Lara Schenck
Lover of programming, maker of monsters
Blog
Look through historical posts using these drop downs:
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There is no fold.
…the amount of time in view steadily rises as we move downpage to a peak between about 1200 pixels down. This portion of the page is viewed for nearly three times as long as the top of the page. Amen to that – awesome reference point for clients stuck in the ’00s. Via this tweet.
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Look how cute!
I’m about to launch a WordPress workshop…stay tuned! In line with the fishing metaphor, this would be you after you take it.
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Freelancer is a dirty word.
First of all, I am very proud to be a freelancer, and certainly identify as one. But…I hesitate. I kind of loathe the term. I feel like the word itself implies someone taking whatever work they can get, aimless and uncommitted, or in-between jobs with no other option to make ends meet. Of course this may…
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Podcasts are Amazing + Recommendations
Before getting into a few, relatively web design-centric favorites, let’s compare podcasts to the written word. By “written word” I mean articles, blogs, and the like. What you sift through on Feedly or links found on Twitter, anything you’d save to Pocket. So yeah, this post qualifies. Oh the irony!
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Enable FTP Server on Mac
Type this into the command line: sudo -s launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ftp.plist thanks to iGerry
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WP dev tools I’m stoked about
I’m constantly reading about workflows and new tools, and don’t really get a chance to use them until something fresh comes around (or if I make an extra 5 hrs to try them out). Anyhow, I’ve got some WordPress in the works and wanted to share these excellent finds. WP-CLI: A command line interface for…
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Color Pickers of Choice
We’ve all got our faves, here are mine! Adobe Kuler Kuler is awesome. You can create your own color schemes from a color or an uploaded image, but the best part is the massive amount of color combos created by Kuler users. You can use Kuler directly through Illustrator too, so no need to deal…
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Talk on Freelancing at Per Scholas
Last week I gave a talk about my experience as a freelancer at the Per Scholas Lunch & Learn, hosted by the New York Tech Council. Per Scholas is a non-profit that provides IT training and job placement for people in low-income communities.
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Startup Bus NYC 2014
Last week I participated in the 2014 Startup Bus from NYC to San Antonio, then to Austin for SXSW. The Startup Bus is a 72hr hackathon where 30 people on a bus form teams and create, develop, and pitch a startup while on the bus. It was quite an experience, to say the least! I…
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Style tile for Q2L Website
Style what? Style Tiles are a design deliverable consisting of fonts, colors and interface elements that communicate the essence of a visual brand for the web. – Styletil.es by Samantha Warren Here is the first iteration of a style tile for Quest to Learn’s website redesign. The branding and logo design were done by the…
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Harvest4Clients Fork
No demo online yet, so a screenshot will suffice for now. I am in the process of transitioning all of my work to hourly billing and am looking for an easy way for clients to check in on my hours. I am a happy Harvest user, but it doesn’t offer an easy way for clients…
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Show a title when hovering over an image with jQuery or CSS
\It’s not too hard! I was writing up a demo and figured I might as well share it with the world. You can do it in CSS or jQuery, definitely useful for galleries.
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Poster design
Kinda fun! For a mission teaching high school students about genetics.
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Child Themes talk at NYC WP Meetup
I gave a presentation on Child Themes at the NYC WordPress Meet Up – I think it went well! There’s the video. Check the the slides here. (Slides created with reveal.js. Let’s take a moment to appreciate the developers on that one – what a fun tool!)
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Medal Illustration
This is for a poster for a 7th grade class’s mission called “Quest to Discover the World’s Greatest City” at Q2L. Students will measure the per capita income, crime, cost of living, and other statistics to determine the greatest city. Hmm..maybe Pittsburgh?
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2013 Web Design Shout Outs
The past few weeks I have been entirely overwhelmed with inspiration and need to drop some serious shout outs: People and Places First and foremost, the the entire web design/dev/tech community. What an open, motivating, and supportive group of people! In particular: Brad Frost – whose work makes me so excited to build things. Matt…
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Responsive Video Embeds
This post walks through how to apply a class to resize responsive videos, but you can also just use something like Fitvids.
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Update: Teaching endeavors in NYC
NYC is treating me well, no doubt. In addition to part-time work at the Institute of Play, I’ve found a real passion for teaching and a few excellent opportunities: Front-end Web Development at General Assembly This is a ten week course covering HTML/CSS/JS and more, similar to the one I taught this summer at the…
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How the Internet Works Comic
I’ve totally posted this before, but just want to reiterate how great it is. I used it in my class at General Assembly and I think it was an excellent guide for talking about what is normally a really confusing/jargon-heavy topic. via Fabulously Broke
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Responsive-ize WordPress Gallery Thumbnails with Sass
UPDATE: Just use Justin Tadlock’s Cleaner Gallery plugin. I am in the midst of rewriting my WP theme WPFolio Two. I wanted to make the gallery thumbnail images a flexible width rather than their default fixed width. To do this, I gave the attachment images themselves a width: 100%; but needed to apply my responsive…
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Cargo Cult CSS
About every other day I read a blog post about a new take on CSS best practices. I think either “I’m doing right!” or, “Ohh that makes sense, I’ll change my ways”. Cargo Cult CSS is another of these posts, and resulted in an “Ahh…now I’m really confused, but this was an excellent read.”
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NYC + Cute creatures
As of the middle of September I started as the Design Assistant at Quest to Learn in New York City. My job is, well, assisting the game and learning designers at Q2L’s Mission Lab. It’s been excellent so far – I’ve gotten some fantastic insight into what goes on at the Institute of Play and…