Favorite Things of 2023

Joey and Squiggy

2023 has been a mostly good year except for losing Buster unexpectedly last month and some other friends before that. I got a few new clients and worked on some interesting websites. Very happy to be working part time for AWN now and looking forward to another year of doing that. Also looking forward to …

Read more »

M2 Max MacBook Pro

MacBook Pro M2 Max

Spoke too soon about not having RAM issues on my M2 MacBook Air. It is great for most work, but was having issues when working with virtual machines, multiple browsers/tabs, and graphics apps all at once. I had been considering getting a second computer for a long time because if something goes wrong and my …

Read more »

Favorite Things of 2022

God of War Ragnarök

2022 was a pretty good year for me overall. I am very thankful for another year with Karen and Buster, and still missing Nikkyo. Outside of some annoying health issues, having to switch to meds that don’t work as well as my old ones, losing a dear old friend, and missing my family terribly, things …

Read more »

Down the Obsidian Rabbit Hole

Obsidian

Obsidian is my latest Favorite App of the Momentâ„¢. I have a lifetime of memory and concentration related problems, and a daily alarm set to “learn something”. The only way to merge these two daily realities is to take notes. Same goes for meetings with clients and research for projects. If I don’t take notes, …

Read more »

2020: Hold my whiskey

Knob Creek Old Fashioned

I started writing this post for my birthday on January 28, 2020. Apparently, the year started out hard and I didn’t want to write about the hard things. The rest of 2020 took a turn for the ‘Hold my beer, early 2020’ and it got too hard to write about any things. I have been …

Read more »

Some Flashbacks Are Good

lightning bolt

Last Monday, I needed to take a break from work because my brain stopped cooperating so I went outside to clear my head. Somehow I ended up at the inner harbor. Must have been on autopilot. It was a nice surprise. If I had been planning to go there, I would have taken the free …

Read more »

Gutenberg Broke My Metabox

Assorted wood stamps

I am trying to love Gutenberg (the new WordPress editor). In theory, I think it is something that is badly needed by WordPress and something that will make content editing easier for the millions of people who use it — eventually. In practice, it feels incomplete and I am finding it frustrating to use. To …

Read more »

PSA: Do Not Use camelCase for WordPress Shortcode Attribute Names

Use lower or snake case instead of camel case for WordPress shortcode attribute names.

I just wasted nearly an hour troubleshooting a shortcode for a project because I did not know that WordPress shortcode attributes are passed through PHP’s strtolower() function (view source). I rarely use camelCase in PHP, and am also not a huge fan of shortcodes, so have easily managed to get through 15 years of developing …

Read more »

Sad Robot

sad robot

I am in a bad place. Not the worst place by far, but it keeps getting worse. My brain is starting to shut down and it is getting harder to come back. It happens whenever there are too many things. It has always happened, and no matter what kinds of medicines I take, or therapy …

Read more »

Working While Autistic

Sisyphus

Working is hard. I think it is hard for most people because it is something you have to do for so many hours of your life. Some jobs are harder than others, but having to put so much time and energy into something can become onerous under the best of circumstances. In many ways, my job is easy. I …

Read more »

50 Random Thoughts On or About Turning Fifty

50

I turned 50 on January 28th. It was a pretty exciting birthday for me. For a person who didn’t think they would make it to eighteen, 50 years old feels like an achievement. 18 seemed like one too, but more like one that was achieved by luck. 50 took a lot more work. In honor and remembrance …

Read more »

Wakeup Call To Action

Call to Action

This could be our call to action to make this country a better place & force us to think about what “a better place” means for everyone, not just ourselves.

Font Rendering in Safari

Browser Logos

There’s definitely a difference between Chrome and Safari due to Safari’s font rendering. In Safari text tends to be a bit bolder due to the anti-aliasing algorithm and can sometimes take up a few extra pixels on the screen.

I was getting very frustrated earlier because of a menu bar that was wrapping in Safari and not in Chrome. The Safari window had to be 200px wider than the Chrome window for the menu not to wrap before switching to the mobile menu.

Making the menu font size .1em smaller fixed the problem. It doesn’t even really make sense mathematically, but it worked so I am not inclined to figure it out right now.

Thanks Stack Overflow!

chaos

chaos

chaos is in me
one step closer to the edge
trying not to fall

chaos confuses
wraps word order wrong and fails
to stop the echo

chaos surrounds me
closing in fog and laughing
when i disappear

I am an autistic person with autism

Autistics Speaking Day 2015

I call myself autistic but if you call me a person with autism, I don’t mind. If you compare me to a puzzle it is ok. I think you are like a puzzle too. I don’t speak for all autistic people. I don’t think anyone can. I understand the reasons why person-first language can be …

Read more »