Delightful Reveal #59

“Thinking out loud but silently” - overheard at Flagrant.

What we did:

• Hosted Madison+ Ruby! Thank you to those that joined us ❤️ We hope you got to create new connections, explore different perspectives, and experience a bit of Madison while you were here.
• Achieved a significant milestone for a startup; we built their first checkout experience so now customers can sign up and pay for a new product
• Pushed a bug to production
• Tried to figure out how to speed up queries
• Settled on a bulk-import pattern that uses OneSchema’s file-upload import method, background jobs to process the data, and sending notifications when the jobs are done
• Presented on the above pattern at the client’s internal dev round table
• Implementing a marketing website using bridgetown
• Met with potential client with an ancient UI from when Skeuomorphism was at peak hotness
• Worked on a new logo and font styles for a client and presented it to them! 
• Began working on RailsConf 2025 theming
• Redesigned a client’s navigational/information hierarchy with ui elements we designed for their component library
• Retro’d a recent project to find out what we learned along the way
• Went way deep into all the cool things you can do with QR codes
• Tested an AI customer feedback app that allows end user to actually ask a survey questions in return (mind bending)
• Messed with a Stripe integration moving a subscription handler from async to sync
• Wrestling with a Turbo Confirm dialog Phlex component
• Published our case study on A People’s History of Tech where we partnered with Fly Media Productions to debut at Sundance with an award-winning, user-friendly, and accessible website.

What we’re reading:

• Twilight Territory by Andrew X. Pham
• Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
• The Story of French by Julie Barlow and Jean-Benoît Nadeau
• The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirrafi by S.A. Chakraborty
• The Year of Blue Water by Yanyi
• The Second Mountain, The Quest for a Moral Life by David Brookes
• The Singularity Is Nearer by Ray Kurzweil
• Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang
• Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock by Jenny Odell

What we’re playing:

• The NYT Games (always) and that one chapter in Monument Valley- still uncrackable
• Stardew Valley
• Slay the Spire (finally — my review is that the games that followed this format are more interesting )
• A code break game- for the last year
• Turing Machine the board game
• Baldur’s Gate 3

What we’re watching:

• The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House
• Make Some Noise +1
• Game Changer +1
• Smartypants
• Um, Actually
• Those about to die
• The Boyfriend +2
• Lisa Frankenstein
• Gravity
• Forged in Fire (Season 10)
• House of Dragon (season 1)
• The Olympics! +1
• 47th Asian American International Film Festival
• Star Trek: DS9
• Hank Green’s standup special on Dropout TV

What we’re listening to:

• Zoë Keating
• Florence and the Machine
• Podcasts, especially the latest season of Revisionist History
• So much Off Menu (Paul Foot is … so weird)
• Volfmon
• Vulfpeck Live in France
• The 99% Invisible Breakdown of The Power Broker about Robert Moses
• The not so quiet hum of my AC spiking my electricity bill
• Say by keshi
• It just is by eaJ and Seori 
• Seth Drums(AI creates music and he drums to it - its funny)
• To Love Is to be Brave by Kelly Corrigan

What we’re interested in:

• Shining Rock Wilderness
• Wisconsin State Fair: Deep Fried Edition
• Solar panels
• Whether chicken smoothies are worth trying, IYKYK

What we’re struggling with:

• Blood sugar +1
• Dog allergies
• Finn is pooping some blood the last 24 hours
• So. Many. Political. Text. Messages. +1000000
• The house needs so much work +1
• Building garden beds on a not super even or straight property line
• Motorcycle battery died

What we’re buying:

• Stone fruit
• a laser level
• a cable tester
• Blades for a Japanese saw
• Shrinky dinks
• Magic Puzzles (specifically the dinosaur one, of course)

What we’re celebrating:

• Peaches and Melons +2
• Colder weather +4
• My cat feeling better/being back to normal after loopiness following a dental appointment
• Cancellation of a boil water advisory. Showering has never felt so good.
• USA women’s soccer team making it to the gold medal game
• Chipmunks
• Getting the nursery set up
• Participating in a plein air painting competition and placing 3rd
• Vet says she can’t feel the tumor anymore in Finn’s butt after the surgery
• HelloFresh getting me to change up my dinners
• Little sisters in a play and getting to go see it!
• Unpacking books and not even getting close to filling the available space (yay built-ins!)
• Being in Paris during the Olympics!

If you’re looking for a team to help you discover the right thing to build and help you build it, get in touch.