Nano Bytes, Vol. 03

The more you know

Diatoms constitute nearly half of the material found in oceans. They produce 20–50% of the planet’s oxygen. Shells of dead diatoms remain as marine sediment, and they are beautiful. Photographer Jon McCormack has revealed them with his microscopic photography.

Tickle me pink

Rachel Mentzer repurposes discarded materials like boxes and debris into art. And the results beautiful.

A friend introduced me to the mysterious music of Mountain Realm. They call it “dark fantasy dungeon synth.” The description told me “no.” Glad thing I like my friend, because now I have some of the best background music for designing and coding.

Privacy lockdown

It’s presumed that Signal is working on a stand-alone desktop app that won’t require a mobile number. There have been murmurings for a while now. Perhaps it’s finally coming to fruition. What a gift that would be.

I’m continuing to work my way through the Privacy Guides Activism Toolbox. It’s massive. It was compiled and published by Em, who is a privacy pro.

Design bytes

Designer Cameron Askin published a giant library of retro, animated video game screens called Title Scream. They’re inspired by 8/16-bit games. And they’re animated.

When I launched the redesign of my website a little while back, it included three modes: light, dark, and colorful. The last one was subpar. So I upgraded the palette, and now it really is colorful. While I was in there, I rolled out a fresh 404 page which has me giddy.

Code bytes

Do you know that there’s a tab-size CSS property? I didn’t until just recently. It’s not super useful in general. But if you’re using code blocks in an article or documentation, it’s perfect for some subtle formatting control.

Accessibility insights

The Web Standards Commission has a spot-on collection of testing tools for accessibility.

Cognition and neurology are commonly ignored when it comes to accessibility. The Mozilla Developer Network has a deep article that covers much of what you need to know about it.