Blake Watson

Because of my disability, spinal muscular atrophy, I spend a lot of time using a computer. I decided to write about my experience and the internal struggle I have with it. blakewatson.com/journal/if-i...

Tab fatigue

✨ It’s the final day of the launch sale for my new course, Whimsical Animations! The price will nearly double in a few hours. whimsy.joshwcomeau.com You can see the exact amount of time remaining here:

I bought this course on day 1 because, yes, an LLM can help you learn—especially surface level or strictly technical info—but only a human who’s been in the trenches and has a passion for teaching can impart that experience to you with all of its nuances and lessons learned.

I should first explain how the business model works. Most people discover my work through my blog (www.joshwcomeau.com). My blog is not directly monetized at all: no ads, no affiliate links, no sponsored content. In 2025, 1.4 million people visited the blog, a number that still blows my mind. 😅

I vibe coded this accessibility tool but I hand-made its website. scrollmymac.blakewatson.com

I vibe coded for the first time. This is what happened. I think the landscape of assistive technology software is about to be completely transformed. blakewatson.com/journal/i-us...

Looks like I have access to Bluesky again. It was previously blocked in Mississippi (long story) but we’re back with age verification.

I’ll be speaking at MagnoliaConf (@magnolia.boo) in Jackson, MS in October. My talk, "No build tool? No problem!" is all about skipping frontend build steps and instead using the cool features supported by modern browsers. You can get 10% off tickets with this code: SPEAKER10 2025.magnoliaconf.com

So, all Bluesky users in Mississippi (e.g., me) are blocked from using the app. I'm posting this by using a VPN. I hope Mississippi's government can come to a more practical solution for its stated goal of child safety, but I'm not optimistic. bsky.social/about/blog/0...

I haven’t played this game in 20+ years but this song lives rent-free in my head. www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lhb...

My website turned 20 today! blakewatson.com/journal/blak...

Hypothetical. Someone who doesn't code and doesn't want to learn asks you what is a good service for making a personal website and/or blog. Where would you point them?

Quick, I need some blog posts! I'm looking for blog posts/articles about why people should have a personal website. I'm putting a list of them in a blog post. Both classic must-reads as well as little known posts from new web authors are fine.

It took two hours of debugging, one of which included 3 developers on a screenshare... to find a misspelled attribute.

🎟️ Tickets for Magnolia Conf 2025 are now on sale! Join us in Jackson, MS from October 21-23. https://www.tixtree.com/e/magnolia-conf-453fc7ea2496

CFP for Magnolia Conf 2025 is now open! submit your talk by August 15(ish)! if you're part of an underrepresented group in tech, we especially want to hear from you! https://forms.gle/ceZAHzkcxXZGCo5U9

Think I’m going to stop cross-posting from Mastodon. I don’t love having a bunch of truncated posts.

Can confirm these are rad! https://iconfactory.world/@Iconfactory/114916100504750898 https://social.lol/@bw/114983446851550327

You'll never have to chase down small breaking changes in your dependency chain you download the CDN versions and commit them directly to your repo. https://social.lol/@bw/114977504714639056

Any weirdos out there have a favorite light theme for VS Code? There aren't nearly as many quality light themes as dark themes I've noticed. https://social.lol/@bw/114977124835327299

I just said "bro, cope" out loud to webpack running in my terminal because it was showing me an error I already fixed. https://social.lol/@bw/114972098507528943

At certain levels, your D&D character has the option to take an ability score improvement or a feat. Ability score improvements are great but sound boring, while Feats have cool names like "War Caster" or "Crusher" (and tbf feats are great too). I just ... https://social.lol/@bw/114971829307993583

Made a bunch of updates to Minimal Character Sheet. - Print mode - Collapsible spells - UI tweaks - Bug fixes https://minimalcharactersheet.com https://social.lol/@bw/114967252818793092

Like synthwave? I just added a bunch of mixes to https://synthwave.live. https://social.lol/@bw/114954447888139317

Found this website which is similar to the HTML for People vibe. Love it! https://www.htmlhobbyist.com/ https://social.lol/@bw/114943644522991487

If you are reading this, you can do it. I believe in you! https://htmlforpeople.com/ https://mastodon.social/@ethanschoonover/114939346322019002 https://social.lol/@bw/114939810963339207

Spent nearly all day yesterday refactoring the autosave function on my digital character sheet app. It handles edge cases more betterly and shows a save-status indicator so that you can have the warm fuzzies of knowing everything is saved (and know when s... https://social.lol/@bw/114931682387589515

Tomorrow I’m gonna start procrastinating for real. https://social.lol/@bw/114910110467382136

I made a thing for D&D peeps! It's been a thing for a while, but I'm just now writing about it after making a bunch of updates. https://blakewatson.com/journal/your-freeform-digital-character-sheet-for-dd-5e/ https://social.lol/@bw/114908676180504999

One of the most fun projects I've worked on recently was the illustration for htmlforpeople.com/ with @blakewatson.com I especially love how Blake animated the SVGs I delivered! (note to self... I really should add this to my portfolio!) #Illustration #Work #Design #Animation #HTML

I've submitted two talks to MagnoliaConf 2025. One about building a static websites with @11ty (https://neighborhood.11ty.dev/@11ty) and one about webdev without a frontend build step. Anxious to see if I will be selected and if so which talk I'll be doin... https://social.lol/@bw/114900186456076658

Remember, folks, if you change a URL on your website and you don't create redirect, Sir Tim Berners-Lee will break into your house at night and kill you with a ceremonial dagger fashioned in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. https://social.lol/@bw/114860153404448119

Hey y'all, my favorite conference, @magnolia.boo , needs sponsors. It has the best food, supports an under-served community, and as the inaugural costume contest winner, I can say it has the best costumes! Sponsorships start at $500, so send this to your company: drive.google.com/file/d/1p2bg...

forgot to mention in the original post, but definitely apply if you're part of an underrepresented group! we want to hear your voice! 💕

Are you in the southeast US and want to go to a dope dev conference? @magnolia.boo 2025 is happening in October! Sign up to be notified. It’s a community event with good people behind it (who have other full-time jobs). Sponsors are needed and sponsorships start at $500! 2025.magnoliaconf.com

This guide is incredibly, incredibly easy to follow. Like it's quite literally how I wish most tutorials worded things.

My DM pointed out that Shillelagh lasts for a minute which is a pretty long time in combat and also it doesn't require concentration. https://social.lol/@bw/114837103517533963

Player’s Handbook: As a druid, we recommend putting your lowest ability score on Strength. Also Player’s Handbook: Weapons? You get a quarterstaff and a sickle. Yes they both rely on Strength. Yeah I know Shillelagh is a thing but I think it's weird... https://social.lol/@bw/114836693971915162

I will be resolving all merge conflicts with *take mine* because that’s the vibe 2025 is giving me. https://social.lol/@bw/114835765900969052

I love when you unsubscribe from an email list and they have a thing that says if you accidentally unsubscribed, click here. Like, yes, I accidentally scrolled to the end of your email, found the buried unsubscribe link, clicked it, clicked a check box t... https://social.lol/@bw/114830059124285937

Make your own website with HTML! It’s easier than you might think. I'll help you. htmlforpeople.com Reposting because my Mastodon cross-post didn’t show the beautiful image preview expertly illustrated by @andycarolan.bsky.social.

Does anyone have a favorite command line program for quickly navigating to specific directories? I'm on a Mac so I'm looking for something I could install with Homebrew. https://social.lol/@bw/114820667457253086

I just found out VS Code is calling itself "The open source AI editor."

If you’re using an AI for coding that uses cloud models (eg, Cursor, Claude Code), what’s to stop it from reading your .env file and sending it to the LLM provider? https://social.lol/@bw/114812392589687766

I really am gonna stop fiddling with Obsidian. It’s perfect now and there’s nothing left to cha—OOOH SHINYYY https://gnelson.gumroad.com/l/obsidian2 https://social.lol/@bw/114801414535376734

There’s never been a better time to learn HTML… because I made a few minor updates to HTML for People. Rolling your own website is hugely rewarding. It’s hard to explain but there’s a real sense of agency and control. If you feel trapped by corpo... https://social.lol/@bw/114795829050260921

Ok I’m gonna do D&D prep and I’m not going to be nerd sniped by the first neat thing that comes across my—OMG WUUUT... https://github.com/javalent/dice-roller https://social.lol/@bw/114787502122123452

There are people in my circles who, if they change their avatar, will completely ruin my life. I have massive respect for people who use the same avatar everywhere for eons. I'm just not one of those people. I tend to get bored with mine after a while. https://social.lol/@bw/114787379474614959