Maggie Appleton
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May 2025
In a wonderfully dramatic change to my life, I became a mother two months ago. My son was born at the end of March via an unplanned but otherwise uncomplicated c-section. Parenthood has been predictably overwhelming, exhausting, and existentially glorious. My days are now spent holding a sleeping newborn…
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Statistically, When Will My Baby Be Born?
A tiny tool to calculate when your baby might arrive
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ChatGPT Would be a Decent Policy Advisor
Revealed: How the UK tech secretary uses ChatGPT for policy advice by Chris Stokel-Walker for the New Scientist
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March 2025
Well, I've had a dramatic start to the year. Normally, the design agency I joined a short eight months ago, unexpectedly closed down in January. Despite running for a decade and working with almost every major tech company, client work slowed down and the founders decided to close up shop. It's been…
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Humanity's Last Exam
Humanity's Last Exam by Center for AI Safety (CAIS) and Scale AI
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DeepSeek
If you're not distressingly embedded in the torrent of AI news on Twixxer like I reluctantly am, you might not know what DeepSeek is yet. Bless you.
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Common Misconceptions in AI
Common Misconceptions About the Complexity in Robotics vs AI by Dan Ogawa
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Undetected AI Exam Answers
A real-world test of artificial intelligence infiltration of a university examinations system: A “Turing Test” case study by Peter Scarfe, Kelly Watcham, Alasdair Clarke, Etienne Roesch
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Unbaited
Unbaited by Daniel Petho
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Smidgeons
Welcome to the smidgeon stream. This is a new kind of content on the Garden. One that was
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How to Import Academic Papers from Zotero into Tana
How to use Zotero's translator and Tana Paste formatting to easily import papers into Tana
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Growing a Human: The First 30 Weeks
Reflections on the strange experience of growing a human from scratch, without any conscious understanding of how you are doing it
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December 2024
We're back in that glorious post-Christmas, pre-New-Year's liminal period when the days blur together and I'm allowed to spend inordinate amounts of time tinkering on side projects and laying on the couch eating handfuls of Twiglets. For the last couple weeks I've been plodding through an overdue and…
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Aesthetic Command Lines with Hyper, Spaceship, and Oh My Zsh
My fairly banal, basic, but beautiful command line setup
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Leaving Elicit
Reflections on two years of working at Elicit and why it's time to leave
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July 2024
Despite the regular drizzle, this summer is looking splendid. The tories are out of power. London is out in force enjoying the warm weather. I'm temporarily funemployed and thoroughly enjoying doing almost nothing. I decided to leave Elicit back in April, and worked my last day there in June. The team…
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Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers
The emerging golden age of home-cooked software, barefoot developers, and why the local-first community should help build it
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Faking William Morris, Generative Forgery, and the Erosion of Art History
Buying fake William Morris prints on Etsy and other early signs of epistemological collapse
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On Opening Essays, Conference Talks, and Jam Jars
How to open pieces of narrative non-fiction writing, conference talks, and sticky jars
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Spinning Worlds, Seasickness, and Dealing with Vestibular Neuritis
Gaining a strange disease and losing my ability to see straight
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A Collection of Design Engineers
Collecting people I know who work at the intersection of design and engineering, in an attempt to figure out what a design engineer is
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Gathering Structures
How to gather people and create communities in ways that are low-stress and high-payoff
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Speculative Calendar Events
Designing tentative calendar events to solve complex scheduling problems
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Ambient Co-presence
Creating a subtle, peripheral, and synchronous sense of shared space and context on the web
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Historical Trails
Giving people a visible, useful trail of where they've been over the course of an exploratory journey
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December 2023
The limbo-like lull in-between Christmas and News Years is my favourite period of the year. I never know what to do with myself. I arrive back from chaotic, overstimulating family visits and sit amidst my pile of gifts, half-unpacked bags, and leftover chocolate, wondering what in the world I used to…
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September 2023
London flipped from sweltering summer back to drizzling grey yesterday. Autumn was overdue. Summer was a little too manic for my taste anyway. I spent a bunch of time in Maine, New York, and San Fransisco. A mix of long back porch hangouts with family, collaborator coffees, and in-person problem-solving…
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Squish Meets Structure
Designing with Language Models
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Language Model Sketchbook, or Why I Hate Chatbots
Sketchy ideas for interfaces that play with the novel capabilities of language models
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June 2023
The last six months have felt like a disorientating blur. While bouncing between overseas trips, writing conference talks, organising events, and keeping up with work, I ended a long-term relationship and moved across London. My writing took a hit – I haven't published much this year. I feel like I'm…
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The Expanding Dark Forest and Generative AI
An exploration of the problems and possible futures of flooding the web with generative AI content
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Computational Notebooks
Shareable, browser-based documents that can compile and run code
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Teenage Skeuomorphic Desktop Designs
An archive of my high school desktop designs, circa 2009
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Reverse Outlining with Language Models
Using language models to generate reverse outlines of writing drafts
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The Dark Forest and Generative AI
Proving you're a human on a web flooded with generative AI content
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Empty Pointers and Constellations of AI
On the fuzziness of calling things “artificial intelligence” and moving the goalposts
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Command K Bars
Command line bars you can quickly summon with a keyboard shortcut
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November 2022
It's a weird week. Twitter is (possibly) entering a slow death march and much of my community is reluctantly slouching over to Mastodon. I've started cross-posting there as well: indieweb.social/@maggie. The Elon-escapades only drive home how important it is to own and control the platform you're publishing…
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Programming Portals
Small, scoped areas within a graphical interface that allow users to read and write simple programmes
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Folk Interfaces
People reappropriating existing software to solve their own unique problems
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Joining Ought
A new role at an AI research lab working on tools for open-ended reasoning
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July 2022
I've decided to join Ought, a non-profit research lab. I wrote about the move here, but TLDR: Ought is exploring how machine learning techniques can support open-ended reasoning and research. At the moment their main focus is building Elicit an AI research assistant that helps automate literature reviews…
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The Block-Paved Path to Structured Data
How block-based interfaces can help us create more structured data on the web
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Daily Notes Pages
Daily notes as a frictionless default input for personal knowledge management systems
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A Picture Worth a Thousand Programmes
Bringing visual explanations and embodied knowledge to programming tools
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Programmable Notes
Agent-based note-taking systems that can prompt and facilitate custom workflows
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Interoperable Personal Libraries and Ad Hoc Reading Groups
Exploring ways to build social infrastructure around books and reading on the open web
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Spatial Web Browsing
Adding spatial affordances to the experience of browsing the web
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Assumed Audiences
Naming your invisible audiences to free yourself from unspoken obligations
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The Finest Narrative Non-Fiction Essays
Narrative essays that I consider ideal models of the medium
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Epistemic Disclosure
Providing clear metadata on the epistemic validity of content
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Metaphors We Web By
A history of our metaphorical understanding of the web
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Algorithmic Transparency
Algorithms that make their reasoning visible
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October 2021
After five years of working with egghead, I decided it was time to move on. I started as an illustrator in early 2016. By 2018 I had moved into an art director and leadership role. By 2020 I'd shifted to focusing on UX and product design. I grew up in this company, but over the last year it's become…
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Plebeian Programming with Keyboard Maestro
How to write macros without touching the terminal
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The Cultural Anthropology of React
An anthropological look at the cultural norms of the React community
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August 2021
With lockdown easing in London I've spent most of summer outside throwing tennis balls around in the park, rather than sitting in front of screens writing words. It's been a good break, but I've missed researching. The British winter will descend again soon and I'll be back inside tending to the digital…
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Tools for Thought as Cultural Practices, not Computational Objects
On seeing tools for thought through a historical and anthropological lens
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Paleolithic Nostalgia
Longing for the paleolithic past in the Anthropocene
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Natureculture, Moral Purity, and Cultural Boundaries
Why there is nothing natural about the idea of 'nature'
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The Linear Oppression of Note-taking Apps
What we lose when our digital notes remove the freedom to move
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Digital Gardening for Non-Technical Folks
How to build a digital garden without touching code
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The Echo & Narcissus Writing Club
A Hyperlink Academy writing club where we mimic the work of others
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Pink, Soft, Glittering Developers
A collection of observations on the rise of soft, sparkly, baby pink aesthetics among developers
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Fetishism & Mechanical Keyboards
Developer self-expression through coloured switches, keystroke actuation, and LED light displays
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Making Programming Visual, Spatial, and Learnable
What's wrong with linear, static programming mediums and how might we improve them?
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Transclusion and Transcopyright Dreams
The lost permissioning and copyright system of the Web
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Organic, Local, Artisan Data Storage
Data is currently dislocated – our narratives and metaphors around it try to convince us it is immaterial
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Positioning Elements & Scrollytelling in CSS
Notes on how to use the position property in CSS to make scrollytelling stories
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Painting Roam Research with Custom CSS
How to customise Roam Research with your own CSS themes
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A Digital Anthropology Reading List
A few favourite books from the field of digital anthropology
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The Eponymous Laws of Programming
A collection of laws named for specific people in the field of programming
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A History of Cyborgs
Notes on the history of cyborgs and why the idea still holds historical weight in Western narratives
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Neologisms
A collection of interesting words that have recently been coined
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A Brief Introduction to Digital Anthropology
A discipline at the intersection of cultural anthropology and binary logic
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GreenSock Animations with React Hooks
How to use the Greensock animation library inside React using React hooks
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Tools for Thought as Cultural Practices, not Computational Objects
On seeing tools for thought through a historical and anthropological lens
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The Bare Essentials of Greensock
Notes on the basics of the Greensock animation llibrary
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September 2020
Digging into the work of Barbara Tversky and reading the literature around embodied cognition. I've been a long time fan of George Lakoff so much of it us familiar. Tverksy's new book Mind in Motion builds off many of the same themes. Delaying a part-time Masters degree in Digital Anthropology at UCL…
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Illustrating Gatsby's Key Concepts
Illustrated notes on the key concepts of how Gatsby.js works
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Why You Own an iPad and Still Can't Draw
The failure of drawing materials without mediums and meat
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Problematic Proteins
How to offend everyone with boundary-crossing steak and nuggets
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New Harvest & Illustrating the Cultivated Meat Podcast
Illustrations made for a set of episodes of the Cultivated Meat podcast
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The Gift Economy
Illustrated notes on the idea of Gift Economies and cultural historys of economic exchange
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Synecdoche: Drawing the Part for the Whole
Notes on the metaphorical varieties of synecdoche and metonymy
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A Meta-Tour of This Site
A video tour through how I build the old version of this site
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Douglas, Dirt, and Matter Out of Place
Mary Douglas defined dirt as matter out of place – the crossing of boundaries
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The Pattern Language of Project Xanadu
Project Xanadu as a pattern language, rather than a failed software project
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Growing the Evergreens
Illustrated notes on the concept of 'Evergreen notes' and how to write them
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The Knowledge Hydrant
Illustrated notes on the Knowledge Hydrant guide to collaborative learning
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Frequently Asked Questions
Questions I am often asked to answer
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A Naïve Exploration of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning
Notes on the academic field of CSCL and major papers in the discipline
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Silent Synchronous Reading Sessions
Notes on how to run silent meetings and reading sessions
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What the Fork is React Suspense?
Illustrated notes on how React suspense works
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Visually Workshopping the AWS Cloud
Some insights into how I collaborative with experts to create illustrated notes on technical topics
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Are Data Unions the Future of Data?
Illustrated notes on how data unions work and what problems they might solve
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A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden
A newly revived philosophy for publishing personal knowledge on the web
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Pattern Languages in Programming and Interface Design
Notes on pattern languages and Christopher Alexander's legacy on software programming
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A Metaphorical Reading Collection
A collection of my favourite books on conceptual metaphor theory
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Tending Evergreen Notes in Roam Research
A walkthrough of how I manage and tend Evergreen notes in Roam
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Fixing Common Git Mistakes
Illustrated notes on common mistakes people make in Git, and how to fix them
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What App is That?
A guide to the apps and tools I use to create illustrations
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Tracking Humanity
The introduction to my thesis on the Quantified Self movement and the culture of self-tracking
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A Short History of Bi-Directional Links
Seventy years ago we dreamed up links that would allow us to create two-way, contextual conversations. Why don't we use them on the web?
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The Dark Forest and the Cozy Web
An illustrated diagram exposing the inner layers of the dark and cozy web
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Drawing the Invisible: React Explained in Five Visual Metaphors
Explaining React through visual metaphors
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A Chat with Henry Zhu on OSS & Gift Economies
Notes from my podcast episode Open Source and Gift Economies on Maintainers Anonymous
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Building a Second Brain: The Illustrated Notes
Illustrated notes on the Building A Second Brain course
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How to Become a Neo-Cartesian Cyborg
A lightening talk on second brains and cyborg embodiment
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Defend Your Cookies with Essential Web Security Tactics
Illustrated notes on the essentials of web security
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How to Draw Invisible Programming Concepts: Part I
A case study showing how I make illustrations for abstract programming concepts
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What the Fork is xState?
Illustrated notes on how to build state machines with the xState library
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A Journey into Vue-Router
Illustrated notes on how routing works in Vue.js
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What the Fork is Rust?
Illustrated notes on the core concepts in Rust
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The Art and Craft of Gatsby Themes
Illustrated notes on building Gatsby themes
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JavaScript Bits You Skipped the First Time Around
Illustrated notes on advanced but fundamental topics in JavaScript
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Meat Planet: The Illustrated Notes
Visualising the cultural narratives around cultured meat
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Building Custom React Hooks
Illustrated notes on building custom React hooks
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Immutable Data with Immer and Personal Assistant Bots
Illustrated notes on how work with immutable data in the Immer state library
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Speaking the GraphQL Query Language
Illustrated notes on the basics of the GraphQL query language
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The Best Illustration Books and Courses
My favourite resources for learning to draw and developing your visual thinking skills
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A Fresh Serving of JavaScript ES2019
Illustrated notes on the new language changes in JavaScript ES2019
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The JAMStack, Gatsby & Contentful
Illustrated notes on the JAMstack, Gatsby & Contentful
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Instachatting with Vue & Socket.io
Illustrated notes on how to implement web sockets with Vue.js and Socket.io
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Building VR Apps with React360
Illustrated notes on building VR web apps with React360
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Testing Apps with Cypress
Illustrated notes on how to test web apps with Cypress
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How Are Compilers & Transpilers Different?
Illustrated notes on how compilers and transpilers are different
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Meet the Robowaiter APIs Serving Us Data
Everything you need to know about what API's are and how they work
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A Shelfish Starter Guide to Databases
The absolute minimum you need to know about data storage
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A Fruitful Guide to JavaScript's Comparison Operators
Illustrated notes on how JavaScript's comparison operators work
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What the Fork is Babel?
Illustrated notes on how Babel works
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JSX is a Lovechild
Illustrated notes on how JSX in React works
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What the Fork is the React Virtual DOM
Illustrated notes on how the React virtual DOM works
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JavaScript's ...spread Operator
Illustrated notes on how JavaScript's spread operator works
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