Changelog

Monthly updates + happenings

2023 Updates

2023-12
2023-11
2023-10
2023-09
2023-08
2023-07
2023-06
2023-05
2023-04
2023-03
2023-02
2023-01

December 2023

Continued work on the modernization of a student loan application for a Canadian provincial government. The project is a .NET Blazor server application, so I've been continuing my journey in building UI in C#.
Finally watched The Bear. It's amazing. And so much more than I thought it would be. Ostensibly a kitchen drama. Actually a show about trauma and adult children of addicts / parents with mental health issues.
Subluxated my shoulder in a cycling accident, attempting to avoid a car parked in the middle of the road.
These are the songs in my rotation in December.

November 2023

Continued work on the modernization of a student loan application for a Canadian provincial government. The project is a .NET Blazor server application, so I've been continuing my journey in building UI in C#.
Travelled to Chile for 10 days with my partner. We travelled to Punta Arenas and saw penguins on Magdalena Island; to Puerto Natales and day-hiked in Torres del Paine park (incl. the Mirador Las Torres hike); to San Pedro de Atacama and saw the Valle de la Luna, the El Tatio Geysers and Laguna Cejar; and to Santiago where we enjoyed the city and nearby Valparaíso. I'm hoping over the holidays to write a few longer-form posts about our experience.
These were the songs that carried me through November.

October 2023

Started work on a new contract for a Canadian provincial government to modernize their student loan application process. This is a .NET project, which takes me out of my usual React work and has me coding almost exclusively in C# to build a Blazor server application. I am accumulating a lot of knowledge of this relatively immature ecosystem, which I hope to share in a longer-form blog post one day.
For the first time since the Covid pandemic started, I hopped on my bike and attended a tech meetup downtown. I went to the StorybookTO meetup in Toronto. A great event with great presentations on the ways organizations like Rangle.io and Wealthsimple are leveraging Storybook in their workflows. I learned a lot and met some great people and overall hope to do more meetups in the coming year.
- Stephanie Zeng from Rangle.io presented on "story-driven" development, which is an interesting variation on TDD for modern UI development.
- Seth Davenport talked about UI testing at Wealthsimple. He gave a great talk on how his teams are using Chromatic and Storybook to drive snapshot tests, a11y tests, documentation generation and test coverage, all while conceding that innovation in the tool chain matter less than innovation in the product (i.e. should be in service of the product).
- Finally, Varun Vachhar talked about using Chromatic's new Modes feature for testing. Modes sit above globals and can be used to test components in a number of different "mode" scenarios (localization, dark mode, etc.).
I went to the premiere of The Great Canadian Baking Show new season at HotDocs. My partner, Carmen, is a photographer and she shot the cast and bakers for their various media. It was a very fun and sweet and wholesome evening.
These were the songs that carried me through October.

September 2023

My dad suffered a detached retina at the beginning of the month, so I spent the first half of the month up north doing some care-giving.
Deep diving into Blazor for UI development for a new project.
These were the songs that carried me through September.

August 2023

Took some time off this month to fix some things around the house. Also spent a bunch of time catching up with people we missed during the winter and the pandemic.
September is just around the corner, and I'm really excited to get back to coding and a regular work routine more generally.
Found a very nice collection of short docs of Berlin Bike Messengers by Claire Tayler. I really do miss that city. 😔
These were the songs that carried me through August.

July 2023

Finished my contract work leading UI / feature development of a micro frontend for a publicly traded HR SaaS platform. Helped my team get their MVP HR ticketing solution shipped and out the door for customer feedback, complete with documentation and knowledge transfer for the UI devs I helped hire. With that, my contract has come to an end. I'm planning on taking some time off in August to reboot and fix some things around the house, and look forward to building more fun things in September!
Attended a large family BBQ at my dad's in Bobcaygeon.
These were the songs that carried me through July.

June 2023

Continued work leading UI / feature development in a micro frontend for a publicly traded HR SaaS platform.
Started exploring Keystatic by Thinkmill for a personal project. It's pretty cool tech and uses Markdoc, which I love, under the hood. May write about it in a longer post at some point.
Also spent some time exploring the Shoelace web components library. It's quite good.
Learned how to play There Will Never Be Another You, another jazz standard, and had my last guitar lesson until the fall.
Spent some time with my parents and extended family.
Finished weeding and planting the front garden.
These are the songs that carried me through June.

May 2023

Continued work leading UI / feature development in a micro frontend for a publicly traded HR SaaS platform.
Implemented fun solutions with react-query and mock service worker.
Interviewed a number of developers for my client and now assisting with onboarding of a new engineer.
Caught up with old friends, including an old colleague from Serbia.
Saw Sasha Velour live at Meridian Hall.
Finished learning how to play Dust Filled Room by Steve Gunn.
Explored minor pentatonic scales (C#, A and D#) for soloing and bending.
Picked up a Kobo e-reader to read library books a bit easier. It's made of recycled plastic that would otherwise be ocean-bound and is pretty awesome.
These are the songs that carried me through May.

April 2023

Started a new project with a new team at the same company I've been working with for the last year. The new project has me leading UI development in a micro frontend for a new feature.
Came down with Covid for the first time. It was not enjoyable and dashed a lot of plans for this month.
Celebrated my goddaughter's first communion.
Guitar: continued learning how to play Dust Filled Room by Steve Gunn.
These are the songs that carried me through April.

March 2023

Continued accessibility (a11y) development work for a publicly traded HR SaaS company. I will be moving to a new role and team in April, leading UI development on an important feature for the company.
Spent a couple of days in Prince Edward County for my partner's birthday.
Learned arpeggios for Autumn Leaves, and started learning Dust Filled Room by Steve Gunn.
These are the songs that carried me through March.

February 2023

Continued accessibility (a11y) development work for a publicly traded HR SaaS company.
Gave a presentation on micro frontend (MFE) architecture and design systems. I put some of my thoughts on these topics for large organizations in a post here.
Wrote a second blog post about Web Components, on new developments in ergonomics and SSR.
Updated the RSS feed of my site to include blog post entries.
Wrote a new Table of Contents web component for the blog pages on my site.
Saw the Toronto Jazz Orchestra perform a night of Radiohead at 3030 Dundas as part of Hugh's Room Live show. They were, as usual, fantastic.
I finally found a guitar of my own, and this month started learning Autumn Leaves, a jazz standard.
These are the songs that carried me through February.

January 2023

A11Y: Continued UI / accessibility engineering work for a publicly traded HR software company. This month I was able to make strategic changes to the code that impacted the entire application, resolving hundreds of tickets with a single PR. Such a great feeling and win for the client.
Privacy: Finished work on updates to a cookie notice for a global SaaS provider.
Guitar: This month I learned Hey Joe by Jimi Hendrix. I'm not playing it with my teeth or with my guitar on fire, or even with barre chords. I'm playing it mostly with open chords, but I'm taking it as a win. I'm going to be delving back into some theory and jazz standards next month. Looking forward to it.
Open source: I made no contributions to open source this month, which makes me a bit sad. Looking to contribute more this month.
Permacomputing: Devine Lu Linvega of Hundred Rabbits fame gave a lovely talk at Handmade Seattle 2022 called "Weathering Software Winter", discussing permacomputing and what it means to live and work on a boat, away from internet, in a world where software is all cloud based. Here's an excerpt:

Many of the tools that we thought we could rely on broke down, whether it is Apple products, or software that require subscription services, DRM, etc. As an artist you spend time developing a skill, you become a Photoshop illustrator. When your connection to the internet fails and that the software locks up, that skill that you thought was yours was actually entirely owned by someone, and can be taken away. Even though we've been paying for this sort of software for years, the moment that you can't have access to authenticate yourself that skill is gone. We didn't expect this, it scared us.

TV: Started watching The Last of Us. Never played the game. The show - and in particular Pedro Pascal - is amazing. And the latest episode with Nick Offerman is just the most wonderful blend of Station Eleven meets World War Z. Beautiful, poignant reflections on what it means to be human in the face of despair and untold loss.
Music: These are the songs that carried me through January.
Other / Random: celebrated lunar new year with my in-laws. Happy year of the rabbit! Painted the main floor of our house white. It was blue before, and giving us the blues. Feels good to start the year with a fresh coat of primer.