Mon Jul 15 2024
Awesome finds - June 2024
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Contents
Some things I liked in June'24.
Books
A Fall of Moondust by Arthur C. Clarke: my June was pretty tough and somewhat overwhelming, so I'm really glad to have something of that balance to read this month. By balance I mean a solid but not overpowering plot, with enough suspense to keep you interested, while being amusing and light enough not to get you too engrossed, but entertained and that's it. I do enjoy a good space travel story!
Music
- STOP!! by IGNACY: I mean, what the fcuk, man. First he releases a totally James Black-esque track sometime in the spring, and I'm amused by it, like aww, funny how a sweet young (21yo) polish boy can pull this off. But then he drops a second one, and now it gets a bit weird - now this is UNCANNY James Blake, self-titled album edition. A great song, not gonna lie, but like... seriously?
- tears by
easyhard life: insanelly happy that my fav Leicester band is back (also that I was able to spell Leicester correctly on the first try), but boy oh boy do I grieve the renaming 😠If you haven't heard the story, some orange budget airline suied easy life over the name usage, which is insane, dystopian and somewhat ironic, but anyway we don't talk about it anymore as they are back with new music and everything is nice and that's what mattters most! - Radiosoul by Alfie Templeman: more from the shamelessly talented and equally shamelessly young (you guessed it, 21yo) boys (like that doesn't sound weird at all) - still the same funky, sparkling, fun and light indie-pop that is so-so optimistic it annoys you sometimes. Very summery!
- Take Me Back by Foster The People: at this point it doesn't even matter if I like the new FTP songs or not (it's fine!), I'm just happy to hear that we're going to have a whole new album... 7 years of waiting, exciting stuff! Ready for cry dancing, or for dance crying, whatever it is.
Tech stuff
Inline conditionals in CSS?: jesus christ can we have this ASAP, please and thank you! I said that before and will say that again: CSS is a proper programming language! so it misses conditionals a lot. Absolutely convinced that we've all had cases for that logic before, and possibility of receiving more functionality to calculate styles properly within style rules without relying on JS excites me a lot.
Syntax: React 19 is here!: as always, a very nice, comprehensive, thoughtful explanation of everything new React 19. It's a hefty release, and personally, as I haven't had a chance to play around with it yet, it was really helpful to read, listen to and watch several reactions and explanations of everything that's just been released.
For some reason, my fav update apart from React Server Components, which I love dearly, is nothing about forms but rather a new support for document metadata - automatically hoisiting
metaand other<head>tags. Small wins, but soooo goood!
A Guide To Accessible Form Validation: a11y-corner this month is represented by the guide that should immediately go to jail your bookmarks. If you have juuuust a teeny tiny bit of time to spend on accessibility, start by improving forms! Almost everything can be understood or bypassed using assistive technologies, but forms are just scary to submit blindly and mess up. This article will help you with the best examples on both a11y and UX.
I tried React Compiler today, and guess what...: on the one hand, I'm very happy that someone has been playing around with the new React compiler and asking questions that we're all dying to ask. On the other hand, well, dunno about you, but my sweetest dreams of never having to write useMemo again have been completely shattered and my day is ruined. Anyway, this is also an excellent source for your future React performance debugging, as the cases mentioned are very close to the heart of every React dev.
Optimizing INP for a React App & Performance Learnings: and while we're at it, here's some advanced stuff on React performance. I'm not gonna lie, this is a lot to take in at one sitting, but incredibly useful: again, it's fascinating to read how programming becomes a real investigation, or even a battle to shave milliseconds off interactions. And, of course, educational: there's plenty of advice on how to approach the same huge task of improving INP, from a person who's clearly done some good in that department.
Fun stuff
Why Do People Hate Nickelback So Much? A Statistical Analysis: everybody hates Nickelback. Yeah, sure, their songs are no good, like, at all. But why exactly are we so united in this hatred (or are we???)? Basically, this article is everything I love, and then some: take a music topic, gratuitously add some statistics and maybe a bit of history, and there you have it, a perfect piece of journalism. Lovely!
Paint'n'Play: feels a bit off-format, I've never shared any games (not that I play much), but this is just too well done! Try John Constable or Cecilia Beaux, it's incredibly relaxing, you don't even have to go outside and touch the grass, and oh so prettyyyy! 🌊
And to polish (pun intended) it all, here's some Warsaw for dessert:
Have a wonderful July! 🌼