Tidbits from Brian - Issue #6
2022 is a year for self-improvement!
Ever since I was a teenager, I've had an unhealthy addiction to sugary soda. I drank sodas throughout high school, late nights at college, and into my adult life. Ironically, I eat pretty healthy now (rarely eat fast food), am gluten-free, and work out on a regular basis.
However, I've been trying to better myself over the last couple of years—both mentally and physically. Health is wealth, as they say. So over the last couple of months, I've been trying to quit soda.
Quitting an addiction (changing a habit) is hard. Thankfully, I've found a good substitute, which has allowed me to reduce my soda and sugar intake by around 95%. I've never been a huge fan of sparkling water, but Spindrift has just enough flavor that I've dropped soda altogether! Here's to forming a new habit and sticking with it. 💪
Updates ✍️
WordPress updates can be like the wild wild west. I always encourage site owners to wait to update plugins and themes for at least a week after they're released. There are some exceptions to this rule, but it can save you a lot of grief. Check out what I do.
In case you missed it, I strongly encourage you to read through my post on how I got orange-pilled on Bitcoin and why you should be holding some. The financial industry is rapidly changing, and it's exciting! But you don't want to get left behind.
Performance is extremely important to both my brother and me. In our last Novashare update, we managed to refactor our main JS file to be more efficient. It's now 25% smaller! Every byte matters these days when it comes to Core Web Vitals.
Interesting things 🔎
Misc.
Chrome 99 shipped some awesome new features for developers: CSS Cascade Layers and showPicker() for input elements.
I have been waiting for years for the Apple Studio Display, and it's finally here! So excited.
For you Xbox fans. Consoles can now download updates in energy saver mode.
Brandon wrote up a great post about how to use a custom icon with aliases in Gmail.
U.S. Senate approves bill to make daylight saving time permanent. It's not a law yet, but one step closer!
Cloudflare is rolling out WAF rulesets in their free plans. This is awesome news!
Check out CodeToImage, a neat little tool to create screenshots of code and text to share on social media.
WordPress
The WordPress web fonts API has arrived. Unfortunately, it won't handle Google Fonts (yet).
Newfold Digital (parent company of Bluehost and Yoast) has acquired YITH.
WordPress ditches “pee” and “tinkle” jokes in its source code. Sadly I'm not joking about this, lol.
Performance
WordPress has released the Performance Lab plugin. Excited to see how this develops.
Check out Kyle's awesome post on how to configure Perfmatters for better performance.
WordPress 6.0 to introduce performance improvements for custom pages. ⚡️ This is great news!
Kinsta added CSS and JS minification option in the MyKinsta dashboard for those using Kinsta CDN.
Chrome on M1-Macs is now 43% faster than it was just 17 months ago.
Cloudflare has added 18 new cities in Africa, South America, Asia, and the Middle East.
Marketing
Google is finally deprecating Universal Analytics (as of July 1, 2023). Time to use Google Analytics 4 or find an alternative. Shout out to Fathom.
Having trouble getting your content to index in Google recently? Don't forget to focus on overall site quality.
Crypto (not financial advice)
Billionaire Ken Griffin admits he was wrong about Bitcoin.
Charles Schwab is the latest ETF heavyweight to propose a crypto fund.
The Swiss city of Lugano is going to make Bitcoin legal tender.
Payment processor Stripe launched support for crypto.
Soon you'll be able to use your crypto with Figure for a zero-cash-out home mortgage.
I encourage everyone to watch this video on Bitcoin with Michael Saylor, Anthony Scaramucci, and Mark Yusko.
This video on how to become a Bitcoin wholecoiner from InvestAnswers is also great.
Until next time! 👋