Sunday Journal 08

I tinkered this week. That means there was a mix of design, development, and spinning my tires. I’m at a place where I’m not super embarrassed of the look/layout, just mostly embarrassed. It’s worth sharing and starting the search for my first ten. This week, I’ll get back to creating content.

Site updates

Here are some updates from this week.

Standalone 100 Days, 100 Posts page: I want to set aside the 100 posts as I continue writing and posting beyond the first 100.

Redesigned the homepage

Here’s a timelapse of me struggling HTML/CSS, then struggling in Sketch, then struggling in HTML/CSS again. In potato
resolution:

Menu and Flickity

I bought a Flickity license, so I’ll be putting carousels everywhere. I started with the header menu, which remains in the previously mentioned super-embarrassed state. Iterations to come. On desktop, the carousel should be disabled and the cards should all just show.

I’ve been brainstorming card sets that might be interesting. One idea was stray book notes. One-off cards with a book highlight and some of my thoughts. For desktop, there should be an option to view the cards laid out next to each other.

Here’s a prototype. Three book notes from this week:

Simplifying

I changed my Twitter name @makeshowlearn to @_franciscortez. I still love the spirit behind “make things, show people, and learn more things”. For a little bit, I was wondering how this would be received by others. Then I remembered the immortal words of Don Draper: “I don’t think about you at all.” And I realized that nobody will care.

IRL

Running

I’m continuing with the Couch to 5K program. It ramped up pretty quick. I dropped the speed down because my heart rate was getting too high based on science and internet browsing. This seems sustainable. I also bought bands to help work on some knee pain.

Meditation

I need to get back on this. I still feel like I’m focusing better than before I started meditating. So Iit seems like a really important skill to work on. I’ll make time to do this. I really enjoyed Eric Barker’s post from this week: “Neuroscience Of Meditation: How To Make Your Mind Awesome”. Clear, informative, and fun to read.