Joe Krall is a husband, software engineer, and occasional musician and writer.
Here's a link for the commonplace book, in time for summer: a few people chipping in with measurements and steps both rough and precise, along with the assurance that, no, they haven't busted the glass dripping hot coffee over ice. A couple years ago, I made more than one iced pour-over with Black & White's Grape Soda blend. They brought it back this year, but I haven't made it iced yet, partly…
I learned the other day about the Eames Hang-It-All from a friend and co-worker who loves mid-century modern furniture. (Thanks, Chris!) I've been wondering why it stands out to me, and I think it has to do a good deal with the color choices. The linked page at the Brooklyn Museum shows an older make - with the Internet Archive getting hammered in the last few weeks, I hope that the URL will be…
In response to a shared link about building custom computers . I find much of this lovely, despite misgivings (why build a laptop, with all its ergonomic problems, while eliminating its portability?) . . . . I enjoy the warm colors, and the absence of a GUI, and the wood grain; I've seen some split keyboards that use wood, like the Keyboardio Model 100 , and some desktop towers, like this series…
I haven't the forethought or gameplan to actually version my site, but I think I could probably call this a minor bump (probably in the neighborhood of 0.3.0 → 0.4.0). The biggest change has been improving the typography. Here, I owe Matthew Butterick (I think I stumbled across him in a different context ). He helped light a fire under me to get myself off system fonts , recommended IBM Plex among…
Today, among other things, I needed to render a scrolling div element such that the scrollbar was at the bottom of the element. I found a nice pure CSS solution from Stack Overflow, albeit one that needed a crucial assist from the comments section: max-height: 470px; overflow: auto; display: flex; flex-direction: column-reverse; flex-direction: column-reverse was the find. However, upon…
Accompanied by a grid of cellphones, smartphones, and ROMs, mapped on two axes: "Respect for Virtue (minimizing screen time AND tinkering)" and "Respect for the Creature (minimizing e-waste AND data collection)." My end goal: avoid occasion for distraction by this device, while minimizing complicity with the degradation of creatures caused by e-waste and the electricity burned in pursuit of our…
I started life on the internet in middle school with a Hotmail account and a penchant for lurking in the old lit forums Sparknotes used to have. When creating this account, I discovered I could stick a period in the middle of my username rather than the usual string of random-or-not numeric characters right before the @. I thought this was pretty cool! Learning how to email from this domain was…
My old laptop from divinity school, upon which I spilled water and thereby cleansed its LED screen of light in our last semester, finally gave up completely late last year; I had reinstalled Linux on it from a USB flash drive for about the fourth time, and the rechargeable battery quit, doubtless out of frustration. The thing was a tank, and I hauled it, CD/DVD drive and all, between school and…
# It's a secret for everyone! Read more about RSS Club . I started using RSS feeds in 2019, and they've helped me keep track of those more obscure and less active blogs. Setting up my own RSS feed? That was first on my to-do list after initial deployment. Seemed straightforward enough with Eleventy's plugin . Upon plugging in my own feed on The Old Reader , I soon discovered a formatting goof. My…
The idea of a blog as a "commonplace," to take a phrase from one of the first blogs I read, is one that's stuck with me. After two years of coding and writing for much longer, I've found that I have things I'd like to remember and things I'd like to share. There are some features I'd like to add: a changelog for posts and linked tagging come to mind. But that's what iterating is for. As I worked…