April 2024 - Bryan's Briefing
Hey friend, how have you been? I began working on my final Code & Context project to graduate somewhat soon.
Some extra challenge was added by me losing part of my hearing on my right ear. I had a constant sound on my right ear, not like my usual tinnitus which is easy to ignore, but a much louder strong constant sound as well as being unable to hear any deep sounds which lead to a constant headache and generally just feeling miserable. Hearing is quite important, listening to music, going outside, talking to people is all quite different depending on if you can hear or not. Since sounds caused me pain I avoided these things.
In the end one of the doctors I had visited prescribed me medicine that actually helped. So now my hearing is back and I can live as I did before.
Still have my other doctor and hospital appointments scheduled throughout this year. But it was especially scary to lose a basic sense suddenly without an identifiable cause.
🌱 Cool Content I Made
- Code & Context Final Project Dev Diary - Live Post (blog post) - Describing my progress and how I approach building an app solution.
- Why Koreans Ask What Year You Were Born (blog post) - Sharing some interesting cultural observations regarding age I had in my year abroad in South Korea.
- Show Your Work - Summary, Review & Thoughts (blog post) - I love this book, found it really helpful as well. Decided to share the great insights about sharing work.
<head>Web Dev (web dev post) - When starting a new website project I keep reusing previous parts. Like the<head>for each website which contains the meta data. I want to create a central reference point for whenever I get started on building another site. And while I'm at it I want it to be a helpful source for other web developers.- Introduction To SEO (web dev post) - Handling how to show up on search engines is part of developing a website (SEO = Search Engine Optimization). Wrote a page on what matters to show up on Google for other web developers.
❤️ Cool Stuff By Others
🍿 Videos
- Rules for good spacing by Chainlift - Spacing in (web) design is something that I feel like is overlooked too often, especially when it comes to details. Video gives a great introduction on what goes into spacing well.
- Rocket League in Minecraft -- Custom Map for Vanilla Minecraft 1.20.4 by SethBling - Sethbling returns to making minecraft videos. He made his own physics engine in Minecraft with datapacks. And then made Rocket League in Minecraft.
- Bad Subscription Service Practices & Enshittification by Mrwhosetheboss - How large tech companies can abuse their monopoly position by exploiting independent contractors and the users. Quite a fun video though.
📝 Blog Posts
- I Know the Secret to the Quiet Mind. I Wish I’d Never Learned It. by Hana Schank (use this link if you can't block the paywall) - Post on living with sudden changes like a brain injury from an accident.
- Insatiable: A Life Without Eating by Andrew Chapman - Some parts felt relateable, the psychological pain of not being able to eat is hard to describe. For me it was only temporary, although I'm still limited in what I can eat I am lucky that I can eat so many different things again for now. It's interesting to see how people who have similar problems but further into the extremes deal with them, what thoughts keep them going.
- What I think about when I edit by Eva Parish - Writing and editing advice by someone that knows how to write.
- My reading year, 2023 by Austin Kleon - Also stumbled onto Austin Kleon's blog after writing a post on his book Show Your Work which I really enjoyed. Great to find some good book recommendations from someone who is a famous author themselves.