Twitter Card Meta Tags

My girlfriend likes to say that I'm, "such a fanboy" of Mary Roach. Maybe so. I was going to make a Twitter post referencing Mary's website and I noticed that there was no twitter card! 🙀

So, I'm going to use my tech skills and Mary Roach's website to [hopefully] do some good and provide a walkthrough on making a better website. Yeah, yeah, I know what you are thinking. Someone using blogspot can't talk about making a better website. My response to that is that it is an example of finding balance between cost, effort/time, and quality - the holy grail in software engineering.

I love the look of Mary's website. Simple, clean design with easy to read source code. But I've noticed a couple things that I'm confident that she'll want to address:

• No twitter card meta tags.
• No favicon.

Twitter Card Meta Tags

Mary has been very active on Twitter lately. Or maybe she was always active and I've only recently noticed. Either way it is clearly a social media platform that she cares about and as such it would be really nice if when a tweet includes her website URL that the appropriate twitter:card would display.

To do this Mary will need to ask her website company, Coconut Moon, to add the following meta tags to each of her website pages:

• <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image">
• <meta name="twitter:creator" content="@mary_roach">
• <meta name="twitter:description" content="Mary Roach, Author of Fuzz, Grunt, Packing for Mars, Stiff, Spook and Bonk.">
• The content here should be different on every webpage. Ideally, it would be different from the meta description tag too. BTW, Mary, you're missing that tag too and you'll want it to improve your SEO score/ranking. This tag is an opportunity to make custom descriptions just for Twitter.
• <meta name="twitter:title" content="Mary Roach, Author of Fuzz, Grunt, Packing for Mars, Stiff, Spook and Bonk">
• Again, the title should be different on every webpage. Side note: Mary, I'm so sad to see that you didn't use an Oxford comma in the title of your index page... I've read Spook and Bonk but have yet to find a copy of Spook and Bonk. Before you say anything, yes, I have heard "Oxford Comma" by Vampire Weekend. I love their sound.
  
  
  
  
• <meta name="twitter:image" content="https://maryroach.net/images/books/Fuzz_350.jpg">
• I'm going to keep saying it - use a different image for every webpage and if you are going to use an og:image tag for FaceBook as well then take the opportunity to make it different, make it special and specific to the social media platform. The users there will notice. Like a rockstar yelling out the name of a city before a concert.
• <meta name="twitter:image:alt" content="Book cover for Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law. It has an arrow head style logo clearly intended to resemble the National Park Service logo with a mountain lion, a bear, and an elephant on it with pine trees behind them and birds above.">
• I would love to feed you some story about how this content will help your website rank better. It will. But that is not why you should add it. You should do it because our world is tough enough for the blind and if a blind person comes to your website then help them out. Mary, the alt tags on your website are all one word descriptions of the images. You can do better. Please do better.

There are other tags but these are the ones that really matter. The rest can be found at https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/twitter-for-websites/cards/overview/markup.

I almost forgot but it is very useful. Use the Twitter Card Validator to test your webpages.

Favicon

A favicon is a small icon that serves as branding for your website. Its main purpose is to help visitors locate your page when they have multiple tabs open. 

Creating a favicon is a small but important step to setting up a website. It adds legitimacy to your site and helps boost your online branding as well as trust from users. Favicons are an immediate visual marker for the website which enables easy and quick identification for users.

• <link rel="icon" href="/favicon.png" type="image/x-icon">
• This is one case where you should use the same image for your entire site.

Lighthouse

To go a bit further, I want to also recommend to anyone reading this to improve their website to use Google Lighthouse to analyze your website. Do it for both desktop and mobile. It'll give a high-level scoring for each fundamental area of your website and detailed recommendations to improve those scores.

Misbehaving

I've been listening to Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics by Richard Thaler on audiobook. In chapter 3, "The List," there is an interesting analysis of a company losing money because managers are afraid to lose their jobs. Which leads them to avoid some projects. I saw this only a little in my work experience.

In chapter 29, "Football," there is an analysis of how to game the draft to end up with an overall better team. Basically, it is chapter 3 but told in a more interesting manner. Replace the star football player with the star project and you get the same problem of putting all your resources in one basket. The analysis goes deeper and points out that the coaches and managers are not solely to blame. They are going after the star players (star projects) because these are what the owner (CEO/chairmen) want. I saw this more often in my work experience.

The higher up in a company the less the employee looked at the project data and the more they looked at what their boss wanted. If you are a manager, director, VP, C-suite employee, or chairman then please read this book. It won't give you answers but it might force you to acknowledge that you are making decisions based on the wrong data. Then you can give the company a better chance at [overall] success.

Okay, I know, I'm skipping over the problem of "the manager who doesn't work on the boss' pet project still gets fired." Yeah, that sucks. You deserve a better boss. But guess what? You saved your department for another year and only had to sacrifice yourself. Had you done the doomed project you might have doomed the department too.

Winter Reading Challenge

My local library is running a winter reading challenge. The challenge is to read five books that meet the following criteria between January 2 to February 29, 2020.

1. Listen to a Book



2. Teaches You Something New



3. Graphic Novel or Comic Book





4. First in a Series



5. In Another Time or Place



6. Book Club Recommendations (need to finish)



7. Author New To You



8. Outside Your Comfort Zone
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9. Under 200 Pages (currently reading)



10. Made Into a Movie (want to read)



11. Always Meant to Read
• 
  
12. Retelling of a Story





13. Set in an Imaginary World



14. Author of Color





15. Winter Setting
• 
  

The Ghost Map

The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World by Steven Johnson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The story was great. You might be thinking, "I don't know about reading this. I've heard tons of 10 and 30 minute versions of this story. Is an 8 hour version worth it?" It is.

The last 20% of the book is the conclusion and it gets a bit off-topic. I don't think you'll really miss out on anything if you choose to skip it. There are good points made and discussed but if you're just here for the Ghost Map story then don't worry about it.

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The Like Switch

The Like Switch: An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Influencing, Attracting, and Winning People Over by Jack Schafer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Very actionable advice... but a strong undertone of endorsing the idea of lying to people. Please only use Schafer's advice to make real friends and to bring joy to coworkers. Befriending people purely for selfish gains is wrong.

Use his advice to get past those first difficult times of getting to know someone. Make a good first impression then be yourself.

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Tehanu

Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is an excellent "see the world through someone else's eyes" book. There will be parts that might be distasteful but that's how parts of people's lives are. Another person's opinions might not be correct but they exist nevertheless. I found the afterward really interesting. The way the author talked about writing the book made it sound like a process of discovery instead of creation.

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2020 Reading List

I was continuously updating and referencing this list to guide my reading. Therefore, I decided it was more useful to make it a page instead of a post with a link on my blog's landing page.

https://jerryyoakum.blogspot.com/p/2020-reading-list.html

Grain Brain

Grain Brain: The Surprising Truth about Wheat, Carbs, and Sugar--Your Brain's Silent Killers by David Perlmutter
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A lot of reviewers complain that this title is very repetitive. It is but for the audiobook that is alright. It is very easy for much of what the author wrote to slip right by especially if I'm doing other stuff while listening. I'm not convinced that this diet is for everyone, but I am convinced that for the people who need this diet that it is life changing. I'll change my food choices some based on this book and definitely watch for future news on this topic.

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Mycroft and Sherlock

Mycroft and Sherlock by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Great job of portraying a young Sherlock and explaining why Mycroft didn't go on to more adventures like he had in the first Mycroft book.

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Alchemy

Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense by Rory Sutherland
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

With exception of the obvious bias the author has in favor of vaping, this was a very enjoyable book. It is a pleasure to look at problems from different perspectives and this book is largely about reframing questions to find different solutions.

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Rust by Jonathan Waldman

Rust: The Longest War by Jonathan Waldman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Rust (corrosion) is a constant companion to all life on Earth. It seems to happen so slowly that we fool ourselves into thinking that we can deal with it later. This book covers corrosion across the range of human experience. It interesting due to how tremendous of an impact corrosion has on modern life. A lot of the book is detailed and filled with facts. It slowed my reading down as I tried to absorb and remember information.

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Who Goes There

Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell Jr.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

An excellent short book for October as Halloween quickly approaches. A lot of the language describing the shapeshifting alien so much reminds me of how they described and detected for Changelings in Star Trek: Deep Space 9 that I suspect that those writers were also fans.

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Spaceman

Spaceman: An Astronaut's Unlikely Journey to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe by Mike Massimino
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Wow! Who hasn't dreamed of spaceflight?! I loved the humanity that Massimino brings to the subject. This is a story that is told from his perspective but goes through many subjects that many people either relate to or want to know more about - childhood dreams, college, work, NASA, flight, spaceflight, parenthood, etc. It is wonderful to see those things through Massimino's eyes. Space exploration is awesome, and it needs people like Massimino to share the story; to bring us all along.

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Starman Jones

Starman Jones by Robert A. Heinlein
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I loved the concern that Max had for his library book. That really hooked me into the book. After that it was a fast, fun ride.

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SuperFreakonomics

SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes And Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance by Steven D. Levitt
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Second time reading and still worth the read. It can be a little disheartening to know that some (many / maybe most) of the things discussed didn't make it into mainstream in the past 10 years. That is a lesson in itself and the concept is supported by a few of the stories in SuperFreakonomics.

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The Dictator's Handbook

The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I was expecting stories about evil dictators, not a practical guide to politics. The real-world feel of this book made me continuously think of the book Physics for Future Presidents.

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Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I loved it, but I'm biased since I have always been more of a generalist. :-D
Anyway, Range is packed with information. I found myself stopping a lot just to ponder what I had just read. I loved all the stories that were referenced as examples and food for thought.

The "Learning to Drop Your Familiar Tools" chapter was just brilliant. The description of the smokejumpers who just couldn't fathom dropping their tools is poignant and heartbreaking. Even though there are a ton of books on NASA culture and the Challenger and Columbia disasters, I'm certain that I would read a book on this topic if David Epstein wrote it.

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The Obstacle Is the Way

The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph by Ryan Holiday
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A perfect book to carry with you everywhere. The chapters are short and standalone so you can skip them or jump around or re-read certain chapters without it interrupting the flow of the book.

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Shakedown

Doctor Who: Shakedown by Terrance Dicks
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Can you really have a Doctor Who story that is not about Doctor Who? Yes! In fact, this story is certainly better for having so little focus on the Doctor.

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Doctor Who: The Mind of Evil

Doctor Who: The Mind of Evil by Terrance Dicks
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The BBC Audio is from the television soundtrack which leaves a fair amount of detail out. It is okay if you are a Doctor Who fan and know who the characters are but in no way should it be considered a standalone book.

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