Just writing and Nothing Else

Firefox 69 was the first to implement selector feature queries, but other browsers are following suit. I’ll show you how it works, and how to start using this new feature query right away.

Horizontal text overflow has always been difficult to manage on the web. The default visible overflow is designed to make sure content remains accessible no matter the size of a containing box, but it’s not our only option.

Why waste your time on half-measures? Make your site THE MOST NORMALEST with this ULTIMATE CSS RESET.

When we’re scrolling down a page, or through a gallery of images, snap-targets can help guide us from one section or image to the next. In the past, developers have used JavaScript to hijack scrolling, but now we can manage scroll alignment directly in CSS with only a few lines of code.

The display property has been in CSS from the beginning, handling everything from block and inline boxes to list-items and full layout systems like flexbox or grid. Now the display syntax is getting an upgrade to match it’s multiple uses.

There are a number of property & value combinations that can lead to CSS being inactive, and now Firefox will tell you why. Open the developer tools, and look for the greyed-out property with an info-box on hover.

It’s a common pattern to align form labels and inputs in grid-like layout. I’ll show you how to do it quickly using CSS subgrid, with several quick fallbacks.

Card layouts are popular on the web, rows and columns of boxes with similar content. CSS grids can help align those cards, but it’s still be hard to line-up content inside the cards – headers and footers that might need more or less room.

For years, we’ve struggled to build resilient layouts on the web, but CSS Grid promises to change all that – and you can start using it now, with only a few properties and basic concepts.

I’ve often used initial and unset in my CSS – global keywords that can be applied to any property. The difference is small, but important: unset allows inheritance, while initial does not. But then Firefox implemented revert and I was confused – how is this one different from the others?!

Sass recently launched a new module system. The new syntax will replace @import with @use and @forward – a big step forward for making Sass partials more readable, performant, and safe.

CSS is the design language of the web – one of three core web languages – but it also seems to be the most contentious and often perplexing. It’s too easy and too hard, too fragile and too resilient. Love it or hate it, CSS is weird: not quite markup, not quite programming in the imperative sense, and nothing like the design programs we use for print. How did we get here?

When you create lists in HTML, browsers add bullet-points or numbers we call list markers. Now CSS gives us the tools to style those list markers, and even create our own!

A fragmented memory of friendship – navigating fluid genders, relationships, and bodies that resist order, category, or completion. Inspired by Margaret Clap, and the many myths of Hermaphroditus.

In the CSS naming-convention arms race to lowest specificity, I’ve decided to only use universal * selectors. I call it F*CSS.

Pushing past the “variable” metaphor, CSS Custom Properties can provide new ways to balance context and isolation in our patterns and components.

Struggles in re-writing the narrative of my life

I was invited to perform a Vagina Monologue, and ended up writing my own.

Script for My Body, My Gender rogue Vagina Monologue.

The Journal of Mennonite Writing asked me to submit for their queer issue. I don’t identify as Mennonite, but I did grow up in the church, so I asked my friends what to write about. They suggested the common question: In a world without rigid gender roles, would anyone need to be trans?

Yesterday, I shared an article about my impending surgery, and a request for help – both social and financial – as I go through this. I was embarrassed to ask, and not sure what to expect, but your response has been swift and overwhelming. I can’t thank you enough, but I’ll keep trying.

Denver Health has started offering vaginoplasty in addition to their other trans medical services. While I’ve been on the waitlist for various surgeons around the country, Denver Health called me this week to give me a date: September 10, less than two months away.

An LGBT concert of writers and composers by the Playground Ensemble, with three works by LGBT authors and the composers.

A queer adaptation of the classic novel

We are not here to flatter egotism, or prop up humbug; we are merely telling the [queer] story. We value what is good in the book; but we believe in the existence of other, and more vivid kinds of goodness.

“I don’t have many guy friends, but my guitarist is one. Parting, I lean in for the cheek-kiss but he plants a good one right on my lips.”

Inspired by Robin Rendle, I demonstrate some of my early experiments combining CSS Grids and custom properties to create dynamic layouts and data-visualizations.

At the family vacation in Moab, everyone is doing their best. It’s not enough, and my day is peppered with the wrong name and pronouns. I hide in my room through dinner so they won’t see me crying.

“I’ve seen myself in the mirror. I find me… disorienting. What do they see that I don’t? Why aren’t they laughing at me?”

“Mother finds me at her wardrobe, in her pumps and pearls. What are you doing? Being a mommy. Are you, then? She clips on the earrings (they pinch!), reaches for her lipstick.”

Viewport units have been around for several years now, with near-perfect support in the major browsers, but I keep finding new and exciting ways to use them. I thought it would be fun to review the basics, and then round-up some of my favorite use-cases.

I wasn’t born in the wrong body. I was born, a body. Without my body, I don’t exist.

It feels like CSS Grid has been coming for a long time now, but it just now seems to be reaching a point where folks are talking more and more about it and that it’s becoming something we should learning.

It’s been a month since our country pseudo-elected a bigoted blow-hard for president. I’m heading to DC to protest his inauguration in January, visit friends, and go on a mixed-media resistance tour…

My friend Maureen Maloney asked to document my reaction to the 2016 election, as part of the America Heard film series.

The Denver Quarterly vol 51 no 2 features side-by-side excerpts from Riding SideSaddle*, and Buntport’s adaptation: 10 Myths on the Proper Application of Beauty Products.

I’m still reeling from this year of insults,  a traumatizing campaign turned traumatic election. I’m not sad about a contest lost, but what those results mean for real people around me. 2016 is over, but 2017 is going to be even harder.

There’s a lot of language that gets thrown around, but much of it comes loaded with over-simplified baggage and misconceptions. Here are a few that have been on my mind – from gender identity to biological sex, transition, passing, and visibility.

A stage adaptation of my novel, Riding SideSaddle*, created with Buntport Theater and Teacup Gorilla.

It’s been a month since our country pseudo-elected a bigoted blow-hard for president. I’m heading to DC to protest his inauguration in January, visit friends, and go on a mixed-media resistance tour…

No matter what acronym drives your selectors (BEM, OOCSS, SMACSS, ETC), loops can help keep your patterns more readable and maintainable, baking them directly into your code. We’ll take a look at what loops can do, and how to use them in the major CSS preprocessors.

Chris Coyier interviews Miriam when she joins the CSS Tricks team as a Staff Writer. We talk about gettting started in the industry, name confusion, fouding OddBird, building Susy, and more.

There are some questions that come up again and again if you are trans. A few of those questions are terrible, but most of them are well-intentioned. I’m lucky to have a supportive community around me, so I thought I’d write down my most common answers to help ease your stress about getting it right, and ease my stress about answering the same questions over and over.

Award-winning stage adaptation of Riding SideSaddle*, weaving myth with everyday ritual

Using Sass, you can write your stylesheets in a more concise, dynamic, and readable way, and cut down many of the repetitive tasks that come with writing vanilla CSS. This book provides a thorough introduction to Sass for the beginner.

A stage adaptation of my novel, Riding SideSaddle*, created with Buntport Theater and Teacup Gorilla.

Riding SideSaddle* has gone vertical – all 250 cards displayed in a gallery show.

This interview serves as a follow up to my performance of The Obsolete Book in a Post-Obsolete World as Represented by a Post-Obsolete Book About Dance at the Media Archeology Lab.

Riding SideSaddle* has gone vertical – all 250 cards displayed in a gallery show.

A joint tour for Teacup Gorilla’s debut album The Holes They Leave, and my debut novel Riding SideSaddle*.

An interview with the insightful Ryo Yamaguchi at Michigan Quarterly Review.

A fragmented memory of friendship – navigating fluid genders, relationships, and bodies that resist order, category, or completion. Inspired by Margaret Clap, and the many myths of Hermaphroditus.

An archival rhizome ecology in ten parts, and a reflection on the obsolescence of obsolescence – documented on the cloud, and open-sourced as a defense against post-post-obsolescence.

An artist residency at the Media Archeology Lab, working on development of The Post-Obsolete Book.

Part 7 of Fuck the Muse

Part 6 of Fuck the Muse

Part 5 of Fuck the Muse

Part 4 of Fuck the Muse

Part 3 of Fuck the Muse

Part 2 of Fuck the Muse

a series of articles on creative process

interview with Richard Wall of the Boulder Writers’ Workshop

An archival rhizome ecology in ten parts, and a reflection on the obsolescence of obsolescence – documented on the cloud, and open-sourced as a defense against post-post-obsolescence.

Studied writing and performance with E. Tracy Grinnell, Michelle Ellsworth, and Caroline Bergvall – resulting in early drafts of The Post-Obsolete Book and Riding SideSaddle*.

A novel about new love, moving apart, and what comes next. A love story, and an after-love story – told wiith poetry and pictures.

Thanks to Chuck Mee for some borrowed words…

A modern, theatrical interpretation of the Catholic Mass – created by Grapefruit Lab and Teacup Gorilla.

Combining the sacrifice, transcendence, blood, and circumstance of the Catholic Mass with history, live music, science, dance, literature, and pop culture to find a wholly modern communion experience. What we have left is our selves, broken and battered, but surviving together.

An action comedy for the stage, based on our favorite movie tropes. The script was devised by the entire ensemble, lead by Michelle Milne, Miriam, Emily Swora, and Ben Jacobs. I don’t believe this is the final script…

a ten minute play, and short film

We hurt ourselves for love…

Based on a series of interviews with Annie in 2003, this play was produced first by Goshen College as a runner-up for the International Peace Play Contest, and then in collabiration with New World Arts for my senior thesis production.

Another day in the lives of Milo & Sam.

a play in one act, and a short film

a play in one act, and a short film

Reflections of a Mennonite holocaust survivor after the war

a play in one page, and a short short film