HWC Baltimore 2018-07-25 Wrap-Up

Baltimore's second Homebrew Website Club of July met at the Digital Harbor Foundation Tech Center on July 25th!

Here are some notes from the "broadcast" portion of the meetup:

derekfields.is — Derek wanted a couple new rules for sharing time, today. First, find and share a site with some cool tech that you like. Second, talk about why you're into web development. He showed off a demo of using the browser Gamepad API w/ a Playstation dual-shock 3 controller. It showed button state changes, including analog states for buttons and joysticks. Been thinking about lots of ideas lately but missing some focus. Looking at productivity hacks to focus more. Notices when he's not focusing, now trying prompts to figure out why he's distracted and get back on task. Derek is into web development because it changes rapidly and requires focus to keep learning. Been working on his VueJS class and it's been going well until today. His accountability buddy is on a trip.

jonathanprozzi.net — Been working on work stuff. Built a single-page app w/ Gatsby for deploys of some Digital Harbor Foundation content for use in remote schools with intermittent internet connections. Pulls course data from the central DHF WordPress and deploys it as a package on Netlify. Ran into his first deploy issues with Netlify due to case-sensitive filesystems (which he doesn't experience on his Mac dev machine). Been really inspired by the Susty WordPress theme which can deliver WordPress pages in ~6KB, compared with most themes, which are very bloated. Jonathan is into the web because of the problem-solving aspects of it, but also because it allows creative expression and productivity.

zach.oglesby.co — New! Welcome, Zach! Recently switched his Known-powered site to Jonathan LaCour's overview page (w/ location info and other nice things), but it doesn't have a representative h-card, yet, so working on that. Also working on making his read posts more compatible with IndieBookClub. In terms of "Cool Tech", just had occasion to use Bootstrap for the first time, which was interesting. Zach is into web development because there are so many ways to do things on the web, you can play and tinker with different things you might not have otherwise.

pulianas.com — New! Welcome, Alec! Has had this website for a while, originally as a portfolio, now as a WordPress site that powers his Micro.blog. Been working on a new site for a podcast, Overanalyzed, also WordPress. In terms of "Cool Tech" - likes Eddie Hinkle's website. Also, webrings "seem pretty cool". Isn't a web developer professionally, but likes how it makes publishing easy. Really also likes the concept of owning your own content, bringing his stuff in from Twitter. Sees his online identities as layers: website is most personal, Twitter next, and Facebook is sanitized.

martymcgui.re — Been working on the Baltimore Improv Festival website, a static site generator called Ruhoh that doesn't really "exist" as a project anymore, though the code and gems are still out there. Needs to spend time on the webrings site. In terms of "Cool Tech", likes this recent "Even More CSS Secrets" talk from Lea Verou. Marty is into web development because it is an amazing way to share content that anyone can access from anywhere in the world! "Can it be done on the web?" is an interesting, if sometimes difficult, lens to see the world through.

Other discussion:

• Code-of-Conduct issues with the recent Hackers On Planet Earth conference that Marty attended last weekend.
• Deploying things on Netlify! Marty tried his first Netlify site during quiet writing hour, as a potential host for the Baltimore Improv Festival website, which is currently on an old shared host.
• Tools for writing VueJS (and using Visual Studio Code for it). Like Vue Snippets for VS Code, linting tools, and Sarah Drasner's CSS tricks articles about VueJS.
• brutalist-web.design and the principle of least power when building things.
• Talked about how mobile designs can be better than "full" desktop site designs. E.g. Twitter vs. mobile Twitter. But also Facebook vs. mobile Facebook vs. "basic" mobile Facebook, the last of which has no Javascript!
• Getting around town. E.g. the new Bird scooters that are here in Baltimore.

Thanks to everybody who came out! We hope to see you all again at our next meeting on Wednesday August 8th at 6:30pm (quiet writing hour at 5:30pm)!