iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Leesa Ward @doubleedesign.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

I have now experienced headphones with Bose “immersion mode” (where it’s designed to sound like the sound is coming from speakers in front of you) and I don’t think I can ever go back to regular blasting of music directly into my ears.

010

Leesa Ward @doubleedesign.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Yes I can ask AI but I'm tired of it. It often over-complicates things, makes stuff up, goes around in circles, etc. I'm really enjoying going to the docs myself, or checking what the author of a book or a blogger thinks. Also, when AI does get it right, let's remember who it learnt from... 3/3.

010

Leesa Ward @doubleedesign.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

There's no shortage of good resources when I come across something and think "I just need to read a bit more about this thing...in a somewhat vetted form." I'm finding myself reaching for the index of a book to look up a topic much more than I have in years. 2/3

110

Leesa Ward @doubleedesign.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Aside from its ugly docblock comments, I'm really enjoying building my pet project with C#/.NET. The docs on Microsoft Learn are really good; I bought some books, my uni provides access to O'Reilly for instant access to more (on top of some physical books of course, when I can go and get them). 1/3

100

Leesa Ward @doubleedesign.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

I actually really, really like Object-Oriented Programming. It just makes sense to me and feels really tidy and straightforward to understand if done well. Is it suitable for every scenario? Of course not. But not using it because it feels old and outdated or whatever...you're missin' out.

000

Leesa Ward @doubleedesign.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

5. Still no setting for how many lines a single scroll wheel step moves. I map my thumb buttons to scrolling, but that's pretty useless on a Mac without a third-party utility.

000

Leesa Ward @doubleedesign.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

4. The menu bar not being attached to the application. WHY?! Not only do I move my attention and cursor to it only to realise the wrong app is in focus, but on a large monitor it ends up very far away from the actual app window - which makes no sense and gets very, very annoying.

100

Leesa Ward @doubleedesign.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

3. Leaving applications in the dock by default, forcing me to repeatedly right-click and uncheck "Keep in dock", for everything I open that I don't deliberately keep there, is obnoxious and frustrating. (Especially when it's the same app over and over again.)

100

Leesa Ward @doubleedesign.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

2. A dot under an icon is not a sufficient differentiator for which applications in the dock are open and which aren't. (My Windows setting for "Combine taskbar buttons and hide labels" is "Never".)

100

Leesa Ward @doubleedesign.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

1 cont. On MacOS, to scale everything up I can only choose a different resolution, which looks blurry or pixellated. The text size system setting affects a laughably small number of applications. The Finder and Settings sidebars cap out at 16pt, and text *in the text size dialog* never changes.

100

Leesa Ward @doubleedesign.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

1. The most egregious first because it's an actual accessibility issue. UI scaling. The Windows PC that lives plugged into the same monitor that my work Macbook does is set to 125% and it is rare for me to have an application that doesn't look good, clearly readable, and not like that's not native.

100

Leesa Ward @doubleedesign.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

After a 9-week break I have started a new job and my grievances with MacOS feel sharper than ever. (There are valid reasons my current employer has us on Macs so this is not a dig at them.) This is not a rhetorical rant. Solutions are welcome. I am allowed to install utilities on my work machine.🧵

100

Leesa Ward @doubleedesign.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

My decision to go all-in on C# (which I had used before, but only at uni) for a personal project still feels like the right decision, but part of me wonders if I can get past how much I hate how its equivalent of docblock comments are written - and am questioning how I managed to forget that...

000

Leesa Ward @doubleedesign.bsky.social · 19/04/2025

Me, who has been writing tons of PHP lately and asking Claude questions about it: "How to [test thing] using Pest?" Claude: *gives me a spiel, examples, and explanation for...Rust, a language I've asked it about literally 0 times* Go home Claude, you're drunk. 😅

000

Leesa Ward @doubleedesign.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

"Create fonts" ...by inputting examples of existing fonts Seems legit. /s

000

Leesa Ward @doubleedesign.bsky.social · 30/03/2025

My brain: "Why would you call it Pest if you want people to like it? ... Oh, I get it. It's test with a P, because it's for PHP. Wait. Pest = Test a language that starts with a P. Hang on. ... Jest is..." Fuck I'm stupid for not noticing that before. 😂😂😂

000

Leesa Ward @doubleedesign.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

I was going to make a joke about it being on MySpace but then I realised that wouldn't be quite that long ago, which is a refreshing change from the usual "gee I'm old" fare of remembering what's been around since my teen years 😂

000

Leesa Ward @doubleedesign.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

3/3 I have also learnt a lot of new things that are not wheel reinventions, for example PHP traits. Whether this all goes to hell or not, at least I've gotten a conference talk idea out of it. Trying to think of a better name than "Lessons from reinventing the wheel" 😅

010

Leesa Ward @doubleedesign.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

2/3 So far I have: - Accidentally embraced atomic design (to an extent) - While writing docs, realised some of the output contradicted my library's own purported principles - Hacked together my own "template syntax" - More than once, wondered how far away I am from accidentally reinventing MVC.

100

Leesa Ward @doubleedesign.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

1/3 I'm developing a UI component library for PHP, almost from scratch aside from some usage parameters that inform the architecture (making it work with WordPress blocks in the first instance).

100

Leesa Ward @doubleedesign.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

I want to tell Claude what the answer was and have it know for the next person, dammit!

000

Leesa Ward @doubleedesign.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

I feel a distinct lack of closure when I ask an LLM about some coding thing, it spits out hallucinations or overly complex partial suggestions, and I go and find the answer elsewhere but there's no forum post to go back to post the answer on.

100

Leesa Ward @doubleedesign.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

100%. One of my favourite things is that the amount of context I can put into an AI chat saves me hours of Googling to piece together a solution. But like what I might initially piece together, AI's first answer might be wrong. It's a remarkable time-saver when you *could* do most of it yourself.

020

Leesa Ward @doubleedesign.bsky.social · 09/12/2024

Reminder to self: When you start typing things like "display: absolute", it's probably time for a break. 😂

020

Leesa Ward @doubleedesign.bsky.social · 24/11/2024

My partner, who has never had much need to deal with SQL, is excited because he figured out joins for something he's working on. Me, pointing at the schema: *gives him a pop quiz about why it's designed the way it is and hence joins are necessary, offers further explanation* My god we're nerdy.

010

Leesa Ward @doubleedesign.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

For my first Bluesky post, I would like to share the rabbit hole I spent my Saturday night in: Customising (visually) the output of Xdebug. I regret nothing. (PS don't judge me for the errors, I'm hacking around with some experimental stuff and I expected them 😅)

040