Looks super slick!

Pretty Thin Paddle!

Close up of the Edgeless Technology

Tacky Grip

Not like any other Selkirk Paddle

I've used Selkirk paddles for many years. When I went from the Amped line to the Vanguard line it was a pretty easy transition. Later, when I went from Vanguard to Vanguard 2.0 it was an even easier switch. These are great paddles and provide a lot of control, spin, and durability. Power is also good but probably where the Vanguard scores the lowest. The Vanguard Power Air, however, provides a lot of power and spin.

Coming From the Vanguard 2.0 Line

If you are like me and coming from the Vanguard 2.0 line be ready for a bit of a surprise. This isn't like going from a Vanguard to a Vanguard 2.0. This is a good thing. I'm super happy that Selkirk is spreading out and making paddles for other types of players. If you want more power in your game I would recommend you give this paddle solid consideration. Just be prepared to make some adjustments to account for the newly found power.

When it comes to spin I've found that the Power Air produces more spin than the Vanguard 2.0. Once adjustments can be made for the power this paddle provides I think the extra spin will help players control the ball. If you've got some extra top spin on the ball you'll keep more shots from going long.

Coming From Other Power Paddles

I have some friends that use power-type paddles. When they tried the Power Air they had very positive feelings. They mentioned how they still get the pop and power they were used to but now feel like they have more control and spin over their current paddle. If you're a player who likes power in your game but are finding you need just a bit more control you need to check out the Power Air.

Overall

Selkirk has made a paddle to fit a type of player that wouldn't look at the control paddles of the Vanguard line. I love how Selkirk keeps innovating and pushing the limits of what can be built into a pickleball paddle. If you're in my area and want to give this paddle a shot send me a message. I've got a demo waiting for you.

Looks super slick!

20mm Thick!

Close up of the Edgeless Technology

Tacky Grip

The Thickest Paddle Ever

This paddle is 20mm thick making it the thickest paddle on the market. My initial reaction to this was that it would be a super control paddle since power paddles are typically thinner. Now that I'd had a chance to hit with it though I can say that that isn't true. This paddle is a power AND a control paddle. It is a really good balance. I'd say the Vanguard 2.0 paddles are control paddles while the Vanguard Power Air is a Power paddle and this one is right in the middle.

Spin

Oh man! The spin on this paddle is crazy. I can generate plenty of topspin on my dinks, drops, drives, and serves. The first time I played a game with this paddle the opposing team was getting mad because my serve would jump towards them after it bounced.

Coming From the Vanguard 2.0 Line

If you are like me and coming from the Vanguard 2.0 line this will be an easy switch. The 003 feels like a Vanguard 2.0 but with more spin and more power. With any paddle change, there is some adjustment time but I don't feel this will be long at all. As a long-time Vanguard player, I find this paddle to be a great evolution to a new level.

A Note On Weight

When I first got this paddle it felt incredibly light. I added some lead tape around the edges until I was happy with the feel. This is a personal preference. You can add as much lead tape as you want until it feels comfortable. For me, the paddle feels even better with some added weight.

Durability

I've used this paddle in quite a few games over the past few weeks. I'm glad to see that Selkirk was able to keep the technology from the Vanguard 2.0 on the paddle face. I don't see any nicks in the sweet spot where there is repeated hitting.

Overall

Selkirk has made a paddle to push the boundaries even farther giving players more spin and more power while not giving up on control. If you're a long-time Selkirk player who loves your control you will love the 003 paddle because it will give you more pop and more spin. If you've never used a Selkirk paddle before this paddle is a great place to start. If you're in my area shoot me a message and you can demo it!

I was skeptical if I'd stick with this goal. I know that's not the best way to start a new goal. I've just never been excited about weight lifting. I can report, though, that I have learned to enjoy it!

Progress

It's been 14 weeks since I started lifting. Covid hit me about week 5. I did nothing that week. So with that, I've worked out 5 days a week for 13 weeks. For the first two weeks, I was incredibly sore! Once that wore off I continue to feel the soreness, but not in a way like the first two weeks. I've kept a log of what exercises I do and how much weight I do. I have been able to increase the weight a little and that feels great.

Diet

I eat a lot more than I did before. I eat mostly protein. Chicken, greek yogurt, cottage cheese, and beef jerky are some of the things I eat regularly now. It's fun because I now eat with another purpose besides being hungry. I eat to fuel my workout and to help recovery. It's enjoyable.

Gym

I still don't want to go to the gym. I just use my adjustable dumbbells at home and work out when I have time. I have found this just works for me. If you're interested in the setup I have you can see everything in my original post.

A critical part of progression in pickleball is drilling. For many of us, drilling isn't as fun as playing games. I get it. However, I've learned to enjoy drilling. I've found that drilling starts well before you get on the court. Here are a few things that have helped me get in to drilling and really enjoy it.

Pick a skill to focus on

You know your game well. You know which shots you don't like to hit and which ones are your weapons. Maybe you miss to many backhands, or your hand speed needs to be quicker. Find an area in your game that feels weak and pick that.

Watch the pros

Before running off to the court to drill, it's important to know what you should be doing to make your selected skill better. The Selkirk TV app is great for this step. They have many lessons and pro matches there. If there is a lesson about the skill you want to work on, watch that numerous times. Another thing I like to do is watch pro matches. When I see one of them hitting the shot I've chosen to focus on, I focus on that part of the match. I'll watch it over and over. Sometimes it's only a few seconds long. I take note of their footwook, stroke motion, and more. This helps me create a clear mental model of what I should be doing to improve my selected skill.

Court time

Now that you have a skill to work on and a clear mental model of what you need to do to improve that skill it's time to hit the court. It's time to get reps. The great part about drilling is you don't need to think about the score, who your partner is, or anything else. You should only be thinking about executing that skill you've studied. After you've hit a good amount of reps, it might be helpful to have someone video you hitting the shot. Once the drill session is over, go back to that pro level match you studied and compare how you looked. Take note of any adjustments needed, and then work on that next time.

Following this process has helped me learn to enjoy drilling more. I enjoy having a purpose in my drill sessions. I hope this helps.

I've always been a little guy. Many times I've been told that I should start to lift some weights and I'd have fun and see some results quickly. I never listened. I hated the gym environment. I didn't like traveling to the gym, and why would I use time doing that when I could play pickleball? But that being said, sometimes I get that itch to try something new. When that feeling comes it's usually related to something web development related, like a new language or a new javascript framework. This time I had the feeling to give lifting weights a try.

Equipment

I knew I wouldn't go to the gym, so I started looking at home options. I was told I could work out every muscle group with some dumbbells. But getting a set of those was expensive! In my hunt, I discovered adjustable dumbbells. I didn't know that was a thing. I found an older model of a Weider 55lb adjustable dumbbell and got it. The newer model looks like this. I picked up a cheap workout bench on Amazon and I was on my way.

Program

Now I had to find a program to follow. I wanted one easy enough for a beginner but could transition into something more difficult over time. I found this program online. I'm doing program one now and will build up to program three.

So far so good

I'm two weeks in now, and I like it. I can work at home with no one else around. I don't have to travel. I can start when it's convenient for me. Most importantly, doing this hasn't gotten in the way of pickleball.

I needed to bring someone their paddle they left on the bench during play one time. Once I picked it up, I noticed how different it felt. It was much heavier in the head than mine. The weight distribution on my paddle is pretty balanced. Picking up my friend's paddle got me thinking about a few things. How would I play if my paddle was more head-heavy? How would I play if my paddle was heavier, but the weight was balanced? Time to play around with lead tape.

By using lead tape, you can manipulate the weight of your paddle. It is completely legal. I ordered this from Amazon, and when it arrived I started by putting two strips on the top half of the paddle. It went from one side, up around the top, and down to the equal point on the other side. I then removed those strips and put two strips on the sides and not on the top side of the paddle. After a while, I then moved them one more time down to both sides of the throat of the paddle. I found that the tape on the top gave me more spin but was a bit harder to control. The tape on the throat gave me more control, and the paddle felt more like what I was used to. When the tape was only on the sides of the paddle I also got more spin but I found it easier to control. I had to loosen up my grip a lot and just let the weight of the paddle roll through the ball. I've left it on the sides of the paddle but I added a third strip. I like it a lot. It gives me some more power and spin. I was able to get used to it quickly. Once you find out where you like the lead just cover it up with some black electrical tape.

If you have never experimented with lead tape I suggest you give it a go. It is super easy to move around so you can find what you like.

I've used the Mach6 paddle since it was released. I even used the Power version for a few months when it was available. Ultimately, I came back to the Hybrid version. The latest version is the Vanguard 2, and it is amazing! It comes with everything I love from the Vanguard 1. It is golden when it comes to touch and control. I can place the ball wherever I want. The third shot drop feels so good with the Vanguard line.

Rolling some forehands cross-court!

Textured Surface

The main difference I have seen between the Vanguard 1 and 2 is the surface texture of the paddle. The Vanguard 2 has more texture on the paddle face. This allows me to generate a lot more spin. When I first hit with the Vanguard 2 it took me off guard and took me a few games to adjust but after that, I fell in love with how easy I could generate more spin.

Long Lasting

Another awesome difference is that over time there are no scuffs in the paddle face. The Vanguard 1 would show when it had been used a lot. I've been playing with the Vanguard 2 for a while now, and it doesn't show the same wear. I also hear from others that use different brands of paddles that the spin wears off quickly over time as the texture on the paddle face wears away. I see none of that with my Mach 6. I can still easily generate the spin I want, even after weeks of heavy use.

Very minimal wear on the surface after many weeks of heavy use!

Other Shape Options

I highly recommend the Vanguard 2 line of paddles. I use the Mach6 because I have a two-handed backhand. If you don't have a two-handed backhand you might look at the Epic or the Invikta.

Olympic Pickleball is a game I adjusted from a tennis game I used to run when I was teaching tennis full time. It's a lot of fun and can be played when you have only one court but more than four players. It works best with 7 players but you can play with 6 or 8 as well. You also need one person feeding the balls.

There is a winning side of the court and a challenging side. The goal is to stay on the winning side as long as possible. When on the winning side you and your partner start on the baseline. The challengers start at the kitchen line. The other challenging teams that are not playing wait just outside the playable area. They need to be ready to jump in because a rotation only take a minute or so. The feeding person feeds a ball to the team on the winning side and the point starts. They can drive, drop, lob, or whatever. If they lose two points in a row, they are out, and the challenging team runs around to take their place. The team that was just replaced comes around and gets in the back of the challenger line. As the new winners are running over the next challenging team takes their spot at the kitchen line. The challengers get out if they lose two points. They don't have to be two points in a row. If a team seems to stay on the winning side for a long time the feeding person can get creative with the feeds to make that first shot harder. The last rule is that if a clean winner is hit, the team that didn't touch the ball is automatically out no matter which side of the court they are on.

Next time you have only one court and 6-8 people that want to play, give it a go. It helps to have a large basket of balls for this one.

Where everyone is positioned at the start of each point.

We had to re-surface our pickleball court. You can read about why we had to re-surface the court in the first place here. The concrete was acid washed, and the court surface material was re-applied. Everything went great. We also had a light installed while we were at it. We did change the gray to green, and we like the look of that. We've missed having the court right here so much. Let the drilling, games, and lessons commence.

All pickleball players have felt the tightness that can come during an important match. You will be playing loose and feeling great during rec play, and when you walk onto the court for a tournament and the feeling changes. Tightness starts to creep in. For most of us, this doesn't happen in every tournament, but when it does it is hard to shake off. I started to wonder why this happens in the first place. My research lead me to the book The Inner Game of Tennis by W. Timothy Gallwey.

The message of this book is amazing and I can't encompass it all here but I hope to convince here that this book is worth your time. The message of Inner Game of Tennis is not just about tennis. Everything touched on in this book can be equally applied to pickleball or other areas of life. Gallwey covers topics about focusing your mind so you can overcome distractions and self-doubt. In contrast, we've all had those moments when you've played out of your mind. He touches on why that happens and how you can make that happen whenever you want.

Gallwey explains that there are two selves at work here. Self 1 is the critical self who is often condescending and always giving directions about what went wrong and what to do to fix things. Self 2 will get the job done, and when not pressured by Self 1, allow you to play your best. The book covers strategies for quieting Self 1 and allowing Self 2 to just be in the moment and play.

I have put his strategies to work and found wonderful results. It is a book that I will read multiple times to help make the principles stick and become second nature. I highly recommend this book not just for pickleball but for how you look at challenges and life in general.

I've always enjoyed created abstract art with code or design tools. I remember a course I took in college where we had to create pieces of art and only use digital means. This was during a time where a lot of things were hand drawn or scanned in. It was a lot of fun to push the boundries with digital design tools. I still enjoy creating digial art today. Here are a few doodles I've made while blending together various shapes with different types of blur effects on them. I'm using Pixelmator to create these. I've drawn a few random shapes and them I'm applying the zoom blur to them and overlapping the shapes in interesting ways.

It's a sad day. It has been raining a lot, and we've got some bubbles appearing on the court. After some investigating, the people who installed the court have learned they should have acid washed the concrete before placing down the court material. The court surface needs to be pulled up now. Then the concrete can be properly acid washed. Once the concrete is washed, the court surface gets re-applied. The games and lessons will have to be put on hold for a little bit. We don't have to pay for the re-application we just have to wait for it to be complete.

I've found this tool to be quite useful when I just need a quick converstion to rem. For most of the applications I work on we have a modular scale built in that handles most of the sizing but sometimes I just need to convert a px from a design tool to it's rem equivelant. This tool is just for that. Keep in mind when using this you need to know what your base is set to to get an acurate result.

This week was the Utah State Campionship Round Robin tournament. This tournament can be a long one since it is a round robin. I like these tournaments because you get a lot of play time no matter how things go. I partnered up with Joe Zaleski and we played in the Men's 35+ 5.0 bracket. We played really well and didn't loose a match. Our second to last round was a super close one. Each round went to 21. We were down 13-19 but ended up winning 22-20. We played tough and got a nice run there at the end. Huzzah!

When we built this house, I was not interested in pickleball. We did have a large concrete slab poured on the side of the house because we didn't want to take care of a large yard, and we wanted a place to place basketball and other games. Once I fell in love with pickleball I knew we had to turn this space into a court. We found someone qualified to do the work and got started.

Black Layer

Blue Layer

Gray Layer

We use this court just about every day. My wife and I drill on it a lot. The kids have the neighbors over and they go at it as well. There is a tennis game called Olympic Tennis that I ran all the time back when I taught tennis that I've adapted to work for pickleball. The kids love this one with their friends. I explain how to play on a different post.

We've been able to do some lessons and clinics here, and it has been great. All you locals are welcome to come to play or if you want a lesson let me know.

Sharing code on the social media can be a pain. The best way I've found is with an image. Well the fine people at Raycast have made a tool to make this easy. You can make all kinds of tweaks. No matter what you choose though the output always looks nice. Give it a try.

As many of you know, I play a lot of pickleball. Sometimes too much. It's just such an amazing sport. For a few years now I've used Selkirk paddles. My first paddle was an S2. When I wore through that one I switched to an Invika, and then an Epic. Now I play with a Mach6. I've also got some Selkirk shirts and I have blogged about those before. All in all, I'm very familiar with Selkirk products. I've never had a bad experience with anything Selkirk.

Spreading Pickleball and Selkirk

If people ask about my gear I would always say how pleased I was about Selkirk products. People would often ask me which shape of paddle they should get next. They would probably ask me because they knew I've used most of them before. A friend asked me one day if I was on the Selkirk team. I said no and he responded that I should apply. So I did! They accepted and I'm so excited to help grow the sport of pickleball with Selkirk! If you are in the southern Utah area and want to try out some paddles I have some waiting.

Those of you that know me well know that I'm not a traveler. My version of a vacation is hiking close to home, some pickleball, and some ice cream. My dad, however, has always wanted to fish in Alaska. He has never been able to do that. My brother-in-law loves to travel and is always booking vacations for my sisters family. My sister nudged him to plan the boys a fishing trip to Alaska. Within a day he had it all booked out and planned. Now that is my kind of vacation planning. I didn't have to do a thing!

River Fishing

River fishing was a blast. We had a guide and he took us down the river. He stopped us in spots and told us where to cast. Live bait isn't allowed so we would cast and reel back in quickly. We were fishing for salmon. My dad caught four before anyone else caught a single one. I ended up getting two. It was amazing.

A super happy dad

River fishing was my favorite

Deep Sea Fishing

🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢
That's how this part of the trip was for me. I was so sick the entire time. I did catch two halibut, two rockfish, and one cod. I don't remember much of it. I was just so sick. My dad, brother, and bro-in-law weren't nearly as sick.

We each caught two of these halibut

Chased By A Bear

On the third day of the trip, we went to a national park to see a large glacier and do some hiking. My brother and I got on a trail just off the highway. A bear trotted onto the trail just ahead of us. He looked at us and went up the trail away from us. We proceeded slowly only to then see him running back towards us! Since we were so close to the road we went back that way. The bear stopped after a bit and went on down the hill off the trail. Turns out once he left us he ran into two other hikers so he turned around and ran back towards us. We had pinned the bear between two groups of hikers. Yikes.

We got one shot of the bear as he came on to the trail

Glad To Be Home

It was an amazing trip. No pickleball happened but I did get some ice cream and hiking.

Man, it's hard to think that I'm actually leaving Uplynk (Verizon, Aol, Oath, Verizon Media). I imagined numerous times that I'd stick with this time until the end of my career. That is saying something since before Uplynk I didn't say over 2 years at any company. All the people I worked directly with at Uplynk are absolutely amazing! The projects I got to work on in the streaming world were fun and exciting. I'm glad I got to be part of the work we did. It was an amazing journey.

So Why Am I Leaving?

To be honest I'm a little unsure about where the future of the company is going. Verizon sold us to Apollo and it's unsure exactly where they will take the company. I also started to realize just how long I'd been in this position and I started to think about stretching my wings somewhere else. Then I heard about PlutoTV and about a position that would be right up my ally. I decided to check it out and that eventually lead to me accepting a position at Pluto TV.

What Will I Be Doing At PlutoTV

I'll be building an extensive component library from the ground up in React for their internal tools to use. This type of work excites me a lot! I've worked on Bindable off and on over the years while juggling regular work. Now I'll be able to focus all of my time working on and maintaining a component library. I'm really excited. Onward!

The Midnight Heist is a pickleball tournament run by the city of St. George. During regular play, the lights turn off at 10:30 PM. For this tournament, they keep the light on until all the games have finished. It could end up being long into the early morning hours of the next day when things finally finish up. This is fun because temperatures here easily go over 100 degrees. Playing at night makes this a little more bearable.

Battling against friends

I partnered up with Joe Zaleski. The tournament was a relaxing time with friends because we knew everyone in the bracket. There were only four teams. The format was a round-robin and then we were seeded for a single-elimination tournament. We went undefeated in the round-robin phase. In the tournament part, we played Jason Weidman and Jason Ayotte in the final. They ended up taking us down in that match-up. There were some close games and it was a lot of fun.

Good times with pickleball friends

I'm on the pickleball court a lot. Sometimes six times a week. The weather where I live is very hot. In the summer we get over 100 every day. I usually play in the early mornings or later at night. In the winter I'll play during the day. Why am I bringing all this up? Well, I sweat a lot when playing. A lot of the athletic shirts I have used will stick to me because of the sweat. It is a pet peeve to have my shirts pulling at me while chasing down a ball. I've got three Selkirk shirts, and I reach for them all the time because they don't stick. They breathe and help keep me cool. They also look fantastic. I have the Amped shirts which they don't sell anymore (I'm wearing one on my home page), but I know their newer shirts are just as good. You can shop for them here. The new TM brand will be what I will grab next. Go get some for yourself!

Folks often mention the links on this website after they have had some time to poke around. People like how the underline doesn't go through the descenders of the text. Or they will say they enjoy the small animation. I thought I'd write a post about how I did this. I need to point out that everything I'll be talking about works great in Chrome, Edge, and Firefox. Safari links look just fine, but they look a bit different. More on that below.

text-underline-offset

I find that the css property text-underline-offset isn't used that often. It allows you set the distance the underline appears from the text. You'll need to have text-decoration set to underline if this isn't happening already. It will take any valid length with a specified unit. Negative values are accepted as well. text-underline-offset works in all of the major browsers.

a {
    text-underline-offset: 0.5em;
}

A thicker underline

On this website, I have thickened up the underline. I did this with the text-decoration property.

a {
    text-decoration: underline 0.15em;
}

The second value in the text-decoration property is not supported in Safari, so it will just have the standard size.

Animating the underline

I set the text-underline-offset property to be a custom property, --offset. I registered this custom property by using @property. Doing so will register the property for me to set later. Then we change the value of --offset on hover.

@property --offset {
    syntax: '<length>';
    inherits: false;
    initial-value: 0;
}

a{
    text-underline-offset: var(--offset, 0.1em);
    transition: --offset 300ms;
}

a:hover{
    --offset: 0.2em;
}

Running a transition on the text-underline-offset property won't work in Safari, so the underline doesn't animate smoothly.

See this post on css-irl.info for a lot more details.

John Dilworth was a professor of mine in college. He once told me to always keep an updated portfolio. My website had not been updated in quite some time, so I set out to give it a refresh. I did the design work over a year ago but never got around to building it.

Page Transitions

I designed the site to have small page transitions between pages. At the time, I had no idea how that could be accomplished. I'm glad I never got around to building this website until now because I don't think I could have used the transition library called Swup. I stumbled upon it when researching how to do modern page transitions. It's dead simple to get some page transitions going using CSS. I found I needed some more control over the page transitions, so I went with the javascript version of Swup. Using the javascript Swup plugin also let me use Green Sock to make things smooth.

Static Site Generator 11ty

I knew I wanted to build a static site and not use some CMS. I tested a few static site generators out. I found 11ty to be easy to use and powerful enough to allow me to do what I wanted with this website. The templating was easy for me to understand. I'm using Nunjucks for the templating. One thing I knew I needed to handle well was images. I have a large hero image at the top of each page and portfolio images for each project. Serving the correct image size for different devices was going to get complicated. I knew I wanted to use the element, but I didn't want to set it up separately for each image. Luckily 11ty has an image plugin that will do all this for me. I use the top sample in my templates and the bottom code sample gets rendered.

{% headerimage intro.image, intro.imageAlt, "100vw" %}

<picture>
    <source type="image/webp" srcset="/img/b7d66153-300.webp 300w, /img/b7d66153-600.webp 600w, /img/b7d66153-900.webp 900w, /img/b7d66153-1200.webp 1200w, /img/b7d66153-1800.webp 1800w, /img/b7d66153-2000.webp 2000w, /img/b7d66153-3500.webp 3500w" sizes="100vw">
    <source type="image/jpeg" srcset="/img/b7d66153-300.jpeg 300w, /img/b7d66153-600.jpeg 600w, /img/b7d66153-900.jpeg 900w, /img/b7d66153-1200.jpeg 1200w, /img/b7d66153-1800.jpeg 1800w, /img/b7d66153-2000.jpeg 2000w, /img/b7d66153-3500.jpeg 3500w" sizes="100vw">
    <img alt="Luke Larsen UX + Front End" loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="/img/b7d66153-300.jpeg" width="3500" height="2517">
</picture>

Lighthouse Score

Lighthouse is a service that will rate a website on performance, accessibility, best practices, and SEO. I worked hard to get this score up. Yay!

Huzzah!

Blog

I have a good amount of posts I need to bring over. I hope to do that over time.

It will help if you read the previous posts about this subject. You can find them here:
New Mach6 Paddle
Bithday Mach6 Paddle

Hybrid vs Power

After a few months of using the Power version of the Mach6, I have decided that the Power version isn't for me. At least not right now. It might be later in my pickleball journey when I get more experience. Right now, the touch and control that I get from the Hybrid version is something I can't pass up. The Hybrid model seems to absorb a lot of the ball so I can control where I place it on the court. The Power version gave me a lot of added power and was quite useful, but when I got in tricky situations where I needed to reset, the Hybrid did it for me. I'll get better at resetting and the soft game and give the Power version another try later down the road.

Selkirk is amazing

I need to give a quick shout-out to Selkrik. They have superb customer experience and have always been a pleasure to work with. I can't recommend them enough!

Flexbox has supported gap as a way to add spacing between flexbox items for a while. We didn't have support in Safari for the gap property until just recently. Safari 14.1 now supports it! What this means is that our CSS can get cleaner!

What does it look like

The syntax is super simple. The great thing about gap is that it handles wrapping. Your flex container will wrap the children, and the spacing will be nice and orderly.

.flex{
    display: flex;
    gap: 15px;
}

What we had to do before

Before the Safari update, we had to add one of the fixes to get spacing correct on wrapping children.

The lobotomized owl

Kind of a crazy name. It fits. It looks like this:

.flex > * + * {
    margin-left: 15px;
}

The simple way to think about this is that it applies to all but the first child of .flex. The bad thing about this one is that it also doesn't work on wrapping children. Once things start to go to the second row, they will still have the correct spacing.

Negative Margins

This method will get things working with children items, but we have to wrap everything in a new container with overflow: hidden; applied to it. Beware, this will cause problems if you need overflow to show. It looks like this.

.wrapper{
    overflow: hidden;
}

.flex{
    display: flex;
    flex-wrap: wrap;
    margin: -15px 0 0 -15px;
}

.flex > * {
    margin: 15px 0 0 15px;
}

Conclusion

As you can see, the gap property is much better than what we had to do before. No hacking, no trade-off. It just works.

The copy, move, and delete commands in Vim routine. I usually move my cursor to the line I want to run the command on, then type the command.

dd
yy

What I'd like to get better at

What I'd like to get better at is running these commands without moving my cursor. The commands are pretty simple. I just have to get my mind in the habit of doing it.

Copy lines

Without moving your cursor you can run the copy command to target a line and place it below your current cursor. This is great because you don't have to move your cursor down to the line you want to yank it. This command will copy line 20 and paste it on line 30.

:20co30

:t is an alias for :co so you can shorten it to:

:20t30

Move lines

If you want to take line 20 out of where it is now and place it at line 10 you can run this:

:20m10

Delete lines

I can see myself using this one the most. If my cursor is on line 3 and I want to delete lines 7 through 10 I can run:

7,10d

What can happen after the command is run is your cursor could get moved. Run '' to get back to your previous position.

Paying attention to line numbers

I think in order for me to get used to this I'm going to have to pay attention to the line numbers more often. I hope this helps or motivates someone to incorporate something new into their workflow.

I am all for paying for a good font! However, sometimes you need a free font for a project. Many free fonts are not great, and when you go looking for free fonts the search can become painful. I've been in this spot before. I wasn't looking for a free font at the moment, but I saw this blog post come across my Twitter feed. It shows free alternatives for the most popular pro fonts. This post might come in handy when you start that next project.

Learn UI Blog

Zion National Park is beautiful. It is full of breathtaking hikes. For most of the hikes, you can show up at the park and go. A few you need to get a permit to hike. The Subway hike is one of those. My sister was able to get some permits, so off we went. It isn't a difficult hike, but it is long. It is 9.1 miles in total. You'll want to block off the entire day and back in food and a lot of water. The end of the hike has a pretty steep upward hike. That is the most difficult part of the hike. There are some areas where you can repel if you want. You can also use a rope to help you down the rock. Here are some of the photos from the adventure. I highly recommend visiting Zion National Park if you get the chance.

View at the beginning

Start of the Subway tunnel

Mini rappel or rope climb

Leaving the Subway Tunnel

When writing CSS, we often need to make classes for various variants. An example of this might be setting some spacing inside a component. You might have classes like this:

.component{
    background: white;
    border: solid 1px blue;
}

.component--spacing-large{
    margin-bottom: 24px;
}

.component--spacing-medium{
    margin-bottom: 12px;
}

.component--spacing-small{
    margin-bottom: 6px;
}

Depending on how many different spacings you need, you could end up with a lot of classes.

A different approach

I decided to try this when making the layout components for Bindable. I didn't want to have all the classes it would take to give me all the sizing options. I wasn't even sure if all those classes would get used in HTML. The different approach uses CSS Custom Properties.

.component{
    --component-spacing: 12px;
    background: white;
    border: solid 1px blue;
    margin-bottom: var(--component-spacing);
}

<div
    class="component"
    style="--component-spacing: 24px"
>
    ...
</div>

If you need the default spacing, you wouldn't need the style attribute in your HTML. But now, you can set that spacing to be whatever you want for each specific use case. A new CSS class for new variants is not needed. This general idea is used heavily in the layout components for Bindable.

Masting Vim Quickly is a book by Jovica Ilik. I have been using Vim for serveral years and I learned a lot when I got started. I've developed some good habits and some bad ones in Vim. I saw Jovica post a few things on Twitter about Vim and he motivated me to get better at Vim. I signed up for his newsletter and I learn something from each newsletter he sends out. I recently bought his book and have been very impressed with the content. It is full of nuggets that have helped me change my Vim habits for the better. If you are new to Vim and want to give it a go I highly recommend this book. If you want to learn some new things in Vim this book will also help you do that.

Links

• Jovica on Twitter
• Masting Vim Quickly

It might help to read my initial post about the Mach6 paddle before reading this post. I should also point out that there are two different makes of the Selkirk Vanguard paddles. One is called Hybrid and the other Power. The Hybrid is the line that will feel more like the previous Amped line. The Power series is much thinner and is geared towards experienced players. It can bring a lot of power to your game.

Surpises

I must admit that when it comes to birthday presents for myself and for my wife we don't surprise each other much. We ask the other what they are wanting and then go with that. The Power version of the Mach6 was coming out soon but not yet available for purchase. I wanted to give it a try when it did release. When the evening of my birthday came around, my wife handed me a box. I was floored when I opened it up to find the Power Version of the Mach6! She had contacted Riley Newman on Instagram and was able to buy a paddle from him! Huzzah!

A lot more power

When I compare the Power and Hybrid versions, the Power model does give a lot more power. It's fun to see all the extra oomph you get by just switching paddles. I'm a little worried about the touch game, but I'm going to stick with it to see if I can get accustomed to the paddle.

Best birthday present ever

This hike overlooks my home down. It is easy and great for the kids. Throughout the hike, you can look down at the city, which makes for some great views. It is only 2.7 miles long. My gang had a lot of fun on this one.

We found a little cave

We made it to the end

I grew up playing tennis. I have a two-handed backhand in tennis. One thing that has been rough for me transitioning to pickleball has been getting topspin off the backhand side. Getting topspin has been rough for me on both dinks and high balls. When I started playing pickleball, I would slice everything that came to my backhand. Hitting underspin was just fine, but as I got better, it became apparent that I need to learn to hit some topspin.

One hand or two

I had years of muscle memory hitting topspin backhands with two hands and slice with one hand. Pickleball paddle handles are much smaller than tennis racket handles. For this reason, I never really used two hands. It was hard to get both hands comfortably on the handle. I was using the Selkirk Epic at the time. At this point, this paddle and the Invikta had the longest handle out of all the paddles Selkirk made. Engage has the Maverick paddle with an even longer handle, and I tried it. My hands could fit great on the handle!! But I did not like the paddle itself.

Injury

I decided to go all-in with a two-handed backhand, even if I couldn't fit my hands great on the Selkirk Epic handle. I choked down with my right hand and made it work. It felt great to hit topspin backhands with two hands. I couldn't ever get the power I wanted with one hand. Over a few months, I started to get pain in between some fingers on my left hand. The spot with the pain was where the finger was right up against the paddle. The pain got bad enough that I switched back to the Engage Maverick paddle with the longer handle. The pain went away because my fingers were not resting up against the paddle. I was not happy though. It did not have the Selkirk feel.

Mach6 Time

• • It was at this time Selkirk released their Mach6 paddle. I was excited about it! I stayed up on the night of release so I could order one as soon as they were available. This paddle was all I dreamed of. My hands fit so comfortably on the handle, and it had the amazing Selkirk feel. If you have a two-handed backhand, you will love this paddle. I cannot recommend it enough.
• • 

  The New Hybrid Mach6 from Selkirk

I used Sublime Text for a long time and had no problems with it. Then I watched a video tutorial about javascript. The teacher wasn't even talking about Vim. I got to see him write code, and I watched him move around in his editor. I was floored. What wizardry is this? That was about 7 years ago.

Since then I have read books, watched videos, re-written my .vimrc over and over, and learned a lot about Vim. People frequently ask me, "Aren't you a UX designer and CSS guy? Why do you use Vim?!" My answer is always the same. It makes me write CSS and other code faster. At first, I was slow, and I made a lot of mistakes. I kept Sublime close at hand for when I need to just get stuff done. Over time though I needed Sublime less and less. You will often hear Vim users tell others to just give it a chance, and after a while, you will want to use Vim everywhere and not just for coding. It is true. I do wish I could use Vim in more places. And yes, if you stick with it, I think most people would love Vim.

Other options besides the terminal

VSCode

I have been using VSCodeVim in VS Code because of this beautiful VS Code theme. So if you have a theme or a feature that you can't do without, install the VSCodeVim.

Stuff even glows!

OniVim

I'm excited about the OniVim project. It aims to bring real Vim into an editor like VS Code. We can take all the goodness that comes from VS Code and also use Vim with all its features.

Other links

• Vim Casts
• Masting Vim Quickly
• My Vim configuration

There is a small hike close by my house where you can find some dinosaur tracks. The tracks are at the beginning, but the rest of the trail is fun as well. We made an afternoon of it. If you are interested in a good trail to mountain bike on this one is good for that as well.

We found the dino tracks

What the trail looked like