as your programming and your server.
I love HTML. I agonize over using the right element for the right content when I do a fresh layout. Thinking about how it will work across all different kinds of devices is part of the fun of it all. Too often this work is given short shrift and done by people who don't care and that just makes me sad.
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This can be hard work because it requires a lot of consideration and testing to get it right. One of the pitfalls of most design processes is that little consideration goes into all the conditions in which content can live.
Really nice piece by Jonathon that I would +1 all the way. It is more work, but it is also worth it, because the user benefits more than we can imagine.
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Now, I don’t care about Opera Mini per se (I’m not its Product Manager). In the same way, I don’t care about walking sticks, wheelchairs, mobility scooters or guide dogs. But I care deeply about people who use enabling technologies — and Opera Mini is an enabling technology. It allows people on feature phones, low-powered smartphones, people in low-bandwidth areas, people with very small data plans, people who are roaming (you?) connect to the web.
Bruce goes on to talk about how many people in the world use Opera Mini and it is quite significant. If you're OK with leaving behind that many people that's fine, but just remember that it is a useful tool for a lot of people and they don't all live in non Western countries. I know several people who use Mini in the US to save on data.
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I’ve begun to think of design today as not so much defined by a binary option, but instead as a spectrum or a continuum—I’m fascinated in this space between the networked and un-networked texts.
I suppose that these suggestions all deal with the instability I find when setting text for the web, and I hope to remind myself of this when a new feature replaces an older one in a browser, or a new hack emerges. I want to consider technical implications of my decisions, and I want to ensure that we think about the effects of an unstable network sending an unstable codebase, only to be interpreted by an unstable browsing environment.
Ethan Marcotte talks about the space between in his latest book, Responsive Design: Patterns & Principles, and I too am fascinated by this space. Robin is referring to networks here, but I think there are a lot of spaces in between. Many areas where the interesting work actually happens. I love that Robin references it. The whole post is fantastic, which is why it got two quotes pulled from it.
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I can almost hear the Hacker News comments now, about what a luddite I am for not thinking five paragraphs of static text need to be infested with a thousand lines of script. Well, let me say proactively: fuck all y’all. I think the Web is great, I think interactive dynamic stuff is great, and I think the progress we’ve made in the last decade is great. I also think it’s great that the Web is and always has been inherently customizable by users, and that I can use an extension that lets me decide ahead of time what an arbitrary site can run on my computer.
So much great stuff in this piece, so many awesome points about how using the right tool for the job is the best way to go.
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Have a chat with your designers before they begin work on your next project. Let them know that your product will be tested for contrast, either by you or as part of your standard quality assurance process—and make sure they’re clear on how to pass. That proactive support will go a long way.
Color contast is a really huge issue that gets left behind way too often. I'm always pushing we think more deeply about this on the sites I work on, especially as it's also about less than ideal monitors as much as it is about people with vision problems.
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Pretty soon you’ll find out that every interview is a conversation, and every conversation is an interview.
So. Much. Good. Advice. Here. Even the obvious stuff (don't be late) and the non obvious. When you are speaking with someone about a job, about the possibility of a job, or just wanting to know more about what they do, remember that you asked for the favor and treat it as such. My only add to this would be to buy the coffee too.
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I like to apply the same thinking for the adoption of a design system: be where the creator is.
Lots of good, practical advice on how to get a system to be taken seriously and used by the organization. I especially like that Mark admits this isn't easy, but it can be done.