The Great Debate
The Great Debate pits teams of non-experts head-to-head, toe-to-toe, and often dumb-to-dumber in lively debates of the inconsequential. Tickets are Name Your Price!
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The Great Debate pits teams of non-experts head-to-head, toe-to-toe, and often dumb-to-dumber in lively debates of the inconsequential. Tickets are Name Your Price!
Thereās a well-established ābest practiceā
that CSS authors
(as well as linters and minifiers)
should remove units from any 0
value.
Itās a fine rule in most cases,
but there are a few common situations
where it will break your code.
Erin and I spent a couple days last week at the Colorado Shoe School in Bellvue, CO ā learning, designing, and making our own sneakers. Yes, actual sneakers, fit for wearing, and built from scratch. Only the soles come pre-formed out of recycled plastic.
Thereās a new web API proposal for transitioning shared-elements across pages. Itās great for making smooth page transitions, but what if we apply it to individual elements with changing styles on a single page?
This post has been written and published, and filed away for safe keeping as an event that happened in my past. This post is also a live performance, and an invitation to engage. Thanks for dropping by.
Reflections on making theater, and my family reacting to it.
–
What does it mean to be a person ā to have a body, and live in it ā to make choices, and change over time ā to tell the truth?
Cascade layers are a new CSS feature that allows us to define explicit contained layers of specificity.
A monkey hitting keys at random for an infinite amount of time will eventually want some help writing Hamlet (or whatever). Youāre the monkey. Weāre here to help.
Working on a new CSS feature like Container Queries, one of the most important considerations is to ensure a āmigration pathā ā a way for developers to start integrating the new code, without breaking their sites on legacy browsers.
@ CSSWG
Media-queries allow an author to make style changes based on the overall viewport dimensions ā but in many cases, authors would prefer styling modular components based on their context within a layout.
āWhat is one thing you learned about building websites this year?ā
CSS Custom Properties allow us to manage and control both cascade and inheritance in new ways.
–
I wrote this at the start of the Iraq war (2003), and later made the short film. Itās been on my mind again during COVID-19 isolation.
āWhat about building websites has you interested this year?ā
Sass recently launched a new module system.
The new syntax will replace @import
with
@use
and @forward
ā
a big step forward for making Sass partials
more readable, performant, and safe.
–
Iāve been working with Mozilla to help create a new resource for web professionals ā with a mix of videos, articles, demos, and open source tools.
Pushing past the āvariableā metaphor, CSS Custom Properties can provide new ways to balance context and isolation in our patterns and components.
A reflection on change, desire, choice, and the stories we tell about ourselves
Script for My Body, My Gender rogue Vagina Monologue.
– @ It Grows Wild
I was invited to perform a Vagina Monologue, and ended up writing my own.
The Journal of Mennonite Writing asked me to submit for their queer issue. I donāt identify as Mennonite, but I did grow up in the church, so I asked my friends what to write about. They suggested the common question: In a world without rigid gender roles, would anyone need to be trans?
Yesterday, I shared an article about my impending surgery, and a request for help ā both social and financial ā as I go through this. I was embarrassed to ask, and not sure what to expect, but your response has been swift and overwhelming. I canāt thank you enough, but Iāll keep trying.
Denver Health has started offering vaginoplasty in addition to their other trans medical services. While Iāve been on the waitlist for various surgeons around the country, Denver Health called me this week to give me a date: September 10, less than two months away.
–
An LGBT concert of writers and composers by the Playground Ensemble, with three works by LGBT authors and the composers.
A queer adaptation of the classic novel
– @ The Bakery
We are not here to flatter egotism, or prop up humbug; we are merely telling the [queer] story. We value what is good in the book; but we believe in the existence of other, and more vivid kinds of goodness.
@ Westword
āI donāt have many guy friends, but my guitarist is one. Parting, I lean in for the cheek-kiss but he plants a good one right on my lips.ā
Inspired by Robin Rendle, I demonstrate some of my early experiments combining CSS Grids and custom properties to create dynamic layouts and data-visualizations.
At the family vacation in Moab, everyone is doing their best. Itās not enough, and my day is peppered with the wrong name and pronouns. I hide in my room through dinner so they wonāt see me crying.
āIāve seen myself in the mirror. I find me⦠disorienting. What do they see that I donāt? Why arenāt they laughing at me?ā
āMother finds me at her wardrobe, in her pumps and pearls. What are you doing? Being a mommy. Are you, then? She clips on the earrings (they pinch!), reaches for her lipstick.ā
A reflection on the nature and value of productivity for the SuperYesMore series: The Human in the Machine.
Viewport units have been around for several years now, with near-perfect support in the major browsers, but I keep finding new and exciting ways to use them. I thought it would be fun to review the basics, and then round-up some of my favorite use-cases.
I wasnāt born in the wrong body. I was born, a body. Without my body, I donāt exist.
It feels like CSS Grid has been coming for a long time now, but it just now seems to be reaching a point where folks are talking more and more about it and that itās becoming something we should learning.
My friend Maureen Maloney asked to document my reaction to the 2016 election, as part of the America Heard film series.
The Denver Quarterly
vol 51 no 2
features
side-by-side excerpts from
Riding SideSaddle*,
and Buntportās adaptation:
10 Myths on the Proper Application of Beauty Products.
Iām still reeling from this year of insults,Ā a traumatizing campaign turned traumatic election. Iām not sad about a contest lost, but what those results mean for real people around me. 2016 is over, but 2017 is going to be even harder.
Thereās a lot of language that gets thrown around, but much of it comes loaded with over-simplified baggage and misconceptions. Here are a few that have been on my mind ā from gender identity to biological sex, transition, passing, and visibility.
–
Itās been a month since our country pseudo-elected a bigoted blow-hard for president. Iām heading to DC to protest his inauguration in January, visit friends, and go on a mixed-media resistance tourā¦
No matter what acronym drives your selectors (BEM, OOCSS, SMACSS, ETC), loops can help keep your patterns more readable and maintainable, baking them directly into your code. Weāll take a look at what loops can do, and how to use them in the major CSS preprocessors.
–
Blog for people who make websites
Chris Coyier interviews Miriam when she joins the CSS Tricks team as a Staff Writer. We talk about gettting started in the industry, name confusion, fouding OddBird, building Susy, and more.
There are some questions that come up again and again if you are trans. A few of those questions are terrible, but most of them are well-intentioned. Iām lucky to have a supportive community around me, so I thought Iād write down my most common answers to help ease your stress about getting it right, and ease my stress about answering the same questions over and over.
Award-winning stage adaptation of Riding SideSaddle*, weaving myth with everyday ritual
Using Sass, you can write your stylesheets in a more concise, dynamic, and readable way, and cut down many of the repetitive tasks that come with writing vanilla CSS. This book provides a thorough introduction to Sass for the beginner. Co-writen with my friend Kitty Giraudel.
– @ Buntport Theater
A stage adaptation of my novel, Riding SideSaddle*, created with Buntport Theater and Teacup Gorilla.
This interview serves as a follow up to my performance of The Obsolete Book in a Post-Obsolete World as Represented by a Post-Obsolete Book About Dance at the Media Archeology Lab.
–
Riding SideSaddle* has gone vertical ā all 250 cards displayed in a gallery show.
–
A joint tour for Teacup Gorillaās debut album The Holes They Leave, and my debut novel Riding SideSaddle*.
An interview with the insightful Ryo Yamaguchi at Michigan Quarterly Review.
– @ SpringGun Press
A fragmented memory of friendship ā navigating fluid genders, relationships, and bodies that resist order, category, or completion. Inspired by Margaret Clap, and the many myths of Hermaphroditus.
An artist residency at the Media Archeology Lab, working on development of The Post-Obsolete Book.
Part 7 of Fuck the Muse
Part 6 of Fuck the Muse
Part 5 of Fuck the Muse
Part 4 of Fuck the Muse
Part 3 of Fuck the Muse
Part 2 of Fuck the Muse
a series of articles on creative process
Collaboration doesnāt have to be a social activity. Successful collaboration is knowing when to bring people together and when to send them home with individual assignments.
An archival rhizome ecology in ten parts, and a reflection on the obsolescence of obsolescence ā documented on the cloud, and open-sourced as a defense against post-post-obsolescence.
– @ Naropa
Studied writing and performance with E. Tracy Grinnell, Michelle Ellsworth, and Caroline Bergvall ā resulting in early drafts of The Post-Obsolete Book and Riding SideSaddle*.
A novel about new love, moving apart, and what comes next. A love story, and an after-love story ā told wiith poetry and pictures.
Thanks to Chuck Mee for some borrowed wordsā¦
A modern, theatrical interpretation of the Catholic Mass ā created by Grapefruit Lab and Teacup Gorilla.
Combining the sacrifice, transcendence, blood, and circumstance of the Catholic Mass with history, live music, science, dance, literature, and pop culture to find a wholly modern communion experience. What we have left is our selves, broken and battered, but surviving together.
since March 2010
Teacup Gorilla inhabits the venues of Denver, CO with dark indie-rock soundscapes and evocative poetry ā often compared to early Modest Mouse, Explosions in the Sky, or the Velvet Underground.
since August 2009
We want to make art without assumptions ā art that humanizes and entertains and challenges and brings people into conversation.
An action comedy for the stage, based on our favorite movie tropes. The script was devised by the entire ensemble, lead by Michelle Milne, Miriam, Emily Swora, and Ben Jacobs. I donāt believe this is the final scriptā¦
a ten minute play, and short film
We hurt ourselves for loveā¦
– @ New World Arts
My first one-act playā¦
– @ Pinchpenny Press
a play in one act, and a short film
Reflections of a Mennonite holocaust survivor after the war
–
Based on a series of interviews with Annie in 2003, this play was produced first by Goshen College as a runner-up for the International Peace Play Contest, and then in collabiration with New World Arts for my senior thesis production.
a glimpse of the aftermath
–
I worked as Master Electrician of the college theater and music performance venues, while I studied theater, writing, and visual art.
Thereās a well-established ābest practiceā
that CSS authors
(as well as linters and minifiers)
should remove units from any 0
value.
Itās a fine rule in most cases,
but there are a few common situations
where it will break your code.
Erin and I spent a couple days last week at the Colorado Shoe School in Bellvue, CO ā learning, designing, and making our own sneakers. Yes, actual sneakers, fit for wearing, and built from scratch. Only the soles come pre-formed out of recycled plastic.
Thereās a new web API proposal for transitioning shared-elements across pages. Itās great for making smooth page transitions, but what if we apply it to individual elements with changing styles on a single page?
This post has been written and published, and filed away for safe keeping as an event that happened in my past. This post is also a live performance, and an invitation to engage. Thanks for dropping by.
Reflections on making theater, and my family reacting to it.
–
What does it mean to be a person ā to have a body, and live in it ā to make choices, and change over time ā to tell the truth?
Cascade layers are a new CSS feature that allows us to define explicit contained layers of specificity.
A monkey hitting keys at random for an infinite amount of time will eventually want some help writing Hamlet (or whatever). Youāre the monkey. Weāre here to help.
Working on a new CSS feature like Container Queries, one of the most important considerations is to ensure a āmigration pathā ā a way for developers to start integrating the new code, without breaking their sites on legacy browsers.
@ CSSWG
Media-queries allow an author to make style changes based on the overall viewport dimensions ā but in many cases, authors would prefer styling modular components based on their context within a layout.
āWhat is one thing you learned about building websites this year?ā
CSS Custom Properties allow us to manage and control both cascade and inheritance in new ways.
–
I wrote this at the start of the Iraq war (2003), and later made the short film. Itās been on my mind again during COVID-19 isolation.
āWhat about building websites has you interested this year?ā
Sass recently launched a new module system.
The new syntax will replace @import
with
@use
and @forward
ā
a big step forward for making Sass partials
more readable, performant, and safe.
–
Iāve been working with Mozilla to help create a new resource for web professionals ā with a mix of videos, articles, demos, and open source tools.
Pushing past the āvariableā metaphor, CSS Custom Properties can provide new ways to balance context and isolation in our patterns and components.
A reflection on change, desire, choice, and the stories we tell about ourselves
Script for My Body, My Gender rogue Vagina Monologue.
– @ It Grows Wild
I was invited to perform a Vagina Monologue, and ended up writing my own.
The Journal of Mennonite Writing asked me to submit for their queer issue. I donāt identify as Mennonite, but I did grow up in the church, so I asked my friends what to write about. They suggested the common question: In a world without rigid gender roles, would anyone need to be trans?
Yesterday, I shared an article about my impending surgery, and a request for help ā both social and financial ā as I go through this. I was embarrassed to ask, and not sure what to expect, but your response has been swift and overwhelming. I canāt thank you enough, but Iāll keep trying.
Denver Health has started offering vaginoplasty in addition to their other trans medical services. While Iāve been on the waitlist for various surgeons around the country, Denver Health called me this week to give me a date: September 10, less than two months away.
–
An LGBT concert of writers and composers by the Playground Ensemble, with three works by LGBT authors and the composers.
A queer adaptation of the classic novel
– @ The Bakery
We are not here to flatter egotism, or prop up humbug; we are merely telling the [queer] story. We value what is good in the book; but we believe in the existence of other, and more vivid kinds of goodness.
@ Westword
āI donāt have many guy friends, but my guitarist is one. Parting, I lean in for the cheek-kiss but he plants a good one right on my lips.ā
Inspired by Robin Rendle, I demonstrate some of my early experiments combining CSS Grids and custom properties to create dynamic layouts and data-visualizations.
At the family vacation in Moab, everyone is doing their best. Itās not enough, and my day is peppered with the wrong name and pronouns. I hide in my room through dinner so they wonāt see me crying.
āIāve seen myself in the mirror. I find me⦠disorienting. What do they see that I donāt? Why arenāt they laughing at me?ā
āMother finds me at her wardrobe, in her pumps and pearls. What are you doing? Being a mommy. Are you, then? She clips on the earrings (they pinch!), reaches for her lipstick.ā
A reflection on the nature and value of productivity for the SuperYesMore series: The Human in the Machine.
Viewport units have been around for several years now, with near-perfect support in the major browsers, but I keep finding new and exciting ways to use them. I thought it would be fun to review the basics, and then round-up some of my favorite use-cases.
I wasnāt born in the wrong body. I was born, a body. Without my body, I donāt exist.
It feels like CSS Grid has been coming for a long time now, but it just now seems to be reaching a point where folks are talking more and more about it and that itās becoming something we should learning.
My friend Maureen Maloney asked to document my reaction to the 2016 election, as part of the America Heard film series.
The Denver Quarterly
vol 51 no 2
features
side-by-side excerpts from
Riding SideSaddle*,
and Buntportās adaptation:
10 Myths on the Proper Application of Beauty Products.
Iām still reeling from this year of insults,Ā a traumatizing campaign turned traumatic election. Iām not sad about a contest lost, but what those results mean for real people around me. 2016 is over, but 2017 is going to be even harder.
Thereās a lot of language that gets thrown around, but much of it comes loaded with over-simplified baggage and misconceptions. Here are a few that have been on my mind ā from gender identity to biological sex, transition, passing, and visibility.
–
Itās been a month since our country pseudo-elected a bigoted blow-hard for president. Iām heading to DC to protest his inauguration in January, visit friends, and go on a mixed-media resistance tourā¦
No matter what acronym drives your selectors (BEM, OOCSS, SMACSS, ETC), loops can help keep your patterns more readable and maintainable, baking them directly into your code. Weāll take a look at what loops can do, and how to use them in the major CSS preprocessors.
–
Blog for people who make websites
Chris Coyier interviews Miriam when she joins the CSS Tricks team as a Staff Writer. We talk about gettting started in the industry, name confusion, fouding OddBird, building Susy, and more.
There are some questions that come up again and again if you are trans. A few of those questions are terrible, but most of them are well-intentioned. Iām lucky to have a supportive community around me, so I thought Iād write down my most common answers to help ease your stress about getting it right, and ease my stress about answering the same questions over and over.
Award-winning stage adaptation of Riding SideSaddle*, weaving myth with everyday ritual
Using Sass, you can write your stylesheets in a more concise, dynamic, and readable way, and cut down many of the repetitive tasks that come with writing vanilla CSS. This book provides a thorough introduction to Sass for the beginner. Co-writen with my friend Kitty Giraudel.
– @ Buntport Theater
A stage adaptation of my novel, Riding SideSaddle*, created with Buntport Theater and Teacup Gorilla.
This interview serves as a follow up to my performance of The Obsolete Book in a Post-Obsolete World as Represented by a Post-Obsolete Book About Dance at the Media Archeology Lab.
–
Riding SideSaddle* has gone vertical ā all 250 cards displayed in a gallery show.
–
A joint tour for Teacup Gorillaās debut album The Holes They Leave, and my debut novel Riding SideSaddle*.
An interview with the insightful Ryo Yamaguchi at Michigan Quarterly Review.
– @ SpringGun Press
A fragmented memory of friendship ā navigating fluid genders, relationships, and bodies that resist order, category, or completion. Inspired by Margaret Clap, and the many myths of Hermaphroditus.
An artist residency at the Media Archeology Lab, working on development of The Post-Obsolete Book.
Part 7 of Fuck the Muse
Part 6 of Fuck the Muse
Part 5 of Fuck the Muse
Part 4 of Fuck the Muse
Part 3 of Fuck the Muse
Part 2 of Fuck the Muse
a series of articles on creative process
Collaboration doesnāt have to be a social activity. Successful collaboration is knowing when to bring people together and when to send them home with individual assignments.
An archival rhizome ecology in ten parts, and a reflection on the obsolescence of obsolescence ā documented on the cloud, and open-sourced as a defense against post-post-obsolescence.
– @ Naropa
Studied writing and performance with E. Tracy Grinnell, Michelle Ellsworth, and Caroline Bergvall ā resulting in early drafts of The Post-Obsolete Book and Riding SideSaddle*.
A novel about new love, moving apart, and what comes next. A love story, and an after-love story ā told wiith poetry and pictures.
Thanks to Chuck Mee for some borrowed wordsā¦
A modern, theatrical interpretation of the Catholic Mass ā created by Grapefruit Lab and Teacup Gorilla.
Combining the sacrifice, transcendence, blood, and circumstance of the Catholic Mass with history, live music, science, dance, literature, and pop culture to find a wholly modern communion experience. What we have left is our selves, broken and battered, but surviving together.
since March 2010
Teacup Gorilla inhabits the venues of Denver, CO with dark indie-rock soundscapes and evocative poetry ā often compared to early Modest Mouse, Explosions in the Sky, or the Velvet Underground.
since August 2009
We want to make art without assumptions ā art that humanizes and entertains and challenges and brings people into conversation.
An action comedy for the stage, based on our favorite movie tropes. The script was devised by the entire ensemble, lead by Michelle Milne, Miriam, Emily Swora, and Ben Jacobs. I donāt believe this is the final scriptā¦
a ten minute play, and short film
We hurt ourselves for loveā¦
– @ New World Arts
My first one-act playā¦
– @ Pinchpenny Press
a play in one act, and a short film
Reflections of a Mennonite holocaust survivor after the war
–
Based on a series of interviews with Annie in 2003, this play was produced first by Goshen College as a runner-up for the International Peace Play Contest, and then in collabiration with New World Arts for my senior thesis production.
a glimpse of the aftermath
–
I worked as Master Electrician of the college theater and music performance venues, while I studied theater, writing, and visual art.