Author Archives: John F Croston III

It’s Been a Year Since My Last Drink

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As of yesterday (February 11, 2021), it’s been over a year since I last had a drink.

The reason for that is I have never been one to drink at home by myself. So during the pandemic with being home by myself and not visiting with friends, I haven’t had a reason for a drink.

I’m a wine person 95% of the time anyway and don’t open a bottle to drink it myself. I would prefer to open a nice bottle and share it with friends than drink it by myself. In my mind, wine is to be shared with friends with a meal or whatever.

Last Drink

So on February 11, 2020, I went to the DC wine and cheese group event. Where two good friends were putting on a tasting at the group, we all used to belong too.

There we had, I think it was four red wines and a dessert wine, two kinds of cheese, and crusty bread, all for $25 or was it $30.

It was nice to attend the event and see other’s I hadn’t seen in years.

Other Times Prior

Before that, the last few times I had a wine/drink was Christmas Eve dinner at a friend’s in 2019. Then at Thanksgiving at their place the month before.

Before that, it was, I think, the last week of September 2019, right before my car died at my buddy Tony’s house. Typically on Tuesday evenings, we would get together to hang out. Have some wine, cheese, and sometimes a meal if someone was in the mode to cook.

Possible Next Time

So at this point, I think I’m going to wait until I can safely get together with my wine friends.

Yes, I have wine friends.

Here’s to Celebrating a Good Friend

Where we celebrate the life of my buddy, Tony, who was one of those two friends giving the class. He passed away the week of Christmas 2020.

So here’s to all of us making it through the pandemic and then having a drink with friends when it’s safe for all of us to do so.

Blogged Daily in January

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In mid-December, I thought it would be interesting to see if I could write a blog post every day in January.

After looking at my blog, I noticed it had been almost two years since I last posted (late January 2019). Before that, I wrote one post in July 2018 and nothing in 2017.

Posting Daily

Posting every day allowed me to write a bunch at first about things from 2020 and the pandemic. Along with some things I wanted to say and others that came up.

Part of the issue was I tended to write longer posts with example code. Which needed to be coded semantically and accessibly, of course. So it took a long time to write them and then post them if I ever did. So I stopped for the most part.

Shorter Blog Posts

So I decided the posts would be short. In my mind, that meant 500 to 1,000 words. It seems most of the blog posts in January 2021 ended up being between 300 and 600 words on average.

The longest post was the first one on January 1st at 926 words. The shortest one was 197 words about a week ago.

What Were the Numbers

I went back and wrote down the number of words for each post in January. The total words I wrote were 14,789 for an average of 477 and some change per day.

NOTE – I only had to add all the words per day up three times to get totals to match twice.

It’s Tough Blogging Daily

After writing a post every day for a month now, I’m not sure how Austin Kleon and others find the time to post daily. Or have ideas most days. Occasion they skip a day or so. Either way, I have found it to be hard to do every day. It’s a lot of work to do it more than a few times a week.

Posting Weekly

After posting every day for a month, I found it took about an hour to two hours daily for each post. Some days three hours if I was working on more than one psst.

Meaning I would come up with an idea or two, outline them, maybe even write the first draft. Or the next day, finish the post and edit it. Then post it or if I was writing on the weekends or had the time started one for a few days in advance.

I think spending four or five hours a week writing a post or two would be good.

Doing so would give me eight or ten hours back. That I had been using to write, edit, and post for other things like time to read and learn to improve my skills. Say in JavaScript, CSS Grid, etc. Or maybe cooking, coding, relaxing, etc.

Or even spending time thinking about what I want to be when I group.

Snowy Sunday

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With knowing it was going to be a snowy Sunday and nowhere to be. Besides my remote JavaScript Book Club at 5:00 PM, I didn’t set my alarm this morning or most Sundays.

Start of My Morning

I woke up at about 7:56 AM. laid in bed, and read until after 9:30 AM. Then I got out of bed to watch some cooking and farming videos on YouTube. I figured I could spend my lazy morning learning something.

Not Ready to Learn

I knew I wasn’t ready to learn JavaScript by watching my Wes Bos “JavaScript for Beginners’ videos. Maybe later this afternoon or this evening.

After watching videos, I cooked up a dozen breakfast sausages I had thawed out the last night. They had been in the freezer since the summer. I figure they would be getting a little freezer burn, etc., and they were.

Cooked Breakfast

While the sausages were cooking on medium-low heat, I washed dishes. Then I chopped the sausages into smaller bite-size pieces to make sure they’re cooked thoroughly. I then could use them in salads later, and with the four eggs, I was getting ready to scramble and cook for breakfast.

I toasted up some Wegman’s sliced garlic bread. Then I added strawberry preserves to one slice and apricot to the other. Once all that was done, I ate it while watching one more video.

Snow Shoveling

Then I got dressed to go out and shovel the sidewalk, walkways to each of the doors, and the back porch. With not having a car anymore, my shoveling is way down by many hours, depending on how much snow we get. I only had to make a path in the driveway.

Today was easy because we only got an inch and a half, maybe two inches at most.

Off for a Walk

After shoveling was done, I went for a 45-minute to an hour walk of over two and a half miles. I took my time to wander the neighborhood and see what was going on.

Home from Walk

Once I was back home, I cleaned up a few spots on the sidewalk and then went into the house. With being cold and a bit achy after shoveling I took a long hot shower. I know TMI.

Then I laid on my bed to read a bit on Twitter and see if I was ready for a nap, and I wasn’t.

Writing this Post

So I started writing this blog post after making a large bowl of popcorn on my stove with some oil and a little bacon fat. The bacon fat made for some tasty popcorn. I got myself a GT’s Gingerberry Kambucha and some water.

The next thing I do before a possible nap and book club is edit and post this blog post.

Then it’s outline/write a draft post about writing blog posts every day of January.

Possible Dinner Plans

Thinking dinner will be leftover curried coconut milk shrimp with elbow noodles, farro, corn, greens beans, and roasted Hatch Chili’s. Most likely, it will be a salad with greens that look to have seen better days.

More Lazy Weekends

So here’s to having more lazy Sundays or even weekends with not much to do but relax, read, nap, etc.

Check Your Draft Blog Posts First

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Today when looking at my drafts to see if there was an old post, I could edit, update, etc., and then post. Because like others, I have old posts I got most of the way there and then never posted them or forgot about them.

When I got near the end of the list of drafts, I found a post about “Progress About ‘Places to Eat’ Web Application” (future posts). I already had old content about the 10K Apart contest and places to eat that I recommend. Along with starting a newsletter, etc., that I ended up writing called “Looking to Start a Newsletter of Places to Eat.” The old one had much more detail.

The old one needed a bit of finishing/updating and was almost 1,300 words. So I broke it into two posts for now that I can use later. Since I recently talked about these subjects. It will be better to post them after doing some research on starting a newsletter platform to use. Or at least which one to use when first starting.

Look at Your Old Posts First

So please look at all your drafts before starting a new blog post. You might even want to read some of them to see if the content is similar to what you wanted to talk about that day.

Here’s to finishing up old blog posts and getting them out in the world or deleting ones you don’t want anymore.

Your Website Needs Color and Contrast

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NOTE – I found this old blog post in my drafts, so I did some time editing it, link checking, etc., and hit publish of an old draft.

To Read Your Content

To allow people to read your content, you need to make sure to have the color contrast as high as possible. So people can read what you have written. It shouldn’t be so high that it bothers people with low vision. Were too much contrast makes it difficult for them to read.

Putting light text on pastel or light backgrounds is not good for some people. You also have to think about the different types of color deficiencies (colorblindness). Meaning you don’t want to have red text on a green background, etc.

A Useful Tool

Below are a few different tools I use to check color contrast. The color contrast tool I use the most is Jonathan Snook’s web-based “Colour Contrast Tool”.  It’s the tool I use to check color contrast for the development team at work or if I have chosen will work.

W3C Recommendation for Color Contrast

Here’s the W3C recommended values from the WCAG 2.0 – 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum) Level AA.

Following these guidelines ensures that foreground and background color combinations provide enough contrast. This pertains to those with color deficiencies. To pass your text and background need to have a color contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 or higher to pass.

How High Should Your Color Contrast Be

You also have to think about how the web page or application is going to be used. Now, if it a heat index application that is likely going to be used outdoors. You have to consider most high heat index days will probably be in bright sunlight. So blaring sunny will not work well with a contrast ratio that passes b a little bit.

Color Deficiency or Colorblindness

Another tool is the “Color Oracle.” It’s used to simulate different types of colorblindness. They have Windows, Mac, and Linux versions created by Bernhard Jenny, Oregon State University (programming), Nathaniel Vaughn Kelso, and Stamen Design, San Francisco (ideas, testing, and icon).  The application places a color overlay for your entire main screen. You can set up different PF or function keys to turn on and off different types of colorblindness masks easily.

Doing this allows you to check against the three main types of color blindness. About 10% of the population is colorblind. Most of them are males. The three main types of color blindness are:

  • Deuteranopia or deuteranomaly (a form of red/green color deficit) – 7.5% of all males.
  • Protanopia or protanomaly (another form of red/green color deficit) – 2.5% of all males.
  • Tritanopia (a blue/yellow deficit- very rare) – Less than 0.3% of women and men.

More Tools

Next is the full list of tools I would you for building websites. Your choice will depend on how you work and what’s best for you.

I hope these tools are helpful to you in checking for color contrast issues.

Additional Reading

For a more detailed look at color contrast, you need to read Todd Libby’s color contrast article called “Contrasting Accessibility with Color Contrast“. You should also follow him on Twitter at @ToddLibby.

Any Recommendations

If you have any other tools that you use and think I should checkout, please leave a comment, and I will give them a look.