88 Posts under Mango Paper
2023: Year of Purpose
I was tidying up my home office area the other day, and found a bunch of things I haven't touched for years. The first thing came to my mind was of course Marie Kondo's Spark Joy principle. But a lot of things in the past 3 years no long spark joy, yet they are still used often. This no longer works.
Then I changed the question to, does this thing have a purpose in my life? It worked surprisingly well. I got rid of many things and kept others. I came up future projects that can make some of them more useful. Promising.
2022 is also coming to an end. It means it's time for my 3rd attempt to a yearly theme. As you have already read the title, 2023 is going to be my Year of Purpose. The past 3 years have also worn down our life's purpose. It's time to bring it back. Let's move past this and look forward to a more purposeful year.
What's your yearly theme?
Community Building
- There are now 40+ folks in my Mango Baby discord community. It's mostly people asking support questions and me answering them. Occasionally, users also help with each other, and I love see more of that.
- Increasingly, I don't feel Mastodon is for me. I'll keep checking and posting since there are a lot of activities moved from the bird site I'm interested in. But for now, I won't bother finding a better host.
- My Micro.blog site continues to function, and I'm also back on Tumblr. Maybe t2 can succeed, or it's best to end social media.
Should I Branch Out?
I randomly posted a Reel of a squirrel eating a pine cone and got 431 likes. I don't know maybe I should branch out.
I'm terrible at language arts, maybe text isn't really for me after all.
Today is really a sad day.
Google Maps Ditched the Hamburger Menu
Everyone else focused on the icon update, but I’d really like to zoom in with the removal of hamburger menu in Google Maps for iOS:
Screenshot of Google Maps for iOS
The hamburger menu now is just a placer holder with no functions, and I expect it to be removed in a future update. And they also moved more features to the bottom tab bar. What a welcome change. It certainly feels more homey on iOS. Therefore, I forgive the new icon 😜
Hanabira工房 Makes Crazy Detailed Miniature Houses
Check out Hanabira工房's YouTube Channel, every single one of their videos is a treasure.
Doraemon and Costumes of Tang Dynasty
Zi De Guqin Studio presents the Doraemon theme song in costumes of Tang Dynasty. It can’t get any better.
ABC Song Variants
Jason Kottke's post on the alternate ABC song got my attention:
An alternate version of the ABC song that slows down the LMNOP part is currently going viral because of a tweet by Noah Garfinkel: “They changed the ABC song to clarify the LMNOP part, and it is life ruining.”
My first reaction was: thank you! I always find the ABC song I'm hearing from my daughter's toys are strange and hard to follow. So I completely agree with them:
About the slow l,m,n,o,p: I teach young learners of English as a foreign language, and have found this way the most effective for teaching the letters.
Here is the original video by Matt Richelson:
However, this is not the one I learned either. The version I learned slowed down the same LMN part, but it also has a different grouping: OPQ, RST, UVW, XYZ, plus a different ending. I find it even easier for non native speakers. Here is a video of this version:
I couldn't find out where this version original comes from. The subtitle of the above videos says it's French music. But searched the French version of ABC song, it's the same as the one in the U.S. It's not U.K. either.
Trying Out Figma
This week I finally sit down and got my hands dirty in design. I partially explored design systems, sketched some logos, colors, and typography in Figma. Then I tried a slight re-design of my website's home page:
A version of the https://mangoumbrella.com design in Figma.
Figma is really intuitive. When I first saw others' cursors moving in real time, it blew my mind. But for me as a one-person shop, its intuitive interface is the reason I love it. I tried Photoshop, Illustrator, and Sketch. They all failed me. Figma is the first tool I felt home-ish. I still struggle with it, but I do see its potential in my workflow.
I know the design I did today isn't great. It's not even good. It's the worst thing I will probably come up with. And I'm not updating my home page to be exactly what I have designed.
However, the design did improve the website in some areas. And I just incorporated them in the latest build.
Separating code and design does make the product better. I will spend more time on dedicated design sessions.
Accessibility is for Everyone
In this episode of @ParallelPods, @shelly interviewed Sarah Herrlinger of Apple. It’s all great, but this clip in particular reminds me how accessibility is for *everyone*. https://t.co/zi4dqYhWtEhttps://t.co/tEVgtU6ARe pic.twitter.com/rie01d8eJQ
— Casey Liss (@caseyliss) June 12, 2019
Exactly the reaction I had when hearing the iPadOS mouse support feature could be turned on in Accessibility. It’s for everyone, so everyone can turn on.
This also infers that the desire to use a mouse on iPadOS is just like any other need like to use Voice Control. It can't be more normal.
Focused Language Evolutions in Acceleration
It was in either 2010 or 2011, I started following Go, I was attracted to its simplicity, its focus. Not long after, I re-wrote my website in Go from Python, just because of my love.
It was also Go that kick started my interest in the evolution of a language. I started reading all the Go blog posts, watching many Go talks.
This is not by accident. Before that time, the language landscape had actually been relatively quiet. Then Go (2009), Rust (2010), Dart (2011), Swift (2014) appeared in public. Not only they are modern, but they also made language development mainstream again.
Go initially focused on concurrency in a large code base, Rust system programming, Dart first a replacement of Javascript, now the Flutter language, Swift the Apple client applications. Because of their focus and the active evolutions, they are bringing us into a new era of software engineering.
More importantly, the evolutions are accelerating.
2017, Go started the Go 2 evolution process.
2018, Swift for TensorFlow was announced, bringing Dynamic Member Lookup [SE-0195], Dynamic Callable [SE-0216], Static Callable [SE-0253]. Differentiation [SE-XXXX], Dynamic Property Iterations [SE-XXXX].
2019, Dart "UI as Code" happened in 2.3.
2019 WWDC, SwiftUI surprised and excited the Apple developer community, marking the end of the NeXT era. It’s bringing Property Wrappers [SE-0258] and Domain Specific Language [SE-XXXX].
It has never been a greater time for programming languages.