Author Archives: karin

SXSW session Notes: Programming and minimalism

“Programming and Minimalism: Lessons from Orwell & The Clash” by Jonathan Dahl TL;DR Programming has a lot of similarities to writing, composing, and other creative activities. Programming is a craft, and should be treated as such by rewriting, refactoring, and … Continue reading

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SXSW: Recap

I had a fantastic time at SXSW. I learned a lot (though I felt my brain was full by the second day) and met a ton of fantastic and smart people – both professional contacts and personal ones. I am … Continue reading

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CSS teaching and wrapping block elements with an a tag

Today I taught a graduate digital history class about CSS. I only had an hour, and there was no projector in the room, so I put together a tutorial to walk through how to take a list from normal looking … Continue reading

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Going to SXSW

Going to break a way too long silence on this blog to talk about: Vacation! I will be headed to SXSW Interactive in Austin, TX next week, the 11th-16th. If you are going and would like to meet up, email … Continue reading

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Some thoughts on Less CSS

First – I will clarify that this post is about the Less CSS method of writing CSS (writing in another format and then compiling to CSS, either through Ruby or Javascript) rather than the Less CSS framework. It’s confusing that … Continue reading

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I’m working on a new theme right now (in part to celebrate 10 years on nirak.net) and things might be a little messy while I get things cleaned up. Let me know what you think!

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Ada Lovelace Day – honoring my mom

I know this is late. I started it yesterday but did not quite finish. March 24th is Ada Lovelace day, “an international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science.” (http://findingada.com/about/) There are a lot … Continue reading

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Accessibility and Usability – Part 3: Tools

This is part of a series on accessibility and usability. See the contents page for more. Now that we have talked about Code and Navigation and Design, I’ll talk briefly about a few tools you can use to help you … Continue reading

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Accessibility and Usability – Part 2: Navigation and Design

This is part of a series on accessibility and usability. See the contents page for more. Design and navigation are important aspects of your site’s accessibility. Clear, concise navigation helps users that must use their keyboard to get around, and … Continue reading

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Accessibility and Usability – Part 1: Code

This is part of a series on accessibility and usability. See the contents page for more. The first step to creating accessible and usable websites is to create clean, semantically marked and validated up XHTML. Well formedness, doctype, and validation … Continue reading

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