Rach Smith's digital garden

A friend asked me if I could build him a simple website for his new Mechanical Engineering business: just a few pages showing off what they’re about and what they can do. 

This is the sort of work I did when I was just starting out with web dev - marketing sites. It’s been 14 years since I worked a gig like this, and I was so struck by how much easier everything is now. 

First of all, the capabilities of CSS are absolutely magical. I needed to do a course to catch up on my knowledge and feel confident again but once I did… putting together layouts is a dream. 

At one point my friend asked if I could change all the places where they had yellow to blue… back in the day this would have been annoying but all I had to do was update a single custom property! I made multiple Netlify Deploy previews for him to look at with different shades of blue and it all took me under 10 minutes.

And because of improvements to CSS and the native platform you need so much less JavaScript to achieve specific layouts and functionality. When you do need JS, you can just use the regular JavaScript API, no need for third party libraries like jQuery or MooTools (lol).

Look, I am old and I am comparing this to the Dark Ages when we were still on CSS 2, but I just can't move past how much better and easier everything is!

At the same time I’m cognisant of the fact this isn’t really a job anymore. My friend had no interest in messing with a Squarespace and was willing to pay my hourly rate to build a static site because he knew he could trust me to do a good job. Most clients probably feel differently, and would prefer to either choose these low or no-code tools to make the websites themselves, or employ devs to build bloated React projects. My own day job is building an incredibly complex Web Application.

What a shame that is, as the technology has never been better for developers to build lean, accessible and attractive websites.

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1. When you put something in the oven and need to remember to take it out, or put washing in the machine and need to remember to hang it out, or need to do anything else time-sensitive like take medication, set a reminder for it. And not just any alarm or reminder, the kind that bugs you over and over until you do it.
2. When packing for family trips, use your lists. Keep the lists updated. Refer back to the lists every time you pack. Don't assume it will be fine because you've done it 20 times before. You will forget to pack yourself underwear or worst of all, one of the 5 sleep aids your child needs to fall asleep.
3. Any important appointment/meeting needs 4 alerts: the day before, the morning of, one hour before and when you need to get in the car/get on the Zoom. Especially on work days, when you are most likely to get sucked in to a focus in which you forget everything else in your life.

Do you recall all those years you were a hot mess? Life was a series of chaotic mistakes and mishaps until out of necessity (having dependants) you developed an extensive set of strategies. The strategies work well, but are annoying to manage, so you are sometimes tempted in to thinking you're a fully functional adult now who can "just remember" to do important things. This is folly, and will only lead to disappointment and burnt potatoes.

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I was a very happy Arc user for a couple of years, but after The Browser Company announced they would no longer be working on it, I started to assess alternatives.

Now I've ended up with a stack of browsers, instead of reaching for a single browser to do all the things.

Polypane

For dev work involving designing, layout and styling.

Chrome

For all other dev work.

Horse

For general internet usage. Horse is a niche one that I imagine is only appealing to a small subset of people, of which I just happen to be a part of. If you are less typical, always open links in a new tab, and have about 200 tabs open at a time "just in case" you want to go back to one... Horse might appeal to you.

Polypane and Horse both require subscriptions, but I'm cool with that. Especially for indie apps.

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Recently I've been experimenting with adding title-less notes to this site, for thoughts the length of a microblog or social post.

Around the same time, I saw Pages CMS popping up in my communities. I decided to give it a try, for adding these micro posts (I call them nuggets) to my Astro content.

I didn't want to replace the authoring flow for my regular notes with Pages, because I quite like the Obsidian-vault-to-site-repo pipeline I had created for those. But these notes are written and published while I'm sitting at my computer. They take more time and attention, so I'm cool with the "slow" and manual process it takes to publish them.

Now I've got Pages set up, all I need to do is add the thought I have into a text box and boom! It's sitting as content in my repo. And I can do it from anywhere, from my phone.

It only took me 20 minutes to read the docs and get it set up. Granted, I have the most basic config ever: just text, no media. But I would recommend it as an extremely handy tool!

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The whole “vibe coding” thing is another reminder that quite a lot of people working in tech don’t understand the difference between programs and products -- Dylan Beattie in The Problem with “Vibe Coding”

Love the distinction made by Dylan in this post. I am still as in love with programming as I was 15 years ago. Product development, on the other hand, brings me to tears on a weekly basis.

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I have this story in my head, that the longer I go without writing a note here, the better that note has to be when I do eventually come back and post again.

I was looking on the internet to see if this is a common thought pattern - that if something is infrequent, it must be excellent.

I couldn't find anything like that on the psych blogs, so I have to assume that I've taken the phrases "quality over quantity" or "quantity over quality" and turned that in to believing "quantity" and "quality" must be mutually exclusive.

You can post infrequently, and have each of those posts be an absolute banger, or you can regularly put out stuff that's okay.

You can't post average shit every now and then.[^1]

[^1]: You can, of course. And so can I, as long as I ignore the voice in my head telling me I can't.

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I was texting with my best friend. Her mum has cancer, and my friend is going through the brutality of watching it take her piece by piece, just as I did with my own mum 13 years ago.

I was thinking about how to respond to the latest message, too personal to relay here, when a suggested reply, animated in glowing colours to let me know it was "intelligent" popped up: Hang in there!

My thought process was immediately broken as I contemplated what an absolutely obscene thing it would be to send in that moment.

This sums up my experience of companies and products trying to inject AI in to the products I use to communicate with other people. It's always just in the way, making stupid suggestions. How could it possibly come up with a better thing to say when it is completely devoid of the context: the relationship I have with the person I'm writing something to. 2, 10, or 23 years of friendship. 9 years of working together. 36 years of being sisters. The audacity of the Product Designers! To think a text-predicting machine would be helpful outside of any situation other than generating some slop or business blathering.

What was already a tough moment, was somehow made worse, by what is supposed to be a messaging utility. Good job everyone.

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This year I set a goal to journal every day in the hope I can write one of these 2024 year-in-review notes for my site. I didn't get to it every single day but I did it enough that I can look back and remember the year that was!

There was a lot that happened this year so I've tried to pull out some threads/themes that particularly stood out or came up over and over again. Most of my focus throughout the year is on my kids, but I don't like to share much about them (for their privacy) so this a just review of my stuff.

This was the most active year I've had in a long time.

I don't think I've moved this much since I was in my early 20s. I'm pretty proud of how consistent I was with exercise as a whole. I found rebounding, started reformer pilates, and got back in to running.

Unfortunately, there were also numerous setbacks due to injury. It turns out I can't do the all-or-nothing thing that I did when I was younger, I just break my body. But I feel like I've learned A LOT about how to improve strength where I need it, pacing myself and injury prevention this year. I'm excited to take the knowledge in to 2025 and have the best year for fitness yet.

Buying the family a piano was the right call

We've all loved having this in the house. Andy and I are already back playing at the level we were when we left high school, after a 20 year break! It's a pretty cool little brain-break from coding work as well.

I got in to reading books again

It had also been a long time since I'd been regularly reading fiction books. I LOVED books when I was younger, before social media was a thing. I never regret choosing to read a story over watching YouTube or some other internet thing. Hoping to increase the number of books I read in 2025.

The highlight of the year was our big USA trip

There was months of preparations pulling this trip together: Anaheim (Disneyland), Seattle and LA. But it went so amazingly well I'm feeling much more open to further overseas holidays. Honestly compared to that, Bali will feel like a walk in the park.

I tried really hard to make connections and form relationships at our School

I've never been great at making new friends. I'm pretty shy and find meeting new people awkward and hard. But I made a conscious effort to push past the discomfort and really try to get to know the other parents of my kids' class. I've met some great people and attending sports and other events is way more fun now that I have people to chat and laugh with.

I made some progress with my mood cycles

For years now I've struggled with a cycle where I move between feeling super freaking great (and productive), and then back to super apathetic and not giving a shit about anything. It is honestly reminiscent of Bipolar Disorder (which many family members have) except like a mild version where I wouldn't call the highs mania and the lows depression, but like a step on the way to either of those states.

I've been trying to solve the puzzle of which lifestyle factors trigger (or speed up) the "spiral down", as it's harder to tell if it is alcohol, hormones, illness, going to bed late, diet, or dopamine chasing (screens) use that then creates more of the same until I feel worse and worse.

I've gone through multiple experiments on myself, cutting various activities out, and whenever I stuck to low-in-added-sugar food I would feel a lot better. I didn't want to believe this was it though, because I freaking love chocolate and sweets. Especially sugary baked goods, oh my God. But after a low that was so bad I could tell my whole family was effected by it, I decided to change what I eat for good. I didn't even let loose at Christmas 😭 but it's been about 8 weeks on an even-(good)-keel which is the longest I've gone without a dip since I had my kids. The pavlova just ain't worth it.

Faves TV

It's a tie between The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and English Teacher.

Book

Fiction: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow Non-Fiction: Areté

Game

Pikmin 4

Podcast

Shameless

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Last I had a Hobonichi Techo Cousin and I loved so many things about it: the paper, the layout, how flat it lays on the desk. The one thing that bothered me was just how big the pages were. I struggled to fill them and it just felt like a waste having so many half-blank pages.

So this year I'm going to do my daily journaling in the A6 size. I bought a HON because I loved the rainbow cover. It is sooo cute and small compared to my Cousin. Can't wait to crack it open today.

I struggled to fill the daily pages in the Cousin, but then on Sundays I would sometimes run out of space. This is because I would write a little "week review" that summed up the daily entries, as well as the day entry. So I bought a Hobonichi Weeks. I will put all my week reviews in there, in the one location. I think this will make it easier to look back on the month when I do my mn&n's.

I am still using a little Field Notes as my daily driver. Still loving this system. It's got to a point where I feel quite lost/scattered if I haven't checked in with the notebook and set up for the day.

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A conversation about the day's playground shenanigans with one of my kids had me asking him: "do you know what social skills are?".

He replied "no, what's that?".

After I explained, he was keen to tell me which skills he thinks he is good at (being kind and respectful, communicating with friends, being able to compromise within a group with different needs). He then said "the skill I don't have, is I'm too shy. I don't know how to talk to new people or at school I'm scared to ask to join in on a game".

I said "when I was your age I found that really hard also. Well I wasn't good at many social skills but the shyness was the thing I found hardest".

He was shocked. "Really?! But you're not shy at all now!!"

"I am still very shy. I'm still scared to meet new people, but I d"

"DO IT ANYWAY!!" (he has a habit of finishing my sentences).

"Yes. Social skills are like maths, english or soccer skills, they can all be practised. But just like those other types of skills some people find them easier to learn than others. And we all have different things we are good at. You're only in grade 1 so you and your school friends are still learning about social skills, so you're all going to make mistakes sometimes, and that's okay. It's part of learning and getting better."

He sat in deep thought for a moment, and then changed the subject to handball skills and how he is much better at them than his classmates.

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Later that night I was reflecting on how cool it is that we have the the resources to help us meet our kids where they are, about growth mindset and differently-wired brains. In the 90s it was like you were likeable and "normal" or weird and shy and awkward (me). End of story.

I was worried that sending my kid (who happens to be just like me) to school would bring up a whole bunch of stuff around how fraught navigating friendships was for me. But instead of it being triggering or upsetting, I've discovered it is that experience which equips me to parent him through it. And in doing so I get to reparent myself. It's quite healing really.

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Sometimes I've just gotta clear the house of extra stuff. When the energy hits I go through every area in the house and bin, give away or sell anything we're not using anymore.

I think that compared to the average household my propensity for accumulation things is lower than average, but my tolerance for cluttered spaces is also low, so the big black trash bag energy hits like once a year.

Doing this is an exercise in cataloging every time I've become momentarily obsessed with a random idea and bought stuff for it. Like the point and shoot camera for taking pics of my kids from when I was giving up my phone. Or the brow products when I decided I was going to be that girl who does her brows every day. The adult colouring books. The press-on nails. The stationary... my God the stationary.

This behaviour is the only thing that gets in the way of living the minimalist low-waste lifestyle I aspire to have. Next time I become fixated on a purchase for a great new idea I'll try to remember this post before I add to cart.

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Recently, my attention has been focused on building web apps to suit my very specific needs. The first one was a financial dashboard of sorts, where I took the data from my YNAB account and built out custom reports so help me make sure we're hitting our investment goal and spending according to our values.

The second one (I just finished) was a digital recreation of the weekly layout from my Hobonichi Techo Cousin. Now my daily time-tracking data is going in to a database, and I'm excited to come up with building dashboards/reporting for that as well, such as tracking habits or generating the counts I add to my monthly notes & numbers.

I'd share screenshots of these things, but one of the primary reasons I've been enjoying myself so much while making them is because they are literally only for me to see or use. I've gone through creative periods where I'm coding outside of work but in the end it has always been shared to some kind of audience - whether that be the designing and coding of this site or my CodePens. This is different.

Robin Sloan coined these type of apps as home-cooked. Following his analogy, technically I am a professional chef but at home I'm creating dishes that no one else has to like. All the stuff I have to care about at work - UX best practices, what our Community wants, or even the preferences of my bosses and colleagues re: code style and organisation can be left behind. I'm free to make my own messed-up version of an apricot chicken toasted sandwich, and it's delicious.

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I had a journal entry in my Hobonichi Techo Cousin for every day this year until July, where I have a string of blank pages.

I was doing so well, and I was really in to the swing of journaling every day... until I wasn't.

The cause? Doing a little too well at journaling, actually. I got inspired by the fancy spreads of other Hobonichi enthusiasts on Instagram, and started making my own pretty layouts. My pages were looking beautiful until things got busy and my mental health/energy took a dive.

I'd raised the bar for my daily entries, and didn't have the energy to meet it. But instead of just lowering the bar and going back to boring/ugly entries, perfectionist thinking kicked in. If I couldn't make it good, why do it at all?

So I missed a couple of days, at which point the all-or-nothing thinking started up. I've broken my journaling streak, why even continue? I've basically ruined my Hobonichi now, for the rest of 2024!

Thankfully, I was eventually able to shake myself out of those thoughts and come back to just getting something, anything on the page at the end of the day. But there was a while there were I really thought I may as well put the journal in the bin.

I had to remind myself that it's okay to lower the bar. That an average version of something is better than a perfect version of nothing. All I can do is have a go.

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Sometimes I get asked by newcomers how one can become a developer like me - specifically, with a job and career like mine.

I find this sort of question impossible to answer. My personal situation is the result of the time I started, local and international economic forces, politics, and happenstance. I can't tell you how to recreate it from scratch in 2024!

It does create a little thought exercise in my head though: if you were to remove all external variables, what traits in an individual developer are most likely to lead them to their version of success?

There was a time when everyone was going on about how you had to have "passion" for web development if you wanted to be a top performer. I don't think that's right. I don't think you need to be particularly passionate about the field you're in or the job you have to do well. There are heaps of great developers who don't make their job their identity or source of fulfilment.

If I had to pick one trait, it would be the ability to be comfortable with "the struggle". That part of the day/hour/minute where the code isn't doing what you expected, things aren't looking like they should, or where things are going wrong and you don't know why. The times where you've planned out a system, realised you've screwed it up and missed something crucial, again. The times where you swear at the screen, let out a massive sigh or hit rest your head on the desk in exasperation.

I've known developers who've put up with the struggle with the expectation that one day it will go away: one day they'll be an expert and never have to struggle again. This day never arrives, and so they bail out of the field.

Unfortunately, I don't think the struggle ever goes away. I've been doing this professionally for 14 years now and I still have to deal with the struggle almost every work day.

If you can be comfortable with the struggle and build up your tolerance for it. If you're able to sit in that moment and be okay without drama or a total crisis of confidence, I'm fairly sure you're going to do just great.

And if you're someone (like me) who happens to go one step further and enjoy the struggle, you've found the perfect career[^1].

[^1]: and may God help you, because I can't.

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I was starting to get over the lettering practice by this week, as I had run out of ideas and felt like it was getting repetitive. I definitely feel like having to "finish" something every day is preventing my ability to focus on quality and perhaps improve my skill. So for July's challenge I'm going to dedicate 20 minutes a day to creative practice and post the WIP on Mastodon.

I ended up with 27 pieces from the 30 days. I missed one day due to having 0 spoons and the last two because we were visiting some dear friends and I was too busy socialising. Even though it wasn't a perfect month I'm happy with the effort I made.

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Three-quarters of the way through this month's creative challenge! I feel like I'm genuinely getting better from all the practice, especially with my control over the Apple Pencil in Procreate.

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I've been trying out a new thing lately - carrying a pocket notebook around with me and using it to capture diary entries, thoughts and tasks instead of my phone.

This change has largely been inspired by that moment when I reach the end of a long day, and I'm staring at my Hobonichi daily page, finding it all too hard to remember and record events of the day. I figured, if I jot them down as I go, that end-of-day diary entry will be easier.

Why a notebook? I could technically do this with my phone but I have a problem where I pick the phone up to put something in it, immediately get distracted by something else, and then forget why I originally picked up the phone in the first place.

So far, I'm really liking this system. The biggest challenge is training myself to carry the notebook (and Pen) with me, instead of my phone. And then reaching for the notebook instead of my phone. I know it can be done (after all, I manage to keep my phone on me at all times without even thinking about it), but progress will be slow. I'm trying to redirect a neural pathway that has been grooved in my brain for 15 years.

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Another week of lettering pieces.

One thing I've noticed is that the need to publish something every day means they often feel quite rushed and I find myself wishing I could spend a little more time on them, and do a better job. The pressure is more positive than negative, because it is helping me get past my tendency towards perfectionism. But I think for next month's challenge (whatever that is, I haven't decided yet) I will set the parameters at 20 minutes of creative work a day, without having to finish something, and I'll just publish the WIP. Austin Kleon would approve.

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I've enjoyed my daily lettering challenge for the month of June so far! I've been having fun with trying different styles and brushes.

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I love a good comedy series. It's my comfort television. These are my favourites over the years.

90s

We only had free-to-air TV at our house, so it was slim pickings from the four channels available to us. I was always happy to watch a re-run of these shows though.

The Simpsons
The Nanny
Keeping Up Appearances
Fawlty Towers (my dad owned the VHS tapes)

2000s

I was watching more Reality TV and crime shows in this decade, but there were a few DVD box-sets that my housemates and I would watch over and over.

Seinfeld
Kath & Kim
The Mighty Boosh

2010s

We got streaming platforms! And access to shows that had only been on cable previously.

The Office (US)
Parks and Recreation
Peep Show
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

2020s

I haven't had a series reach "watch several times" status. I did enjoy Schitt's Creek, but I've only watched it once. I think its due for a rewatch soon.

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