Makzan’s Weekly Dispatch 2019w9,10,11: Writing books for web technologies

Hi there,

It has been 3 weeks since my last newsletter.

I had been teaching new courses and preparing the course material really take me so much time. Currently I’m teaching an iOS development and mobile first web design class, along with a PHP class.

It is not an excuse, I know. so I’m keeping my writing promise.

Speaking of writing, Ulysses release the version 15, that comes with my long waited feature: preview and export network image. Previously, Ulysses only works with local images. But we all write and put different sources of image into our article. So this is a nice addition to my go-to writing tool.

I use different editors to write before the drafts go into Ulysses. I also use the Paper app on Mac to write. It has a permission setting that I can turn off the delete and replacement feature. So that editor forces me to only type words. I cannot go back to delete or edit any text that I have already typed in. This allows me to focus on writing the first draft as junk draft—with many typos—and then I can always edit my draft later. And because the draft is really like junk draft now. I can’t use my words directly and it forces me to rewrite the first draft into second draft.

I teach classes on full spectrum of web technologies, including HTML5, CSS3 effects, mobile first web design, ReactJS, Vue, PHP, Ruby on Rails, iOS development and Git version control. Now I want to to gather all those teaching materials and put them into online courses and books. The first 2 books to release are the Mobile First Web Design and CSS3 Effects. The mobile web1st edition book was already finished and I’m now updating it into 2nd edition.

Links worth sharing

The Development Abstraction Layer

Management, in a software company, is primarily responsible for creating abstractions for programmers. We build the yacht, we service the yacht, we are the yacht, but we don’t steer the yacht. Everything we do comes down to providing a non-leaky abstraction for the programmers so that they can create great code and that code can get into the hands of customers who benefit from it.

The Purpose Of Life Is Not Happiness: It’s Usefulness

It comes down to this: What are you DOING that’s making a difference?

The Daily Routine of 20 Famous Writers

E.B. White: “A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.”

Why the Siri Face Is All I Need from My Apple Watch

I use and stick to Siri Face too after trying different faces. Siri face shows my next events and focuses and also shows a photo of history.

Code worth sharing

Block-grid layout with CSS Grid

The minimal(200px, 1fr) means every grid column has minimal 200px width. If there are more spaces, they all have equal width because of the 1fr fraction setting. The repeat and auto-fill means repeating the column to fill in as many columns as possible according to the minmax(200px, 1fr) requirement.

Quote worth sharing

“Stop Thinking, Just Execute”—Finish What You Start

Until next week,
Thomas Mak

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