Studio Espresso Weekly - 14/01 📨
💬 "The scariest moment is always just before you start." - Stephen King
Hey there friend 🙂
The quote above perfectly encapsulates how I'm feeling typing this. The idea to send out a semi-regular newsletter has been in the back of my mind for about a year now and I think it'll help me do a couple of things.
First of all I want to do more writing about what I do at work, the things I've learned over the years and the projects I'm working on. Because I've learned a ton by reading blogs and newsletters and I want to keep that ball rolling for other people.
2023 will also be a big year for me personally: I'm moving in with my girlfriend, in the house we've been building ourselves for the last 4 years. I'm looking forward to it immensely but the final weeks/months will also bring loads of stress and extra work. I'll occasionally share house-stuff here as well (as long as the list of people reading this is still somewhat limited :))
I've also noticed that the group of current readers here is pretty much split between (ex)co-workers/developers and friends outside of work, so I'll try to combine the nerdy things with some personal things. Feel free to unsubscribe if this isn't your thing, no hard feelings 🙂.
With this preamble out of the way, let's get into things.
Web links of the week
- Hostile Patterns in Error Messages
- How to rebuild social media on top of RSS
- Setting up a screen reader testing environment on your computer
- How type influences readability
Picking up a camera again
I used to be a very avid photographer, shooting concerts and festivals for a couple of years. But over the last 5ish years, I've hardly ever taken my "big" camera out on a trip or a holiday. Probably because cameras on smartphones have gotten so much better, in combination with how light and small a phone is versus how clunky and heavy a big DSLR camera and lens are to lug around.
But I still really enjoyed taking photos, so last year in June when we went for a trip to London, I decided to bring the big camera with me. 4 days and about 500 photos later, we had a great trip and I rediscovered my love for photography. But it was still big, clunky, heavy, etc. So for our "big" holiday trip to Spain in August, I treated myself to a FUJIFILM X-T30 II, a much smaller system-camera. The different style of camera also forced me to learn take photos again.
Here's a shot from when we went to Gaztelugatxe in the Spanish Basque country, which you may know from Game of Thrones 🙂. It was the one not-sunny day of the trip, as you call tell by all the rain on my lens, but the storm & rain made it even more memorable 😀.
I'm really happy I purchased the new camera and I'll try to share some photos every now and again.
That's all for this first newsletter. Next one (at the end of January), I'll dive into some work and nerdy stuff 🤓.
Have a great week!
Jan