If we haven't met yet, hi! I'm Lara. Thanks for coming.
I love to write about and share my work with web technologies, as well as general life topics and creative undertakings. Hopefully you'll find something of interest, and maybe learn something new!
If you'd like to keep abreast of new posts, you can subscribe via RSS or write me a note encouraging me to set up an email list for this purpose (something that's been on my to-do list for, um, a while).
Want to learn how a browser works? Computer Science fundamentals? This is a great place to start! A long list of resources for my research for my talk at CSSConf EU, the Algorithms of CSS.
Another installment of Designgineering Chronicles jam packed with information! IndieWire launched with the pattern library, and we are in full pursuit of the holy grail: sharing markup between the library and production theme.
Pittsburgh is and always will be my home city. I'm back for an long trip over the holidays and in between some east coast conferences, and it's been a wonderful trip. The grey skies and wintry weather are a welcome break from the monotony of LA sunshine (it's nice but...not for me). Here's what I've been up to.
I'm eating a breakfast burrito at LAX before my flight back to Pittsburgh. Breakfast burritos at the airport before early flights are a ritual for me, and I felt like writing about it.
I like house music a lot. I'm quite a fan of the lo-fi trend, and Ross From Friends is in that category. A class act. Boots and cats and boots and cats and boots and cats and boots and cats.
It's not necessarily bad to concatenate Sass selectors, but if you need to keep developers from doing it for the purposes of coding standards, this might be helpful!
As part of my mission to conquer Twitter anxiety, I've figured out a solid workflow for quieting notifications on my phone. These things may be obvious, but they are not the default, so decidedly not obvious.
Creative Quest could not have come at a better time for me. It's essentially a holistic guidebook to being creative, and the concepts have literally applied to every aspect of my life. If you're a creative person and looking to put some more energy into developing that side of yourself, I can't recommend it enough!
Have you ever watch koi fish eat and noticed how hilarious their noses/mouths are? This monster (and possibly many monsters before it, but subconsciously) were inspired by the gaping mouths of koi.
Most of the websites I work on at work are not accessible and won't be any time soon. I had a bit of a realization this week about how to deal with that – accessibility doesn't have to be all or nothing. One step at a time.
It's time for the third installment of Designgineering Chronicles! This one is a long one and written in major haste, so buckle up. Lots of good things about job titles, CSS standards, JavaScript, perfectionism, and the joys of refactoring.
.u-glue is a CSS utility class (or what I would call an algorithm) that provides an API for positioning an element absolutely over another element. We are using it at PMC, and it's proven a useful model!
Over the past year, I've been giving a talk called The Algorithms of CSS, originally created for CSSConf EU. This post covers the first part of my presentation, and breaks down how CSS fits into the categories of programming languages.
This is the second in a potentially ongoing series about my work at PMC as a Design Engineer. This month was full of lessons learned about working at a big company, building out a pattern library, and an exciting foray into Node.
![Thumbnail for "[Book Rec] Creative Quest by Questlove"](https://notlaura.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/6b2f47e2c6a3b410a6197b11de1fd799-500x500-c-default.jpg)
![Thumbnail for "Designgineering Chronicles [WiH]: The Third Month"](https://notlaura.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/a78955d26711151c1bf3ed902a22cf92-500x500-c-default.jpg)
![Thumbnail for "[Book Rec] How Not To Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking"](https://notlaura.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/ea50256b74b79bca863abcbdd36e995c-500x500-c-default.jpg)
![Thumbnail for "Designgineering Chronicles [WiH]: The Second Month"](https://notlaura.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/1fd731645cb6106695bc3ae4d4a95ef5-500x500-c-default.jpg)
