Ben Dunkle

Blog

  • Schemarama

    Schemarama

    I finally finished a working version of a Figma plugin I’ve been tweaking for years.

    Figma is one of the coolest pieces of software I’ve ever used, and makes up the majority of my coursework these days.

    When COVID hit, my students were forced to work from home on whatever computers they had access to. I hoped at the time that Adobe – until then the primary tool used in my classes – would release a free license for students. The monthly subscription fee was more than I felt was fair for students, especially for those who were barely able to afford the costs of higher education.

    Figma was a godsend; I was able to transfer my assignments’ requirements easily enough, and students could work anywhere. And it was free.

    What really attracted me to the platform, however, was the presence of a community of developers who could easily contribute plugins and other resources to be shared among all Figma users. This is something that WordPress does so well, and as someone who has contributed for as long as I have, I set out to publish on Figma’s community.

    Easier said than done. While Figma plugins are based on languages I’m familiar with – HTML, CSS, and Javascript – the process was vexing. I had written a basic color picker app that worked in the browser (see https://codepen.io/empireoflight/pen/eYYgGjL) I just could not get it working in Figma’s plugin development environment. I gave up after a while, and used the project as a basic learning tool in my color theory lectures.

    Enter AI. From the minute I saw the capabilities the LLEs had for generating code, I’ve been flying through old projects like Schemarama and bringing them back to life. This morning I cracked open my old Schemarama repo and rebuilt it using Cursor, and just finished submitting it to the Figma plugin review team.

    Fingers are crossed that it gets through, but the learning experience is worth it no matter what the outcome.

    Here’s a sneak preview:

  • SVG icon demo

    Here’s two versions of the WordPress home icon that you see in the dashboard. Click here for demo

  • Rethinking web design instruction

    I’ve taught Web Design for many years now. I started out teaching students how to use the now defunct Adobe GoLive. I realized quickly that wysiwyg editors such as GoLive and Dreamweaver were effectively bad ways to teach students how to build websites, and moved into html and css.

    I”m seeing a new trend in web design that may make me rethink how I teach it. It seems that the big open source CMS packages, drupal and wordpress, are taking over high-end website design. If your site isn’t built on one of these two platforms (OK, maybe there are one or two others), it ain’t cutting edge.

    This summer I’m undertaking two major site designs, one in drupal and one in wordpress. The drupal one is finished: http://www.msja.org (assuming they’ve launched it). The wordpress one is under construction.

    My hope is to gain a deeper understanding of how to build within these two environments, and begin to shift the focus of my classes from building sites from scratch, to starting with basic CMS templates. This fall, I’m teaching Intro to Web Design again, and my summer projects will definitely bear some weight on the material.

  • Urinals

    Urinals are cool. I want one in my house.

  • Dreams

    3 Dreams last night:

    1. I was at a church, saying something about having to keep church stuff in mind at your home. I was like preaching this, even though I wasn’t the priest. Everyone was like “yeah”. The we drove up Brookside Ave (back in LI) to a baseball diamond. There was one of Grif’s friends dads up in a tree there, in a white bear costume. But then I saw a real white bear on another tree branch. IT wasn’t a polar bear, it was smaller–weird. So it started creeping toward the dad. I yelled, he dropped out of the tree, and the real bear ddid too, and started chasing him. Then it was chasing me, into the baseball diamond (). It turned out it was another guy in a suit, but he was old and had been living in the woods around the baseball diamond. He was trying to bite me/eat me because he was some kind of rabid zombie. I think he got a bite in on my foot before I woke up.

    2. I was in the backyard, and it was swampy. But under the water were like smooth stones, kind of like in the iphone app Koi Pond. The water was shallow, and I was walking around back there. It was very peaceful-winter, grey, but stragely warm. In parts of the yard, the water got deeper. Soon I was up to my knees. A goldfish swam up to me, and it wasn’t scared. Next thing I know, I’m swimming in it. It’s warm, but I wonder if it’s dirty. I go to get out, but there’s these kelp/weeds in the way of the concrete ledge. I heave myself out though, and I’m standing on the ledge. So I jump back in on the other side, and see a hand floating in the kelp. I go “Wow, a dead person!” and I grab the hand. It’s a little hand, my son Eli’s. I push him up out of the water; I’m in too and it’s hard to hold him up. His eyes are open, but his mouth is closed and I wonder how I can get him on the ledge to give him CPR; I’m panicking and grief-stricken, wake up.

    3. I drive up to my house in Snyder. It’s a beautiful day, and the sun is out and warm, even though it’s winter. Maybe it’s spring. My dad comes running up to me. He’s much younger; his hair is dark and he has glasses on like me. I hug him and I’m super happy to see him. He’s come for a trip in his pickup truck. In the truck it’s really messy, with a unch of Bud cans lying around, and a sixpack of unopened bud. He wants to drink some with me and my brother Bri who has just shown up. I look around, and the garbage we put out hasn’t been picked up. Lying on the blue bin is an enormous party pizza that has not been touched. My dad wants to eat it, but my brother goes” it’s nasty, there’s little black bits all over it” and he pretends to take a huge bite by sticking his head right on it. There is scaffolding on the front of the house as the workers are residing. I wake up.

  • Perfection and lazy day

    2 hockey games done with, now we’re reading counterpane fairy and playing perfection.

  • Speakers

    The speakers are good, but it is hard to sit still for hours at a time. I like workshops much better.