Ep. 17: Teleportation, PapayaWhip, and Cookies with Miriam Suzanne

Episode Guests

Miriam Suzanne is an artist, activist, teacher, and web developer. As a co-founder of OddBird, Teacup Gorilla, and Grapefruit Lab, she hopes to create art & software that celebrate the queer complexity of human experience.

Transcript#

Claire:

Still terrible, or not?

Miriam:

Oh, definitely

Claire:

OK.

Miriam:

The worst.

Claire:

Good.

Welcome back to Word Wrap with Claire...

Steph:

and Steph! You can find the transcript for today's show on WordWrap.dev.

Welcome back to another episode of Word Wrap. This episode we are joined once again by friend of the show Miriam Suzanne, who you may know as TerribleMia on Twitter.

And fortunately, she's not too terrible to decline our second invitation to the show.

Miriam:

How dare you.

Claire:

She wanted to come back which is bonkers to me.

Steph:

No, we're super glad to have you back. Miriam owns the agency OddBird and is well-known for writing specs and being part of the working group. Last time we talked to her about container queries so if that's what you're expecting to hear about, we already did that. And she's been talking about it extensively the past year.

So today we're doing something quite a bit different. We just so happen to be recording this episode near the winter holidays. And if you are a Grinch, you may want to skip this episode because we are here to have fun today and expect it to go a little off the rails.So.

Claire:

Any topic is available for discussion. And so I just wanted to mention about the container queries thing. It's funny, we did that episode in May and I believe the syntax has completely changed since then. And

Miriam:

That's probably true.

Claire:

Yeah. And

Miriam:

I told you I'm terrible,

Claire:

You know,

Miriam:

You know, you were warned,

Claire:

We were warned.

Miriam:

So good to be back. Thank you for having me back.

Claire:

Yeah, I'm super glad to be able to talk to you again. That's super super good. So what is the first topic that we wanted to talk about? Not container queries, because that's work and work, especially on a Friday is not allowed. Wait, just kidding. If my boss is listening to this, I of course work on Fridays. And it's funny that my boss, I believe does listen to this, so that's fine. Maybe I'll edit this out.

But I, yeah. Lot of things going on on the web lately, a lot of things going on in the world lately and not all of it's positive and we kind of just wanted to talk about more positive ish things.

'cause it's pretty easy to get down, you know, especially with year 75 of the pandemic. And then also the, the Omicron, which I just wanted to say that way, because it reminds me of Optimus Prime for some reason, because my brain is weird. Which Optimus Prime is the good one. Right? I don't know. I just can't keep thinking about Bumblebee being Camero.

Miriam:

It reminds me of OmniCorp, which I think is the bad guy in Robocop. Yeah.

Claire:

I love it. Well, and also Omicron Persei 8, which if anyone's watched a Futurama, then you know, you know what I'm talking about. So anyway yeah. One good thing in the web is a container queries and, you know, it's pretty terrible that you keep changing the syntax.

That's fine. You know, it breaks everything and that's just your way.

Miriam:

This is why we have prototypes, we have prototypes so that we can break things and change direction. And we're not actually hurting production code when we do it. So, yeah, it's a good thing.

Claire:

And that's the cool thing about the web is that it is constantly changing.

So like you would expect something that is in development to wildly change. I mean, any developer out there is going to be like, oh yeah, I had to make a breaking change because X or Y you know,

Miriam:

We want to do those before we ship them because once they're shipped, there's no changing it or much less changing it.

Claire:

It reminds me of SmooshGate. If anyone remembers that.

Miriam:

That's right.

Claire:

Which I it's just so funny that someone said that it should be called smoosh. I really wish it would have been called that, but I understand that, you know, internationalization of it. And how do you describe smoosh and in a different language also?

I can't, I don't even think I'm saying it right. Smush? Is it smush or smoosh? Anyway. But Yeah, plenty of things happening on the web nowadays. React finally admitted that web components exists, which is cool.

Web components exist? Okay. Octa.

Yeah, I know. Right. It's just like, well, if React says that they exist well, then they must exist, right?

Miriam:

Yeah. Yeah. But I've played with them a little bit.

Claire:

Yeah, just a little bit? What have you made with it?

Miriam:

Mostly just tests just to see, just to see... I don't like styling them. So...

Claire:

That's fair.

Miriam:

I haven't, I want, I want a way to have, well, one thing I don't like having much JavaScript. And you need JavaScript to do much with a web component.

Claire:

That's true.

Miriam:

And so I'm like, well, that's weird. I want to just be able to have, have some templates and then automatically have them registered and use them. And so declarative templates. And then I also want to be able to choose whether I'm using a shadow DOM or not. Sometimes I just want my styles to be normal styles and go through.

Claire:

Yeah, I agree. Whenever I've used web components I've used Lit or previously known as Lit Element. And one of the cool things about Lit is that you can choose to use the shadow -shadow DOM or not. Granted Lit is like, I think the last time I looked at it, it was like 50 kilobits kilobytes, kilobits. Wow. Kilobytes of, of a library, which I mean not great, but not terrible. And, but yeah, it makes it, it makes it shadow DOM free, so you don't have to worry about styling at all. But you also have 50 kilobytes JavaScript. So

Miriam:

Yeah, it's weird to me to have a native feature for doing H extending HTML, but I need to load JavaScript to do it. That feels weird to me.

Claire:

Yeah, I'm curious if there are other ways to like, do that. Like I guess I probably don't know, but I've been trying to think about like, WebAssembly lately. Like, you know, writing something in Rust or writing something in I've just wanted to learn Rust. But like, could you define an HTML elements in more of a, you know, closer to the browser language language? So that you wouldn't have to run JavaScript. And you could like extend the browser that way. So, because I feel like that could be run once and it would stay on that website kind of thing, kind of like a cookie, but not really.

Steph:

Cookies.

Claire:

Like it could be like element storage or something.

Miriam:

Steph wants cookies!

Claire:

Steph wants cookies now.

Steph:

The more fun topic is cookies, but what if we could extend the browser with Legos? We're talking about Legos earlier.

Miriam:

Yeah. Legos are of my favorite. Yeah.

Steph:

Legos and cookies, real cookies. What if we repurpose our old DVD drives for cookie dispensers. That's I'm just saying the web needs more sensory experiences. That's what I'm trying to say.

Miriam:

Cookie dispensers

Steph:

You know, or biscuits. We'll be kind to our friends, you know,

Miriam:

I'm thinking through how I'm going to spec this.

Steph:

I, yeah, I just want, you know, it feels like something very, you know, it could be componentized for sure.

Claire:

Well, I'm thinking about like, so we've got document dot cookies, right? So it's relative to the document. I feel like the cookie dispenser would be relative to the window instead.

So you'd have window dot cookies and because who doesn't want a cookie window?

Steph:

Yeah. I mean like, or again, you know, biscuits.

Claire:

Yeah, whatever. No, we have to localize that. Window dot biscuits and across the pond and it's window dot cookie.

Steph:

Aliases, that's a thing, right? You do that already with like grey and gray.

I don't either. I learned this year that that's one of the things I learned this year is I learn, I use British grey.

Claire:

Which is British gray - E or A?

Steph:

E.

Claire:

Oh, I always use A. What's the difference?

Steph:

A for America. That's what somebody told me.

Claire:

And E for England?

Steph:

Apparently it makes sense, right? Like everything.

Miriam:

There's nothing about named colors in CSS that makes sense.

Steph:

It really isn't, that's a fun topic. We should do that someday. Claire,

Claire:

That's actually one of the like least known things in my like, repertoire, if you will, like, I have, like, I know, I know Alice blue, cause it's weird. It's not weird. It's like Alice, like that's not a color. Anyway. It doesn't matter. We're not going to debate the politics of color now.

Miriam:

You're just jealous, you just wish there was a Claire.

Claire:

I wish there was a Claire. Claire blue. Yeah, because it also sounds fun. But there's Rebecca purple. And then like the normal colors, like white, red, black, you know, like, I don't know of all the like

Miriam:

PapayaWhip.

Steph:

Apparently, there is light, dark, and medium orchid. So,

Claire:

Really?

Miriam:

The fun ones are where like dark gray is lighter than gray. I think. Yeah, PapayaWhip's a good one. I mean, if you ever need a subtle

Steph: Y

eah.

Claire:

Wait, wait, papaya whips?

Miriam:

PapayaWhip. Singular.

Claire:

That's a, that's a color?

Miriam:

Yeah. It's sort of a light peachy color, sort of just off white eggshell, maybe eggshell peach. I don't know something in there. You know, like a... papaya that's whipped?

Claire:

Corn silk. Oh, chartreuse is one of my favorites.

Miriam:

Have you seen - there's there's a great sorted colors

Steph:

That's the link I put in the chat, so.

Miriam:

Great. Good. Oh yeah. I love that. I love that tool.

Claire:

I wonder, like, what are the politics of like naming colors, peach puff?

Miriam:

Well, so a lot of it happened really early on and there's, there's been some movements to like rename the colors or like add, add sensible names because the original ones came from like two or three different systems, mostly like X11 and something.

And that's why they don't match up or have any consistency. So there's been like proposals for how colors should have been named. And do we want to add reasonably named colors or is it not worth it?

Claire:

I mean, I, I'm curious. Yeah. I'm curious how many people use them, like out of all, I guess, I don't know, like personally speaking, I've never really used named colors before. I've always thought in terms of hex values, but I'm sure there are other, there are people that, that think intern, like they remember all these colors. Like an old roommate remembers all of the names to all of the Ikea furniture he has ever purchased. And he knows exactly which one it is. And I'm like, how, how do you know that stuff? Like, I just couldn't wrap my brain around it.

Miriam:

I, I use named colors when I'm making demos. I think of them as like, you know, people load a UI toolkit or something that comes with a color palette and I'm like, here's my color palette. It's provided by CSS. I can choose off this list. Yeah, it doesn't always get me right where I need to be, but you know, it's got MediumVioletRed is really good. So what else do I need?

Claire:

I admittedly, I'm also really bad about color names in design systems. So it might just be a me thing. I just remember the hex colors more than I did, or the hex hexadecimal more than the name. But I've also been like the person that remembers everyone's phone number and stuff like that. So maybe I just have an affinity for numbers and also A through F so.

Miriam:

I remember one phone number. Well, no, I remember my parents' phone number that I grew up with and one high school friend.

Claire:

Wow. I remember all of the phone numbers we've ever had. And then I know like other numbers, like. Bank account numbers and like old bank account numbers that I had that don't even exist anymore.

Miriam:

Do you wanna - I'll get a pen and paper here.

Claire:

Yeah, I'm sure.

Steph:

By the way, Claire, you just here's your new side project idea: Colors AF.

Claire:

What's it going to do?

Steph:

I don't know, that's up to you.

Miriam:

Hopefully something to do with cookies.

Steph:

Yeah.

Claire:

Yeah. Can we get back on cookies? What kind of cookie? What, what's your favorite cookie? Mine's peanut butter.

Miriam:

Peanut butter is good, but it doesn't have chocolate in it. I mean, you could add chocolate to it and then it's even better.

Claire:

Yeah, peanut butter chocolate is even better. It's a better combo.

Steph:

Mine is my grandma's world war two recipe for chocolate pecan cookies.

Miriam:

Very specific.

Steph:

Yes. And apparently eggs were smaller back then. So I tried to make it recently and it was too runny. I had add a lot more flour.

Claire:

Yeah. Okay. How much smaller were they?

Steph:

Enough to ruin the batter when I made it as is.. I'm like she clearly was adding more and didn't update her recipe because that was the only way they turned out. Good times.

Miriam:

Okay. This means we've been actively breeding chickens for larger eggs.

Claire:

I mean, I wouldn't be surprised we've been doing that for bigger chicken wings or bigger breasts or whatever.

Miriam:

I mean, I just haven't been doing it personally. So then, like, I didn't know what was going on. Yeah. Okay.

Steph:

Everything is bigger. Yeah, so anyways!

Claire:

So talking about. Dang it, I had a really good segue and it just segwayed out of my mind. So yeah. How about dang it. I have no idea what I was going to say. I wanted to bring it around to crypto, but I didn't because I wanted to get spicy, but I wasn't real.

Miriam:

That was a real transition there.

Claire:

Thank you. I'm really good at those. So, you know,

Miriam:

Crypto chickens.

Claire:

They're obviously the same thing. Yeah.

Steph:

NFT is the glue there, obviously. Non-fungible chickens? Oh dear.

Claire:

Oh, I think NFC already exists and it's not non-fungible chickens.

Miriam:

Why do we want to talk about crypto?

Claire:

I don't know. I just want to get spicy.

Miriam:

Oh, ok.

Steph:

Spicy chicken.

Miriam:

Spicy chicken!

Claire:

No, I just I don't know. I think it's one of those hot topics, you know, and like it's, it's something that's not fleshed out and like, I think everyone's kind of figuring it out. And I think, I think that's something that mirrors like other instances of things that have happened in the past, but I don't know. There's this focus on money. Which bothers me.

Miriam:

Yeah. There's a gold rush. And a few people are getting rich at the expense of other people and the world. So I don't know.

Claire:

Yeah. It's weird. I don't know, like

Steph:

It's so weird. People like don't want to pay you for doing good work or offering them stuff that they need. It's like so weird. I know they got to do these weird backwards tricks to do it instead.

Claire:

Well, I mean, in order to purchase something, you have to do three backflips.

Steph:

Yes.

Miriam:

I hope that's not true because I like buying things sometimes.

Claire:

I agree.

Miriam:

I don't think I can do three backflips.

Claire:

I don't think I could even do one. I think my back hurts. Just thinking about it.

Miriam:

Yeah. My career has not been working towards this moment.

Claire:

That's fair. Need more lumbar support for that.

Steph:

Well, if you could do your most favorite thing and have it somehow tied to the web and maybe accidently make money, what would that be?

Miriam:

Writing fiction theater, making music, wait, all of them together. All of it together.

Claire:

There's a word for that. I don't remember what it is.

Miriam:

I mean, I think theater is sort of just the word for it because. Like theater is just like any art you want all shoved together and then like put in front of people.

Claire:

It's true.

Miriam:

Genres are fake.

Claire:

True, very true. Categorization is fake.

Miriam:

Categories are fake.

Claire:

Categories are fake. Big category.

Miriam:

Do we want to talk about platonic realism and natural kinds? Is that where we're going? No clue.

Claire:

Looks up what that means.

Miriam:

Categories are fake.

Claire:

I, I think for me, I am curious, like, I don't know. I don't know what the answer to that question for me would be. I would want to like, not get tired of whatever I was doing, but I do like making people laugh. I just wish I was witty all the time.

Like if I could make money off of my wit, like just.

Miriam:

We wish you were witty, too.

Claire:

Yeah, I'm not witty at all. You know, if I could just fire off a spicy tweet every day and make money off of it, I think that would be the way to do it, but I don't even have material.

Miriam:

That's the life. Yeah. Spicy tweets,

Claire:

Spicy tweets. It's a coming to a fast food restaurant near you, I don't know some. I'm losing it.

Miriam:

I think you're onto something. I think you're onto something with not getting tired of it. Cause I feel like like every once in a while I think I meant to make a living in the arts. That's what I was, that's what I was trying to do. And I ended up here. And like, but then I looked around and most of my friends are artists and they're just working jobs.

It's jobs. It's still jobs. And it's not any better than this job. So I don't want to just like, get a job in the arts. That's not somehow magically better than a job in tech. What I want is not a job. And then to be able to like, float between things. Yeah.

Claire:

If you, like, you know, when everyone was talking about like universal basic income or like that, like, you know, having needs met and like being able to kind of just do whatever you felt like doing I feel like there would be just this creativity rush of like, you know, people would finally be able to like, kind of do whatever. It, not, not advocating a political political position or anything like that. It's more of like a, you know, a dream dream kind of thing.

But yeah, I mean, I, I think I've always been, I've always liked tech. Ever since I was a kid I've always been into like tinkering with things, but you eventually have to like finish the thing and I don't think I'm good at the finishing part. I'm just good at the tinkering part.

You know, talking about Legos earlier, like I was so frustrated not being able to have a big TV block and none of the blocks I had had that. So I just drew on my Legos. I got a bunch of white ones and I just drew like with a, like a marker or whatever. And I found out that with a wet paper towel it just comes off very easily. So I was like, okay. So I got like those super thin tips markers, and I just went to town. So and I don't,

Miriam:

That's clever, advanced Lego.

Claire:

Yeah. But like, I don't, it's not like I

Steph:

Hacky Legos.

Claire:

Yeah. But I don't hack things now. I guess I kind of hack things with JavaScript sometimes, but I don't know. I try not to hack CSS or HTML. I try to do it right. Practice what I preach, if you will. But what about you Steph? What did, what would you, what would you do?

Steph:

Good question.

Claire:

I feel like she was like, hoping not to have to answer the question and that like, I would just keep talking or something.

Steph:

I, I kind of like where, like where my side projects, so I don't know. I, I don't, I'm trying to think that there's anything. If I could somehow combine probably baking with web tech. That would

Claire:

Yeah, cookies!.

Steph:

That's that, you know, there you go. Maybe that's my new pursuit is figuring out the cookies.

Claire:

A web-connected oven that somehow gets the ingredients. It's like a 3d printer, but for cookies.

Steph:

There you go. Just, yeah, Smell-O-Vision, but smell, Smell-O-Web?

Claire:

Oh gosh. Can you imagine the hacking that would go on with that? Like to create terrible smells?

Steph:

Yeah, but you're onto something with the 3d printers. I assume that with that around, I know that they like, I've seen chocolate printers, so this is not completely outside the realm of possibility.

Claire:

Coming in 2023 Steph's chocolate printer available for purchase nowhere.

Steph:

I'll just start the baking metaverse. It'll be fine. Don't even worry about it. Everybody smells like vanilla, chocolate. Strawberry. Snozzberry. Whatever.

Claire:

I just watched that movie and by movie, I mean, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, not another movie that uses that term, which is Super Troopers.

Anyway you got me thinking about oh my gosh, what did you get me thinking about? I am like a goldfish today. I literally had a topic. Oh, metaverse!

Miriam:

Kids these days and their attention spans.

Claire:

If I had one, it would be really nice. Yeah. Metaverse so I have a lazy eye and so like my eyes work independently of each other and VR doesn't really work very well in that, you know, sphere, if you will. And.

So it was the same thing with 3d movies. They like require they, they were like built on the assumption that your eyes worked together and you didn't see two images at simultaneously. And so if I were to describe my vision, it's more like a Venn diagram. For the most part there's two images of everything, but there's like this area in the center where like there's only one.

And I found that when I'm inebriated, it becomes single vision instead of double vision. Anyway, point is I guess if everything goes to the metaverse, I'm going to have to figure out a solution to that. And I don't know if I like the idea of the solution that I just kind of proposed,

Miriam:

Yeah. You're going to need one of those beer hats.

Claire:

I've always wanted one of those actually.

Steph:

Yeah the beer hat or the Camelback just,

Miriam:

Oh yeah.

Claire:

Oh my God.

Miriam:

Camelback makes people take you more seriously. Yeah. LIke ah, she's intense.

Steph:

You can wear that to conferences and everything.

Claire:

What's in the hat. You don't need to know.

Yeah. But it is really interesting. Like the emerging tech that comes that's coming about, you know, I dunno, it's kinda interesting to see, like what's going to stay and what's going to go. And like, like 3D TVs, like where are they? They went away. They went gone. And I'm super glad about that. I actually owned a 3D TV and had this like promise of like being able to see two different like you could have two different full screen. Like you were let let's say you're playing like a racing game or something. And with 3D glasses, you would be able to see a full screen picture of your, like, you know, half of the screen. And the other person will be able to see the other like full screen. Like, so kinda, it was very, it was, it was promising, but it never worked. And I was very sad about it. So that's why I think 3D TV died.

Miriam:

Well, they don't, they don't really offer much right?

Claire:

No they don't, I don't want to wear glasses that I already, I already have to wear glasses, so I don't want to wear

Steph:

Everything has glasses, all these solutions do. It's very interesting.

Miriam:

Yeah. I'm curious at what point AR VR stuff becomes sort of accessible to people. Yeah. But I mean, that also means solving some of the accessibility issues.

Like it's gotta work for people with a lazy eye.

Claire:

Yep. Which a lazy eye is very common. Like it's a, it's a very common thing that happens. Granted, most people use like patching or when they're, when they're kids so that their eyes do work together.

I was the one that was the rebel. I took it off as soon as I got to class and I never wore it. So my doctor was like, oh, well, I mean, you can do that, but you're going to have things happen later on in life. And I'm like, don't care, I'm seven, whatever I'm doing, I'm doing all right. But yeah. So.

But yeah, the accessibility thing, like another thing that like I personally have is like, I can't really deal with like, like dark or like red on a black background. And so like that's actually influenced like car purchasing things, because like some cars have dashboards that are like red backlit at night. I just can't, I can't read the, the, the letters. I mean, I can, if I really try and focus, but like, that's the last thing you want to do on the road is try to focus on what the heck's going on in your dashboard. So you know, when we talk about accessibility, it could be even just those things, you know, And they don't really impact my life like entirely, but it does make special considerations.

Like I am, I'm honestly worried that if VR AR becomes more of a thing, like, I hope I don't get left behind, you know, like. I'm sure I'm able to use it, but like not in the way that it's designed. And so, you know, if you. If it, if things rely on that gimmick, not a gimmick, it's not a gimmick, but of your brain combining the images, then I'm just out of luck.

You know, I, the reason I said inebriated earlier is because I actually found that out when I went to a 3D movie inebriated. And I was scared to death of what was going on in front of my eyes, because it was, I don't really have a lot of depth perception, but I had things flying at me and I was like, what, what is happening right now?

And then I realized that when I'm inebriated, that happens. And so, you know, It's a weird thing to talk about, but it is, it is. It's just interesting how that all works. So anyway, life is interesting.

Steph:

As a segue. What in mythical or movie universes would you bring to web to have as an actual thing?

What's that movie that we all pointed, not we all, but Minority Report? Or what, what was the one that had the holo screen thingy or whatever.

Miriam:

Being able to swipe things with your hands?

Steph:

Yeah, swiping things with your hand in midair.

Miriam:

Do I want to do that all day?

Steph:

Yeah. Right, exactly!

Claire:

Your arms would get tired.

Miriam:

Yeah. I think so too. No, I mean, I'd be more interested in something that like uses my wrists less.

Steph:

I would like teleportation is probably

Miriam:

Yeah teleportation, that would be,

Steph:

I actually, what I really, really, really want is the food dispensers from Star Trek that like apparently are nutritionally balanced, no matter what, but they can taste like,

Miriam:

Right, right. You can just eat nutritionally balanced ice cream all day.

Steph:

Yeah.

Claire:

Oh my gosh. Delicious. I'm also thinking of that. I don't know if you've both have seen the movie version of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but Zoey Deschanel's character like makes some sort of like, I don't know, muffin or whatever. And it's just like, and that would be, that's kind of the same thing as like it's, it's kind of just if you think it, then you can have it kind of thing. That would be kinda cool.

But I think more realistically, like kind of going back to the AR VR stuff, like something that would be interactive, that wouldn't be me just sitting at a computer, looking at a screen all day. But like something where it's kind of funny to think about like visually, like, you know visualizing it, but like being in this like box that would like transform into this 3D website, if you will. And like, I don't know. I'm thinking of like, like Microsoft Bob, you know, it was like a room that you'd go to, to do activities, but instead you would like, I don't know.

Miriam:

I'm just thinking Sarah Drasner did a talk at one point about building websites for VR.

Claire:

Oh, I should look at that.

Miriam:

Which yeah. Look that up. I haven't done anything with it.

Claire:

Can you imagine doing any of the thing that we do on the web in 3D space instead? I mean, you you've got CSS a bit in 3D but like, like 3D transforms,

Miriam:

Yeah. I mean, I don't need it for the things I'm doing. I don't know.

Steph:

Right? That's the thing.

Miriam:

Maybe, maybe if it was there, it would be fun. I, or I think of.

Steph:

Yeah. Do I want my banking experience to be 3D? No. Just let me freaking do it.

Miriam:

Take a scroll through your transactions.

Steph:

I know. I couldn't even get through our insurance account sign up the other day without issues. So let's just slow down, everybody, like, come on.

Claire:

So it's funny you bring that up because I just saw a tweet like today or something and it was like, oh yeah, let's do all this metaverse stuff. But you know, someone that's you know, maybe of older age or something, can't sign up for their online required account now. But yeah, let's focus on, you know, having Zoom meetings on a fake lake or something. So.

Steph:

Fake lakes only.

Claire:

I know that both can exist, but you know, it's one of those things where it's like the. Eh, it's one of those things where it's like, it doesn't make money to make things like in a good, in a accessible way. And like, I think we have to get past this like it makes money, so it's valuable kind of thing, but that's a whole bigger conversation. So.

Miriam:

Yeah. How many times can we come back around to capitalism sucking?

Claire:

I don't know. I think we're at like three now.

Miriam:

Yeah.

Cause I mean the cookies idea. If the web was distributing cookies.

Claire:

Big cookie would have a problem.

Also total side note. I love saying big in front of something, like calling it some sort of like, you know, not cartel, but like you know, this big conglomerate of companies.

Steph:

Big code. The whole thing's a conspiracy, it's fine.

Miriam:

Are we part of, are we part of Big Web? Are we the problem?

Steph:

That's where all problems begin.

Claire:

I don't think I've introspected that much. Maybe I am the problem. Oh, no.

Miriam:

No, I mean, that would be a mythical, a mythical feature I would love on the web is have it be fully accessible?

Claire:

Yeah.

Steph:

Whomp whomp whomp. Sad violin.

Well, we're not airing this before end of year. However, it's still a good time to remind folks that there's no time like the present to make that part of your resolutions.

Claire:

It's true.

Miriam:

Yep.

Steph:

Whatever you're doing.

Claire:

Resolutions don't have to be at the new year. They could be at any point in time, whenever you put your foot down.

Steph:

New leaf to turn over and so forth. Oh goodness.

Maybe that's a interesting one to go kind of end on. Is uh yeah, like so slightly practically going into the new year. What are you excited for or wish would happen? Whether it's something you're actually doing or just something you want to see happen? Nobody's optimistic.

Miriam:

I am. I am looking forward to in-person conferences again. Although I'm also very cautious about it. Like I'm not, I don't know. Like I don't, I wouldn't feel comfortable at one yet. And I know that there have been some and I haven't heard any tragic stories, so but it would be nice to be in the same room with people again.

Claire:

I agree. I agree. I think that would probably be mine too. Or at least just more in person things.

Like over the last, I mean since the pandemic began I've met a ton of people on Twitter, you know, that like seem to be really cool. And sometimes I feel like I don't have, I don't have the digital wit as well as I do in person. Like if people can see my face, they can read like what I mean by it. But with Twitter it just seems to be a whole thing or whatever. But I don't know. Yeah. Just seeing more people in person would be great. This pandemic has been super isolating and yeah.

I still can't believe I walked up to Miriam at Smashing Conference, but I, I walked up to Jen Simmons and couldn't say anything. And I was like, okay, I'm just going to leave now. And then I went to the Edge team and was super annoyed that they were switching to Chromium. And now I work at Microsoft, which is super weird. That was just a weird conference. It was great though. It was a great conference, but anyway.

Miriam:

Yeah, that was a fun one. And thanks for coming and saying hi. I mean, that's the point of being at the conferences is meeting the people. So.

Claire:

No, it's true. Very true.

Steph:

Looking forward

Miriam:

to people.

Steph:

Yes. Not in the metaverse anyways.

Claire:

Yeah. Right.

Stephanie, what are you looking forward to?

Steph:

Get us to teleporting and then we can get to these conferences this year.

Claire:

Yeah, less planes, less planes in a pandemic. I've, I've kind of wanted to like experience one of the, like, you know, videos that you see on the internet in person. Just cause I like chaos, but.

Miriam:

How do they handle privacy issues with teleporters? Like, can you just teleport anywhere? That seems like a problem?

Claire:

Do you own your atoms? Like, do they take your atoms or do they like take your digital footprint? Like,

Miriam:

Oh right, that's a problem too.

Claire:

How does, how does that work?

Miriam:

But like, can I just show up in your office? Like, do I need permission to show up in your office?

Claire:

How do you lock it?

Miriam:

Or your home? That seems. Yeah, I think there's a lot of problems to solve here.

Steph:

You're, you're right. It's a big privacy tumbleweed. Probably.

Claire:

Tumbleweed - that's a great, great word for that.

So Steph, your thing would be teleportation for the next year.

Steph:

Yes. I'm looking forward to teleporting.

Yeah, no, I'm looking forward to conferences too. I get to go to one and yeah. Hopeful for that.

Miriam:

Which one are you going to?

Steph:

I am speaking at beyond tellerrand in Dusseldorf.

Miriam:

Oh, I love that conference. Its such a good conference.

Steph:

I'm really hopeful. It's in May, so I'm really hopeful. That's like, yeah.

I mean, that's mid-year almost so maybe, maybe people, I dunno. I dunno.

Claire:

Maybe I'll actually write a talk this year.

Steph:

You should do that.

Claire:

Like I said, I was going to do that this year. I just don't know what to talk about. Being witty on Twitter, how to do it. No, I have an idea. And it has to do with front end development and how it's not valued, but I also feel like it's an overplayed tune. So.

Miriam:

Overplayed tunes are fine. I mean, the fact that you've heard it a lot doesn't mean that everybody has

Claire:

I don't even know if I've heard it a lot.

Miriam:

Your perspective has been. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I don't, don't worry about that. I mean, like I talk about CSS, talk about overplayed tunes.

Claire:

Yeah. You talk about CSS a lot. Like we've heard about it.

Miriam:

I know, it's annoying.

Claire:

We get it. You want to contain things. We get it.

Miriam:

I don't even want to contain things.

Claire:

You're in the wrong business then.

I am hopeful that my bonkers GitHub thing that I did, that I still don't have notifications on for in GitHub actually makes it. And cause I just want to say, oh my gosh, I, I proposed that, but. Yeah,

Miriam:

My mom has a job where she gets sabbaticals and that's the thing that I'm trying to learn. Like, I mean, I don't get paid sabbaticals in the same way. I'm not going to be able to take a year or six months or something, but just trying to think about like, how do I, how do I build that sort of idea into my life? I think that's a, a think to keep exploring this year,

Claire:

No, I think that's a good idea. Like you know, as Americans, I feel like we don't take enough time off. So, I mean, I try to like, I, in two, 2017, I kind of started off with a goal after my first international trip to like, try to take an international trip every year.

And except for 2020, because reasons I have taken one every year and you know, that it's been one of those things where it's just like, I want to explore, you know. And just see different cultures and see different people. So, but that requires taking time off and I should take more time off. Yeah,

Miriam:

Take as much time off as you can.

Steph:

Indeed. Well, I don't think we're going to come up with a great way to end this episode.

Claire:

Nope, I don't think so either.

Miriam:

I thought you were going to give us all cookies.

Steph:

Well,

Claire:

I was promised cookies.

Not the runny ones. I don't want runny cookies.

Miriam:

No runny cookies?

Claire:

Yeah, because of the too much egg. The big eggs.

Miriam:

Oh, the big eggs. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Claire:

It sounds problematic.

Miriam:

I've been working on trying to get a gluten-free bread recipe to work. So far, it's it's not perfect yet, but kind of keep working

Steph:

I saw a TikToker, just randomly say to use half ground oats and half almond flour anytime that it says flour. I don't know if you've tried that?

Miriam:

I haven't. I've been doing a flour mix that's a mix of like rice flours and teff flour and sorghum flour and oat flour, and a few others that I read somewhere.

Claire:

Yeah, yeah. Come to Word Wrap where we talk about CSS, HTML and gluten-free bread recipes.

Miriam:

Yeah. I mean, I haven't been working on cookies, so it was the closest thing I had.

Claire:

Yeah.

Steph:

I think that's now your new 2020 goal. 2022. Holy moly macaroli.

Claire:

Where's everyone's sourdough starters? Didn't they all do those?

Miriam:

Oh, I threw mine out because like you had to feed it every day and it was just getting too big.

Claire:

Wait, you had to feed it?

Miriam:

And like, I couldn't use it up. Yeah, you, yeah, sourdough you'd have to feed it. You've put, put more flour in basically every day. And it was like, there was so much getting thrown out. I was like, nah, this isn't worth it.

Claire:

Fair enough. Well,

Miriam:

Couldn't go through it fast enough.

Steph:

Sounds like me when I bought a two inch basil plant that suddenly was like out of control in a week. I was like, oh dear, nope.

Yep. We're talking about everything today. It's good.

Claire:

Yeah, we did say that it would go off the rails, and uh, sure has.

But yeah, to wrap it up. Thanks for coming on the show. Yeah, we word wrapped about everything. Actually, we went from eggs to CSS, to Legos, to cookies, back to eggs, and then we got what'd he gluten-free starter thingy. I also talked about my eyes and how they're weird. We tried to spice it up with crypto, but we didn't, which is fine.

And yeah, but thanks for joining us and it's been lovely. And Steph, can you please close it out? Cause I'm really bad at closing.

Steph:

Yes. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for being willing to just yeah, go off the rails with us today. We'll see what actually makes it in the final.

Miriam:

Of course I'll just come hang out with you. Like what's better than that.

Claire:

I hope you had fun because I had fun. This was fun.

Miriam:

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for having me.

Steph:

Yes. And hopefully we'll see you in person in the next year at some stuffs.

Claire:

Thanks for listening. Be sure to subscribe and keep in touch on Twitter by following us @WordWrapShow. If you're able to cover show costs, join us at Patreon.com/WordWrap. We'll see you next episode!