If I recently bought a product or service from you or interacted with your sales or support staff online, and you did not send a follow-up email asking me to rate the experience: Thank you.
You get five-stars: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The 432,210 KM selfie
I love this photo from NASA’s Artemis I mission. It has all of the elements of a great selfie: the subject in the foreground (showcasing both the worm and meatball logos), and some friends off in the background (in this case, all of humanity).
Broth conspiracy
My last two web searches were:
- “when was the last time someone was convicted of seditious conspiracy?”
- “chicken bouillon vs. chicken broth”
Our brains were not made to live in so many worlds at once.
For the record, the last successful seditious conspiracy charge in the US was in 1995 and bouillon and broth are interchangeable.
Instant web dev classic
For many web developers, A Complete Guide to Flexbox from CSS-Tricks.com is a pillar of our web developer reference material. It’s my externalized memory on how the flex feature of CSS works. I don’t have to remember how it works because I know I can look it up there. You can even download a poster version to hang on the wall.
Now there’s another great reference An Interactive Guide to Flexbox by Joshua Comeau. An instant classic.
Rough winter
Canada’s central bank is warning us to “brace for a rough winter”, so I’ve lined up snow-removal service for my driveway with Steve’s Snow Removal (no relation).
New (to me) music: Expert In A Dying Field by The Beths
Today I stumbled across (via the YouTube algorithm, I think) a song I immediately loved. The song is called Expert In A Dying Field by a band called The Beths.
My preferred musical formula: heavy + melodic. While I wouldn’t call their music ‘heavy’, they combine fuzzy guitars with sweet melodies, which does the trick.
The jumping in-and-out of falsetto reminds me of Regina Spektor, the lyrical style reminds of me Kathleen Edwards (bonus recommendation: Change The Sheets), and the fuzzy buzzing guitars remind me of, me!
Only Wallpapers in the Building
The TV-series Only Murders in the Building is fun for a few reasons. It makes fun of true-crime podcasts and the combination of Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez is perfect.
What I was most surprised to find myself enjoying about the show: the literal wallpaper.
How many pizzas should I order?
For all its sordid history, the gossip-news site Gawker left us with a lasting gem: The “How Many Pizzas Should You Order” formula. It’s elegant in its simplicity: (# of people) × 3/8.
What if some of the people are adults and some are kids? Large pizzas or Medium? No more questions! Just use the formula, and round up to the nearest pizza. It works. Your quality of life will improve.
Know what PHP stands for?
The company I helped to found over 23 years ago, silverorange, is thriving in a way I couldn’t have imagined back in 1999. Getting to work with and learn from new team members of all different backgrounds is the best part.
We’re hiring for a few different positions, the most recent of which is a PHP-focused Web Developer position. It’s a great group of people to work with.
My Fiona
Having just weathered Hurricane Fiona, the strongest to hit Canada on record, I have a few notes:
- Everyone in my circle and as far as I can see around me is safe.
- I’ve never felt my house shake in a storm – but I did this time.
- We had a lot of close calls, but no major damage to property.
- There was a lot to clean up (branches, sticks, leaves, trash, etc.)
- Our power was out for an entire week (even longer for others).
- It gets dark early! We really rely on our artificially-extended days to keep up with life.
- A BBQ with a burner was a life-saver. We cooked a ton of decent meals, and boiled a LOT of water.
- There was no interruption to our municipal water supply (we could flush the toilets!).
- It takes a LONG time to boil water.
- Cleaning out the fridge after a week wasn’t as bad as I expected.
- Cleaning out the freezer after a week was was much worse than I expected.
- The mobile network was unreliable. Text messages wouldn’t go through, and then would go through 10 times repeatedly. Mobile data was like the weather, coming and going as it pleased – never there when you need it.
- The clean-up and recovery mobilization at a large-infrastructure level has been impressive (tree removal, power line repair, etc.).
- Solar panels are awesome, but people don’t realize that most residential solar installations can’t generate power when the grid is down. For now, the only option is a $10,000-$20,000+ battery installation.
- A similar outage in winter would have been much more dangerous. Keeping warm and keeping pipes from freezing would be difficult and has me thinking of contingency plans.