Matthew Lang avatar

Matthew Lang

Family guy and web developer

Molly White reminds us that we can have a different web.

Though we now face a new challenge as the dominance of the massive walled gardens has become overwhelming, we have tools in our arsenal: the memories of once was, and the creativity of far more people than ever before, who entered the digital expanse but have grown disillusioned with the business moguls controlling life within the walls.

We can have a different web

After chatting with a colleague at work about a little development project he’s been working on, I now find myself messing about with ThreeJS and TypeScript. I managed to get the ThreeJS demo code working to show a spinning cube. It’s a start. The next step is to get it working in TypeScript.

My hopes for tomorrow

The following 24 hours or so will be a roller coaster of waiting as Americans head to the polls to decide who will be the next resident of the White House. There’s certainly a lot at stake in this election.

This year’s campaigns have been eye-opening, with both highs and lows. Each candidate’s core message has been clear: one promises unity, while the other reflects division. I don’t remember America being this divided. Sure, social media and 24-hour news play a part in amplifying these divides, but one thing is clear: it’s time to fix them.

We’ll hopefully have an idea of the winner by tomorrow morning. Of course, I have my preference, but more than anything, I hope that the announcement won’t lead to any unrest and will be the start of another stable presidential term.

A peaceful declaration of the winner is my hope for tomorrow.

I got up early this morning, and instead of starting out with some writing of the Ruby code, I opened my notes app and started writing a blog post for today. Nothing major, just an observation for tomorrow. It’s queued up and ready to be published later today. Feels good.

Cal Newport with some advice on dealing with election day anxiety.

Here I have a suggestion that I think could be healing for all points of the political spectrum: use the stress of this election to be the final push needed to step away from the exhausting digital chatter that’s been dominating your brain.

After You Vote: Unplug

Although I am not voting, I am slightly anxious about what the electoral map will look like by tomorrow. With the timezone difference though, I won’t have any issues following Cal’s advice. By 10pm tonight I will likely be out for the count.

I was hoping the Packers would at least have a close game with the Lions tonight at Lambeau. After a dismal first half and the Packers just giving away penalties, I’ve seen enough.

Settling into Stimulus once again

Over the last few days, I’ve been writing more JavaScript than usual. The reason? I am using Stimulus a lot more in one of my Rails projects.

Enhancing the functionality of my Rails application with some HTML markup and a JavaScript controller is good, as Stimulus has a small learning curve and integrates well with Rails.

As I add more Stimulus to the application, though, I am learning some of its best practices the hard way. One criticism I have of my own controllers is that they are very page-specific. That’s fine for now, as the application is relatively small. Still, I plan to break these controllers into more generic behaviours that can be re-used more easily across the application in the future.