Published by

Manifesting cake

All of the birthdays in our little family fall within a 15 day period in the middle of the summer. There was a lot of cake around for nearly a month. And then we went to the UK to visit family who kindly wanted to celebrate all of our birthdays, so we did it all over again.

Now, B asks for cake after nearly every meal, sometimes for breakfast. Obviously we’ve been trying to phase it out, explaining that there’s none left. But there have been enough times when he’s asked for it at random moments and it has been around. So there’s no way he’s going to chance not asking for it.

This was the conversation the other day at his Nana’s table during lunch.

“KEHK??”

“No buddy, there’s no cake.”

“… Happy bur-day?”

“No buddy, there’s no cake. It’s no one’s birthday.”

“…… Happy bur-day Nana?”

“… 🤦🏻‍♂️”

It had been my birthday, Sam’s birthday, and his birthday already. But we hadn’t celebrated Nana’s yet, so it was a logical ask to be fair.

I asked him what his favorite song was yesterday, and he started singing Happy Birthday. (This was 100% a ploy for cake, his actual favorite song is “Hey Jude” because he likes to yell the NAH NAH NAH part.)

He’s still getting over jet lag since we arrived back from the UK last weekend, lots of 5:30am-ish wake-ups. This morning, he wandered sleepily out of his bedroom to go use the potty and the first thing he said was, “Bur-day?”

I’m pretty sure he thinks he can manifest cake.

Published by

“Kill your personas”

Counterpoint to yesterday’s post: “Kill your personas: How persona spectrums champion real user needs” by Margaret Price at Microsoft.

A persona spectrum is not a fake person. It’s an articulation of a specific human motivation and the ways it’s shared across multiple groups. It shows how that motivation can change depending on context. Sometimes, a trait can be permanent, like someone who has been blind since birth. A person recovering from eye surgery might temporarily have limited or no vision. Another person might face this barrier in certain environments, like when dealing with screen glare out in the sun. How would your product adapt to this range of people and circumstances with similar needs?

I can get behind that!

Related, check out Microsoft’s Inclusive Design Toolkit. (Though I reeeeeally wish that were a webpage…)

Via Doug Belshaw’s “Temporarily Abled” article on Thought Shrapnel.

Published by

GDS’s Accessibility Personas

If you’re a designer or engineer and have never dug in to accessibility personas or cognitive walkthroughs before, I’d recommend checking out GDS’s accessibility persona homepages and their accompanying blog post about how they use persona profiles to test accessibility. As of right now, their profiles include the following personas:

  • Claudia – a sight impaired screen magnifier user
  • Ashleigh – a severely sight impaired screenreader user
  • Ron – an older user with multiple conditions
  • Chris – a user with rheumatoid arthritis
  • Pawel – an autistic user
  • Simone – a dyslexic user
  • Saleem – a profoundly deaf user

It’s no substitute for testing with real users, but it’s a big step in the right direction if it’s not already a part of your design and engineering process.

Published by

A long-overdue work update

It’s been a wild few months professionally.

Earlier this year, I was asked to be the Engineering Manager at SuperHi and started in that role in May. That same month, I gave a talk at Parsons on the invitation of Eric Li and Michael Fehrenbach for their Typography and Interaction students in the MPS CD program. Maybe a month or two ago, SuperHi CEO and friend Rik Lomas and I were interviewed by Aja Singer for the recently-released first episode of her new podcast “Interview Stack” which offers a “deep dive on the engineering hiring process”. She’s a great interviewer, I’d keep an eye on her work.

And then over two thirds of us were laid off from SuperHi yesterday!

It’s unfortunate but understandable given the circumstances, it’s a tough world out there for startups right now. I really wish nothing but the best for the remaining SuperHi team and hope they’re able to reach the lofty goals that we set for ourselves. It’s a great platform and community with so much potential. I recommend checking out the courses and workshops that we recently released including one on generative art, one about Squarespace, and another on integrating AI on the web. There should be a lot more to come soon, SuperHi’s newsletter is the best way to get updates if you’re interested.

We achieved so much together. Personally, I’m really proud to have improved a lot of the accessibility practices, project management, QA, knowledge transfer processes, and documentation at SuperHi, even though some of that isn’t publicly visible just yet. I’m proud of the code I wrote and the languages and frameworks that I learned while there, going from working largely with CSS, HTML, JS, and PHP before to working heavily with TypeScript, Next.js, and React across multiple interconnected projects in a monorepo. I’m also really proud of the quality of our collaboration both across SuperHi in general and particularly within the Engineering team specifically. We shared extremely trusting working relationships which isn’t easy, especially when working remotely.

It’s sad to not be a part of that anymore, and it’s tough when you’ve been working towards a goal so hard for so long and then suddenly the next morning is a blank page.

But I am looking forward to pottering a little. A little blog gardening, improving performance on this site (when did it get so effing slow?! the cobbler’s children have no shoes etc. etc.), maybe finally setting up the bookshelf site I always wanted to make. Will have to do a little bit of LinkedIn cleanup. ::makes gagging sound:: And I had the last week of summer scheduled off anyway so I’ll be spending that fully focused on B, probably wandering in and out of all the water features in every playground within a 5 mile radius.

If anyone has interesting opportunities to share, please give me a shout.

And please do share this with your friends. I think I’m looking for another software engineering role at a remote USA- or UK-based company, or in-person at a NYC-based company. But I’m going to think about it a little more and am aiming to post again soon with more specifics.

Of course I wasn’t the only one, there is a lot of other ex-SuperHi talent out in the world now too including top-notch designers, razor-sharp teachers, meticulous engineers, brilliant strategists, and community management geniuses. I’m not going to post names here just yet because I want to verify who would like what shared, but if you have any opportunities along those lines, send them my way and I’ll make sure they reach the right eyeballs.

Now, time to relax a little during our remaining few days visiting family in the UK. Below are the flowers that my mother in law picked from her garden for me after she heard the news. I wish Smell-O-Vision was a thing, because these are pretty fantastic.

I’ll be back in Brooklyn on Sunday. If you happen to be nearby in the coming weeks, let’s get a coffee or go for a stroll in Prospect Park or something.

Until soon x

A small bouquet of pink and purple sweet peas in a glass bottle on a white kitchen counter

Published by

Family recipe for classic white frosting

This is my Grandma Piper’s classic white frosting recipe that she always used on the family recipe for white layer cake. Her notes: “This frosting is super. It never hardens on the cake. BUT, it is only enough for sides and top. So must use a filling.” I just doubled it for B’s birthday cake and there was plenty left over.

I’d never heard of a frosting with a flour and milk base before so looked it up online. Apparently this is “ermine” frosting. I was sort of skeptical, but it is really, really nice. It’s not quite as sweet as a standard buttercream, and Grandma Piper is right. It stays so fluffy, it’s kind of crazy. It was super easy to spread even after it had been in the fridge (after it had come to room temp, of course).

***

Double the quantities if using it for the top, sides, and inside of this white layer cake recipe.

  1. In a saucepan, combine 5 T all purpose flour and 1 c (225 mL) milk, and cook until very thick. Whisk constantly! If you manage to avoid lumps, you won’t have to push it through a sieve later. Put it aside and let it cool completely.
  2. In a KitchenAid mixer or a large bowl with hand beaters, cream together 1 c (227 g) unsalted butter, 1 c (125 g) powdered sugar, and 1 t vanilla until white and fluffy.
  3. Add the 100% cooled milk mixture to the butter mixture and beat them together for around 10 minutes. At the end, the frosting should be lump-free and the consistency of thick whipped cream.
  4. If you still have lumps, push the frosting through a fine mesh sieve to get the majority out.
  5. Store in an airtight container in the fridge until ready to use.

Published by

Not a baby anymore

It’s such a stereotype. But there really is a moment when suddenly they’re not a baby anymore.

You open up your phone to look for particular photo and notice it’s automatically made a memories album of your kid. So you click and watch, and realize you missed the moment, whenever that was. It’s a weird shock that seems so obvious, it’s like you didn’t get to say goodbye to a friend you always knew had to leave.

Published by

Family recipe for white layer cake 🎂

Context

This recipe was in the cookbook that my Grandma Piper customized for me. This is apparently the cake that the Piper family always made for weddings (so my great-grandma’s recipe on my Grandpa’s side, I think), and my Grandma made it for birthday parties. I made this for the first time last week for B’s birthday party on the weekend.

It results in an exceptionally smooth batter, it almost feels a bit too fancy for a kid’s party. But it’s a lovely cake! It also stored well double-wrapped in the fridge for a few days before I iced it. I haven’t tried freezing this cake, but I think it would probably work nicely.

Grandma would have always used her KitchenAid, but it was no problem making this with handheld electric beaters. Her recipe didn’t specify salted or unsalted butter. I used salted and quite liked it. Likewise it didn’t specify the sugar. I’m almost certain she would have used granulated, but I used caster which worked fabulously. If you use caster, just make sure to go with the weight measurement, not cups.

Apparently this recipe makes 3 dozen cupcakes and you have to bake those for 25 minutes. But I’ve never tried it, and there is no more instruction from her on that.

Goes well with this classic white frosting recipe.

  1. Preheat the oven to 325F (165C).
  2. In a KitchenAid, or in a large bowl using electric hand beaters, cream together ⅔ c (150 g) butter and 2 c (400 g) granulated sugar until very smooth. Add 1 tsp vanilla extract and beat until smooth.
  3. In a separate bowl, sift together 3 c (360 g) cake flour and 1 tbsp baking powder.
  4. With the mixer on low, add the flour mixture in to the butter mixture alternating with 1½ c milk, blending after each addition. Do not overbeat.
  5. Butter and flour two eight-inch cake pans.
  6. In a separate bowl, beat together 4 egg whites until stiff but moist. Make sure that the beaters and bowl are very clean, any fat will prevent the egg whites from frothing up nicely.
  7. Fold the beaten egg whites in to the rest of the batter using a large metal spoon.
  8. Pour in equal parts in to your two prepared layer pans. Then bake at 325F (165C) for 10 minutes, and 25 minutes at 350F (175C).
  9. When done*, remove from the oven and let cool in their tins for about 10 minutes. Turn the layers out on to a cooling rack, and let cool completely before icing the layers or double-wrapping in cling film to refrigerate or freeze them. If storing, try to store them side-by-side to preserve height.

* This cake is sort of hard to tell when it’s done. When done, it will have picked up a little bit of color on top and should pull away from the sides of the pan slightly. If you listen to it you shouldn’t hear much crackling, and if you very lightly press the top, it shouldn’t feel like you pop too many bubbles.