A personal blog from Ana Rodrigues.
Last year I spoke at MK Geek Night about my personal reflections on how, after years of chasing IndieWeb perfection, I just accepted my imperfect website. I finally sat down to transcribe it and post it here. The base of this post was a transcript of my presentation but some editing is now present for added clarity, blog context instead of presentation and correction of grammatical mistakes. This…
Bookmarks related to tech and web development My Opinionated CSS Reset by Declan Chidlow. How the same content always has multiple different versions by Diana Khalipina. Blogs are back . Email address obfuscation: What works in 2026? by Spencer Mortensen. Post 13264 by Chris Coyier. CSS is filling the gaps with rules. A way to style gaps in grid and flex by Brecht De Ruyte. Here’s how to instruct…
A few weeks ago I decided to be bold and put out there that I had itches I wanted to scratch. It isn't something I normally do, as I usually reject myself before allowing others to do so. So, after the Wonders of Web Weaving podcast was published, I rejoiced online and said that I was grateful for how, in 2026, I'd experienced a couple of things for the first time: being an MC at a conference and…
I was a guest on James 's Wonders of Web Weaving podcast and it was such a lovely conversation. We talked about old teenage blogs, how I found the IndieWeb community, why I think now is the best time to be your full weird self online, and I accidentally held myself publicly accountable for a side project. This was also my first podcast ever, so I was a little bit nervous at the start. Besides my…
The other week I was the MC for day 2 of CSS Day conference . It was my first time ever being an MC for a conference! I was so excited and, honestly, very nervous at the start. My hands were shaking a lot, and it's no wonder, as Bruce Lawson had been the MC of the previous day, and that's a tough act to follow. And if I can’t be funny on the spot, I will try to make up for it in other ways . I…
This article was originally drafted in 2024 but I struggled to finish it then. I was stuck wondering if I was just moaning over the past. Recently, Salma and Jo both shared thoughts that gave me the rage and energy to come back to this. Today is the day I finally have the courage to publish. I can’t recall how many times I thought of writing something like this. I thought of riding certain waves…
A couple of weeks ago we took a little break. The first adults-only break since my daughter was born. For that reason, we decided to do something that was quite close to home. I am still was quite nervous about being far away from her and I didn’t want to go abroad because of her seizures. So I figured that we should stay near London and a small train journey away. Ideally, a train journey that…
So I’ve been thinking, when was the last time I’ve experienced some sort of burnout from a community. And I had forgotten that tech was not my only interest, or the only thing I’ve been deeply enthralled with. While I started making websites when I was 13, I wasn’t always stuck on only thinking about web development as a hobby and career. I used to be quite obsessed with films and filmmaking. I…
I am deeply frustrated with my inability to stick to the plan and do this post once a month. But I will really make an effort from now on because the more I delay the more links (and tabs) pile on and I end up not being able to share everything. Bookmarks related to tech and web development Webmentions by Joe Crawford. Selfish reasons for building accessible UIs by Nolan Lawson. Radical Web . Bot…
The last time I wrote a year in review was in 2019. I ended it with “have a healthy 2020” and we all know how that went. Since it does feel like we’ve been living in hell since 2020 I somehow stopped writing yearly reviews. But I have been itching to capture more of my life and I did have an okay 2025 so here it is. The struggle is, I am a glass half empty person. I’d hate to sound like I am…
I am back from Berlin after spending a few days last week at Beyond Tellerrand where I was a speaker ! It was my first time attending as well. Before that, in September, I did the same talk in Freiburg at Smashing Conference . In both events I gave the talk that I worked on the first half of this year about modernising and maintaining CSS. Now that this is all done, I want to write out all my…
I've never participated in a book club so I don't know if I am doing this right. I don't know how the conversation would go in a group setting and I normally lean to sharing my experiences as a way to connect. I've recently learned it isn't something people are keen on. But since this is my personal blog I guess I get a pass. Zachary Kai proposed the book The Creative Act by Rick Rubin and I was…
Slowly catching up on my RSS feed and I just read Dave's post “Why would anybody start a website?” . Obviously, Dave's post is right up my street but it reminded me of a random notes post on my phone that I wrote a while back. Why build a website? Why knit a jumper with your bare hands? Why cook a homemade meal from scratch? Why paint in a canvas? Why fix a broken thing? Why write a letter? Why…
The State of CSS Survey results recently came out and I was asked what I was my pick of the year in the CSS world and turns out I had an opinion. I told Sacha , My pick of the year is all the font clamp generators that people have been creating and sharing. What’s great about them is that they are all so different so it accommodates different learning styles. Especially, if reading documentation…
I am currently regretting the posts I didn't make. Yes, as someone who bangs on and on about posting things on your blog first and then elsewhere, I too fail many times. And, it's been like that when it comes to Jessie. Since we adopted Jessie in 2017, I've been celebrating her adoption aniversary on social media instead of this blog. And it bit me in the arse. I used to have a lovely thread going…
Last year I spoke at Open UK about my IndieWeb journey. I've posted the slides on Notist but I finally sat down to pick up the transcription and tidy it up on my blog. The base of this post was a transcript of my presentation but some editing is now present for added clarity and correction of grammatical mistakes. My first personal website was built 20 years ago. And no, you cannot find it…
Exactly two months I shared that I was about to do a little "summer tour" of my a talk about refactoring CSS. And I did! I spoke at CSS Day , Middlesbrough Front End and Pixel Pioneers in three weeks and it was scary and wonderful, very similar to Brecht's experience ! I had great conversations with people afterwards and I'm super happy that my talk inspired Bart from Project Wallace to add…
Some weeks ago Oliver from Pixel Pioneers asked me: "How did you come up with the idea for your upcoming Pixel Pioneers talk, and what can we expect to take away from it?". This is my answer: Around two years ago I realised that I was feeling a lot of decision paralysis when building brand new shiny projects from scratch. I was feeling very overwhelmed with all the new cool CSS things, and I would…
Last week, I spent a few days in Leeds attending All Day Hey again, a brilliant conference for developers, designers and tech leads. This conference is part of my holy-grail of community-led conferences that I purchase tickets for regardless of the schedule. This is because I want to support these events that bring me so much joy and because I know I'll find myself amongst like-minded individuals…
For a while now, I've been slowing working on a refactor of the codebase of this blog. At one point, I got caught in exciting world of performance and I wanted to make sure I had a super fast pageload. Currently, my CSS is added inline in the HTML and I found myself thinking "no one will be able to read this". I mentioned in my speaker spotlight interview for Pixel Pioneers how I learned to code…
I'm somewhat frustrated at myself for how long it took me to finish off this post that Remy kindly tagged me in. The last time I participated in something like this was the " My Typical Day " write-up. Reading it now is an interesting stroll down memory lane. This challenge also reminded me of Manu's wonderful People & Blogs newsletter, which comes out every Friday, and which I had the privilege…
Let's get these out of the way! Bookmarks related to tech and web development Likes* are the best by Hagen Terschüren. Paged.js . Making Math Accessible by Dan O’Mahony and Ricky Onsman. My Eleventy site setup by Anh. 88x31 archive by . W3C badge custom element demo by Patrick Brosset. Adding Search to an Eleventy Site Without Client-side JavaScript by Philip Renich. My script to auto-delete…
I wouldn't be where I am today if it wasn't for community-led events in the front-end community, and I am forever grateful for that. However, I am heartbroken by the current state of the events. Many community-led events have recently been cancelled due to low ticket sales, which feeds a gigantic gap of events left by the pandemic. I remember we had to cancel the in-person London CSS and…
I want to read all the newsletters I subscribed to. I want to read everything in the ten web dev community slacks I joined. I want to read everything on the seven Discord servers I am on. I want to read every blog post in the hundreds of feeds I follow. I want to read every toot of the people I follow on Mastodon. I want to find more people to follow. I want to ensure I didn’t miss your cool and…
I cringe whenever I look back to the days I was the interviewer for roles at the companies I worked for. When I was just starting out my career at a company with hundreds of developers, I remember thinking and feeling that being the developer picked to interview someone meant that “you made it.” This is a true testament to how deeply insecure I was. I am not a good interviewee either, as I shared…
I'm over the moon to share that I am one of the speakers for this year's WebExpo ! It will be my first time attending WebExpo. I was impressed with how keen the organising team was on the community and the attendees' experience. It will also be my first time at a multi-track conference, and the speakers list is so good! I know it will be difficult for me to choose what to attend. Since I gave this…
The other weekend, I attended IndieWebCamp Brighton and had a wonderful time! I've been working from home for four years, and most of my friends have left London, so events like this excite me to see internet buddies! Like Jeremy said , I, too, feel like it was my RSS feed coming to life! Notes from the event were masterfully collected in IndieWeb's wiki , but here are my write-up and thoughts on…
This is clearly the result of living in a capitalist society. In recent years, people have felt the pressure to monetise their hobbies, so there’s a constant state of hustle. We all need money to exist in our society. In the online communities and circles where I try to hang out, there is a slight pressure to “create content”. It is expected to bring you exposure and credibility within the…
I am at IndieWebCamp Brighton and I am testing IndieKit! Ignore this post.
Growing up, I wasn’t close to my extended family. My parents weren’t close to them or were not on speaking terms, so, as a child, I followed their pattern. It probably explains why it took until recently for me to experience grieving while online. I just flew back from Portugal, having spent the first anniversary of my father’s death with my mum and sister. I don’t know if I am lying to myself but…
I recently built a page where a positioned sticky element would appear when another element wasn't visible anymore. For this, I used the intersection observer. Later on, it was noticed that on an iPhone using Safari, it was as if this sticky item would start blinking, appearing and disappearing at certain scroll positions. I had no idea why, but eventually, I found a comment buried on a GitHub…
I've been thinking, especially since the recent Spotify layoffs, that I'm due to delete my Spotify account. I haven't paid for it in years, and I have also significantly reduced my usage. The other thing is that I've had this draft for ages and procrastinated on this topic. Luckily, today, I stumbled across this post from Raed explaining their reasonings for deleting their account . I thought,…
I'm excited to share that I am one of the speakers for this year's All Day Hey ! I first attended All Day Hey in 2018, and it has since been one of my favourite conferences. Well, technically, this is a comeback to the stage since I did give a lightning talk at All Day Hey back in 2019. So, five years later (I can't believe it has been five years), I will be back, but this time to talk in a longer…
I am excited to attend IndieWebCamp Brighton in less than a month! I already booked my non-refundable hotel, which felt very nerve-wracking! The last time I tried to attend an IndieWebCamp, I ended up cancelling my trip last minute because childcare plans fell through. But Brighton is near where I live, so hopefully, all will go well this time. I'm super looking forward to meeting people from the…
Let's get these out of the way! Bookmarks related to tech and web development Shawna, a Set Maker by olia. Letting Eleventy Schedule Its Own Builds by Luke Morrigan. Using Trello as a Super Simple CMS by Phil Hawksworth. Sometimes the job is an assembly line by Dave Rupert. Hands‐on guides to assitive technology and accessibility testing by Adam Liptrot. Style your RSS feed by Darek Kay. WIP:…
I had not realised it had been 805 days since my last bookmarks roundup. 805 days. This section is still one of the most visited parts of my little web corner. It's been so long that I have accumulated an intimidating number of bookmarks. On the other hand, I did go on maternity leave and stayed away from the tech world for a while. I started the draft for this post in May 2023, and here I am, on…
For my daughter, I've been buying second-hand as much as possible. If it can be washed and disinfected, it will be second-hand. She loves noisy books right now, so I've been getting some cheap books from Vinted and charity shops. The other day I found a noisy book in a charity shop for £1, but I couldn't test it. I assumed the batteries had died, so I still bought it. I was right regarding the…
I’ve had a long year. I spent the first half on maternity leave and struggled quite a bit. Raising a baby is hard enough, and then adding the constant worry of milestones and development, their health, getting all the information to ensure you’re doing things right, all the apps and books, weaning, the comparison, etc., is a full-time job. Then my dad suddenly died , and I found myself having…
Two weeks ago, I spoke at FFConf . Yes! Me! Last year, I made a little shy appearance in one of Sophie's slides, but it was the big deal this year. I mentioned in a toot a while back how special FFConf is for me. Years ago, my friend Paul told me about it, and it turned out to be a life-changing conference. I was disheartened with the industry and tech community at the time (I think this was in…
Some weeks ago, I was so privileged to have been invited to chat about myself and my blog at Manu's new series, People and Blogs . I really enjoyed following someone else's prompts. I never rationalised some decisions about this blog out loud, so it was a fascinating exercise. Since then, I've been thinking about how I need to bring my bookmarks back, how my voice and thoughts matter to me and how…
With Twitter imploding and people (myself included) trying to move to multiple similar apps, I was following everyone I knew numerous times. It may not look like it, but I can be a bit shy! If we're "Twitter/conference friends", you probably noticed me clicking the follow button on at least three new platforms. Then, some social anxiety creeps in! "Oh, I liked my friend's post on Mastodon. Should…
Well, well, well. Who would have thought I would give this another go after pouring my heart a few years ago in a blog post ? But I did! And nothing terrible happened! I've had a silly idea of something I wanted to build for a long time, and I was daydreaming of turning it into a talk. While at Pixel Pioneers earlier in the summer, I asked Jeremy , Michelle and Andy for their opinion on my…
Updated on the 21st March 2025 If you're here, you're probably interested in this gap decorations proposal too . I need to preface this post by saying: bare with me. I was without doing much coding for over a year, so maybe I'm wrong, or everyone already knows this. I recently had a situation where I needed to add a border between elements that sat in a 12 grid with a gap between them. To my…
Editing and manipulating someone isn't new. But now that it is more accessible than ever for anyone to do, it feels as if every day I could be risking my safety. As someone who has been online for over 20 years, the majority of those as a child, teenager and young adult who didn't think much of consequences means that I have been trying to delete traces of myself from the internet for a couple of…
When I moved to the UK some years ago, I developed a strange new fear that I was unfamiliar with. Despite living alone for many years at that point, it was the first time I was living abroad. For the first time, I realised that I was hundreds and hundreds of miles away from my parents. I suddenly became afraid of being far from my parents should something happen to them. This new anxiety took over…
My maternity leave has ended! I was one year at home with my little one. But, it's really like they say: the days are long, but the years are short. Around six months ago, I wrote a blog post called Matrescence which resonated with a few people. Meanwhile, as I found some headspace to go back online, I found a few more posts written by other parents that resonated with me too. Around the time I…
This post has a content note of pregnancy, birth & mention of previous loss. Visit the link directly if you're okay with reading it.
I wasn't entirely sure how to title this blog post as it isn't straightforward to describe it but here it goes. I should also preface that my knowledge of SVGs is quite high level so maybe someone who is may more experienced than me would have spotted this out easily but I feel like this warrants a post because it doesn't happen in all browsers and quirks are annoying to solve. Recently, we had a…
Here are some of the things that have been collecting dust in my bookmarks since June. I missed a lot of things shared online since. I hope one day I can catch up. This really isn't my year when it comes to sharing bookmarks. Luckily, the world won't end because of it! Bookmarks related to tech and web development A Guide To CSS Debugging by Stephanie Eckles. A Deep Dive Into object-fit And…
One year and one day after receiving my settled status I officially became naturalised and am now a British citizen. I’m grateful for having been welcomed here (despite Brexit!) and making it “official” with the country I now call my home and for Portugal to allow dual citizenship. It is an accomplishment but it was also due to privilege and luck. There are so many other people who will not be as…