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04.24 – 04.30

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Work

I think I’ve finally got the Google Analytics/Tag Manager monkey off my back. I wrote a hook to replicate GA4 enhanced measurement events in our custom <audio> and <video> components which tied up the loose ends.

I probably have to accept there are bits of React 'magic' that will never flow through me – why do changes to the cachedSteps only work if I run them through a useState hook? God knows. Half a day lost figuring that out.

I also hadn’t accounted for the fact that using gtag('event', 'blah') doesn’t send events direct to GA, but instead populates the dataLayer with a custom event which you then get to respond to from within GTM. That cost me another half a day.

We had a mini workshop about our design principles for accessibility and inclusion. It feels good to give some proper thought to this stuff – ‘accessibility’ is a term that gets bandied about as something that has to get done rather than something that is integral. And inclusion is often overlooked altogether. These kinds of meetings remind me how hard language is.

Ended the week using the Accessibility panel in Chrome Dev tools to solve a problem on our pa11y dashboard (ok only theoretically solved at time of going to press). Felt pretty good about it.

Life

I entered the ballot for the London Marathon 2024, joining 515,000 other hopefuls. Looking forward to the curious sensation of disappointment and relief when I once again don’t get a place.

I’m a sucker for a new shiny text editor and zed looks nice. There would have to be a far more parsimonious story for porting my VS Code settings and shortcuts over before I’d consider switching though.

Got moderate rib-ache from excessive coughing. GP reckons I’ve trapped something or pulled a muscle but gave me some antibiotics in case things get worse. Woke Sunday with diplacusis which is both a new word and a new sensation for me. Like I’m listening to the world relayed on a slight delay through a really poor quality headphone in one ear. Something particular about the timbre of the little man’s voice makes him sound like a Dalek, which is hugely disconcerting. This coupled with the fact I’ve never seen phlegm so green emitting from my face and am generally feeling quite beaten up is making me think the antibiotics might not be a bad idea.

Bluey the ageing Vauxhall Corsa passed his MOT (Go oan yersel Bluey!). Now we’ve got to drive the little blue bastard to the Lake District with two far-from-chill kids so I panic-bought an iPad in abject fear. Will spend the week downloading the CBeebies back catalogue in its entirety.

I used my last drop of resilience when baby girl hung off my armpit hair while screaming in my ear. I had a cry. Felt a bit daft. Then things seemed marginally better. An absolute rump of a haircut (NO SALAD BARRY) helped too.

Bae’s parents came to help out over the weekend for which I am immeasurably grateful. We all rounded out the week with an afternoon at the fresh hell that is Clissold Park fair. Remarkably we escaped without a major meltdown.

Reading

• Load Balancing – some neat visualisations
• CSS Blend Modes – nice interactive post. Nice blog
• The URL is the ultimate global state management tool – preaching to the choir. Preach away
• Scoped CSS is back – this melted my brain slightly. There’s some undeniably cool stuff here, but I worry that if I ever find myself relying on scoping strategies like the ones described, I would very quickly end up in a world of pain

TIL

• You can hide text in CSS pseudo elements from screen readers
• You can search open tabs in Chrome with @tabs – and how to set up custom search engines

Running

Monday hills. Wednesday Ally Pally (not to be confused with a11y or pa11y – must’ve been a subroutine in my brain that took me this way) out and back. Saturday hills.