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On Life In General

Articles and publications tagged On Life In General across the Atmosphere.

203articles1publication
Rachel Andrew
Rachel AndrewJan 4, 2026
2025 in review
I concluded my 2024 review post by saying that I hoped to make the move back to the North of England in 2025. The event that defined 2025 (other than my 50th birthday!) is that I managed to do just that, and I'm writing this post from a little town in Northumberland, where I've been...
2
lifereview
Rachel Andrew
Rachel AndrewMay 10, 2025
A matter of fact
I've been an amateur genealogist since I was a teenager. I started before the internet existed. This was a world where finding a single fact about a not-too-distant ancestor could involve an entire day of hauling huge indexes off shelves, then waiting five days for the certificate to arrive. It was time-consuming and expensive. As...
1
genealogyOn life in general
Rachel Andrew
Rachel AndrewJan 29, 2025
Blog questions challenge
I was tagged by Jon Hicks and it seems like as good a time as any to return to ye olde blogge days, so here's my answers. Why did you start blogging in the first place? I had some personal notes on an older incarnation of this site, and when blogging became a thing, I...
On life in generalWriting
Rachel Andrew
Rachel AndrewJan 1, 2025
2024 in review
2024 went fast, and this post looks back at some of the things that featured in another far too busy year. Work Life at Google has not got any less challenging or busy during 2024, but I'm proud of the things my team and I have achieved. Everything that ends up on web.dev or developer.chrome.com...
reviewFitness
Rachel Andrew
Rachel AndrewApr 21, 2024
On having no visual memory
I have aphantasia—no ability to create images in my mind, or to remember things in a visual way. For well over half of my life I lived under the assumption that suggestions to visualize things were entirely metaphorical, and also that I was incredibly stupid in certain ways, finding things that everyone else seemed to...
On life in general
Rachel Andrew
Rachel AndrewJan 21, 2024
11 years
Facebook reminds me that it's been 11 years since I went for an ill-advised run in the snow, fell, and shattered my elbow. I've had four surgeries since—the initial one to reconstruct it, with a bunch of metal. Two to remove the metal, and one in 2016 to scrape out scar tissue. The final procedure...
liferunning
Rachel Andrew
Rachel AndrewJan 1, 2024
2023 in review
Here we are again, with another year completed. I've now been at Google for over two years, I've managed to avoid collecting any additional cats or new broken bones, but I have gained a son-in-law! Work 2023 was the most challenging year of my career to date. Previous downturns in the industry haven't posed much...
lifereview
Rachel Andrew
Rachel AndrewDec 31, 2023
1996
My daughter came to stay for a few days at Christmas, and we pulled out a box of old photographs. I found this photo of me, taken in December of 1996. I was 21 and pregnant, and had just been let go from my backstage job in the theatre. The computer—a Packard Bell 486 "all...
lifeOn life in general
Rachel Andrew
Rachel AndrewFeb 25, 2023
Cooking
I don't remember being taught to cook. Cooking was just something that happened in my vicinity. Growing up in the 1970s and 80s in the UK, people didn't go out to eat. I can remember the few occasions that we did—the deep pan pizzas near Trafalgar Square, a meal in an Indian restaurant because some...
blogginglife
Rachel Andrew
Rachel AndrewJan 1, 2023
2022 in review
There is much to be unhappy about as we close out another year. The news seems relentlessly dark, with a cost of living crisis, looming recession, a collapsing health service, war in Ukraine, and a pandemic that is very much not over, while everyone pretends it is. I am a generally positive person, but that...
lifereview
Rachel Andrew
Rachel AndrewJul 31, 2022
A new home for this site
At work, I've recently spent a good chunk of my time moving content off legacy sites to the current ones, including making my manager sad by finally pulling the plug on HTML5Rocks. I figured I might as well do the same during my weekends, so have moved my blog archive, so I can begin posting...
On life in general
Rachel Andrew
Rachel AndrewJan 30, 2022
2021 in review
I didn’t write a year in review in 2020, deciding that it would have been too full of pandemic and fury. That was probably a good decision, and the fact that this post will have to touch on things that happened in 2020 only reflects the strangeness of time right now. At the beginning of...
On life in general
Rachel Andrew
Rachel AndrewDec 31, 2019
2019
2019 I’ve run the gamut, A to Z. Three cheers and dammit, C’est la vie. I got through all of last year, and I’m here. – “I’m Still Here”, Follies, Sondheim. Twenty years ago I saw in the Millennium, at home recovering from flu. My daughter was a toddler, I had no money, and was...
On life in general
Rachel Andrew
Rachel AndrewAug 26, 2019
Get Ready For CSS Grid Layout – 2nd edition
In late 2015 I wrote a “brief” for A Book Apart, entitled Get Ready For CSS Grid Layout. The book was published in January 2016, some fourteen months before we had Grid Layout in Firefox, Chrome and Safari. Now, the 2nd edition of that book is released, Get Ready For CSS Grid Layout is a...
On life in generalWriting
Rachel Andrew
Rachel AndrewJan 1, 2019
That was 2018
Another year flies by. Here are some of the things I’ve managed to pack into the last 12 months. TripIt tells me that I was on the road for 160 days, travelling 284,347 km to 47 cities in 15 countries. Most of that was conference travel, along with CSS Working Group Meetings, and a couple...
On life in general
Rachel Andrew
Rachel AndrewAug 21, 2018
Why I’m moving from MacOS to Windows
Over the past week I’ve been moving my primary development machine from a Macbook Pro to a Surface Book. I will write up some of the detail of actually switching, however this post is essentially because I keep answering the same questions over and over again on Twitter. Therefore here it is for those who...
On life in generalPooters
Rachel Andrew
Rachel AndrewJul 19, 2018
Widget
We nearly missed you at Battersea Old Windsor. Beth spotted you, shivering and scared in your cabin. The staff were keen to find a good match for this family who had never owned a cat before. A first cat, a cat who had no special needs, who just needed a place to call home. You...
On life in general
Rachel Andrew
Rachel AndrewFeb 12, 2018
Weeknotes 5
First conference of 2018 was Smashing Conference in London. I had a new talk to present and was also doing a one day workshop. I find workshops exhausting, although I love the immediate feedback and the chance to see people get concepts right there in the room. The Smashing Conference videos are already online, you...
On life in general
Rachel Andrew
Rachel AndrewFeb 5, 2018
Weeknotes 4
Slides, slides and more slides. That really is what I’ve been working on this week, getting all these talks and workshops sorted out. I’ve also written three, as yet unpublished articles, and started work on some examples for the MDN Web Docs. Ran over 30 miles this week, half of that as a long run...
On life in general
Rachel Andrew
Rachel AndrewJan 28, 2018
Weeknotes 3
I am well into conference preparation now. Smashing Conf London is just over a week away, and I’ll be presenting a new talk and updated CSS Layout workshop. I’m also working on a new talk for designers on Grid and other new layout methods. I’ll be presenting that at UX Immersion: Interactions. CSS Layout News...
On life in generalWeb stuff
Rachel Andrew
Rachel AndrewJan 20, 2018
Weeknotes 2
This week Widget the cat had to go to the vet hospital for an operation. He is home now, quite angry at us, but seems to be a lot better than he was before the op. No flying lessons due to the continued suboptimal weather, but I’ve been to Cross Fit twice and run a...
On life in generalWeb stuff
Rachel Andrew
Rachel AndrewJan 12, 2018
Weeknotes 1
I have something of a tendency to do stuff and move on, straight into whatever is next. I thought in 2018 I would have a bit of an experiment and write these weekly notes. Here is the first one, covering a little more than a week due to the weird Christmas getting back to work...
On life in generalWeb stuff
Rachel Andrew
Rachel AndrewJan 1, 2018
So that was 2017
Time for another of these roundup posts where I look back, baffled at how quickly time has passed. TripIt tells me that I spent 158 days on the road last year, visiting 56 cities in 16 countries and travelled 184,988 km. That did include a holiday in Nice, but otherwise my travel was conference or...
On life in generalWeb stuff
Rachel Andrew
Rachel AndrewJul 16, 2017
A redesign
In Grand Designs, there is the moment when Kevin McCloud shows up to make his final visit to the property. Fairly often, the outside of the featured mansion looks habitable, however when opening the door it is obvious that the family aren’t quite living there yet. It’s a work in progress, hurridly tidied up for...
On life in generalWeb stuff