Designer of various things, sometimes developer, occasional writer. Design system nerd. User researcher.
CIS Ally. Trans rights are human rights. Black Lives Matter.
| Personal Site | https://stegrainer.com |
| UXcellence | https://uxcellence.com |
| Pronouns | he/him |
| Location | Richmond, VA |
Over the weekend, I sat down to write an essay. I wanted to express some thoughts on our current political, economic, and technological landscape. (Yeah, I know.) Even as I started to write, something changed in the writing. A couple of lines in a rhyming couplet stuck with me, and the more I thought about them, the more a poem evolved around them.
This is what tumbled out:
https://stegrainer.com/journal/2026/what-if
🔗 Optician Sans — A free font based on the historical eye charts and optotypes used by opticians
Theo Jansen’s Strandbeests (wind-powered kinetic sculptures) feel like something straight out of Studio Ghibli.
“Software cannot, in fact, eat this world. Software can reflect it; encroach upon it; more than anything, distract us from it. But the real physical world is indigestible.”
From Flood fill vs. the magic circle by Robin Sloan:
https://www.robinsloan.com/winter-garden/magic-circle/
I really enjoyed the first episode of Service Request, a podcast offshoot from 99% Invisible. The podcast focuses on the infrastructure, services, and the underlying systems that keep our society running. And the first episode was about the 311 service in New York City.
A city is deceptively simple. You flip a switch, and the lights come on. You turn a faucet, and water flows. You tap “buy,” and a package lands at your door. Usually, we don’t think about how these systems work, who keeps them running, or how we interact with them…it all feels effortless. But behind
🔗 Performance-Optimized Video Embeds with Zero JavaScript — A handy technique for performant, Javascript-free video embeds
https://frontendmasters.com/blog/performance-optimized-video-embeds-with-zero-javascript/
🔗 Beyond The Blur: A Quick Guide to the CSS Backdrop-Filter Property — A useful guide to how the backdrop-filter property works
https://www.alwaystwisted.com/articles/beyond-the-blur-css-backdrop-filter
