We are kicking 2025 off with a lengthy list of great resources that you shouldn’t miss. There is a bunch of CSS wisdom waiting for you here, a number of performance-related resources, and a few bits and bobs for lower-level programming enthusiasts. As always, we are kicking things off with a record recommendation that I have been listening to the most this month. Let’s go!Album of the monthI had a period of my life when I dug deeply into the Swedish rap scene. The Looptroop Rockers is still one of my favourite bands ever. Around the same time, I discovered Red Astaire, also known as Freddie Kruger or by his real name, Fredrik Lager. I can’t tell you how much I dig some of his mixes. I recently picked up cheaply in a local record store “Nuggets For The Needy Volume 3”, and it has been spinning on my record player for weeks. I recently found out that Fredrik died in June 2022 following a heart attack. Rest in peace 😔Top picksCollection of insane and fun facts about SQLitePretty cool lis...

The CSS attr() function retrieves a value from an HTML element’s attribute. Firefox added support for it two decades ago, so it’s rather not a new thing. I can’t tell you how many times I had an incredible use case for it, just to be reminded a second later that its use is limited to the content property. Here is an example.<article data-category="Technology">...</article>article::before { content: "In category: " attr(data-category);}Baseline: attr() (content only) is widely availableGoogle Chrome: 2, 2009.05.21 Microsoft Edge: 12, 2015.07.29 Firefox: 1, 2004.11.09 Safari: 3.1, 2008.03.18 The new attr() functionI’m not sure if you noticed, but in the last few years all the impossible-to-implement CSS features all of a sudden became possible. The CSS Values and Units Module Level 5 redefines the attr() function, opens its functionality to all properties, allows us to exchange a value between the markup and stylesheet that is not only limited to strings, and also accepts a fallback.<art

It was Cal’s “Digital Minimalism” that inspired me to ditch conventional social media channels, and after two years without mindless scrolling I can only recommend you do the same. “Deep Work” by the same author helped me to refocus and understand the difference between deep and shallow work. I waited patiently for a moment of downtime to read/listen to “Slow Productivity” since I heard about it for the first time on Andrew Huberman’s podcast.After talking to friends and reading plenty of 2024 reviews, the overall busyness is the common denominator. Working on multiple things at once, busy schedules, and plenty of side gigs are just a few things I hear from folks. I ended up in the same trap. How often do all these things lead to actually meaningful achievements? The new book by Cal Newport is a suggestion of a new philosophy for knowledge workers to reduce pseudo productivity by following three simple rules.Author advocates for applying three principles: do fewer things, work at the n

I recently moved from Helix to Neovim. It wasn’t too hard at first, as all the basic motions are very similar, but something didn’t feel right. Because I came from the editor that follows a selection-first approach (motion → action), I blindly kept on replicating the same in the action-first Neovim (action → motion). I have seen crazy efficient Vim programmers before, and I just knew that I needed to level up.A Mastodon user called trójkąt ▼ recommended the “Practical Vim” by Drew Neil to me. This book helped me a lot to understand the editor’s philosophy. It is a pile of hundreds of bite-sized practical tips, and it is designed to cherry-pick the bits you like. The book assumes working with a Vim core, and apart from very few exceptions, does not require any particular plugin or configuration. It is a good one to have on a bookshelf regardless of proficiency in Vim.Favourite tipsLet me share with you a few tips that I learned from the book that made me a lot more efficient. I use them

This is the last post of 2024. It was a really good year overall, but to keep an annual tradition I published “A look back at 2024” where I revealed more. It was also an interesting month. You would expect December to be a quiet month, but it was full of interesting releases, and a bunch of great resources came out. Other than that, I also have some great music recommendations for you folks.Before you jump into top picks and music recommendations, I would like to wholeheartedly wish you a happy and healthy 2025.Album of the monthSometimes spontaneous click-around on Bandcamp can lead to a good exploration. That was the case with my favourite album of December, Damu The Fudgemunk – Peace of Action. Mainly a jazz record, but heavily inspired by the hip hop nuggets here and there. You can tell that it was produced by a hip hop beats producer! Sourced from KPM (and associated music libraries), the selection makes it a truly unique compilation that just makes you want to listen from start t

This year I’m not next to the Christmas tree surrounded by reindeers and blinking lights, but I’m in sunny Carvoeiro on the south coast of Portugal with my family, relaxing and reflecting on the past year. To keep an annual tradition, I would like to share with you some of the highlights and set some goals for the upcoming year.A family picture from the Christmas trip to Carvoeiro.A quick goals check from the previous year. I embarrassingly failed my running goal, but I managed to accomplish the others. I’m not sure why I force myself to get into running so much, but I am keeping this resolution for the next year. I contributed to a number of open-sourced Rust-based projects, and after a decade of using the same profile picture, I have a new one (maybe it sounds trivial to you, but I just hate being on this side of a camera).❌ Run the distance of a half-marathon✅ Get involved in the Rust open-source community✅ Change a decade-old profile pictureTime for a decennial profile pic update.

A year ago, I decided to try Helix.“The joy of learning Helix (and probably other modal, terminal-based editors)”reveals more about the motivations and initial impressions. A few weeks afterplaying around with it, I adopted it as a daily driver. I love Helix, itssimplicity, the set of features it comes with, the documentation, and thecommunity behind it. Learning this tool made me a more efficient programmer, abetter typist, and, due to the underlying technologies, I learned a lot aboutLSPs, Tree-sitter, terminal emulators, and shells.On the way, I hit a few roadblocks, though. A few of these nuanced or lesspopular features can make or break your experience. So, after resisting for awhile, I made the switch to Neovim. It wasn’t love at first sight for sure. Letme share why I abandoned Helix and what my initial impressions of using Neovimare.Missing piece of HelixIt all comes down to a missing package manager. I don’t want to tell you aboutall the occasions I was looking for something a

This is probably the shortest list that I have ever shared with you. I was justtoo busy with work-related stuff, some activities aroundNN1 Dev Club #4 meetup, and my exploration of newsubjects were a bit overshadowed by the fact that I changed a code editor(again). Neovim that is now, and I truly enjoy the ride. I did not forget aboutthe music recommendation, though.Album of the monthMarc Mac came back with his Visioneers project!“Def Radio”is a record that has kept on spinning on my Technics turntable nonstop for thepast month. It is full of incredible funky beats, b-boy breaks, and mellow jazzysounds. One of those records that can play from the very beginning to the end,and your head cannot stop nodding. I need to hunt for some previous releases byVisioneers!Top picks1 dataset. 100 visualizations.How creative that is! A simple dataset represented in 100 different ways, eachof them telling a different story. This is good inspiration for diagram designin your next project. I really lik

An article about a web platform feature feels incomplete without a browser support info. The CanIUse Embed built by Ire Aderinokun is widely used amongst web bloggers. Recently, Rachel Andrew from Google announced an official web component to display the Baseline status.Both of them fetch the results from external resources at runtime. To keep my website trully static, I would prefer to pre-build results at the build time. Stefan Judis uses a custom solution that takes results from the browser-compat-data and wraps it in a beautiful section at the build stage. Chris Swithinbank took an official Google’s <baseline-status> and converted it into an Astro component to avoid client-side JavaScript.I write a ton about the web on this blog, so I finally built a solution for my static website built using Hugo. Let me share a recipe with you.Hugo shortcode to display the Baseline statusFor the sake of simplicity, I chose the Web Platform Status API as the source of data. As Mathias Bynens notic

What a month. When everyone lost hope for the new major release of the most popular Node.js framework of all time, Express v5 just dropped. Deno also released a major version bump, and Evan You founded a company that is going to build the cargo for the JavaScript ecosystem. To top it off, I have some great CSS articles for you all and, of course, as always, a music recommendation from my collection. Enjoy the read ☕Album of the monthI received this album on the 2nd of October, and that was the day I knew what to put in this paragraph at the end of the month. A collaboration between one of my favourite rappers and a producer who is also very high on my favourites list. “The Auditorium Vol. 1” by Common and Pete Rock sounds fresh, like a comeback that good rap deserves. Pete Rock is one of the most versatile producers ever, and he didn’t disappoint on this release. Almost a month after I heard the full album for the first time, I still enjoy it as much, or even more, than before. Solid r