My friend Tim is running a workshop. He’s really very smart, has a TON of experience, and he’s entertaining too:
“I'm running a workshop on how to clean a hacked #WordPress Site, it's on the 21st March and I hope I can tempt you to come! I'm excited, I think I have managed to get the balance between technical and accessible, so that it genuinely is useful to everyone.”
Hang on… ChatGPT’s voice is terrible at reading out long strings of digits? What?!
(Sound on…)
@gilest Hello fellow Wiltshire person! I seem to follow you already and I feel like we’ve interacted before. But hello again! Thanks for following.
Hang on… which newsletter am I reading here? This isn’t The Tavern?
(Inside-Baseball WordPressers know what I mean!)
Another week, another single-page web app gets spun up. These are the new domain names. 😂
This one is secret for now. But real fun to make.
Figuring out in-browser background removal with JS/CSS. Plus turning HTML into images to print.
Cool stuff!
I really need to bookmark my open tabs! 😬
Wowza! 17th on the global leaderboard for Words In Progress?! 🙌
US Politics + “Oh my eyes!” design.
Even if you thought Trump was a good politician, would you really look at this and think you’d want to spend $400 on them?
Keep scrolling too… there’s a VERY special offer at the bottom.
Here it is then: My manifesto for small, static web apps.
If you wish to comment/reply on this, please read the intro on what a manifesto is before you do.
https://rosswintle.uk/2024/02/a-manifesto-for-small-static-web-apps/
With that in mind the summary is:
– Static first/only
– No login
– Don't store user data
– Use the smallest JS library possible
– Use web standards as much as possible
– Use simple build steps that won't break
– “Done” is a goal
– Zero-maintenance (and easy maintenance) is a goal
– Don’t minify
– Be accessible
I try hard not to dunk on WordPress because I still love it, for all its flaws.
But when patterns first arrived I knew it was the wrong model.
And now we’re at what they should have been. But because it’s built on the wrong legacy it’s “Synced Pattern Overrides” 😬
Surely I wasn’t the only one that (fore)saw this?
Anyway, here’s the video…
In the newsletter that linked me to this video I also read:
“Gutenberg meets the needs of fewer than half of respondents”
🧐
I’m watching Matt Medeiros demonstrate “Synced Pattern Overrides” in WordPress 6.5 and wondering “How on earth did we get here?”
The feature, like the name, is so complicated.
And it’s complicated because the original model of patterns was bad.
Patterns should always have been synced. And they should have been called “Components”, which is what everyone else on the web calls this concept.
They should have default content.
That’s it. That’s all that was needed.
Scrap patterns. Start again.
Yay! I got the Bandle in one!! (I’m not sure if this is a good thing)
Bandle #549 1/6
🟩⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
Started writing my small, static web apps manifesto. And it makes me realise why I love this approach: everything is about removing complexity.
– Hosting is simple
– Maintenance is simple
– Many complex problems just don’t exist (authentication, data protection)
And the manifesto “articles” all combine with each other to achieve this.
🤩
… It does kinda suggest the antidote though:
“veteran meteorologists would make weather forecasts first by looking at the data and forming an expert judgement; only then would they look at the computerised forecast to see if the computer had spotted anything that they had missed. (Typically, the answer was no.) By making their manual forecast first, these veterans kept their skills sharp”
Knowing – and practicing- the basics is as important as ever!
I’m really enjoying reading Tim Harford’s “Messy – How to be creative and resilient in a tidy-minded world”
It’s a book from 2016, but contains some very relevant wisdom on automation:
“Systems that supplant, not support, human decision-making are everywhere. We worry that the robots are taking our jobs, but just as common a problem is that the robots are taking our judgement.”
Next I plan to write a Manifesto for simple, static web apps!
This is my soapbox now!
A simple, web/cloud based, private key/value store. Like a fediverse but for personal data.
Is this possible? Does it exist?
I've mentioned this a few times here and it's always too hard to explain in short posts.
So here’s a long one.
https://rosswintle.uk/2024/02/static-databases-for-static-sites-possible/
I've always seemed to have friends who play D&D, but I have never actually played D&D. And now my kids know other kids that play D&D!
So when I read @davatron5000's post about Cora Quest, which he describes as ‘an easy “Dungeons and Dragons for Kids” game’ I was intrigued.
https://daverupert.com/2024/02/coraquest/
And when I saw Cora and Dan's kickstarter video I was enchanted and tracked down a copy.
It arrived today and we played our first quest. And it was wonderful!
Thanks Dave, Cora and Dan!
Discovered “Bandle” the other day. A daily puzzle where you have to guess a piece of music from a reduced set of instruments.
After two total misses, I finally got one today from just drums and bass!!
Bandle #547 2/6
⬛🟩⬜⬜⬜⬜
Found: 1/2 (50%)
Current Streak: 1 (max 1)
#Bandle
https://bandle.app/
Today I visited the “Festival of Tomorrow”. A local, annual science week with different events going on.
We saw “Luna” … a giant, inflatable, rainbow-coloured snail robot.
I thought it was just odd at first. But kids were mesmerised!
Then I read the plaque and realised its movement was entirely through inflation and deflation of the different air chambers. There were no rigid parts!
Really cool engineering.