Gitting things done
GitHub has a fascinating interview with Linus Torvalds, the inventor of both git and Linux for the 20th anniversary of git.
GitHub has a fascinating interview with Linus Torvalds, the inventor of both git and Linux for the 20th anniversary of git.
The (relatively) new View Transition API is really slick! Simply adding the following CSS to my blog enabled same-document view transitions - no JavaScript required!
Go ahead and give it a try now! Simply click a link to another page on this site and you should observe a seamless transition occur.
@view-transition {
navigation: auto;
}
If you want to add even more pizzazz, you can declare CSS keyframe animations:
/* Create a custom animation */
@keyframes move-out {
from {
transform: translateX(0%);
}
to {
transform: translateX(-100%);
}
}
@keyframes move-in {
from {
transform: translateX(100%);
}
to {
transform: translateX(0%);
}
}
/* Apply the custom animation to the old and new page states */
::view-transition-old(root) {
animation: 0.4s ease-in both move-out;
}
::view-transition-new(root) {
animation: 0.4s ease-in both move-in;
}
For a blog like this there’s no real use, but for more complex web applications, the View Transition API is a really seamless way to integrate smooth transitions.
I’ve been a long time user of Cultured Code’s Things to-do app. It’s slick, has well designed ergonomics, and is perfectly minimalistic. Things’ Markdown support is tasteful and its approach to task management structured but pared back.
They’ve just announced a rewrite of their existing server-side infrastructure stack in Swift, the linked post and blog post are worth a read.
From a technical perspective, I’ve always appreciated its rock-solid proprietary Things Cloud syncing service. In particular, I find it interesting the app asks for Local Network access to enable faster syncing:
btop
is now my default terminal resource monitor, supplanting top
, htop
, and all the others of that ilk. I wanted to spare a few words for its beautiful (and functional!) text-based user interface (TUI):
btop
divides your terminal window into multiple information-dense panes displaying CPU, memory, network, and process information simultaneously. What’s fantastic about btop
is that user ergonomics and customisation are clearly front and centre: each pane is numbered, and toggling off/on a pane is as simple as pressing the corresponding pane number. Instead of fiddling with a config file and refreshing (as many other command-line tools require), you can effortlessly switch between panes on-the-fly.e
) from searching the manual to just looking at the screen.What makes btop
stand out is its intuitive keyboard navigation system. Unlike many other CLIs, btop
maps essential functions to single keystrokes. This design philosophy means the interaction mode gets out of the way - toggling through complex system information and controls is always just a keystroke away. To borrow from The Design of Everyday Things, this feels like a set of masterfully crafted affordances.
This is awesome! Typographic Hangul from the title scene of Parasite
“I wonder how much it is insightful to watch someone doing a workflow and to note when discomfort kicks in. That’s a really insightful thing to realize what matters from bitter experience, right? … Experience tells you when to worry about something and when not to worry about it” - Ben Sparks
That is - the rising discomfort of a programmer when employing a new tool, framework, or library is a good window into the ergonomics of how one uses your tool, framework, or library. Source: How I animate 3Blue1Brown | A Manim demo with Ben Sparks. The whole video is worth checking out! It’s a masterclass on how to construct a programatic-animation library and demonstrate how to work within it.
This demonstration of an auditory representation of a (visual) graph in Swift Charts is wild: Vectorized and function plots in Swift Charts at WWDC24.