May 20, 2024

Openings and Eel Slaps

Hey friends,

We're rounding the corner on May-cember! June is almost in sight! 😎

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Thinking Too Hard

I had the opportunity last week to do a mini-presentation in Viget's tradition of LabShares. I think one of the hardest things (other than dealing with nerves 😅) is the opening.

Maggie Appleton recently wrote a piece on this I found helpful:

"...Openings need tension – paradoxes, unanswered questions, and unresolved action.

Good openings propose problems, pose questions, drop you into an unfinished story, or point at fundamental tensions within a topic. Ideally within the first paragraph or two.

I recommend you read the rest of the article, but starting with a question was helpful in framing my talk!

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Interesting Web Bits

• A modern guide to CSS shapes
• Eel Slap for when you need to slap someone in the face with an eel. 🤷
• Google released (at some point, I missed when this launched) a very nicely animated site about emerging web features. (Look at those lovely card animations!)
• Adir gives us a helper library to add motion blur to CSS animations
• And if you need spring effects instead of blur, Georgy Marchuk gives us kinet.
• Chat GPT keeps getting crazier...
• A really nifty terminal file browser: Superfile
• Some very clever people have figured out how to open an unopenable door in Mario 64
• Have you ever thought, 'Hey, I'd love to play Sudoku with Vim commands'...? Well now you can.