I'm a web designer, developer, educator, and business owner.

So far, the journey has been about running profitable companies that help you get better at web design and development. 🫶

Email from Apple: We’re reaching out to let you know that the iPhone Upgrade Program is coming to an end. Thank you for being a loyal member.  Awwww. Sad trombone. I’ve been on this program for as long as I can remember. Every year you just send back your old phone and get the new […]

CodePen 2.0

Noting perhaps my largest personal career accomplishment, which is launching CodePen 2.0. Far more work, believe it or not, than the entire creation of the original CodePen. This isn’t the place to describe every detail of what we did and why we did it. If you’re interested, perhaps our Why 2.0? podcast or the What’s […]

Choosing Movies

Almost surely, if you totaled up the number of hours of movie watching I’ve done and the hours of TV show watching I’ve done, TV dwarves movies. It’s not a conscious choice; just how it shook out for me. Via the internet, I “know” a couple of people who are consciously movie-only. Khoi Vinh does […]

How You Get the Mentos into the Diet Coke

Did you think this was gonna be some grand metaphor blog post? Nope. You probably know: if you put Mentos in Diet Coke, it makes the carbonation go crazy and fizz shoots out of the bottle. It’s a “science” experiment akin to baking soda & vinegar volcano, freezing a banana in liquid hydrogen and shattering […]

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so dateable

If You are Asking for Human Attention, Demonstrate Human Effort — Tom Bedor. There’s a bit of a blog post that goes with it, but the title really says it all. Pairs nicely with Dave’s I don’t want a screenshot of your Claude conversation and Simon’s “I will not publish anything that takes someone else […]

The Raven Tattoo

I’ve long been envious of my friends with sweet sleeve tattoos. It’s a cool place for a tattoo. You get to see it yourself a lot. Some of it sticks out from a rolled-up shirt-sleeve which is fun and mysterious. You’ve got a decent amount of real estate to work with. You get to showcase […]

CodePen

I co-founded CodePen in 2012. I still run it today along with co-founder Alex Vazquez.

It's my all-day every-day job.

I should probably get a tattoo of the logo at this point. Is that lame? I feel like it's both lame and I want to do it, which makes me lame, and I need to find peace with that.

CodePen is a social front-end web development environment. People make Pens (secret: they are just little websites). They don't have to install anything or learn anything terribly bespoke. It all just happens right in the browser.

People make Pens to experiment and prototype. They might be making a reduced test case for a bug and trying to get help. They might be making generative art. They might be building a website for a small business. They might be helping educate the next generation of web designers and developers. They might be interviewing a candiate on their front-end skills.

My elevator pitch is a little long, I should work on that.

CodePen is a long-profitable small business that runs with a small all-remote team. We'd sure appreciate your support via a PRO subscription, which unlocks all sorts of powerful features.

ShopTalk Show

With Dave Rupert, I'm the co-founder of a podcast called ShopTalk Show. Kicking off in 2012 and doing weekly episodes, we're over 700 now. It's hard to believe how many incredible web luminaries we've talked to over the years.

There have been a ton of incredible moments from "Dave Goes Windows", speaking directly to a guy who hacked me, interviewing people for an eventual conference talk "How to Think Like a Front-End Developer", Bernie Standards, to looking back at guests we can't even get anymore because they're too high up the corporate ladder now.

I'd like to shout out Christopher Schmitt who was a web developer, author, conference organizer, and friend. He was a long-time sponsor of ShopTalk Show, believing in us from the start. RIP man. I'll keep that website online for ya.

CSS-Tricks

I built CSS-Tricks, a website all about building websites, and ran it for 15 years, from 2007 to 2022. If you know me there is like a 62% chance it's from that.

I sold it to Digital Ocean in 2022. It's still a great place to learn about web design and development, and my ol' buddy and lead editor Geoff Graham still runs it.

A ton of people contributed to CSS-Tricks over the years. Sara Cope was the first part-time employee and did tons of stuff including shipping merch out of her own house. Marie Mosley helped out in the early days and now is the longest CodePen employee. Robin Rendle wrote a lot including handling the newsletter for years. Sarah Drasner was on the team. Lynn Fisher did those famous flexbox and grid illustrations.

Writing is for winners

I’m big on the power of writing as a way to think better and improve yourself.

This sounds fake to say, but I've written many thousands of blog posts over the years. The public part is helpful as it gives writing some stakes. It forces you into an empathy mode where you imagine what it's like to read your own words. Does what I'm saying make sense? Am I expressing myself clearly and fairly? Do I have my facts correct? Does it sound like me?

Writing helps you with all sorts of stuff. Like email. Crucial. Can you write an email to the parents of your kid's soccer team and actually have it coherently convey what everyone needs to know this coming Saturday? You're hired.

✨ Documenting things (uh: writing) is a golden ticket at work. ✨ Writing a blog opened more professional doors for me than anything else I've ever done. ✨ Writing helps your mind grow. ✨ Writing helps you vet and spread your ideas. ✨ Writing helps you connect with people.

Practice writing, folks.

Ruby

Ruby is my eight-year-old daugher. 💜

She's pretty cool. If this was real life I'd show you a bunch of pictures, but we keep her face off the internet. She should probably have a say in that once she's old enough to really care.

Her hobbies and interests change all the time. That's how I rolled as a kid too. My mom said I'd never stick with a hobby and she got sick of spending money on my hobby flings. It wasn't until computers and music when things stuck for me.

Right now, Ruby likes Roblox (ugh), swimming, singing, her dog Lulu, and as many play dates as she can get.

Old-Time

I like old-time music.

Most people know what bluegrass is. Old-time ain't quite that. Old-time is a bit of a catch-all term for the related music that came before it. Mostly fiddle and banjo stuff with quite a few instrumental melody tunes. No solos, just people playing their part in the tune and it all melting together. It's very satisfying.

I try to play old-time as much as I can manage. Here's some buds and me playing in the Skookumchuck river.

I play mostly banjo these days. Clawhammer style like the African roots. I'm still useful in a jam on guitar or bass as well. Mandolin was my main thing when I played bluegrass, but those days have passed. I've got a couple banjos from my ol' college buddy Aaron who know makes instruments as Beansprout.

Little Me

Some pictures of me as a kid. Also wasn't that a sick glitch effect? c'mon.

Little me, photo 1
Little me, photo 2
Warrior Poet Philosopher
Little me, photo 3
I didn't really turn out to be a robe guy.
Little me, photo 4
I did turn out to be a vest guy though.