The life & works of Joshua Bartz

Apple and user hostility

2016-10-31T00:00:00Z

We lost the headphone jack on iPhones and all but USB-C and a headphone jack on Mac laptops. Feature parity between iOS and macOS is drifting apart (see: Messages) and even their own devices can no longer plug in to one another without purchase of a dongle or separate cable. Apple may find itself in a rut this year on interoperability, but until first- and third-party USB-C devices and software parity are in abundance, the real sufferer is the customer.

Response to Apple just told the world it has no idea who the Mac is for

Hello World

2017-01-25T00:00:00Z

After a lifetime obsession with design and any number of detours, I’ve finally jumped over to the world of UX, and it’s very good to be here.

About Me

I’m Joshua Bartz: a lifelong learner and tinkerer. I love thinking in systems-level complexity and translating to layman terms for the rest of the world.

I’ve been a press operator for a printing company, a full-service computer technician, and a (unofficial) part-time UX researcher/designer at a Minneapolis startup.

Most recently, I completed a 10-week 400-hour UX design immersive program at General Assembly in Austin, Texas and started the hunt for my first UX design job.

New Career, New Blog

Writing has been a central interest in my life, whether for technical instruction, documentation, short stories, or journaling. Medium allows me to process and discuss things I’ve learned, show off an artifact that isn’t quite enough for my portfolio, and engage with the vibrant community of developers and designers.

Employers and recruiters are cool too.

The Impossible Entry-Level Job Market

2017-03-13T00:00:00Z

Part 1 - Introduction & Discontent

I’m what the industry calls a “junior.” We’re those people that fall into that weird 1- and 3-year career experience range. We’re the ones that are most likely kneeling at a hiring manager’s ankles at networking events and groveling for just a few seconds of their time.

It’s no secret that the industry is severely lacking people power. There are tens of thousands of UX jobs just waiting to be filled by people with more than 3 years of experience. There are significantly fewer jobs for people with less than 3 years experience though. It’s a baseline expectation as a newbie that you’ll be lucky to get one response for every ten applications you send out. People with long-established careers might not realize or remember how much of a struggle it is.

It’s a full-time job to find a full-time job. But why is that true?

It Took A Long Time to Get Hired

The process lasted from April 2016 to March 2017, for many reasons. I was not good in interviews at first and I was losing most of my energy to a full-time soul-sucking job in tech support. In October, I went all-in on the career transition and moved to Austin, Texas for 12 weeks to attend a UX boot camp at General Assembly. From mid-January 2017 to March, I dedicated between 20 and 50 hours a week to landing my first design job.

I relied on recruiters, mentors, peers, friends, books, and my everlasting need for self improvement to land a job. When an offer finally landed in my inbox, it took a few days beforeI fully grasped that the hunt was over - after two decades of love for design, I was actually going to be a designer.

When it was all said and done, I sent out no less than 85 applications to 77 employers. Over the course of the 11 months, there was no end to the number of no-responses and 15 absolute no-thank-you’s.

I Made a Case Study of the Job Hunt

After a while, it was the best way to stay sane and stay somewhat sharp on my skills. Every successive interview I landed was a chance to iterate on my interpersonal skills, my presentations, and figure out how I could get a little closer to expressing my true self.

Everyone knows that interviews can be a very dehumanizing experience, so I worked to break out of that feeling. As it turns out, fighting my nerves and expressing my true thoughts on design was what brought me the best results, the most positive feedback, and ultimately, a job. But there was so much to it beyond fighting nerves! The books, the feedback, the endless iteration, mentorship, insanity, and the beer and tacos! I had to break it apart in segments in order to make the job hunt make sense.

A Series to Pay It Forward

Over the next few posts, I’m going to talk about my experiences and perspectives as a newcomer to a hard-to-crack industry. I’ll share what worked for me, what didn’t, and what I did to change course.

This is also a way to engage other entry-level designers, hear how they’re tackling the job search, and form some thoughts to address the plight of the junior designer. More to the point, this helps me journal a very pivotal and hard-won time in my life.

I’m not here to tell anyone what to do, but I want to pay forward the endless help I had along the way. There is no end to the number of things I wished I knew months ago. If something I’m doing helps The Next Great Designer get their first job sooner, I’ll consider my struggle a success.

Stay tuned for Part 2!

Don't Tell Me How To Think

2018-01-19T00:00:00Z

As a designer, few things pain me more than being told to “think blue sky” or “think big.” I wasn’t hired to be told how to think. I was hired because I proved I know how to think.

I’m here to solve problems. Give me the problem, tell me how to reproduce it, show me the data you have to back it, and tell me your ideas to get it solved. Your deadlines, restrictions, limitations, and exceptions are the real indicators of how “big” I can think about the problem.

The basis of my job is to come up with the best solution I can with the time and resources allotted. If I hit a wall, I’ll do more research. If I need more time, I’ll let you know.

Your idea of “big” does not happen in one sprint. It is not the product of one person, but the result of many artifacts and points of input over a long enough period of time to determine that “blue sky” is the right path to take.

Stakeholders, do us a favor: Stick to the facts and stop telling designers how to do their jobs.

The man from Rotterdam

2019-09-08T00:00:00Z

The man from Rotterdam sitting at the window seat on the plane with a view of the Netherland countryside below.

The man from Rotterdam was baffled when the Jewish man in the seat in front of us asked me if I was Republican or Democrat on our flight to Amsterdam. Politics in Holland are plainly liberal, Rotterman stated, and such a question could not exist. The people of his country form coalitions during election cycles and political party affiliation could never be a binary choice. I’m certain I misheard at least some of that.

He went to NYC once in the 1960s and never had an interest in visiting the US again, especially in our current climate. He was on his way back from Krakow after receiving a prize and award for his paintings.

The Jewish man was going back to his adopted home in Brooklyn after returning to Krakow to visit family.

By the way, Krakow is a sprawling European shopping mall with a Jewish district and a lot of history. With the exception of some parts of the Jewish district and with respect to the city’s history, I can’t say I enjoyed it. I took photos, but I mean…it’s just a mall exploiting its tragedies. We laughed every time we overheard the Pols tell each other that they’d rather be in Wrocław.

Every trip out of country is certainly a marvel for locals when they hear how things are going in the US. I feel like a stranger in our country too. I think many of us do.

While there are problems everywhere, our problems back home are beyond exhausting. There was a bang in the distance in Katowice and my friend didn’t flinch. I did. What crossed my mind wasn’t even a passing thought for them. Their country survived a century of violence. Our country can’t sustain itself without it.

Things for journals.

Wheels up. Off for re-entry via Boston, then four days in Raleigh. Nothing like southern whiplash to welcome me back.

Hello, 2020

2020-01-01T00:00:00Z

The conservatory at Como Zoo in St. Paul, Minnesota.

That last decade was a wild ride, wasn’t it? Remember that time the media gave Obama shit for wearing a tan suit? Or that moment when that couple you’ve been close friends with made the leap into parenthood and the happiness you felt for them? That night you stayed up longer than you should to help someone mend their broken heart? Or all those nights where so many did the same for you? How about those other nights where you never thought you could love someone more, and when you looked over at them, you knew they felt the same about you? How you wanted that moment to last forever, and they did too?

Remember all those trips we went on? All those get-togethers we all were thrilled to see each other at? Those long lost friends that picked up exactly where you left off and told you that you’re just as amazing as you hoped you could be. Oh god, the hangovers! But they were worth it when someone retells the story.

Remember that time you said “fuck this” and uprooted your career, your life, to try something different, with nothing but blind faith, a lot of support, and a little savings? Or that time a little after that when you didn’t think you could do it anymore? And that time not long after that when someone you didn’t expect said something that showed the path you were looking for?

The ones that moved away and sought you out when they came to visit, the moments with family where a years-old grudge dissolved and something new began. And every moment of heartache and heartbreak you can look back on and how you’ve changed from it.

I don’t know if I can make a resolution, but I do think the best way to go into this next decade is to make all that happened in the last one count for something. Just do a little better and try to be kinder to myself when I don’t.

Happy New Year, happy leap year, happy decade. Happy all of it. And when it’s not happy, and not all of it will be, hold on to the times that were and all those people that were part of it. Right? Right.

Prague to Amsterdam

2020-01-22T00:00:00Z

Despite the language barrier, we found a lovely conversation.

A woman from Japan sat next to me on the plane from Prague to Amsterdam. Her English was very broken, and who am I to judge? I know nothing of Japanese. She told me she was in Czechia visiting a friend who had moved there some 20 years ago.

When she asked where I was from, I surprised her. She thought I was European. I thanked her, which also surprised her. I told her it’s not a great time to be an American. I am not very proud of my country.

The conversation picked up and dropped. We bonded over notebooks — she and I have near identical spiral bound dot grids with translucent white covers — and she was very interested in my book, “How To Do Nothing” by Jenny Odell. She didn’t understand much of what I said about it, but she wrote down the title to research later.

When the plane took off, we both admired the transition from ground to air to above the cloud line. She is one of few passengers I’ve met who, much like me, leaves the window open and occasionally glances out to admire the view and collect her thoughts.

Her notebook was near filled with writing by the time the plane landed. She opened a bag and offered me a candy from it, and we went our separate ways.

Police murdered George Floyd

2020-05-29T00:00:00Z

A boarded up store front in Minneapolis, a common site during the uprisings.

I watched my city burn this week. I watched four people sworn to protect it kill an unarmed black man while in custody.

I watched white supremacists with and without a badge come out of the woodwork to accelerate the destruction of immigrant and black communities.

I watched a city otherwise plagued by segregation and racial injustice band together, push back against the police, overrun a precinct, and come back the next day with brooms and trash bags to clean up.

I listened through the night as gunfire, sirens, helicopters, and explosions filled the air. I listened to the sounds of hammers and drills fastening plywood to the businesses down the street from me.

I watched the news spin our anger against us, calling a man a thug for stealing a baby seat from Target. I read reports of undercover cops pretending to be protesters to embed a visible reason for the police to incite violence.

I joined a peaceful protest as it marched around downtown until agoraphobia and exhaustion got the better of me. I saw videos of pepper spray coming through the driver side windows of squad cars as they moved through the very same crowd I was a part of. A protest where volunteers were handing out face masks because we’re still in a fucking pandemic, offer first aid, and block off traffic ahead of the march because no officials were there to help.

I read as news broke that Derek Chauvin was arrested and brought in on weak charges of manslaughter and murder, and a medical examiner’s report that blamed George Floyd for his own death. Three other known officers are unaccounted for and dozens more are still able to incite and antagonize freely.

Most of us are not violent, and most of the ones who were are well within their right to be. The remaining few took advantage and exploited the situation.

My black friends and neighbors are tired, angry, and scared. We all are. We’re grieving not just for George Floyd, but for every black person killed by or living in fear of the police. We’re grieving a system that isn’t going to change.

Until Derek Chauvin is convicted on the charges he deserves, I will not let myself believe that this time is different.

dadbod.txt

2020-07-28T00:00:00Z

A good father figure (heteronormatively speaking)…

Doesn’t use his mother, sister, wife, girlfriend, or daughter as shields for his sexist fodder
Fucking shows up early and stays late
Listens and waits to speak
Normalizes women’s reproductive health
Doesn’t call his kid a quitter; gives them support for trying something new; helps them process why they quit, what they learned
Breaks down household gender roles; allows the home dynamic to evolve naturally; feels no shame if the matriarch rules the roost, but doesn’t fall short on his responsibility
Can fucking apologize in front of and to his kids
Advocates/protests on behalf of the underrepresented; educates his kids on why it matters and how they can help
Calls out toxic masculinity in himself and his male peers (I could go off about what a father isn’t just on this topic alone)
Lets his nails get painted
Actively and openly talks about what he’s learning; encourages his family to share too
Proactively finds gaps in the security and well-being of the family and works to fill them, seeks input from the family
Allows his kids their contrasting views; demonstrates the importance of allowing views to be challenged healthily
Stops short of manipulation, condescension
Establishes and demonstrates healthy boundaries
Doesn’t act like he can shoulder everything himself, but thinks first before asking for help
Can more than cover his costs of burden
Does not even pretend to be his partner’s everything; actively de-stigmatizes seeking help with mental health
Just fucking isn’t his partner’s child
Absolutely gets giddy when his kids shows interest in what he’s doing; thanks them for interest; thanks them if they help
Works with his partner to ensure both are getting the time away that they need, as individuals and as a couple (can we normalize solo vacations in relationships? Seriously. Sometimes I want to go away for a weekend and exist.)
Helps with homework; turns the process of learning an answer into something educational in itself; helps foster a purposeful life of self-educating
Destigmatizes talking about finances in front of kids; provides kids with practical financial knowledge
Destigmatizes sex; draws clear boundaries on what’s appropriate to talk about; practices mindfulness to allow his kids to comfortably seek him out for help
Isn’t a fucking asshole
Can leave a heated environment without slamming the fucking door
Recognizes how he carries his physical presence around his kids, constantly checks that he is not a menacing figure
Worships every square goddamn inch of the mother of his children

How Nazis win

2020-08-29T00:00:00Z

From Twitter

During the rise of the Nazi party, one corner of the German populace was indoctrinated in a form of irrational fear that dictates that the only solution to the demands of the common people is to create a greater, authoritarian fear in response and sell it as the will and action of the just people against a faceless, selfish Jewish enemy. This begat grabs for positions of suppressive power by Germany’s extremists.

Germans did not want what happened, yet the minority voice’s media machine, the voice of the Nazi, was so amplified in part by the majority’s complacency that by the time the majority realized it had to be stopped, these fearful men had used the government to push every level of society into an overwhelming national crisis. They used that crisis as a smokescreen to dismantle every check and balance that held their systems together. Then they blamed this newly broken system for the crisis and recused themselves. The party boastfully became the government right before the eyes of the German people.

Swap “Nazi” for “MAGA,” “Germany” for “the US,” “Jewish” for “Black and Latinx,” and “German” for “American.” We’ve been complacent for too long. This is the failure our children will come to know of us in their history class.

Design and development tools of 2022

2022-06-26T00:00:00Z

While we should always pick the right tool for the job, probably, these are the apps and hardware I’m using this year.

Design

Sketch
The first design tool since Photoshop CS that really stole my heart. Native performance is unparalleled, and official Apple Libraries make quick work of keeping pace with the Human Interface Guidelines.

Figma
You cannot deny the feature set of this thing. I can soapbox about how problematic Electron is all day, but Component Variants and Auto Layout are game changers.

xScope
Providing an on-screen overlay simulating an array of vision impairments, this is a must-have.

Quartet Whiteboard
I can’t think of a project that didn’t end up on this indispensable 6-foot by 4-foot collector of to-do items, ideas, layouts, notes, post-its, and magnets. Pairs well with their fine tip EnduraGlide markers.

Development

Panic Nova
Everything Panic touches is gorgeous. A lot of thought went into getting the app out of the way so you can focus on work. As a very junior-at-best web developer, it’s appreciated.

Linear
Just enough of a ticketing system for personal and client projects, and it sure is nice to look at.

Eleventy
The latest hotness in static site generators. It’s everything I wish I had when I was young with web developer dreams.

GitHub
While hardcore and veteran programmers use git commands, I’ll stick to the GitHub Desktop app for now, please and thanks.

Netlify
My website deploys automatically whenever I push a commit to a watched branch. One instance for staging, and another for production.

Notes & note-taking accessories

Agenda
My go-to for client and project meetings. It goes beyond notes with prioritizing tools and tie-ins to your calendar app of choice.

Notion
Amazing for focusing on copywriting and information architecture.

Pocket
I don’t think a great bookmarking solution exists, but Pocket has been the best of them.

Miliko A5 size dot grid notebook
The transparent cover lends well to the avid sticker collector. It follows me from office to kitchen, to workshop, to grocery store, to coffee shops all over the globe. This is the one exception to my otherwise Amazon-free shopping.

Studio Neat Mark Two pen
Kickstarter turned me on to Studio Neat’s pens a long time ago. This everyday carry goes wherever my notebook goes, and it’s built to last.

General

Raycast
I was a ten-year Alfred user, but what Alfred required as an extension, Raycast offers it out of the box. It’s a fresh take on all counts.

1Password
Simply put, it’s the best password manager for your money and peace of mind.

Apple Music
Music discovery and user experience is lacking. Higher resolution audio, better artist royalties, and a lack of Joe Rogan, however, are great perks.

Apple Podcasts
My most controversial app. Overcast and Pocket Casts just don’t do it for me.

Honorable mentions

Apple Reminders, Apple Notes, Safari, Firefox, and Ghostery.

On human rights and the responsibility of American industry

2022-06-30T00:00:00Z

There is a rise of organizations choosing to use Pride and Black Lives Matter logo variations on their websites, while leaving their power to enact real positive change on the table. The internal messaging is often that it is important to the business to toe a moderate political line, but unironically highlight the increase in sales that their Juneteenth marketing campaign had year-over-year at their quarterly reviews.

I have worked at organizations like this. Seeing this performative social impact capitalism informed my decision to focus on projects that improve the welfare and lifestyles of the common good.

Roe’s overturn & the deafening silence of Tech

This month, under the guise of religious righteousness, five people in our highest court have determined that people with uteruses in the United States are no longer entitled to their own life story, that they do not deserve the kinds of protections and autonomy afforded to the other half of the population.

We will see stories about people sent to prison for attempting to terminate a pregnancy in the coming months. Less than 13% of Americans celebrate this cruelty, while half of Congress will block efforts to codify reproductive care into law.

In the United States, now more than ever, maintaining a job is now the requirement to spare us not just bankruptcy, but risk of death from the complications of pregnancy. We are at the mercy of the benefits and salaries of the jobs we manage to get. The companies that push against these oppressive rulings are becoming oases, mirroring political effects happening with many major cities in the US.

Big tech companies are expanding their footprint in the most oppressive states like Florida and Texas, where their political influence could create great change. Instead, they’ve chosen to invest in union-busting efforts while sending lobbyists to Congress to promote laws that block or slow industry regulation and protect their power to harvest personal data for profit.

Change is action

Design is political. Business is political. Our decisions now can have ramifications for generations. Human rights cannot be just another seasonal marketing refresh opportunity. Design also has the immense power to change the world for the better. We have the most powerful tools in human history in our pockets to connect people and point them to the resources they need.

Industries at large, and especially Tech, must choose to take a stance for human rights and the sanctity of the individual. If you are working to bring helping, privacy-conscious tools to the growing masses of disenfranchised people, it would be my honor to help in any way that I can.

Expanded and revised on July 1st, 2022, then revised again on March 31st, 2023.

The soul in sharing food

2023-03-31T00:00:00Z

Food is the universal language. It’s the ultimate form of expression without words. It’s a communication between the cook, their tools and stove, and their guests. In one evening, you can tell everything you need to know about someone’s views on life – their optimism, moral virtue, wit, and patience – by following the journey of the ingredients they use to serve the people at their table.

That first bite that love letter to someone or something or some idea of a thing, is the pinnacle moment for the person that put in the labor. When the conversations come to a stop and the eyes close, and the pace slows down, that’s the goal, the dream. That’s the high. How did I do this time? They’re eating slow. They’re savoring every bite. They’re making mental notes on what works, what could improve, but they taste and feel all the love and hope and value that went into every minute of shop, clean, prep, fire, cut, plate, and serve.

There is no greater high than the reciprocity of gratitude between the person who did the cooking and the person enjoying the outcome for the effort. There’s no liquid on the planet that you could heat on a spoon and inject into the vein to reproduce that feeling.

Give me a drawer full of cheese and I can cut the tension between enemies. Give me access to a garden, a good knife, pan, and stove, and I can stop wars. Food is love. It is a series of acts of love, for the growers, the dirt, the animals and air, water, and fertilizer, the power of fire and presentation. It8s love for creation and willing into existence, almost by magic, a series of new textures and smells and flavors, and visuals that could not have existed prior to the combined efforts and sacrifices of every living being in the food supply chain.

The first time I ever said “I love you” to my partner was through my cooking. I say it with food at every meal. I say I love you through my kitchen, my love of tedium and iteration and improvement. I say it when my timing improves and every plate arrives hot and fresh and closer to what I dreamed up than the last time.

Food is romance. It is chemical and physical bond. It is the one tradition, force, and factor that alters your entire perception of your world, with or without your consent, until the next meal. You know true love because you’ve known the magic of making food and feeding others. You know the impact of love through the food made for you. Even broken households taught us that there is love, even when other words and actions may not adequately prove so.

Cooking is therapy, heat is transformation. Cleaning and prep are meditation and the dinner table 1s where we have an opportunity, every night, to show how much we’ve improved.

Tune in next time for the magic of bidets.

Go placidly

2023-04-06T00:00:00Z

[Fig. 1] Cloud in the sky over Charlotte. April 2023
[Figs. 2 & 3] Pianodrome for Charlotte Shout. March 2023

I often can’t shake the looping thoughts on how I don’t do enough, I have not and will not amount to what I can do and who I can be. This is a chronic and human labor without easy remedy. Last week, though, I woke up remembering “go placidly,” the opening to a poem that used to be framed on the wall, and I was reminded that perspective is a great contrast to personal value.

Desiderata, by Max Ehrmann

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Public version 5

2023-05-04T00:00:00Z

It’s version 5 of this kind of career-forward website for me, certainly not the fifth canonical version of my website. This is a project that I abandon and come back to more often than I’ll ever admit. Despite the façade of confidence and swagger, I think personal sites are monumental challenges for even the best designers, developers, writers, whoever decides to do this. It is deeply anxiety-inducing.

I’m releasing this before it’s finished, so expect some bugs and rough areas, including:

Some buttons do not look like buttons yet
Hover interaction on lists of articles need refinement
My little rotate-screen widget interaction is broken!
“About” is not fully concocted, but I decided to ship it at Good Enough™ for now.
~~Unbelievable to be typing this, but I did not fully QA test on mobile yet~~
OpenGraph (OG) images are not re-styled
~~Long bullet points in lists do not wrap to new lines in proper alignment (you’ll see what I mean on this post)~~
blockquote blocks carry the left-hand border down to the quote attribution. This bugs me to no end.
I really need to clean up the primary stylesheet
“Read next” blogroll footers include current page

I want to call out the typeface in particular. Two Ukrainian software studios, MacPaw and AlphaBravo, collaborated on it and gifted it to the world with an open license. They ask for nothing in return, but if we wish to thank them, they provide an option to donate to the MacPaw Foundation, which is providing relief to Ukrainians during the Russian invasion.

In utter hardship, they crafted something beautiful, named it after their studio cat, Fixel, and buried the donation call-to-action at the very bottom of a very long, very beautiful page.

This gesture and the absolute beauty of the typeface was what prompted me to rip off my own bandaid and try again here, with this.

Ideally this is a hub for my goings-on, a way to own my content and corner of the Internet. It wouldn’t put so much emphasis on my software career, so much as offer broadly all the things I want to share. It’s still not an ideal site, but this is a much better flavor.

Some things I’m looking forward to trying in v5:

There’s a growing movement in going back to full-color filled-in iconography. While my line icons are not bad (hat’s off to the chef), I sure did miss seeing full objects (I’m the chef).
OS emoji are cool and all, but what if I got back into illustration?
The footer could really use…something. I’m not sure yet.
De-emphasizing professional software work without burying it
Updated: It is done. Creating a website changelog page, alongside the Colophon. These housekeeping pages always please me when I see them. They’re like anthropological artifacts. Like a captain’s log or the due date stamp sheet in the backs of old library books.
Bringing back books, music, playlist pages

The previous version was ugly to me for so many reasons. I’m glad to be rid of it. As always, even with the quick turnaround, I still had feedback and support from peers and friends. My thanks and gratitude to them. I hope you enjoy it. I hope it sparks in someone the urge and audacity to go learn some code and attempt almost relentlessly to build their own static site.

The genetic lottery

2023-10-13T00:00:00Z

Osterman Beach in Chicago, using my sunglasses for a lens filter. Instagram requires an image. August 20, 2023

My ticket was punched before I was born. Mom is of European descent, but my biological father’s genes are card-carrying members of the Ashkenazim. I am half-white, white-passing, mixed race, you name it.

Jewish identity means you are a part of a heritage of gratitude that you ever got to exist, you’re endlessly curious and hope to live a good life. You are a descendant of a people who trace back to the Levant more than three millennia ago.

It means a lot of people hate that you exist. You’re exiled, massacred, displaced, called a colonizer (by colonizers) even in your ancestral land. Your people even wrote the book about the god that they worship. People weigh in on your fate, but don’t know how to engage with your Jewishness. You feel radioactive sometimes for bringing it up.

Instagram, the world’s #1 vanity dumpster, shows hot takes claiming that a group, whose sole mission is to paint the earth in my blood, are freedom fighters for killing kids. A video from 2023 of people outside of the Sydney Opera House, chanting, “Gas the Jews! Gas the Jews!” Nazi swastikas at rallies around the world, held by many who would be forced to stand in line for the gas chamber with me. When the past-tense of history shifted to present-tense, my emotional dam broke.

Read their charter online: Hamas does not care about land or sovereignty. If we are 5% or 100% Jewish, we are targets. Their calls for global protests are attempts to scare Jews everywhere, not liberate Gaza. They want me terrified watching my friends endanger my life by virtue of vanity and hubris and Share buttons, and they are actively staging their own civilians as targets. Nazi Playbook 101.

Palestinians should be free and Israel is stepping in shit. But if you are not Jewish, Palestinian, Israeli, or Muslim, your ignorant pantomiming on an issue older than history rouses an ancient hatred that puts lives like mine at risk, and you have diminished my humanity in the process.

I used to post long-form writing here regularly, but while I’ve had words to say, I’ve found that most haven’t been worth sharing. There is a kind of peace in disillusioning yourself of publicly inflated self-image. Consider that.

Prompting readers to rotate their phones

2022-10-16T00:00:00Z

Let’s do the demo first. If you just happen to be reading on a smartphone, I’m guessing it’s being held vertically, in portrait orientation: You should be able to see the little component below.

Rotate for a close-up.

Try rotating your phone. 🪄

And then rotate it back. ✨

If you’re reading from literally any other kind of device, the component you’re not seeing looks like this:

Rotate for a close-up.

When rotating a smartphone to landscape orientation, the component disappears. It reappears again in portrait orientation.

Out of context, it’s really not all that magical, but I was encouraged to document the discovery and use case, and if only to be my own future hype man, how I figured out how to build it.

Using a static site generator

Lurking in the shadows on this site is a set of hand-coded case studies on product design. They could’ve been shipped by now on Webflow or Squarespace — tools I’ve used before — but I have no Easy mode with personal projects. After years of working up against the bloat and flagging performance of dynamically-loading web apps, I wanted to scratch an itch for hand-spun web development. Eleventy came a-calling as the new hotness in static site generators right around the same time.

This has become a labor of love. The more I’ve learned and understood, the more I’ve refined. I’m finding a groove. I think maybe it’s time I share something I’m figuring out, and pay forward the gift of learning publicly, like Sara Soueidan or Josh Comeau, or the dozens of others who’ve been inspirational to me these last several months. Or maybe I’m just procrastinating again.

Mobile portrait orientation is hard for desktop software

As a user experience designer, you inevitably solve problems for apps and web apps built for desktop operating systems. When I’m turning these into case studies, I spend a lot of time fiddling with screenshots that are too dense or too large to be legible on mobile devices. It turns out that most desktop software vendors stop at having their screenshots fill the width of the page on mobile and call it a day.

Figma, Sketch, Raycast, and macOS Monterey's screenshots are hard to discern. Microsoft's Windows 11 site brings the UI up close and intimate.

Across every site, screenshots were almost perfectly legible when the phone was oriented in landscape. The team behind Microsoft’s “Meet Windows 11” site put in effort to create cropped, animated images of the critical UI for each section.

Great idea, but this is not a solution that works for establishing shots. I also need something cheaper. I wanted to see if I could try to make a simple little interactive something to suggest directly to the user to perform the physical task, in lieu of assuming that they (you; us) would rotate or pinch-and-zoom passively.

Hitting the research

Going into this, there were two easy assumptions to make:

If you’re casually browsing the web on mobile, you’re very likely holding your phone vertically (portrait orientation).
If you’re playing mobile games, they may prompt you to rotate the device horizontally (landscape orientation).

My hypothesis was just as simple:

When you’re browsing the web, but not a web app, can you be prompted to rotate your device when the content is better viewed in landscape orientation? Is there any reason not to?

I couldn’t turn up any hard, fast rule stating that patterns like this were discouraged. A truly great website (and I would argue that mine is not) brings something new and interesting to the table without abandoning and alienating the user. I think a part of what makes building for the web so fascinating and challenging is that websites can use its canvas to paint an experience any way its programmers have the patience to create. Experimentation is encouraged; testing is strongly recommended.

My requirements for this site include ensuring that mobile users are not left feeling short-changed, and that zero JavaScript is delivered to the end-user. If CSS media queries cannot deliver the environmental information I needed for this component, I would simply go back to the drawing board.

The W3C was way ahead of me, indicating that I was not the first person in 15 years of mobile-first web design to think of these things.

Can I ask the browser to tell me the physical orientation of the device?
Yes! The W3C created an orientation query with the values landscape or portrait.

Let’s slap together a test component:

<div class="rotate-view">Rotate for a close-up.</div>

We’ll also use display in CSS to toggle whether the component is visible by switching between block and none. I set the site default to none.

/* hides the prompt for smartphones in portrait to rotate to landscape */
.rotate-view {
  display: none;
}

Then, below that on the stylesheet, I added the rules for portrait-oriented devices to display whatever’s using the rotate-view class:

@media only screen and (orientation: portrait) {
  .rotate-view {
    display: block;
  }
}

A real break-you-out-of-your-bubble moment: we live in a time when desktop monitors can be optionally oriented vertically. This might report back to my site and display the component in the wrong circumstances. I needed more specificity.

Can I ask the browser to tell me if it’s a touchscreen device?
You bet, pal. Once again, the W3C gave me two @media queries that work in tandem: hover: none and pointer: coarse. Smashing Mag’s Cristian Diaz helps us understand hover like this:

none detects when the primary input mechanism can’t hover or can’t conveniently hover, like most cellphones and tablets.
hover detects when the primary input mechanism can hover over elements (for example, desktop computers, laptops, and smartphones with a stylus).

The options for pointer are explained in the same article as the following:

none detects when the main input mechanism doesn’t have a pointer device (for example cellphones);
coarse detects when the main input mechanism has a pointer device with limited accuracy (like the remote control of a Smart TV or some video game consoles);
fine detects when the primary input mechanism has an accurate pointer device (like a mouse, touchpads, or stylus).

Great! I can filter out devices with mice and cursors. We’re going only for devices with cudgels for inputs. I’ll take both. The test code evolved into this:

@media only screen and (hover: none) and (pointer: coarse) and (orientation: portrait) {
  .rotate-view {
    display: block;
  }
}

But in testing, tablets were still filtering through and displaying the component. Duh. As portrait-oriented smartphones are safely below ~768px in width (relatively), I added a max-width of 44em, or 704px. I also learned in testing that not all smartphones report pointer accurately, so I broke out the query to include coarse and none with an or operator.

Here’s where we ended up. For this final example, I’ll include styling and variables:

/* mobile (portrait orientation) */
@media only screen and (hover: none) and (orientation: portrait) and (max-width: 44em),
  (pointer: coarse) or (pointer: none) {
  /* shows prompts for mobile users in portrait mode to rotate to landscape */
  .rotate-view {
    display: block;
    background-color: var(--btn-bg-color);
    border-radius: var(--border-radius);
    padding-left: 0.4rem;
    padding-right: 0.4rem;
    padding-bottom: 0.13rem;
    margin-bottom: 0.5rem;
    vertical-align: middle;
    max-width: fit-content;
  }
}

Now, let’s add a class for styling. You know what? I’ll make an icon, too:

<div class="rotate-view subnote">
  <span class="icon-rotate"></span>Rotate for a close-up.
</div>

And voila:

Rotate for a close-up.

If you want to an example of it in its natural habitat, break out your smartphone again and have a gander:

Rotate for a close-up.

It's like an enigma, wrapped by a puzzle, trapped inside of a riddle.

Shoutout to Eleventy

What makes Eleventy particularly spectacular is the ability to turn anything into a sort of a working component by using includes in a page layout. The HTML for this component lives in its own file called rotate-display.html and I can summon it into place by inserting the following snippet where it needs to live in my markup:

{% include "partials/rotate-display.html" %}

When the site is built, the final page simply shows the HTML in place of the include syntax.

They’re not sponsors, but if you are considering building a personal site, I cannot recommend them enough. It’s like a candy shop and a puzzle store had a baby, and that baby was all the things I always wished I had for web development.

Someone else can give Zach Leatherman this stunning testimonial.

Regex

2026-01-30T00:00:00Z

Regex is so powerful, but I’ve learned that learning Regex is the part of using Regex that you have to be into, because actually using Regex is seldom what you get to do with it.

These whistles fight fascists

2026-01-20T00:00:00Z

Since January 2026, I’ve been printing emergency whistles with a Bambu Lab P1S. I’ve shipped them primarily to friends around the Twin Cities area in Minnesota. But by mid-February, Minneapolitans were up to their ears in whistles. Local businesses around Chicago can’t seem to keep them in stock, though.

This is the one time anyone with a 3D printer has been able to contribute meaningfully to society, and according to The Verge (gift link), it’s a not-small movement.

Tracking is nowhere near a requirement for this project, and probably ill-advised for TSA PreCheck and Global Entry status lovers, but I never claimed to have good judgement.

Where the whistles went

Chicago

Destination

Interactive map tracking where I've sent emergency whistles in the United States. Javascript must be enabled.

9 deliveries of 1,896 whistles.

Destination	Quantity	Date
Sociable Cider Werks	216	Jan 20, 2026
Roseville, MN	104	Jan 26, 2026
Minneapolis, MN	208	Jan 26, 2026
St. Paul, MN	308	Feb 3, 2026
Oakland, CA	204	Feb 10, 2026
Roseville, MN	204	Feb 10, 2026
Columbia Heights, MN	308	Feb 25, 2026
Loaves & Witches	104	Mar 1, 2026
The Chicago Mosaic School	240	Mar 4, 2026

Home printers’ kit

I’ve stuck to this extremely loud and compact emergency whistle designed by “Peter.” I like it so much that I made 2-color print-ready versions. There are hundreds of other options to try.

My whistles ship with breakaway ball chains. I’ve tried a few different vendors and these have been the best quality and strength so far. I want for people to hide them away if necessary, and to break them free of their keychains as easily as possible

Silk PLA is recommended by most whistle printers for its reliability and ease of use.

Glow-in-the-dark plastics

It may prove more of a gimmick than utility, but if there was any chance that my whistles could have improved visibility in tough situations, I wanted to take it.

These filaments contain strontium aluminate¹, which can sand away softer materials that it comes into contact with in the printing process, including printer nozzles.² I bought an AMS HT on sale to try to mitigate this a bit.

That said, if the risk doesn’t make you squeamish, I can recommend the following:

Distribution

The ad-hoc national networks like the Whistle Crew are likely at capacity. Look to local businesses, museums, schools, and restaurants. If your 2D printer needs a job, consider printing instructional fliers.

Strontium aluminate on Wikipedia ⬏
Which Glow in the Dark Filament is the Best? by CNC Kitchen ⬏

Version 6

2026-02-21T00:00:00Z

Fresh deli color vibes, typography with extra wonk on a bed of digital garden, and served in a parchment-lined red plastic basket, and a tangy dill pickle spear on the side: Welcome to version 6.

Designing for myself is always a real challenge. Every personal site I’ve ever made felt juvenile and under-thought, so I would stop development after the case studies were done. I’d pour my love for good design into corporate software instead, effectively shelving this project indefinitely. This has been cathartic and important, and loaded with revision.

The independent Web has been making a comeback, and I got inspiration in dozens of other personal-first websites.¹ I kept running into examples of digital gardening,² which seems tedious, but the trick is, I guess, getting the system to maintain itself so you’re not lost in fixing broken backlinks whenever you update your permalink structure.

I ~don’t~ have a Links³ page ~yet~, but I wanted to share some stellar examples that moved me along:

Some articles about why personal sites matter

Henry (From Online) turns his writing into works of art. If personal writing could be museum-worthy:
- A website to destroy all websites
- How to build a website
A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden, by Maggie Appleton
Louie Mantia’s enthusiasm is honestly what got me excited to pick this site up again:
- The Web Is So Cool
- How to Make a Damn Website
- Why by Hand?
- And those are well and good, but it’s the ease and frequency that he shares more than just the salary-bumping material, like in Nothing to Show for It

Personal sites that I really fucking love

Lynn Fisher
Eva Decker
JA Westenberg
The first thing I did last year was run, by Henry (From Online) – One of many articles-turned-micro-site from his digital garden.
Josh Crain – Toggle between light and dark mode. The color palettes are exceptionally complimentary to each other.
Rasmus
Robin Rendle – This online file browser style is impeccably done
Jedmund
Chester – We have a shared love of Fraunces
Andy Bell – Andy’s updating his personal site in two-week sprints so you can learn from his process
Salma Alam-Naylor – Punk rock as fuck.

There’s lots to do yet, but what I have now is the structure of the website I’ve been trying to get at for years now. Less tinkering, more publishing, and everything can look beautiful. And always, always gratitude to the people who let me ask them every two days to check the website again for feedback.

Prioritizing self-expressive design and content first, ahead of professional work, e.g.: case studies. ⬏
Maggie Appleton is the definitive anthropologist and historian on digital gardening. I couldn’t explain it better if I tried. ⬏
Every site needs a Links page / Why linking matters, by Melonking ⬏

Give cassettes a try

2026-03-10T00:00:00Z

The first eBay haul: 30 well-curated cassettes, a Walkman WM-FX277, and a Maxell MXCP-P100.

My partner and I have been trying on different ways to cut back on digital consumption. We got our kid an AM/FM radio last September, and it quickly became her favorite gadget of all time.

She has a favorite radio station for different times of the day, a favorite morning talk show, opinions on the best pop station, and a newfound love of '90’s pop and alt-rock. We handed her a portal to untold worlds and she ran with it.

The FM tuner on our ancient TV receiver introduced us to 91.1 Vocalo Radio. My point-and-shoot camera gets first dibs over my camera app when I’m out in the world. Fewer bells, dings, push notifications, news alerts, movie ticket pre-sales. More singular focuses, capturing the world, listening to albums and not aggressively narrow algorithmically generated playlists of artists I can’t commit to memory.

Becca Farsace documented the novelty of it: Insert the cassette or CD, hit PLAY ›, adjust the - VOLUME + wheel. That was the beginning and end of the decision-making process. The studio producers or the person crushing on you enough to make you a mixtape take over from there. I miss that. I want that.

San Francisco & Chinatown

2026-04-15T00:00:00Z

Marina District - Betty never misses out on crossing crosswalks on painted stripes only.

Marina District - Shoes peeking through privacy glass.

Crissy Field East Beach - Cleaned feet get a free ride back to the sidewalk.

Spring break was set to begin a week after we left for San Francisco, but flight and hotel prices were too good to pass up. Betty’s teacher sung her praises for winning the school spelling bee, helping classmates with their work, and earning straight A’s every quarter. She had no concern about pulling her out of school early.

With Molly’s brick-and-mortar business opening planned for late Summer, this was the last best time to travel, and Betty more than earned some extracurricular adventure.

This kid is a natural at the art of high school senior portrait posing.

The sunlight cast onto this quinceañera dress gave the Palace of Fine Arts an ethereal feeling.

Living vicariously through your kid's eyes is magic.

My default travel behavior is to throw my bag into the hotel room and bee-line it right back to the sidewalk, so, naturally, we all missed breakfast. We wandered through the Marina District to Crissy Field Beach and the Palace of Fine Arts, gawking up at the pavilions and counting turtles in the pond. The Bay area was expected to be unseasonably warm for the week. By noon, we were bordering on hangry and already feeling a thin layer of sweat form under our jeans.

We took refuge from the sun at Côte Ouest Bistro, presenting arguments to each other on whether the gentlemen running the place were genuinely French or took the job for the acting opportunity.¹

You could fit a lot of stuff through that door.

Molly is also a scholar in the fine art of the high school senior portrait post.

My Ricoh GR made all of my off-hand photos like this look filmic and beautiful.

A genuine Willys Jeep! Holy smokes!

The Painted Ladies had a muted color palette.

The bus tour took way too long, thanks to traffic, but it was a nice break from walking.

Then the bus tour. Spontaneously, we grabbed tickets for a hop-on, hop-off double-decker bus that promised a meandering, history-filled tour of the Northern half of the city, including a two-way trip across the Golden Gate Bridge. What this did for us in leg recovery time, it took from us in growing wait times as afternoon traffic picked up.

Realizing that the bridge crossing was perhaps several more hours away, Betty and I couldn’t deal anymore, so we took our leave at Washington Park only to find that the Painted Ladies were in their beige and bland era.

I parted ways from Molly and Betty to catch up with my friend, Lee

They were genuinely very kind and actually French, and I need to stop being so suspicious of people. ⬏

Eleven consecutive wins

2026-05-05T00:00:00Z

Cubs beat the Diamondbacks for their 11th consecutive win this season.

The crowd is in on every opportunity to cheer for their home team or distract the contenders.

Take me out to the ball game.

More than 34,000 attendees showed up to throw the Diamondbacks off their game.

50/50 odds that the crowd was standing or sitting.

The life & works of Joshua Bartz

Apple and user hostility

Hello World

§ About Me

§ New Career, New Blog

The Impossible Entry-Level Job Market

§ Part 1 - Introduction & Discontent

§ It Took A Long Time to Get Hired

§ I Made a Case Study of the Job Hunt

§ A Series to Pay It Forward

Don't Tell Me How To Think

The man from Rotterdam

Hello, 2020

Prague to Amsterdam

Police murdered George Floyd

dadbod.txt

How Nazis win

Top 5 links for Spring 2022

Design and development tools of 2022

§ Design

§ Development

§ Notes & note-taking accessories

§ General

§ Honorable mentions

On human rights and the responsibility of American industry

§ Performative social impact capitalism

§ Roe’s overturn & the deafening silence of Tech

§ Change is action

The soul in sharing food

Go placidly

§ Desiderata, by Max Ehrmann

Public version 5

The genetic lottery

Prompting readers to rotate their phones

§ Using a static site generator

§ Mobile portrait orientation is hard for desktop software

§ Hitting the research

§ Shoutout to Eleventy

Regex

These whistles fight fascists

§ Where the whistles went

§ Home printers’ kit

§ Glow-in-the-dark plastics

§ Distribution

Version 6

§ Some articles about why personal sites matter

§ Personal sites that I really fucking love

Give cassettes a try

San Francisco & Chinatown

Eleven consecutive wins

About Me

New Career, New Blog

Part 1 - Introduction & Discontent

It Took A Long Time to Get Hired

I Made a Case Study of the Job Hunt

A Series to Pay It Forward

Design

Development

Notes & note-taking accessories

General

Honorable mentions

Performative social impact capitalism

Roe’s overturn & the deafening silence of Tech

Change is action

Desiderata, by Max Ehrmann

Using a static site generator

Mobile portrait orientation is hard for desktop software

Hitting the research

Shoutout to Eleventy

Where the whistles went

Home printers’ kit

Glow-in-the-dark plastics

Distribution

Some articles about why personal sites matter

Personal sites that I really fucking love