# This Modern Web

> The personal website of Patrick Marsceill, a software designer. Essays and short posts about design, technology, projects, and life.

Every page and post has a Markdown version: append .md to its path, or use /index.md for the homepage. Markdown is generated from the same content as the HTML page. Each response identifies its canonical HTML source URL for citations. Dates describe when a post was published; historical posts may not describe current circumstances.

## Pages

- [Home and post archive](https://p.atrick.org/index.md)

- [About Patrick and this site](https://p.atrick.org/about.md)

- [Now](https://p.atrick.org/now.md): Includes its last-updated date.

## Resources

- [Agent guide](https://p.atrick.org/AGENTS.md)

- [RSS feed](https://p.atrick.org/feed.xml)

- [Sitemap](https://p.atrick.org/sitemap.xml)

## Posts

- [Microblog — 2026-09-10](https://p.atrick.org/2026/09/10/125039.md): Made this site a little easier for agents to read: append .md to any page or post URL for a Markdown version. There’s an agent guide and content index for more
- [RSS as personal context](https://p.atrick.org/2026/09/09/rss-as-personal-context.md): I’ve been thinking about RSS feeds as a way to give AI software better context about me. Not context in the technical sense of stuffing more tokens into a model
- [Introducing Feedster](https://p.atrick.org/2026/03/05/introducing-feedster.md): I love the web. It's the reason that I have a career, it's why I got into design, and it has enabled so much of my (and our society's) modern life that I cannot
- [Microblog — 2026-03-02](https://p.atrick.org/2026/03/02/143703.md): “Ideas are cheap / execution is expensive” has become “Execution is cheap / ideas are cheaper”
- [Microblog — 2025-02-17](https://p.atrick.org/2025/02/17/141508.md): Thinking about (micro)blogging again.
- [Microblog — 2024-08-09](https://p.atrick.org/2024/08/09/102924.md): I love personal computing!
- [Microblog — 2024-08-01](https://p.atrick.org/2024/07/31/212004.md): We have lift off 🚀: The 2024 refresh of This Modern Web is now live on the new domain p.atrick.org.
- [Microblog — 2024-05-30](https://p.atrick.org/2024/05/30/143012.md): Dusting off the cobwebs on this old thing...
- [Microblog — 2022-07-20](https://p.atrick.org/2022/07/20/16502.md): Meeting People Is Easy
- [Microblog — 2022-03-01](https://p.atrick.org/2022/03/01/2337.md): Deeply feeling this... Desperation-Induced Focus by Ravi Gupta Processes that feel unnecessary really demotivate and kill creative spirit. One of the main reaso
- [Microblog — 2022-02-08](https://p.atrick.org/2022/02/08/16516.md): I’ve been spending more time than I should wondering why someone would choose not to add an RSS feed to their personal blog/website in favor of a “subscribe to
- [Figuring out what’s next](https://p.atrick.org/2022/02/08/looking-for-my-next-job.md): How I approached looking for my next job
- [Microblog — 2022-01-16](https://p.atrick.org/2022/01/16/143939.md): First week at WorkOS is in the books. Really excited to share some of the stuff that we’ve been working on 🚀
- [Jealousy List 2021](https://p.atrick.org/2022/01/15/jealousy-list.md): Shout-out to all the work that made me jealous this year
- [Microblog — 2022-01-07](https://p.atrick.org/2022/01/07/23218.md): After 6.5 years, today is my last day at GitHub. It is truly the best job that I've ever had thanks to the people that I got to work with here. I'm proud to hav
- [Microblog — 2021-12-15](https://p.atrick.org/2021/12/15/211116.md): Boosted this morning 💉
- [Microblog — 2021-12-15](https://p.atrick.org/2021/12/15/42859.md): Some incremental improvements to the personal website… Re-wrote it in Next.js Switched to Stitches for styling Loving the perf gains so far.
- [Microblog — 2021-11-27](https://p.atrick.org/2021/11/27/165817.md): It’s the Saturday after Thanksgiving… time to get a tree.
- [Microblog — 2021-11-23](https://p.atrick.org/2021/11/23/17526.md): It’s a: gotta dig up my septic tank with a shovel to find out that it’s not draining properly kind of day.
- [Microblog — 2021-11-17](https://p.atrick.org/2021/11/17/213918.md): What’s your least favorite website that you have to use? Mine is the Microsoft Corporate training SharePoint portal.
- [Microblog — 2021-11-15](https://p.atrick.org/2021/11/15/13430.md): Sensing some cosmic shifts these last weeks. 🪐👽
- [Microblog — 2021-05-01](https://p.atrick.org/2021/05/01/231022.md): Got Moderna shot #2 yesterday. The day after symptoms are no joke. I’ve been laid up with a fever and body aches all day.
- [Microblog — 2021-02-20](https://p.atrick.org/2021/02/20/20743.md): Ideas for future posts: Designing principles Fewer concepts and more types Finding that sweet spot between implementation and concept/shaping Looser process/st
- [Microblog — 2020-12-14](https://p.atrick.org/2020/12/14/125926.md): Man you gotta love Benioff (I mean, you don’t but he’s going to try), he clearly worked for Larry Ellison, loved Larry Ellison, and then said, I will be the ab
- [Microblog — 2020-12-12](https://p.atrick.org/2020/12/12/19143.md): I think I might be ready to start writing again...
- [Microblog — 2020-09-11](https://p.atrick.org/2020/09/11/154321.md): One of my favorite websites now has an iOS app... Check out what the poolside.fm folks have been building over at https://cellular.poolside.fm The closest thin
- [Microblog — 2020-09-09](https://p.atrick.org/2020/09/09/191023.md): Yesterday marked my five year anniversary of working at GitHub 🎉
- [Microblog — 2020-09-09](https://p.atrick.org/2020/09/09/184830.md): It feels obvious now, but just starting to realize that my own creative output correlated to my personal happiness and probably my mental health, also.
- [Microblog — 2020-07-30](https://p.atrick.org/2020/07/30/232849.md): Nice surprise for a Thursday evening... Cowboy Bebop Soundtrack now on Spotify. via Kotaku
- [Microblog — 2020-07-08](https://p.atrick.org/2020/07/08/02140.md): I love me some internet nostalgia and 98.css does not disappoint. 98.css is a CSS library for building interfaces that look like Windows 98. A pretty damn fai
- [Microblog — 2020-05-18](https://p.atrick.org/2020/05/18/2281.md): If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs Maybe it was chronicles of their life as they got a job teaching in Japan and how it was leav
- [Microblog — 2020-05-18](https://p.atrick.org/2020/05/18/13028.md): Most Thursday nights, I was with three other humans in a too hot (or too cold) room constructed out of hastily framed walls, unfinished drywall, and 200 year ol
- [Hacking from your iOS device](https://p.atrick.org/2020/05/13/siri-shortcuts.md): Developing with Siri Shortcuts and more
- [Microblog — 2020-04-23](https://p.atrick.org/2020/04/23/143031.md): Gruber’s review of the 2020 iPhone SE showcases the bonkers performance of the A13 Bionic chip: ...a $400 iPhone SE bests a $3,000 top-of-the-line MacBook Pro
- [Microblog — 2020-04-10](https://p.atrick.org/2020/04/10/34412.md): I am very excited to hear that NetNewsWire (my RSS reader of choice) is going to get iCloud syncing support! That was literally the only wishlist feature that I
- [Microblog — 2020-04-10](https://p.atrick.org/2020/04/10/33610.md): Some thoughts I had this week: I’ve never been this conscious about what I'm eating every day because we only have a finite supply of staples like eggs, butter
- [Microblog — 2020-04-07](https://p.atrick.org/2020/04/07/172749.md): Phases of social distancing / shelter at home: Week 1: WTF is this, the world is going to hell Week 2: Struggling to find balance between work and family Week 3
- [Microblog — 2020-03-29](https://p.atrick.org/2020/03/29/152911.md): I’ve been thinking a lot about how we can bring the principles and tools used in open source software development to the scientific and medical community to aid
- [Microblog — 2020-03-29](https://p.atrick.org/2020/03/29/53.md): In a truly psychedelic moment during my morning run, I saw two older men (70+ years old) walking six feet apart, movements perfectly in sync, both wearing leath
- [Microblog — 2020-03-20](https://p.atrick.org/2020/03/20/2020-03-20-15-58.md): Gary Hustwit is streaming his documentaries for free during the COVID-19 crisis. Watch this week's flim Helvetica about the iconic typeface from March 17-24. I
- [Microblog — 2020-03-20](https://p.atrick.org/2020/03/20/2020-03-20-13-15.md): My daughter now has FaceTime dates set up with her classmates in pre-school because she can’t be physically close to them and probably won’t be for a few months
- [Microblog — 2020-03-17](https://p.atrick.org/2020/03/17/2020-03-17-04-04.md): Got inspired by Rafa’s Shortcut and whipped my own Apple Shortcut up to automate posting media and books to my Inbox from my iPhone. All I need is to select cov
- [Microblog — 2020-03-15](https://p.atrick.org/2020/03/15/2020-03-15-15-32.md): 🎥 Uncut Gems might be the most stressful and anxiety provoking film I’ve ever seen. Amazing on so many levels and the celebrity cameos were done in a way that
- [Microblog — 2020-03-13](https://p.atrick.org/2020/03/13/2020-03-13-13-49.md): Popular Science’s DIY hand sanitizer recipe: 1 cup of 99% isopropyl alcohol, 1 tablespoon of 3% hydrogen peroxide, 1 teaspoon of 98% glycerin, ¼ cup, 1 tablesp
- [This web designer gets his wings](https://p.atrick.org/2020/03/13/swift-for-web-designers.md): My first impressions of SwiftUI
- [Microblog — 2020-03-09](https://p.atrick.org/2020/03/09/2020-03-09-03-29.md): I hope we see more of this from the tech industry, which actually has the resources to put a dent in the detection effort despite our government’s ineptness: T
- [Microblog — 2020-03-06](https://p.atrick.org/2020/03/06/2020-03-06-14-04.md): Three lessons in on Design+Code’s SwiftUI course. SwiftUI’s layout engine feels really similar to auto layout in Figma.
- [Microblog — 2020-03-02](https://p.atrick.org/2020/03/02/2020-03-02-20-20.md): Useful dashboard for viewing the latest quant data for COVID-19 from Johns Hopkins CSSE. Desktop version and Mobile version available. The raw data is also avai
- [Microblog — 2020-02-25](https://p.atrick.org/2020/02/25/2020-02-25-01-35.md): Trying out Meng To's SwiftUI class.
- [Microblog — 2020-02-19](https://p.atrick.org/2020/02/19/2020-02-19-00-05.md): First time I’ve seen a pixel font in the wild in about a decade. I’m not mad at it either.
- [This modern what?](https://p.atrick.org/2020/02/17/new-site-who-dis.md): A new decade, a new site, and a new name
- [Microblog — 2020-02-15](https://p.atrick.org/2020/02/15/2020-02-15-22-45.md): Kinda love the “build the plane as you fly it” approach to making my personal site. The more things coalesce, the higher it flies.
- [Microblog — 2020-02-10](https://p.atrick.org/2020/02/10/2020-02-10-13-08.md): I’ve been sick for three weeks, the longest I can remember. Makes me wonder if my body is getting weaker or are the germs are getting stronger.
- [Some things I did in the 2010s](https://p.atrick.org/2020/01/03/what-i-did-in-the-2010s.md): Music, family, and a career
- [Microblog — 2019-09-27](https://p.atrick.org/2019/09/27/23145.md): 4 years at GitHub!
- [Microblog — 2018-08-13](https://p.atrick.org/2018/08/13/49313.md): Are there any examples of design education that focus on how to effectively utilize existing infrastructures vs. blow everything up and start over?
- [Microblog — 2018-08-09](https://p.atrick.org/2018/08/09/68214.md): 🤔 Does the long arc of the web bend toward non-bullshit? Link: The Bullshit Web
- [Microblog — 2018-08-08](https://p.atrick.org/2018/08/08/77329.md): “I love the smell of incremental correctness in the morning.” - Anonymous
- [Microblog — 2018-08-06](https://p.atrick.org/2018/08/06/55722.md): Zen and the art of website maintenance
- [Microblog — 2018-07-27](https://p.atrick.org/2018/07/27/74622.md): Wrote code for the first time in a while today. Feels like stretching.
- [DIY internet privacy](https://p.atrick.org/2018/03/27/diy-internet-privacy.md): Roll your own VPN for (almost) free
- [Microblog — 2018-03-21](https://p.atrick.org/2018/03/21/grand-designs.md): 📺 Grand Designs has become my new obsession.
- [Microblog — 2018-03-14](https://p.atrick.org/2018/03/14/84178.md): 👋🏻 I’m posting from the Micro.blog iOS app using the micropub API.
- [Here we go again](https://p.atrick.org/2018/03/14/here-we-go-again.md): Is the future of the web a network of independent sites?
- [Microblog — 2018-01-20](https://p.atrick.org/2018/01/20/hello-microblog.md): Hello, micro.blog!
- [Design GitHub, the product](https://p.atrick.org/2017/03/28/design-github.md): Shape the future of software development
- [Dear Last.fm,](https://p.atrick.org/2017/01/10/dear-last-fm.md): It’s been awhile. Seven years, actually
- [Hacking the font Stack](https://p.atrick.org/2016/11/28/hacking-the-font-stack.md): Explorations in a modern native fonts on the web
- [Introducing Tab Lab](https://p.atrick.org/2015/02/08/tab-lab.md): So, what’s stopping you? ... has been my mantra for the last six months. It's been in the back of my head from the first conceptual sketch, to the last code dep
- [Woodshedding](https://p.atrick.org/2014/10/30/woodshedding.md): When I was nine, I began learning how to play percussion. I started out studying in the school band program. By eleven, I was surprisingly still interested enou
- [Designing for Yourself](https://p.atrick.org/2014/09/11/designing-for-yourself.md): Redesigning my personal website has historically been a stressful process riddled with self-doubt. Designing for yourself is hard. It's hard for individuals, it
- [Prototyping Q&A](https://p.atrick.org/2013/12/11/prototyping-q-and-a.md): A few months ago Happy Cog™ released The Happy Cog Way, an instructional video series highlighting our methods and best practices. As part of this series I crea
- [The Russian Joe](https://p.atrick.org/2013/06/26/russian-joe.md): I was looking at some old photos on Flickr and came across this. It's from 2013's SXSW Interactive, at Easy Tiger, just before a sizable group of people consume
- [The Difference Between Money and Power](https://p.atrick.org/2013/02/27/the-difference-between-money-and-power.md): Such a waste of talent. He chose money over power, in this town a mistake nearly everyone makes. Money is the McMansion in Sarasota that starts falling apa
- [Building My Desk — Part Two: The Top](https://p.atrick.org/2013/02/13/building-my-desk-part-two-the-top.md): The conclusion to my desk building saga ended with a trip to Ikea, and the sanding, staining, and finishing of the tabletop. I would have never even considered
- [Building My Desk — Part One: The Frame](https://p.atrick.org/2013/01/14/building-my-desk-part-one-the-frame.md): Over the last week and a half, I designed and constructed a new desk for my home office. If you follow me on Instagram you might have seen some of the progress
- [How I Setup My Machine for Prototyping](https://p.atrick.org/2012/11/19/how-i-setup-my-machine-for-prototyping.md): A few weeks ago, I wrote a post for Cognition explaining my process for creating prototypes and how I arrived there. After being asked for more technical detail
- [First.](https://p.atrick.org/2012/10/24/first.md): I can't think of a better first post than to link you to something I wrote on Cognition.