Friday Links

It’s been a fun week.

In the “toots I didn’t toot” category was:

Also I’m content to have songs be about whatever the artists want them to be about. I like the songs “Sail Away” by Randy Newman and “The Illinois Enema Bandit” by Frank Zappa though I have a rather hard time with “Stray Cat Blues” by the Rolling Stones.

I’m writing more Python lately. I found this about lambdas useful.

Mark Sutherland is getting back to his blog and that’s great.

The stories from the cast of Pulp Fiction at the TCM Festival were delightful. There’s video.

Twitter’s new business model is Russian disinformation.

Everyone ought to learn about the parts of a URL. It’s a little complicated, but it’s worth learning. I was thinking about this as a reply I gave to a toot:

In 8th grade in San Diego we had few days of a pseudo home-economics. Among the tasks was to learn to read and understand a bus schedule and a train schedule. This was in the 1980s and one needed to do these things manually. Reading the timetables and their legends and doing work to plan a trip on X day at Y time was complex. A URL address has–to me–analogous complexity. But useful for wayfinding. Essential even.

I was quite surprised to read that Women Who Code is shutting down. In San Diego they have had a good number of great events with speakers which I managed to attend and a Slack with good participation, and more.

Some of us remember San Diego as home to a WebGrrls chapter which evolved into digitElle and Techniquelle, long forgotten entities now. But there’s still utility in such orgs. Perhaps there are others and I’m merely unaware of them… And there’s a LinkedIn group forming for San Diego.

Tracy Durnell wrote “Webbing” the IndieWeb:

The IndieWeb in general is publishing oriented; however, the pool of people willing to publish anything is very small as a subset of the online audience. If the IndieWeb is meant to be for all, we ought to consider how our indie websites can serve people who primarily read content rather than write it — at the same time we lower the barriers to entry of posting replies and interacting with our sites. And I mean both technical and social barriers.

100% agreement and finding a space for readers in the IndieWeb — and here I’ll be the 12 millionth nerd to lament the demise of social readers like Google Reader — but there are others out there! I want to try some and see if there’s any I would feel great about proselytizing.

The interview with her for People & Blogs was great.

Cam pointed out the bonkers interesting navigation of HTML Review number 03. And yes, it’s bonkers. Playful. Fun.

Be like Jason Scott, feel no guilt about blocking. Boundaries are good.

It remains vexing that this is necessary but given the way things are, one must do this.

Trina Robbins was a badass. I saw her speak on comics at SDCC and elsewhere several times. Fiery, funny, trenchant, honest. Keith Knight wrote a great comic about her.

Rest in Peace Trina!

WOMPRAT is a really really cool font.

symbol.wtf is a perfect website that does one thing perfectly. It’s on GitHub.

I saw Adrian Roselli this week at the Front End Study Hall and am happy to reconnect with his blog. Web Turns 35, Seems Popular.

I was pretty nervous about what Front End Study Hall would be, but it was an absolutely delight that flew by. Keeping it at a tight 90 minutes was great. And we had tremendously smart people with a wide range of experience. We had an infant grandchild make an appearance and a small kid showed off her Glitch site with recipe microformats which was charming and really great. Thanks to all who came and who dropped in, RSVP’d, and webmentioned or tooted.it – including Patrick Walsh, Eric Meyer, Al Abut and Mandaris (and here) and gRegor as well. And Nick too. There are probably instances I missed, and if so, I’m sorry!

I made a backdrop for myself: CSS IS AWESOME. This comment on CSS Tricks tells the history of that image. All of the notes are really great too.

That’s a fine place to end it for now. I remain grateful and happy despite life not being perfect and the world being a bonkers mess.

Onward.

Wait, a bonus link perfect for Friday: FAMOUS PAINTINGS MADE ONLY WITH EMOJI by ND Stevenson.

Okay, now, rock on.