I started reading gRPC Up and Running. Purchase it here. I’ve finished the first two chapters of this book and my first impression is that it started out slow but quickly picked up pace and jumped right into the details. I still have a long ways to go before finishing the book but so far, I think I like it. I’ve dissected a small part of the first chapter and compiled some of my notes. The g in “gRPC” stands for something different in every release. I didn’t know this. I just assumed that it stood for Google. Very clever.

I’m in the middle of reading Seven Languages in Seven Weeks. Purchase it here. “The question isn’t ‘What are we going to do?’ The question is ‘What are we not going to do?’” — Ferris Bueller In an ever changing world where companies try to be innovative and progress in their business, the culture will certainly change as evolution happens. If you remain at a company for a significant length of time, you’ve probably seen this happen. In my experience, these are some lessons I’ve learned: Things will change. Process will change. Values will change. Priorities will change. People will change.

I’m always fascinated about what is achievable without Javascript. So when I was reading this article about how Bear Blog does analytics with CSS, I decided to do my own experimentation. The concept here is to use css to trigger certain endpoints by using properties that require loading an image (or something). To do this, I spun up an ExpressJS app and created a simple endpoint that started out with just outputting certain params. I kept it simple in the beginning as I just needed a feedback mechanism for the requests my CSS was making. If I were to use this somewhere, I would need some sort of data store to persist data.