Chris Gargiulo

Author: Chris

  • Movies, TV Shows, and Books

    TV Shows

    Netflix

    • The Åre Murders (great)
    • The Night Agent (ok)
    • Fool Me Once (ok)
    • A Man on the Inside (great)
    • The Diplomat (great)
    • The Lincoln Lawyer (ok)
    • Criminal UK (ok)
    • Secret City (good)
    • Collateral (great)
    • The Fall (good)
    • Treason (ok)

    Apple+

    • Ted Lasso (awesome)
    • Prime Target (good)
    • Shrinking (great)
    • Bad Monkey (ok)
    • Slow Horses (great)
    • Truth Be Told (ok)

    Amazon Prime

    • The Tunnel (good)
    • A Very British Scandal (great)
    • Three Pines (good)
    • Annika (great)
    • River (good)
    • The Unforgotten (good)

    HBO

    • The Staircase (great)
    • The Last of Us (awesome)
    • True Detective (awesome)
    • The Gilded Age (great)
    • The Night Of (great)
    • The Outsider (good)
    • The Undoing (good)
    • Mare of Easttown (great)
    • House of Dragons (great)

    PBS

    • Miss Scarlet & The Duke (great)
    • Victoria (good)
    • The Unforgotten (good)
    • Ridley (good)
    • Inspector Lewis (great)
    • Endeavor (great)

    Books

    • Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
    • Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
    • [ need to add more recent books from past decade]

    —————

    • Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
    • The Alienist – Caleb Carr
    • Journey to the East – Herman Hesse
    • Narcissus & Goldmund – Herman Hesse
    • Siddhartha – Herman Hesse
    • Catcher in the Rye – S.D. Salinger
    • The Sun also Rises – Ernest Hemmingway
    • For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemmingway
    • Island in the Stream? – Ernest Hemmingway
    • The Old Man & the Sea – Ernest Hemmingway
    • A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemmingway
    • The Garden of Eden – Ernest Hemmingway
    • Green Hills of Africa – Ernest Hemmingway
    • The Fifth Column – Ernest Hemmingway
    • Maus Part I & II – Art Speigelman
    • Of Mice and Men – John Steinback
    • Into the Wild – John Krackauer
    • Into the Clouds – John Krackauer
    • Angela’s Ashes – Frank McCourt
    • ‘Tis – Frank McCourt
    • Still Life with Woodpecker – Tom Robbins
    • Electric Cool-Aid Acid Test – Tom Wolfe
    • On the Road – Jack Kerouac
    • Call of the Wild – Jack London
    • One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey
    • The Fountainhead – Ayn Rand
    • The Count Of Monte Cristo – Alexander Dumas
    • The Tortilla Curtain – T. Coraghessan Boyle
    • The Autobiography of Malcom X
    • In the Name of the Father – Gerry Conlin
    • The Stranger – Albert Camus
    • The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
    • Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
    • Tha Adventures of Huck Finn – Mark Twain
    • Invisible Man – Ralph Waldo Emerson
    • The Souls of Black Folk – W.E.B. Dubois
    • Rome & Juliet – William Shakespeare
    • Henry IV, Part I – William Shakespeare
    • The Celestine Prophecy – James Redfield
    • Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe
    • One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey
    • Victory : An Island Tale – Joseph Conrad
    • Of Human Bondage – W. Somerset Maugham
    • The Hobbitt – JRR Tolkien
    • Neuromancer – William Gibson
    • Pattern Recognition – William Gibson
    • Murakami books – ?
    • The Kite Runner
    • Kid’s books:
      • Bridge to Terabithia
      • Johnny Tremain
    • Michael Crichton books:
      • The Great Train Robbery
      • The Andromeda Strain
      • The Lost World
      • Jurassic Park
      • Rising Sun
      • The Terminal Man
      • A Case of Need
      • Disclosure
      • Eaters of the Dead
      • Five Patients
    • Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
    • Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
    • Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
    • Harry Potter Books by JK Rowling

    Movies

    • [ need to add ]

  • Bespoke Frontend Web Dev

    The word “bespoke” is often used to describe “custom-made” products. Within the context of web design and development, it is easier to associate the word bespoke with UI design (the visual appearance of a website) than it is for front-end development (the underlying source code used to render the website in the browser) and therefore brings up some interesting questions, such as, “does it matter if it is not seen?” I would argue that it does matter because while it may not be visually seen, it can be “felt” by users due to its direct impact on the UX and performance.

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  • My Love-Hate Relationship with WordPress

    One of my WordPress sites, creativemedia.space, crashed multiple times over the past couple of weeks, so I have been looking into alternative solutions for the site, such as Webflow and Jekyll.

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  • Javascript Frameworks for Static Sites

    Javascript frameworks and libraries have evolved to resolve many of the early problems faced by web apps. They offer a wide arrange of built-in tools and support for SPA’s (Single Page Apps) like decoupling the front-end, building UI’s with stateful components, and working with dynamic data. They also offer the ability to create rich, native-like user experiences via routing with page transitions. The former sounds great for large-scale, complex apps, but what about small-scale, simple apps and static web sites? I’ve heard great things in regards to server side rendering, but what I want to know is: are they a good fit for creating pre-rendered sites for static hosts like Github Pages or Netlify?

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  • Page Transitions

    Back when Flash was used to build rich, animated web sites, animated transitions were often used to enrich the user experience. Many Native mobile apps embrace UI animation and page transitions as integral parts of their user experiences. Thanks to HTML5, CSS3, and new JS technologies and libraries, complex UI animations and page transitions are now achievable on the web, and not just for single page websites and SPAs (Single Page Apps), but for small static sites as well.

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  • Static Sites and Going Serverless

    As a teacher of intro-level web design and front-end development courses, I have always enjoyed the simplicity of static web sites and how the primary three web technologies of HTML, CSS, and JS have persisted throughout the years. As a freelancer, most of my clients require some sort of backend functionality, such as a CMS, a contact form, or more complex systems like custom generated reports or custom web apps. As a front-end designer with little backend experience, WordPress (and it’s many plugins) has been my goto solution, but lately I have been considering other options—namely embracing third-party API’s and services that work well with static sites.

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  • Progressive Web Apps

    I recently began reading about Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) and their future potential. In past years, I’ve done several hello-world tests compiling HTML, CSS, & JS into native applications (e.g. using PhoneGap Build), but recently I have been trying to figure out how to best build a PWA, which does not require any device specific compiling (e.g. Swift or Objective-C for iOS or Java for Android apps) and essentially consists of using straight-up web technologies to create mobile apps.

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