Now

What is this?

It’s a now page: what I’m focused on at the moment, both professionally and personally. It’s what I’d tell on old co-worker if we met up for a 30 minute lunch. Inspired by Derek Sivers. Trying to keep it updated at least monthly.

Last updated January 10th, 2023.

Professional

Work Stuff

Still at Suffolk Law School’s Legal Innovation and Technology (LIT) Lab, working on court form software, particularly e-filing. Last month I released an e-fileable Appearance form in Illinois, working with Illinois Legal Aid Online! It’s the result of a lot of work over the past 2 years, and I’m really happy to see it out in the world. I’m also pushing hard to have our other Motion to Stay Eviction for the Massachusetts Appeals Court go live, gotta wait on bureaucracy now though.

I just did a conference talk at eCourts 2022 (we got an article in GovTech too), with my colleague Quinten Steenhuis and our partner in the Massachusetts Appeals Court, Paul Tuttle, on the work we’ve done together. I had hoped to have the e-filing app live by the time the talk happened, but eh ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

I’ve also done some more accessibility work: I improved the accessibility of docassemble’s combobox, and I’ve also started guiding some Suffolk Law students in putting together a full WCAG 2.1 audit of our docassemble systems, which is exciting.

Latest Github Activity

  • Made a pull request in the SuffolkLITLab/docassemble-ALToolbox repo.

    Correct `aria-controls` to reference correct id

    Issue was caught by aXe-core testing: https://dequeuniversity.com/rules/axe/4.4/aria-valid-attr-value?application=axe-puppeteer

    The issue happened because `tag_group_name` was added to the beginning of each id / href, but not to aria-controls.

    The `tab_id` was never used individually, so I just updated it to include both `tab_group_name` and `tab_id`,

    and then replaced its used in the tabs and tab panels.

Long Term Career Stuff

My position at the LIT Lab is grant funded, and ends in Q3 2023, so I’ll be looking for a new gig around then! I have a variety of different tech skill sets, and am not concerned about developing a few more. But I am more interested in making sure that I work at a place helps under-served communities help themselves, and developing the skills to do that well (like partnership building).

Personal

Doing

Planning a wedding and house-hunting takes up most of my free time. I’ve moved my mastodon account to the new public interest instance, which I recommend. It’s a bit small now, but the community is growing, and I’m seeing lots of interesting new people.

I’m also reading about and playing around with live coding. I’ve on and off tried Sonic-pi for a while ,but I’m taking the idea of starting with nothing and trying to implement something in a small time frame more seriously (15-30 minutes, a “live coding set” in that I am coding the whole time, even if I spend 10 minutes debugging). I’m also trying to learn SuperCollider and Tidal Cycles (in the form of Strudel), and I am reading The Theory and Techniques of Electronic Music.

Listening To

Last month was my favorite time of year: Spotify wrapped. I absolutely love seeing what all of my friends have been listening to, and breaking out of my own musical bubble. I have a Spotify playlist that has a song or two from all of the wrapped posts that I saw. I’ll list some of my favorites from it below.

  Song Artist
The single cover for Sister Sister, by Mtbrd Sister Sister Mtbrd
The single cover for Universal Sound, by Tyler Childers Universal Sound Tyler Childers
The single cover for Angel, by Placid Angles Angel Placid Angles
The single cover for Everything's Electric, by Liam Gallagher Everything's Electric Liam Gallagher
The single cover for Unholy (feat. Kim Petras), by Sam Smith, Kim Petras Unholy (feat. Kim Petras) Sam Smith, Kim Petras
The single cover for Slumber Party (feat. Princess Nokia), by Ashnikko, Princess Nokia Slumber Party (feat. Princess Nokia) Ashnikko, Princess Nokia

Gaming

I finished Bloodborne, which is my first From Software game. I absolutely loved it, 100% would recommend.

I started and stopped playing Horizon: Zero Dawn. I have mixed feelings about it; at times I liked the combat and the world building, but then I’d get tired of having to fight 20 robots every 5 feet, and just got to the point where I played all of the story that I could. I wasn’t impressed with the writing, though the vocal performances were fine.

I’m about 1/2 way through Uncharted 4: Thieves End. Really liking revisiting the characters after playing through the first 3 games in high school. The writing, the little one liners and the character arcs are great so far.

Watching

Re-watched Knives Out, and despite the fact that it is very in the moment of 2019, it’s aged very well, and still is funny and riveting. I also watched the sequel, Glass Onion, which is great in different ways; it’s not really a mystery in the same way, but it’s just as funny IMO.