Apr 3, 2021

Emojis, War, and Peace - Issue #7

By Benjamin Hollon • Issue #7 • View online

This week I’m excited to announce a brand new feature on my blog: Emoji Reactions! This is a quick and easy way to let me know what you think once you finish an article. I also released a review of War and Peace, which I’ve been reading since January.

New Blog Post: Emoji Reactions

Here’s a run-down of the new feature; how it works, why I made it the way I did, and some fun discussing Emojis. Also, it’s a great place to experiment with the new feature; I think you’ll like it!

New: Emoji Reactions | See With Eyes Closed

For the first time in a good while, I’ve released a completely new blog feature! Back in February, I did a redesign of the entire site from scratch with new (and better), but the blog got little attention and was mostly a recreation. Now it’s time to start adding new things. And to start off what I hope will be a good run of features is one I’ve been considering for a while now: Emoji Reactions. Today I’m going to walk you through the new feature and give you a summary of my design philosophy when creating it.

seewitheyesclosed.com • Share

Site Updates

Besides the awesome new Reactions, I also added a reference to a Bible verse to the footer of every page. It randomly picks from a list I hand it. Each time I add a feature to my site, I’ll also add a new verse for it to pick from.

I also fixed a feature with the Dark Mode: on mobile, the switch to pick between Dark and Light didn’t show up! Now it should.

War and Peace

This week, I finally finished War and Peace. I had a lot to say about this one, so I wrote it out in a Goodreads review here (don’t worry, there won’t be spoilers):

Benjamin Hollon’s review of War and Peace

So, War and Peace. It’s a big one, for sure. But I feel like it’s a lot shorter than people think it is. War and Peace has become our archetypal long b…

www.goodreads.com • Share

Current Projects

Character/Author Recognition - I’m experimenting with a couple of ideas. First, recognizing which Shakespeare character you talk like. One problem with this is that most people don’t talk anything like them (I picked Shakespeare because plays are really easy for code to parse). My other idea, which is probably more practicable, is to try and see what author your writing style is most like.
What’s really private? - I’m trying to put together a tool that’ll attempt to reveal to you everything websites can actually see about you. Most people don’t realize how much of their online lives are monitored. This might be a future blog post. If you know something browsers can collect that they shouldn’t be able to, please let me know!

Thought of the Week

At night our fear is strong…but in the morning, in the light, we find our courage again.

– Malala Yousafazi, I Am Malala

I analyzed this quote almost a year ago in a blog post titled “When the Sun Sets.”

Have a great week!

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By Benjamin Hollon

A weekly digest of my new blog posts, projects, and things I'm currently working on as well as just an eensy bit of plain old fun.

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