Blog Posts

Mon Jul 17 2023

What's stopping me from doing all the things I want to? It's not other people, my ability, or even time. It's my ego, and it's the same for you.

Fri Jul 14 2023

We've all been in situations where our surroundings are too chaotic or noisy to get work done. It's why people go to libraries or coffee shops to work but not tennis matches or concerts. You already k...

Wed Jul 05 2023

There's been an immense shift in awareness and understanding around mental health. We're teaching people to see that one action does not define them. If you screw up today, you're not a bad person; we...

Mon Jul 03 2023

The podcast Hard Fork had a great conversation about how AI will start to consume what it creates. This self-cannibalization will harm future models, and the actions of search engines will only worsen...

Sat Jul 01 2023

I've been taking improv comedy classes for a few months, and I love it. Improv brings with it a bunch of benefits. You learn to think on your feet. You learn to make your partners look good. You add t...

Fri Jun 30 2023

Too many people take a long time on website builds, waiting for them to be 'perfect' until releasing them. It's a long and exhausting process. By the time your site launches you're so fatigued that yo...

Wed Jun 28 2023

I really struggle to keep in touch with people, especially when they're far away. I don't talk with any of my high school friends, and only one college friend. For the longest time I thought it was so...

Mon Jun 26 2023

Are you stuck trying to choose the perfect tech stack or the best side project to build rather than just getting started? Do you own twenty different courses but can't decide which topic is the best t...

Thu Jun 22 2023

If you read books on an Amazon Kindle, you should know you can access all of your books on the web, too. It keeps in sync with your Kindle device and any Kindle apps you might be using. While it's not...

Wed Jun 21 2023

We all know gossip isn't kind. We get that it hurts the people we're talking about, even if they never find out about it. What you might not realize is how much it hurts you, too. I don't think of mys...

Mon Jun 19 2023

If you're learning to code in 2023, you probably wonder, Should I be using AI tools like ChatGPT and Copilot? I say yes and no. Yes, because clearly, some amount of AI will exist in every developer to...

Mon Jun 19 2023

I'm a perfectionist 😇 You'll often hear this said by someone who seems to have their whole life together. They seem to sit back and calmly put out consistent, excellent work. It's these people that g...

Sun Jun 18 2023

It's a mad dash, but I love my frantic writing sprints. To improve my writing, I've set a weekly goal of shipping five blog posts. To reach that goal, I'm doing 50-minute blog post writing sessions. I...

Sun Jun 18 2023

I'll show you how to add a search like the one on my site to your own Astro project. We'll use a package called PageFind to index our Astro site and provide an instant fuzzy search. No third party ser...

Fri Jun 16 2023

When's the last time you were actually bored? Do you feel the need to always have music or the TV on in the background? Is it hard to make yourself do boring tasks? In the age of TikTok and YouTube, m...

Thu Jun 15 2023

AI isn't going to put us all out of work. It sure as hell isn't going to end the world. Sure, there's a ton of hype around ChatGPT and Midjourney. But there were also hype bubbles around Crypto, NFTs,...

Wed Jun 14 2023

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the 1999 Bruce Willis film, The Sixth Sense. This is an excellent blog post on working with ADHD by Stack Overflow. Let's talk about it.In particular, I liked ...

Mon Jun 12 2023

It was much worse when I was a kid. The stutter was more intense, and I'd get stuck on words for what felt like an eternity. No kid wants to be 'different,' at least not like that. I don't think I was...

Sat Jun 10 2023

I identify as a multipotentialite, which means I have a lot of interests and creative pursuits. I love teaching, designing, making videos, doing podcasts, writing blog posts and newsletters, building ...

Thu Jun 08 2023

I was catching up with my pal Cassie Evans when we both touched on something we had discovered independently about ourselves. We tend to compare ourselves to others in a particular way. We compare our...

Wed Jun 07 2023

In The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, she talks about the three types of fun: Challenging fun, Accommodating fun, and Relaxing fun. Challenging fun requires a good amount of effort and some plan...

Tue Jun 06 2023

Over the last few months, I've slowly refined my productivity system to something I'm thrilled with. I've tailored it to me and my needs, but one or two things I'm doing can be helpful to you, too. Th...

Mon Jun 05 2023

Body doubling is the best technique I've found to help me get work done. For me, working alone is challenging and requires a ton of willpower. When body doubling, you work alongside someone else, eith...

Sun Jun 04 2023

Affecting change across the web is about as easy as making change anywhere else in the world. It takes work for a single person or even a company or country, especially if it doesn't play into people'...

Fri Jun 02 2023

Brene Brown has this fantastic concept called Painting Done, which helps you give better directions to others. There are three levels for how much information you provide when you give someone a task:...

Thu Jun 01 2023

There are rare tools that change how I interact with the world or what possibilities I see. One of those tools is Descript. Editing videos and podcasts like they're Word docs was such an innovation th...

Wed May 31 2023

My later years as an elementary school teacher were pretty miserable. The hours were long (7am-6pm most days), the pressure was unrelenting, and the entire system was designed to reduce a child's valu...

Mon May 22 2023

I've always been interested in services like Blinkist and Shortform which provide you summaries of popular books, allowing you to learn the book's core lessons in a fraction of the time. While it's no...

Sat Apr 01 2023

There are many resources to teach you how to write better, but barely any apply to developers. I've consumed dozens of books, guides, courses, and podcasts on writing, but most advice is helpful only ...

Sat Mar 04 2023

A list of over thirty writing prompts for developers looking to improve their technical writing skills.

Mon Jan 09 2023

One of the biggest mistakes you can make as a developer advocate is assuming that every user is _just like you_. Your knowledge is important in the developer advocate role, but it's crucial to underst...

Wed Dec 28 2022

This is a brain hack I've been using on myself for the past year. Sometimes the hardest part of a task is _just starting_. If I'm not exactly sure how something needs to be done, I'll most likely proc...

Mon Dec 26 2022

A recap of the Holiday Snowtacular fundraiser, along with what went well, what didn't, and what I want to do for next year.

Thu Aug 25 2022

Good DevRel starts with understanding your company, your product, and your community. All of your initiatives are built upon this foundation of knowledge. Don't just generate ideas: make informed deci...

Thu Aug 11 2022

A method for finding the unique type of content that resonates with your audience.

Mon May 09 2022

The Chrome DevTools Command Menu is a lesser-known feature that reveals all of the hidden features. There are quite a few features here that you might have downloaded a plugin to handle, but Chrome ca...

Sat Apr 30 2022

Before I was a web developer, I was an elementary school teacher for 5 years. Changing careers into tech takes a lot of work, but it can be easier with the right approach. I won't lie. There are many ...

Sat Feb 26 2022

Making plans used to stress me out. I wasn't a calendar person, so when asked if I was doing something next week I honestly didn't know. The problem was I wasn't using my calendar. When you're not ope...

Sat Jul 24 2021

Fetching additional data with Prismic Slice Machine can be tricky. Here are some solutions.

Wed Jun 09 2021

When we lower the bar for what we share with the world we're able to create more and improve faster.

Tue Feb 25 2020

I'll show you how to name and group stock SVGs so they're much easier to animate.

Fri Feb 21 2020

A look at problems I recently faced by using CSS Custom Properties in different ways.

Sun Jan 26 2020

I used the app Bear for everything, and I'd love to show you some of my favorite features.

Fri Jul 19 2019

12 Excellent and tiny macOS apps that do one task incredibly well.

Mon Apr 15 2019

Netlify's new Dev feature gives you the power of Netlify on your desktop. The Live feature allows for site streaming across the internet. Let's check it out!

Sun Apr 07 2019

Learn the most useful Emmet shortcuts to make your HTML and CSS writing much faster.

Mon Jan 21 2019

If you aren't using header tags, or if you'd like to know why they're great, here's why they're a must-have on any website.

Mon Dec 10 2018

Learn why you need to think about the real purpose of the site before you choose a layout, font, color scheme, or anything else.

Mon Dec 03 2018

Learn how to take your focus to the next level with a few skills like batching and the pomodoro technique.

Tue Nov 27 2018

You've been planning that project for far too long. Today is the day you need to start! Learn why stepping forward is always the right thing to do.

Mon Nov 19 2018

I want to share what I learned on my frontend web developer interviews so you can perform better and get the job.

Sun Nov 04 2018

Speed up your vector workflow by learning how to easily copy and paste SVG between Illustrator and your favorite code editor.

Sat Aug 04 2018

The Virtual DOM might seem like magic, but it's completely understandable and crucial knowledge to becoming an expert React developer.

Sat Apr 21 2018

A case study on a Javascript arcade game I made for my Udacity Nanodegree. I go through how I approached the project and what I learned.

Fri Apr 06 2018

A look back at my first time teaching kids coding with Scratch. Lessons learned and what I'd do next time.

Sat Mar 31 2018

Teaching is a tough job, but computers could make it so much more efficient. Here are a couple ways code could make teaching better.