This blog still runs on WordPress. It’s a theme I have designed and developed years ago in B2, which was the father of WordPress. I coded the theme from scratch using only PHP hooks specifically for my blog. Even to this day, my theme has three files: index.php, style.css, screenshot.png.

These days WordPress has become way too complex to start from scratch. I can still take a starter theme like Gutenberg and go from there, but it already packed too many things I don’t need. I prefer to have control of WordPress instead of the other way around. I want to know exactly how my HTML ended up in the browser. I tried not to sweat it and just lived with whatever an existing theme spits out, but it just feels wrong.

I would love to learn how to make a WordPress theme from scratch using the Gutenberg’s blocks. I have not found any tutorial like that. If you do, please let me know.

Because WordPress has lost me, I can no longer develop clients’ website with it. I turn to Kirky instead. Kirby is not free, but it is worthwhile paying for. Kirby allows me to stand up a site quickly and doesn’t get into the way I design the website. Every piece of HTML is rendered exactly the way I have coded. The best part is that the panel knows which piece can be updated by content editors. As a result, Kirby is an ideal CMS for a small websites.

At fifty-four, Shapiro discovered an unsettling truth about herself through a DNA test. Writing this book is a way for Shapiro to cope with her new identity and the the people who were involved (related or not). In addition, Shapiro’s investigative journalism shows how easy it is nowadays to find out anything about ourselves through online technology and social media. It’s a beautiful, moving, and deeply personal memoir.

Michael Grothaus reports in Fast Company:

Last year it came to light that Facebook was using the phone numbers people submitted to the company solely so they could protect their accounts with 2FA for targeted advertising. And now, as security researcher and New York Times columnist Zeynep Tufekci pointed out, Facebook is allowing anyone to look up a user by their phone number, the same phone number that was supposed to be for security purposes only.

I deactivated my account for two weeks already and I might end up deleting it.

David Remnick profiles Buddy Guy in The New Yorker:

Three chords. The “one,” the “four,” and the “five.” Twelve bars, more or less. Guy’s devotion and sense of obligation to the blues form began long before the death of B. B. King. The story goes like this.

The son of sharecroppers, George (Buddy) Guy was born in 1936, in the town of Lettsworth, Louisiana, not far from the Mississippi River. On September 25, 1957, he boarded a train and arrived in Chicago, another addition to the Great Migration, the northward exodus of black Southerners that began four decades earlier. But Guy hadn’t come to Chicago to work in the slaughterhouses or the steel mills; he came to play guitar in the blues clubs on the South Side and the West Side. He was twenty-one.

Worth a read—or listen.

Jane Mayer reports in The New Yorker:

Trump has made the debate a point of pride. He recently boasted to the Times that he’d won it despite being a novice, and despite the “crazy Megyn Kelly question.” Fox, however, may have given Trump a little help. A pair of Fox insiders and a source close to Trump believe that Ailes informed the Trump campaign about Kelly’s question. Two of those sources say that they know of the tipoff from a purported eyewitness. In addition, a former Trump campaign aide says that a Fox contact gave him advance notice of a different debate question, which asked the candidates whether they would support the Republican nominee, regardless of who won. The former aide says that the heads-up was passed on to Trump, who was the only candidate who said that he wouldn’t automatically support the Party’s nominee—a position that burnished his image as an outsider.

Of course they colluded.

A few weeks ago after failing to search for upcoming design or typography conferences in the DC metro area, I asked Twitter for help. An Event Apart was recommended and I already knew about AEA in DC, but I was not planning on attending.

I went to AEA once about five years ago and I have tremendous respect for the organizers, but it has not changed much except the price. The three-day pass is $1,500. Although my work would cover the cost, it is still expensive. While most of my colleagues attended conferences cost around $500, here I am requesting a conference for triple the price.

My primary reason for not wanting to attend is the lack of new and diverse speakers. AEA has done a great job of adding many women speakers to the roster, but the line up for DC as of today is lacking minority representation. Furthermore, most of the speakers are within a small circle. They are fantastic, but I would love to see different voices.

Andrew Jacobs reports in The New York Times:

Much like the fight over prescription drug prices, the “poop wars,” as one doctor described it, mirrors long-running tensions in American health care between pharmaceutical companies and patients.

Human feces, it turns out, are a potential gold mine, for both medical researchers and drug makers.

According to the analytical firm GlobalData, the market for drug-based treatments for C. diff is expected to reach $1.7 billion by 2026, up from $630 million in 2016. The growth is tied to soaring rates of C. diff, which parallel the overuse of antibiotics, leaving patients more vulnerable to the infection.

Inspired by the success of fecal transplants for C. diff, scientists are racing to develop similar treatments for an array of ailments and disorders, among them obesity, autism, ulcerative colitis, and Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.

Investors, too, have taken note, and they are pouring tens of millions of dollars into start-ups chasing the next microbiota breakthrough.

Fascinating!

Oliver Schöndorfer writes:

Typekit was the place for web fonts – it made them accessible and affordable for many designers and customers. With Adobe Fonts it transformed into being a great tool for mostly designers but not necessarily a web font service anymore. And this makes me sad.

This made me sad as well. I missed Typekit and moved off Adobe Fonts.

Mỗi buổi chiều đi làm về, cái mà tôi mong mỏi là ly rượu vang đỏ và miếng phô mai đầu bò hình tam giác. Dạo này tôi bắt đầu hứng thú với rượu vang. Tuy đã uống từ lâu nhưng tôi không rành về rượu vang. Đã uống bao nhiêu chai khác nhau nhưng vị chát vẫn thế. Cái lạ là sau khi uống tôi lại có cái cảm giác thích thú cái vị chát chát đó.

Ngày xưa tôi thích uống rượu nặng, nhất là cocktail như gin and tonic, screwdriver, hoặc margarita. Uống shot thì tequila hoặc XO. Bia thì cũng tạm tạm nhưng bây giờ bị gout nên không còn uống được nữa. Chỉ có rượu vang là không bị gì cả.

Thôi thì trong ba thứ rượu ích nhất vẫn còn một. Cũng tốt là vang không hại sức khỏe nhiều như mấy thứ khác. Ích ra còn có một chút men rượu để giải sầu. Không có men rượu thì cuộc đời này còn thú vị gì.

Trên đời này cái mà tôi đam mê nhất tôi không làm chủ được. Lúc có lúc không. Rượu thì tôi làm chủ được. Lúc nào muốn uống cũng uống được. Dĩ nhiên cũng có chừng mực và tôi chưa phải dạng người sáng xỉn chiều say. Tôi vẫn biết trách nhiệm và thân phận của mình.

Two former Google product designers show you how to Make Time in four steps: highlight, laser, energize, and reflect. To focus your time and energy on doing something you want, you need to get rid of digital distractions and take care of yourself. Unfortunately, the book doesn’t tell you anything you don’t already know; therefore, I find it not too helpful.