Mike Jeff of the Web

Vibe Check №1

Vibe Check

You guys, I’m doing it again. I’m re-starting the blog on a new platform with the hope that I’ll be able to stick to it now. My youngest son is a bit older now, and I’m sleeping better, and I feel as if I have a bit more free time on my hands to create something. I have always had trouble trying to laser-focus in on one project, so I’m expecting this to be a little scattershot. I’m going to embrace that.

I’m trying to become a better developer, dad, musician, and person, so expect lots of content in those areas. Also, I think in the past, I’ve tried to narrow the scope of my blog so much that it became uninteresting to me, so you can expect to see me write about other subjects as well.

First week of school: I have a quiet house again. My home “office” has no door, so it can be difficult to separate myself from whoever is home with me while I’m working. It’s a double-edged sword — it’s great that I get to spend tons of time with my family, but there are times where I need to focus and to be honest, that’s hard to do when there’s people doing their thing nearby. I’m happy to have some structure back.

New (to me) album: Tim Timebomb and Friends. It’s probably a about a decade old at this point, but there’s a ton of tracks on this album that I had never heard before. It's kind of Rancid-esque, but also included is Tim Armstrong doing first wave ska — mellow-ish, full horn section most of the time, and lots of guest performers. It’s darn good.

I’m back on Noom after an indulgent summer (our first summer of doing our normal road trips and vacations since the Covid Pandemic hit.) I can gain weight fast, but, it comes off pretty quick too with a little discipline. Noom is great for that. Basically, it makes you log your food and drink intake and gives you a calorie allowance. It’s supposed to kind of retrain you to be able to think about your eating habits and make good food choices. It’s an effective weight loss tool, I need to be better about sustaining the good habits I’m forming.

I’m not much of a recreational reader, but I’m trying to do better because it’s such an important method of gathering information and learning. I’ve been trying to make a habit of reading at least one article each day on web development, or at least technology in general. I find myself gravitated to the personal blog of Dave Rupert. I have learned so much about web development from him and his podcast cohort, Chris Coyier (founder of CSS Tricks and Code Pen) over the years. If you’re looking for some inspiration, or to learn the latest in web development, these guys deliver, and they seem like good people to boot. At this moment, I am emulating blogging techniques I learned about on his site.

That’s a wrap for now. Let me know if you saw this post, and what you thought of it — hit me up on Twitter @fellaroonie.