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05.08 – 05.14

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Work

Wrote a Playwright test for expected behaviour with a page’s JavaScript turned off to prevent a regression that was only previously being caught (by chance) with pa11y. This was the first of its (no JS) kind and good to know it’s possible. There’s plenty of scope for adding more to check we’re doing a good job of progressive enhancement.

We found lazy-loaded images don’t print (unless they’ve been scrolled into the viewport). People do still love to print the internet, and to be fair some have legitimate grounds — Visual Stories are definitely a candidate for print, and without doubt the most important thing that should print in a Visual Story is the visual bit. I had what may turn out to be a rubbish idea of including them as background-images for print media.

Life

We departed Coniston for Beverley Monday morning. Both offspring had puked within five minutes. Ultimately this worked in our favour because they passed out shortly after and the majority of the journey passed without incident. I’ve made my peace with a final-hour-screamathon being the theme for car journeys nowadays.

I felt considerably more alive arriving in Beverley this time than just a few weeks ago. Baby girl is spending much longer stretches without screaming her lungs out which lets a little bit of air blow through our thoughts. Not to say she can’t still give it absolute laldy when the mood takes her. A screaming baby does somewhat mask the sound of a melting down toddler though.

My cough isn’t improving. Or if it is, it’s doing so at a glacial pace. It’s not so much the cough as the associated rib pain that’s getting me down – paracetamol and ibuprofen not touching the sides. The out of hours GP prescribed something that makes my ears ring so I now have sore ribs and ringing ears.

A little sad I missed seeing little man on his big day out to York Railway Museum. By all accounts he flipping loved it – even went back for a second go around after lunch. I’m mildly concerned the steam engine gene (that mercifully remained recessive for me) has made its way through to him. We can but hope he grows out of it.

Last day of the holiday trip to East Riding Community Hospital to get little man’s foot X-rayed. Just a sprain thankfully.

Re-routed via my bro’s house on the way Back to London to avoid a hold up on the motorway. Worked out nice for all involved – everyone happy to see each other and a short enough stay that nobody had a chance (ok I didn’t have a chance) to get to get wound up. Went to Dad’s grave for a bit – still doesn’t make any sense that he’s not here. Baby girl had a good scream at him – he’d have liked that.

In lockdown #2 I got (back) into sketching. My fortieth rolled around shortly after and I amassed a stack of exciting art kit from pals who’d been told that was now my jam. Ever since, it has all sat dormant under the bed, occasionally making me feel guilty – my (idiot) ego won’t let me put pen to paper in case it’s rubbish (which it definitely will be, but I shouldn’t care – my logical self certainly doesn’t). Anyhow, also in lockdown #2 I picked up the book SKETCH! by France Belleville-Van Stone and first learned of the iPad app Procreate. I finally had a play with it this week and I think it might be the key to getting over myself. Probably going to ‘have to’ buy an Apple Pencil to be sure (I can always add it to the guilt stack if it doesn’t work out).

This site

I played some more with twitter/opengraph images using a different plugin (previously discussed). It’s neat but ultimately it still felt like too much of a faff so I took it back out.

On Friday my timeline was suddenly awash with the View Transitions API so I had to have a little dabble. It’s some fresh voodoo. I foresee much shoehorning-it-in-ad-nauseam.

Reading

• 1-bit Hokusai’s “The Great Wave”
• The problem with sticky menus and what to do instead
• Andy P’s annual post – My name in lights
• Ligatures in programming fonts: hell no – hard agree

Running

Tuesday round Beverley Swine Moor (navigating various bogs and barbed wire fences to avoid cows and horses). Set off for a trot on Saturday afternoon but almost immediately pulled the rip-cord because of sore ribs. Trying(/failing) not to feel too sorry for myself as a result.