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While on a short road trip and then recovering from surgery, I hand quilted and hand embroidered a linen lilypad quilt. And yes, I did make this little quilt for my Frinos plush from Hades II to have a nice place to rest.
I've worked out of a handful of different community studios at this point, so I figured I'd share a (probably incomplete) list of you might want to consider when picking a community ceramics studio for your practice. Cost, location, value: I'm not going to comment too much on this as costs vary highly depend on what city/metro area/etc. you're in and you best understand what value you'll get and what you can afford. That said, if you live somewhere walkable and are planning on making at home, you might want somewhere you can walk to or get to with fewer transfers or shorter walking to make transporting fragile greenware simpler. Regardless of your budget, it's good to know all the costs up front: class tuition, membership fees, open studio time fees, firing fees, materials costs, etc. Also, if you live somewhere with a high demand for community ceramics studio access, you may not get to be that picky if you want to start sooner! Equipment and space: What equipment is provided? What condition is it in? How many wheels? How many wheels per member? How many wheels per student? Is there a slab roller? What size? Do they have dedicated canvases or mats for different color clay bodies? Which do you use if you use a non-studio claybody (if you're allowed). Is there an extruder? Which extruder dies does the studio have? Can you use your own if you buy more or make custom dies? What are the policies for who gets to use what equipment and training? Stricter policies usually means equipment will be in good condition, but only if it's enforced. Ask about how often equipment has needed repair and how to report issues, even if they have good policies. What do the workspaces look like? How much space is generally available per person? What kinds of chairs and stools are provided? Are stools at wheels adjustable? Are there bricks or similar available for resting feet on if that helps your wheel positioning? Are handbuilding and glaze area seats comfortable for you? What height are those work areas/chairs? This may not seem very important, but standing height tables can be much less comfortable if you're primarily going to sit. What does your storage space look like? Are shelves shared or do you get dedicated space? How much capacity and weight work on the shelves and how does that fit into your practice? Remember you may be storing tools and clay/reclaim as well as works in progress. There can be lots of politics around shelves - ideal ones are neither too high nor too low, all else equal, and can be very competitive to get. Highest shelves may also be highly coveted since you may be able to stack things very high and store more! How easy is it to move around the studio? How easy is it to get your pieces from the storage space to the working areas to the places where you set them to fire? Are there separate spaces for members and students? Even if there are dedicated student classrooms, do additional classes spill over into other areas or shared areas? How frequently? Is this information easy to find out before you get to the studio? Does the studio provide bats and wareboards? Remember, even if bats and wareboards are provided, you may want to bring your own that you can keep in better condition or have different properties. Are there shared studio tools? What condition are they in? Is there communal newspaper? Communal plastic for slowing down drying? Newspaper is easy to get yourself, but dry cleaning bags are hard to buy in individual-use quantities. Materials: What are the studio claybodies? Do they fit well in your practice? Are they smooth or groggy enough? Which colors of claybodies are available? How durable and food safe are they? Will they reach vitrification and achieve low absorption rates if you're making dinnerware or other vessels intended to hold water? Is clay communal or do you purchase your own? If so, does the studio reclaim for you or is it communal practice? What is done to ensure reclaim isn't short? If clay is not provided, can you buy it at the studio? 25 pound blocks of clay are heavy and annoying to transport if you walk, bike, and take transit everywhere like I do, so this can be a big deal! Can you do agateware/neriage/nerikomi? (Make sure you're doing this with compatible clays, of course.) This question is especially relevant if clay is communal as you cannot simply throw blended clay blocks into reclaim bins for a single clay as this would create a new claybody unexpectedly. Maybe you are required to reclaim yourself, maybe there's a miscellaneous reclaim, or maybe they accept a small amount of loss (remember you can minimize this by ensuring you use all your blocks up - the end can usually be wedged up into a new claybody and made into a little pinch cup or bowl worst case). Can you use outside claybodies? If yes, what's the approval process? Even if you are not personally interested in using outside claybodies, it's good to ask as free-for-alls can result in low fire clays melting all over shelves and ruin other people's work at hotter temperatures. Does the studio provide decorating slips and underglaze? If they don't provide, can you bring your own in? What's the approval process? Can you make your own decorating slips or colored claybodies with Mason stains or oxides? What's the approval process? What are the studio glazes? Are they clearly labeled as food safe vs. not? If multiple claybodies are common in the studio, how many glazes fit each and is this clearly labeled? Are there test tiles for every studio glaze on each studio claybody? Are there any test tiles for glaze combinations? Reminder that test tiles aren't a replacement for doing your own testing - different surface slopes, your dips may be longer or shorter - but they help give you a sense of what's compatible with which clay bodies and which are runny vs. stable. How and how often are studio glazes tested? Are new batches tested before they're put out for use? Are studio glazes typically kept in consistent conditions? Large buckets of glaze can change consistency over time. Is specific gravity monitored periodically so water can be added as needed? Are glazes flocculated well/kept well in suspension or are they often hard-panned? Can you use non-studio glazes? Typically, this means commercial glazes as homemade opens a gigantic can of worms. What's the approval process? Reminder that low fire materials used in higher temperature firings can mess up more work than just where they're used, so even if you're not planning on ever using non-studio glazes, it's good to know what checks are in place to avoid this issue. Does the studio provide wax? Wax brushes? What condition is it in? Does the studio provide oxide washes? Are you allowed to make your own if it doesn't? What's the approval process? Firings: What temperatures does the studio fire to? How does this match their claybodies? A lot of claybodies, especially commercial claybodies, claim to support a range of firing temperatures, but they're not fully vitrified at all of those temperatures, especially at the lower end of their ranges. If a studio fires to both cone 6 and cone 10 and you plan on working primarily with cone 6 glazes, either studio or commercial, and make food-safe pieces, is there an appropriate claybody that will reach vitrification or are they secretly really all meant for cone 10? If you're only interested in making non-functional work, this may not matter to you as much as someone making mugs or vases. Are there special firings, e.g. luster firings? If there are luster firings, make sure to inquire about their safety protocols around luster firings - even if you plan on never using luster, poor safety policies around luster can endanger the health of everyone in the studio. How quickly is work turned around? Faster isn't necessarily very important once you've settled in as you want to be in a flow that has work at all stages at all times so you always have something to do, but it can be helpful to plan your rhythm. What is being done to ensure quality materials and firings? Are cones used in every firing? Is work that is too wet or egregiously overglazed set aside or fired alongside everything else - causing frequent explosions and glaze mishaps that affect other people's work? Cleanliness and safety: How clean is the studio? If you can visit on a few different days, that might help. Do people generally clean up after themselves well? Don't forget to check glazing areas and the undersides of tables and such - lots of clay dust can hide there! Are people taught safe practices (wet cleanup, no dry sanding, etc.)? How often do they actually follow them? What supplemental cleaning does the studio staff do? How frequently? Are there air filters? What quality of cleaning do they provide and are they appropriately matched for the size of the studio? Are there air quality monitors? Note: this doesn't seem very common to find at community studios in my area, but it would be a good sign if the studio did! Access and security: Are there signups for specific space to use or is it a free for all? Signups can be frustrating, but you're guaranteed specific space at a specific time. I've noticed people are better at sticking to an appropriate amount of space for their work that's mindful of those around them when it's a space they have to sign up for, but the flexibility of being able to drop in whenever can be great, too! If studio time is signup-based, are new slots released at clear, consistent times that work for you or will you always be getting picks long after most others do? Do students and members have 24/7 access to the space or do they only access to the studio when it's staffed or it's their class or for times they've signed up for? When is the studio open? It can be especially helpful to check in on drying and potentially spray a piece with a little water if it's getting too dry before you're able to do work, even if it's not a time you can do work. It's also great for getting a sense of how quickly pieces dry at the beginning of new seasons/studio temperature and humidity conditions. Who's allowed in the studio? Are there video cameras? Staff on site? Studio flow: Getting a sense of a studio's flow is easiest by seeing and trying out the studio! Take a tour, attend a workshop, take a class! If you're interested in membership, it may still make sense to take a multiple-week class first, and at least in Brooklyn, a lot of studios require you to take a class at their studio before getting a membership to learn how their studio operates day to day. If you're interested in membership, note that membership flows and class flows might be different - different spaces, different open studio policies, different storage situations for work and tools, etc. for example, a studio I loved to work out of as a member was a terrible experience during a handbuilding class because it tried to cramp too many people in too small of a space, but members weren't in the member handbuilding areas as much all at once, so I could finally enjoy the studio. Also, students often share a communal shelf in my area, while members have more dedicated storage space, allowing for more projects at once and storing more tools and other items used in their practice. Community vibe: Is it more social? More get down to business? Loud? Quiet as a mouse? How do you vibe with the community? Does the studio have a code of conduct? Is it a good code of conduct? Does wearing headphones generally mean "don't bother me" or do people interrupt everyone frequently? How do the owners and staff interact with staff? How do owners and staff interact with students and members? What are their expectations of members? I've been at studios where the owners and staff really don't want to ever interact with you, but I also once worked out of a studio where the owner would roll in and interrupt whatever was going on to use whoever was at studio as their personal therapist... even though it was time those members and students were paying her to use the studio. While the latter is a pretty extreme example, I've heard from ceramist friends in many areas that it's sadly not that uncommon to encounter overbearing owners that sour the experience. Miscellaneous: Are you allowed to sell work you make there? Are there community shows/sales? Are there official or unofficial limits on the volume of work? Some studios only want potters who aren't making very small quantities of work or only small to medium sized pieces because they don't actually have the capacity for high throughput or larger work... but not all of them will have clear policies on this. If there's a limit but it's only an unofficial policy, it will likely be applied unevenly. Finally, while it's unlikely that every community studio, or perhaps even any community studio, will be a completely perfect fit for any given potter, I've personally found my practice to be enjoyable at every community studio I've been at with a good community vibe. The goal of this list isn't to find a reason to avoid any particular studio as much as knowing how a studio's choices or limitations might affect your practice so you know what to expect and how to adapt!
Like so many other hat knitters, I've knitted the classic WWII watch cap, which is also known as Beanie no. 212, more than a handful of times. (You can find it on Ravelry here and here, respectively.) It's a charming, quick knit that's easy to resize, but I've never really liked the crown shaping on the original. I've knit a lot of these hats, and only one's had the original crown shaping for the decreases. I'm sharing two crown shaping variations I keep going back to below. I always knit this hat in the round, and my crown shaping patterns assume you will be knitting in the round, too. Alternate crown shaping 1 This alternate crown shaping follows the 6x2 ribbing of the previous section for the bulk of each round so that the ribbing continues throughout the entire hat. Written out: Divide stitches on 3 double pointed needles with stitches evenly divided among the three needles or mark out even sections with stitch markers if decreasing across 2 circular needles or with magic loop. (k1, ssk or skp, k if previous row was knit or p if previous row was purl until 3 stitches are left on the needle/before the next marker, k2tog, k) x3. Repeat step 1 until 4 stitches remain on each needle/in each marked section. Cut and draw yarn through the remaining 12 stitches 2-3 times. Tie off and weave in the ends. Alternate crown shaping 2 This alternate shaping both maintains the ribbing throughout the crown shaping and accentuates it by creating a sort of three-pointed star with 3 of the 2-stitch-wide purl parts from the previous 6x2 ribbed section. This shaping really only makes sense when making a size hat where the number of stitches is evenly divisible by 24, so I typically only do it on size "small" hats (cast on 96 stitches). You could adjust the needle size and gauge for a yarn that works well at that gauge to make this work for different sizes. Written out: Stop the last 6x2 ribbed row 1 stitch early and divide stitches on 3 double pointed needles with stitches evenly divided among the three needles or mark out even sections with stitch markers if decreasing across 2 circular needles or with magic loop. Ensure that each needle transition or marker has a single purl stitch on each side. (p1, ssk or skp, k if previous row was knit or p if previous row was purl until 3 stitches are left on the needle/before the next marker, k2tog, p) x3. Repeat step 1 until 4 stitches remain on each needle/in each marked section. Cut and draw yarn through the remaining 12 stitches 2-3 times. Tie off and weave in the ends. Additional project notes Needle: US 7 - 4.5 mm Gauge: 19 stitches and 24 rows = 4 inches in stockinette Hats made for me should generally be a small (cast on 96 stitches), and hats made for my partner Matt should generally be a medium (cast on 104 stitches). Footnotes Either of these will create a left-leaning decrease, use whichever one you prefer.↩ Ibid.↩
After five different drivers, including a school bus driver, aggressively close-passed me in Midwood last night and two of them threatened me just for being on the street, I realized there's a huge gap in educational outreach about bike rules in NYC: drivers. I decided to make a mini-zine that demystifies the behavior of law-abiding bicyclists like myself and helps drivers better understand what to expect when sharing the road: All text and illustrations in the mini-zine are my own. Many thanks to Matt Denys for help proofreading! This zine is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, so you can copy and distribute this zine for noncommercial purposes in unadapted form as long as you give credit to me. Gas stations, car dealerships, auto repair shops, rental car offices, parking lots, book shops, restaurants, coffee shops, and other commercial establishments are welcome to give out these zines, too - as long as the zine itself is free! Check out the NYC Bike Rules for Drivers mini-zine on the web or download the pdf to print here!
Here's how to fold a mini-zine, featuring my mini-zine So you want to make a public comment! Fold the printed mini-zine page in half, then half in again, and then in half again as shown. When you open the piece of paper, each of the pages should fit fully within a set of folds. With the mini-zine page completely open, fold it in half with short ends touching ("hamburger style") so the text is on the outside. Using scissors, cut a across the dotted line. When you reopen your paper, there will be a slit in the middle of the sheet. Fold the paper in half lengthwise with long ends touching ("hotdog style"), hold the paper at either end, and fold the sheet into itself to form an 8-page booklet. Make sure the cover is on the front!
More in programming
It's time for a dev blogger's favorite topic: blogging about my new blogging setup. After migrating my blog from Hexo to Eleventy, building a photography website and creating a personal one-pager, it was time to find a new digital home for all my projects. If you notice any issue after the migration, please let me know. I redirect the RSS feed to the new domain, but you might want to update the feed URL in your reader. Motivation I've been maintaining three different websites under two different names: a mostly developer-oriented blog, a photography portfolio and a one-pager gluing everything together. When I started blogging about my sabbatical journey, I was thinking about making yet another page to create a clear separation. I've decided to do the opposite and merge all my websites into one instead. As I further reduce my dependency on social media and third-party services, it has become even more important to have my own space and practice POSSE. Every decision I've made was driven by two main goals: simplicity and personality. Setup I've stopped chasing the latest and greatest. I want to keep the setup as clean as possible, which means pulling fewer dependencies. Every package adds complexity and maintainability costs, so I've only added what was necessary — no more Gulp, Sass or Tailwind. Instead of taking one of my existing websites as a starting point, I created this project from scratch. I reused some of my previous code, but I didn't want to take over any technical debt (especially with the advancements in CSS). The foundation of this website hasn't changed: Eleventy (Build Awesome). It covers the fundamentals of a static site and offers a great level of customization. I've made my project more and less dependent on Eleventy at the same time: I replaced Gulp as my build pipeline with pure Eleventy processing. I replaced most shortcodes with Markdown alternatives (and markdown-it plugins), which are better supported by editors like Obsidian. I've also replaced the Nunjucks template engine with Liquid, which comes with a few trade-offs. The main reason was to avoid creating a new collection for every set of posts I render. With Liquid, you can apply array functions like filtering or sorting in the template itself: {% assign drafts = collections.all | where: "data.isDraft" | reverse %} {% for draft in drafts %} … {% endfor %} Another advantage is having date formatting included, so I don't need another library or custom code. You can even set a default date format, so you don't have to provide it each time. What I don't like is the verbosity of the template language, although I've gotten used to it by now. Nunjucks: {{ "/tags/" + tag + "/" }} {{ modified or created or date }} {% set perspectives = ["dev", "photography", "life"] %} Liquid: {{ "/tags/" | append: tag | append: "/" }} {{ modified | default: created | default: date }} {% assign perspectives = "dev, photography, life" | split: ", " %} After migrating my existing content, I've noticed the build taking way too long, both in the dev server and the production build. I've found out that the Eleventy template cache is turned off for Liquid by default. This was useful during development, but when updating actual content, it caused every template and partial to be constantly recalculated. After turning the cache on, this issue was resolved: eleventyConfig.setLiquidOptions({ cache: true }); Check the colophon for the full tech stack overview. Perspectives The main challenge was finding a way to separate and present my main personas. The Venn diagram intersection of people interested in software development, photography and my personal life is probably small. I could use tags, but they don't offer the level of personalization I was looking for. Most personal blogs separate the content by post type (blog post, note, photo), but this doesn't fit my use case. Instead, I've decided to structure my website around three perspectives, a term I have borrowed from the Eclipse IDE. Each perspective comes with its own avatar, tagline and bio. If someone is interested in everything I share (hi Mom!), they can still view all my posts. Design Since building my photography website, I've made many changes, but I never got around to share an update. The biggest change was the design, which I have used as a blueprint for the new website. I've decided to mimic a social timeline/feed, which most people are familiar with. At the same time, it should be clear that it's a personal website and not yet another walled garden. Typography is an important part of every design. The first step is to choose between a system font stack and a custom font, which comes with the usual performance vs. personality trade-offs. I've decided to go with a uniform look across all devices. I've settled on Source Sans 3 for copy text and Hack for code. Another big change was introducing a sidebar. I always felt like the empty horizontal space was "wasted" on a desktop device, but getting the sidebar UX right is challenging. I'm happy with the result, especially with the last two panels adding a personal touch to the design. Images I've made several changes to the handling of image files. To make them compatible with Markdown editors, I had to replace my custom picture shortcode. The official Eleventy image plugin is a popular choice, but it violates my simplicity goal and doesn't support everything I needed. I've decided to go with a plain Markdown image markup and a single image file (no format fallback or 2x version for retina displays). Additionally, I wrote a markdown-it plugin to turn the optional title parameter into a caption. As for the file format, both WebP and AVIF have excellent browser support. For each image, I select the format based on the quality and file size. For my photos, I'm using WebP for the timeline thumbnails and JPG for the full-size version. Theme picker There have been some recent discussions about dark mode toggles, and I considered going for a light/dark solution based on the user's OS preference. Driven by the personality goal, I knew I had to add at least one more theme, so a proper theme picker was necessary. Similar to navigation, people like to hide the theme selection on mobile devices behind a burger menu or a dropdown. I prefer the solution by Sarah L. Fossheim, where all available themes are displayed above the page footer. A friend was scrolling through my new website, and their first question was "Why is the theme picker in the footer?". This tells me the solution was a good idea — I don't think he would have noticed a typical theme button in the header. The implementation follows standard practices: Use the light or dark theme as default based on the user's OS or browser preference. Store a selected theme in the local storage and use it as the single source of truth. Prevent a flash of inaccurate color theme. Make the theme play nicely with bfcache. I might have slightly gone overboard with my third theme, but the nostalgia kept me adding more and more features. Enjoy going back to the 90s: Feeds As browser vendors decided to remove XSLT support, I didn't bother to style my feed. Instead, I've created a new web feeds page, listing all available feeds and a short explanation. I provide one feed for every perspective and one with all my posts combined. I once offered tag-based RSS feeds. This was useful for my sabbatical, but even there I had only a single subscriber. Now, all tag feeds redirect to their main perspective feed. I've also dropped the JSON feed, despite having at least 16 subscribers. Given that every web feed reader supports Atom feeds, I don't see the value of providing a JSON alternative. A JSON feed doesn't add much complexity, but handling different media types (post, photo) and properly escaping the content is one more thing to implement and maintain. Quality assurance I've put a lot of effort into my new digital home, and I want to make sure it stays in good shape. I've included several tools, most running automatically as part of the CI pipeline: eleventyDataSchema — lint Eleventy data values like titles or dates markdownlint — format/lint Markdown files Vale — lint content (grammar, writing style, formatting) Lychee — find broken links (internal and external) Evaluatory — check accessibility and validate HTML Oxlint — lint JavaScript files Eleventy linters are another option to analyze a template's output, but I haven't found a use case for it yet. Not everything can be automated, so I also did the following manually: Test with Chrome, Firefox and Safari Test with Polypane Test with Google Lighthouse Test with a screen reader Test with JavaScript disabled Test with CSS disabled Test at 200% zoom Test with a bigger browser font size Test with custom fonts disabled Test with delayed assets Performance It's difficult to compare the performance of two separate websites with that of a combined one. Some parts got worse, e.g. bigger font files and more CSS. At the same time, I've noticed that gzip compression was turned off for anything but HTML for a few years now (I must have missed it when upgrading nginx) 🙈. One improvement was to implement on-demand assets. For example, the lite-youtube-embed CSS and JavaScript is only loaded if a <lite-youtube> element is present on the page. As before, JavaScript is fully optional (except for interactive demos in individual posts). I've been using a mix of <noscript> and CSS to hide elements that require JS (like the theme picker). I don't like the user experience of pagination, so I avoided it for years. But now that I have almost 300 posts, I've decided to finally add it. I display 30 posts per page, with images further down still being lazy-loaded for better performance. I haven't applied pagination to tag pages, as that's more complex with Eleventy. Bits and pieces Here are some other noteworthy changes: I've removed post-specific social share images and use a single WebP Open Graph image instead. I've dropped JSON-LD. Open Graph and microformats are sufficient. "Naming is hard" is a common expression in software development, but it also applies to photograph titles. I've decided to use a counter as the title, e.g. #0100. Sometimes I do come up with a title that I love, like the Castle in the Sky, so I might mention it in the description. On a photo page, you can now open the previous/next photo using the left/right arrow keys (in addition to the existing navigation buttons). It's now possible to filter photos by date, gear, or location. Check the explore page for an overview. I've learned about and used some experimental CSS features (with progressive enhancement), like scroll-triggered animations or squircle corners. I've added an AI statement on my LLM usage. I finally have a proper about page. Cool URIs don't change, but it's inevitable when moving to a new domain. All my previous URLs are redirected, except for some assets that are no longer used. I will keep the old domain, so the redirects will continue to work for a foreseeable future. I've kept my previous Easter egg and added a few more. Have a happy hunt! 🕵️♂️ Inspiration I visited hundreds of personal websites looking for inspiration. Here are a few that I kept coming back to: Emma Goto. I love Emma's approach to presenting the variety of her interests, even though I went a different route. Brennan Kenneth Brown. This website has so much to offer. It's a great example of what the open web looks like. Rex Barrett. The sentence "Collecting hobbies is my hobby." hit home — so much that I had to steal borrow it for my short life bio. Conclusion This project was mostly about merging the content of two websites into one. I knew this would take a considerable amount of time, but I still greatly underestimated the effort. In the end, it was all about the journey, not the destination. I loved fine-tuning the design and tweaking little details that probably no one will ever notice. I still have many more ideas left in my backlog. How do you like my new digital home? If you have an opinion, let me know! Reply via email
New electronica album by Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan
To protect against link rot and disappearing content, I save local copies of web pages I like into my web archive. Ideally, this archive is completely self-contained. I want a local copy of each page’s HTML and all the assets it depends on (CSS, images, scripts, and so on). I don’t want my archived pages fetching resources from the original website, which could disappear at any time. Initially, I was verifying self-containedness by hand. I’d open each saved page in a web browser, and check the browser dev tools. I’d check the Console tab for errors and failed requests, and watch the Network tab for requests going out to the internet. That approach was tedious and error-prone, and I wanted something better. I now automate the process using Playwright, a testing framework that allows you to control web browsers. I open each page using Playwright, and check if it’s making external requests. Detecting external requests in Playwright When you open a page in Playwright, you can subscribe to request events which tell you when the page issues a request. In this Python snippet, we start Playwright, start a WebKit browser, and open a new page. We tell the page to append external requests to a list, and then load example.com. We see that example.com makes two requests on page load: one for https://example.com, and one for a JavaScript file. from contextlib import closing from playwright.sync_api import sync_playwright with ( sync_playwright() as p, closing(p.webkit.launch()) as browser, closing(browser.new_page()) as page, ): requests = [] page.on("request", lambda msg: requests.append(msg)) page.goto("https://example.com") print("requests:", requests) # requests: [<Request url='https://example.com/' method='GET'>, # <Request url='https://example.com/s.js' method='GET'>] In a more complex scenario, we might use Playwright to interact with the page after loading – for example, clicking a button or filling in a form, and then we could see the requests triggered by each action. Once we have a list of requests made by the page, we can inspect the url property to check if any of them were fetching from an external website. I wrote a function is_external_request to carry out this check: from playwright.sync_api import Request import urllib.parse def is_external_request(req: Request, original_url: str) -> bool: """ Check if a request has a different origin than the original URL. A request is considered internal if: - it matches the original URL exactly - it has the same scheme, host, and port as the original URL - it uses a `blob:` scheme (for example, in-memory media representations) """ if req.url == original_url: return False # Compare the scheme/host of the request to that of the original URL. org_url = urllib.parse.urlsplit(original_url) req_url = urllib.parse.urlsplit(req.url) if org_url.scheme == req_url.scheme and org_url.netloc == req_url.netloc: return False # Ignore blob: URLs, which are in-memory representation of some data, # and not an external request. # # Playwright detects blob: URLs when loading media files; for example # using the <audio> or <video> tag. if req_url.scheme == "blob": return False # Fail open: if we can't decide if a request was internal or external, # assume it was external. return True assert_page_is_self_contained(ctx, url) I’ve wrapped these two steps in a function assert_page_is_self_contained(ctx, url), which is part of my chives utility library. The function takes a Playwright Browser (or BrowserContext) and a URL, then: Opens a new page in the browser Loads the URL in the page Checks what happened when the page completes loading It throws an exception if there are any: Uncaught page exceptions or errors Console warnings or errors Non-GET requests Requests targeting external resources The function tries to trigger important network requests that might be skipped on the initial page load. For example, it evaluates the body’s offsetHeight to force a synchronous reflow, which causes the browser to request any lazily loaded images or fonts that might otherwise be missed. Here’s an example which verifies a file example.html from the working directory: from chives.browser_fixtures import assert_page_is_self_contained, file_uri from contextlib import closing from playwright.sync_api import sync_playwright with ( sync_playwright() as p, closing(p.webkit.launch()) as browser, ): assert_page_is_self_contained(browser, url=file_uri("example.html")) I originally passed a Page as the first argument, but changing the function to take a Browser or BrowserContext lets it manage its own pages. It gets a fresh page for every verification, and closes it when it’s done. (The first time I ran this, I created a new page for every verification, and never closed them – my computer ground to a crawl as my script opened hundreds of browser tabs.) If you create a new context, you can emulate different browser settings, like location, locale, and window size. Here’s an example where we use contexts to test the same page in light/dark mode: with ( sync_playwright() as p, closing(p.webkit.launch()) as browser, ): with closing(browser.new_context(color_scheme="light")) as light_ctx: assert_page_is_self_contained(light_ctx, url=file_uri("example.html")) with closing(browser.new_context(color_scheme="dark")) as dark_ctx: assert_page_is_self_contained(dark_ctx, url=file_uri("example.html")) In my web archive, I check every page in light/dark mode, and at 1×/2× pixel densities. It takes at least a second to run each verification, so I cache the results. As I save new pages, they’re added to a verification queue, and I’m warned of any missing assets. Unsurprisingly, the first run flagged many missing fonts and images, which I added to my local archive. Every saved page now passes cleanly. Browser is best-effort, but may still miss things Even with automated testing, it’s difficult to guarantee a completely self-contained archive. Different instances of a browser might load different assets, and a single page load might miss different variations: Responsive images – web pages can offer different sizes of an image, and the browser chooses a specific size based on the current window dimensions Appearance settings – a browser might load different fonts or images depending on light/dark mode Interaction-dependent assets – a web page might have assets that are only required on hover or user action You can mitigate some of this by testing with multiple contexts or adding post-load interactions, but every step makes the process take longer. Fortunately, most of the pages I save are simple, blog-style pages where I’ve stripped out the JavaScript. For my specific use case, initial load verification is more than good enough. Other uses for this code There are other projects where it could be useful to intercept and audit the requests made by a web page: Verifying your Content Security Policy (CSP). The CSP header restricts what resources can be loaded by a web page, and you could check that your configuration has the correct effect. Auditing login screens. You could check that sensitive pages don’t load any external scripts, which mitigates the risk of credential theft via a compromised third-party. Testing analytics and tracking. You could script user flows, like a shopping cart checkout, and confirm that tracking events fire correctly. I don’t do much front-end web development, but Playwright has become a key tool in my toolbox. I read a lot about people using AI agents and MCPs to interact with websites, but I prefer Playwright. It’s more fiddly and requires explicit instructions, but it’s constrained, deterministic, and I never have to worry about it doing something unexpected. [If the formatting of this post looks odd in your feed reader, visit the original article]
It’s four years since I bought a printer. I thought I would provide an update on running costs, print sales, and profit. I’m happy to be completely transparent about all this as I know it can be difficult to figure this out if you are thinking of creating your own printing business. January 11th 2026, 11:30am All the photos here are work shot in the last twelve months. Year Four Investment? Nothing other than consumables this year. I did purchase a high-spec film scanner last year, detailed here, but don’t consider that as part of this. The scanner has paid for itself several times over, and it may become a factor in future years (see below). Income Income is made up of sales through a local gallery that I am part of, along with web sales: 5,940.- CHF - sales through the gallery 80.- CHF - sales through web shop = 6,020.- CHF total income Total income is down about 50% compared to 2025. Costs I had to purchase consumables (paper and ink), at a total of 957.- CHF. That cost is included in the total here under the “print consumables” category. January 11th 2026, 3:30pm Rental cost of space in the gallery was reduced due to having overpayments of rent and my loan to the gallery, from the previous year(s), paid back to me. -1,500.- CHF - rental cost of space in the gallery -957.- CHF - print consumables (paper, ink) -1,138.- CHF - framing/mounting/postage -1,135.- CHF - commission to the gallery -300.- CHF - web shop subscription 0.- CHF - stripe / paypal fees 0.- CHF - advertising (none this year) = -5,030.- CHF total costs Total costs are down by about 60% compared to 2025. Total Profit 6,020.- CHF total income -5,030.- CHF total costs = 990.- CHF total profit A Quiet Year? Actually an average year. The previous couple of years were outliers, due to large orders, so really I’m back to normal in terms of sales. The key factors in managing to generate a [small] profit this year were: 1) no longer having to pay back the loan used to finance the printer, and 2) reduced rental cost of space in the gallery due to a previous loan to it being repaid. Also having to spend almost 1,000.- CHF on ink this year ate into profit. This is probably a “once every three years” cost given the rate I print at. The principal cost is rental of space in the gallery - in a normal year this would be 3,000.- CHF. Essentially this means, given the material cost of printing and framing/mounting and commission to the gallery, I need to make about 5,500.- CHF of sales to break even. Solar Eclipse, August 12th 2026 That’s a grind. However I did receive two substantial orders at the end of October, which haven’t made it in to this year’s figures and should boost next year’s. Maybe even a good sign for the year to come? At least now the original investment loan is repaid, the printing costs cover themselves in most years. I may look at offering scanning services now that I have a high-spec film scanner, which could become a scan + print service. More thoughts about that next time.
