Web Witch Weekly

Hello friends! It's almost the end of another week. I skipped last week's issue after a rough bump health-wise and then I had to book a last minute trip to San Francisco for my German visa. I spent less than 24 hours in SF and it was a quick but stressful trip.

This week I'm focused on keeping myself nourished and grounded, prioritizing what's best for my mental health. Whether that's taking a walk in the middle of the day or during a meeting, or taking time to make my own dinner than ordering take away.

I'm feeling better today but there's still some nerves and uncertainty around travel and trying to get a second passport for travel in January because the German embassy has my passport for the visa. There are worse problems to have.

I'm looking forward to some time off for the end of the year and holidays. My partner Jhey will be here soon, and I'm antsy to have him here.

Career Things

My book, Design for Developers, is nearing completion. I spent last week finishing up the bits of the book that come before the main content. I'll write the appendix of resources this week and have a few graphics to re-create for ones I can't get permission for.

Other bits: I am currently (attempting) to explore GraphQL. So stay tuned for some fun updates there.

Trying to wrap up things before my time off and get ready for what is sure to be a busy but exciting 2023 at RapidAPI. I'm working on the plans for our Mac client and VS Code extension, along with some other initiatives that will be fun to work on. Our VS Code extension also hit 100k downloads which is a really excited milestone as the PM for that product.

The invites to conferences to speak are starting to roll in, so I'm planning the first 6 months of the year (and even some in the second half). I'm looking forward to being a bit more selective this year and not stretching myself too thin with talks. It's a lot of work! Even if you have content ready to go. I'll be updating my speaking calendar over the holiday break.

On the Web

• Joceyln Harper's book, A Software Engineer's Guide to Seniority, is available for purchase!

• Setting up a screen reader testing environment on your computer from Sara Soueidan

• Document Object Model (DOM) Geometry: A Beginner’s Introduction And Guide by Pearl Akpan

Books of Note & The Weekly Music Find

Some of these may be affiliate links and I will receive a small commission at no cost to you.

Finished reading:

Just Keep Buying: Proven ways to save money and build wealth 

Currently & Still Reading:

• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

• Lean Customer Development

• The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive Book 1)

Weekly Music Find:

This week isn't necessarily a new find but I finished Netflix's Wednesday and there's a viral bit on Instagram and TikTok going around that uses Lady Gaga's song "Bloody Mary." So I've been listening to Born This Way which came out in 2011...and I'm mildly revolting against that thought. Over a decade ago.

Codepen of the Week

Jhey's whimsical login form is my favorite codepen this week (and I'm probably biased). Note: it only works in Chrome Canary at the moment. It's functional in Edge canary with a little bit of layout funkiness but I love whimsical creative coding using experimental features in Canary.

I hope your week has been good and if it hasn't, I hope next week is better. Remember to slow down and say yes to things that energize you, otherwise it's perfectly alright to hibernate!

Cheers,The Web Witch (Stephanie)