Supporting community, Theme Vitals, NC Art Meets, and more

Friends! A quick aside before we get into content updates...

❤️ I love supporting our tech (& art) communities through community organizing as well as writing and speaking on tech topics.

HOWEVER, I'm a freelancer so I don't get paid 💸 to do any of this! I'm looking to get sponsors to help make this more sustainable.

Help me hit my goal!

🗓️ Monthly support is best but I'm also happy to have one-time donations!

Pick your preferred sponsorship provider:

• Github Sponsors
• Ko-fi
• Patreon

🙏🥰

Wondering what work I do for free?

• All blog posts, newsletters & most talks
• Building/maintaining https://ThemeVitals.com
• Organizing the Eleventy Meetup
• Co-organizing PerformanceObserver
• Organizing Durham Plein Air
• Building/maintaining https://ncartmeets.com

I love this work - help me keep doing it!

Theme Vitals new features #

New features are live in Shopify Theme Vitals (plus March data is published):

• All themes with any data points in the latest data show up. You still need at least 50 data points to see webperf data, but you can see current URL counts, market rank, AND…
• Theme versions. Shows the context behind performance numbers (e.g. the latest version has a perf improvement, but shops haven’t updated yet so the numbers don't reflect it).

Check out the theme list.

Not-Meetup Meetups (built on 11ty) #

I now organize 2 "meetups" not actually on Meetup dot com. The 11ty meetup was my first, and I was able to make a number of improvements with my second, PerformanceObserver. The latest new features are using AddCal to programmatically build add-to-calendar URLs, and a short JavaScript button that automatically converts <time> elements to show the time in the local user's timezone. Maybe one day I'll build an 11ty starter repo for this. Or at least write a blog post. 🙂

New website: NC Art Meets (built on 11ty) #

I've started building a new website that helps local artists find live drawing/painting events by aggregating them on one site - ncartmeets.com. For me, live art events are more engaging as I get to get out of the house and also meet new people. Per my usual, it's built with 11ty, no CMS, and uses Buttondown for monthly newsletters. I recently added filtering with a little bit of JavaScript.

New cross-published Shopify post #

I just cross-published another one of my Shopify posts onto my personal blog. If you've ever struggled with images on Shopify, check out Responsive images on Shopify with Liquid.

From other folks on the web #

A few things by other folks I enjoyed consuming since last time:

• Guide to implementing speculation rules for more complex sites by Barry Pollard
• Using Chrome New Performance Panel Landing Page In Dev Tools by Ian Duffy
• Anchor rel attribute use from the Web Almanac SEO chapter
• And, an evergreen resource you should bookmark for yourself and others: The most effective ways to improve Core Web Vitals from web.dev

/Offline #

• I have another 5-star read since last time! The City in Glass by Nghi Vo was such a strange and interesting story - and a love letter to cities and books.
• If you're interested in composition in terms of how it impacts our emotions (great for art, illustration, and storytelling), then check out Picture This: How Pictures Work by Molly Bang. It's very short and simple, but its simplicity is powerful for understanding composition and storytelling within a picture. There are no wasted words here. The simple paper-cutout illustrations help convey the concepts well. I'll be returning to this often in my work.
• Inspired by Alexis Nicole, a.k.a. blackforager on IG, I foraged my first plants for eating - onion grass which I dried and crushed as a replacement for onion powder. So, I finally bought my first foraging book and it's amazing - packed with so much info including keys for how easy/hard it is to identify as well as "best" lists like "best berries for stuffing your face". Check out Sam Thayer's Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants
• I've spent at least a month painting almost every day - in watercolor. I've posted a few on sia.studio, and you can see more on my art Bluesky or Instagram.

This newsletter is reader-supported. If you buy a book from one of the links above, I'll earn some coffee money. You don't pay a higher price, and Bookshop.org supports independent booksellers.

Struggling with web performance? #

I'm here to help! Check out my services or contact me today.