Well… hello! 👋
This is the first newsletter I’ve sent since March 21, 2020. Given everything that’s happened in the interim, I thought restarting this thing on Friday the 13th was fitting.
A reintroduction is probably in order, so here’s my description of my goals for this newsletter from ICYMI #1:
I love keeping up with what people in the tech community write about, speak about, and accomplish. I’ve wanted to curate these things for a while, and I’m finally doing it!
The goal for these will be for me not to talk a lot 🤐, just to offer up cool articles, talks, podcast episodes, side projects, and shout-outs. I just want to keep better track of all the awesome things I see, and surface them to people who may have missed them / want to see them! Come along with me if you’d like.
So, up top, if that no longer sounds interesting to you, please unsubscribe – I’ll have a nice link at the bottom. I sure don’t want to take up space if it’s unwelcome!
✏️ Writes
- Sustainable Web Design, An Excerpt (Tom Greenwood) An excerpt from the A List Apart book of the same name – on the physical cost of the web and being more conscious builders of the web.
- How to be a great podcast guest (Sam Julien) If you’re interested in guesting on podcasts, Sam has some specific, actionable advice to get prepared and hopefully settle some nerves.
- Writing great alt text: Emotion matters (Jake Archibald) “What’s the alt text for this image?” The answer is sometimes more nuanced than one might first think.
🔨 Projects
- Website Carbon Calculator - What is your website’s carbon footprint?
- Repo Visualizer - “Fingerprint” the structure of a GitHub repo.
- Monthly Dev Tee - A new developer tee every month! Did I buy one? Yes. (Kurt made it look too good).
- Emojinator - Generate your own “weirdly specific meme-moji”.
🎤 Talks + Events
- Access All Areas - An accessibility-focused online conference, spanning two days (October 25th and November 9th).
💬 Tweets
Here’s the thing: frontend engineers who specialize in accessibility are often treated like they practice a small subset of the frontend, instead of a superset of it. a11y specialists synthesize all of the standard frontend skills with a host of others. 1/5
one time i asked a potential manager how many women were on his team and he said “…there’s a woman who sits near us!” and i still wonder how she’s doing
Since legitimate content creators are being confused for grifters simply because they charge for some of their content, here are some tips to help you decide whether or not to buy a course (which, hopefully, will also help you spot actual grifters). 👇🏽
Please talk salary with your friends and peers. As someone who grew up pinching pennies, I couldn’t even fathom the amount I could get paid in tech. When I moved to SF, I asked for $100K, received a phenomenal offer at $120K, then realized everyone was getting paid $150K.
🦄 Random
- Naomi Osaka (The Netflix series) - Even if you’re not a tennis fan, this was incredible to watch.
- Type the alphabet - Literally type the alphabet as fast as you can. It ate some of my time…
🌵 Personal
- The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a major report on climate change. Eric Holthaus wrote a great thread breaking down the report, and Emily Atkin shared a piece I found helpful.
- The Disconnect: Power Politics and the Texas Blackout - Our local NPR station is putting out a great series on the Texas power grid – what happened during the Texas blackouts in February 2021, how did the grid get this way, and how do we fix it?
Have a great weekend, y’all,