I enjoyed Kim Curran’s debut novel, The Morrigan, so when I saw a copy of her brand new book in the local library, I snapped it up.
Like The Morrigan, Brigid is modern retelling of Irish mythology, but in a very different time period. Whereas The Morrigan was set in a mythi...
When I told you about the schedule for UX London 2026, I said:
After your afternoon workshop there’ll be one final closing talk at the end of each day before we head to the bar.
These closing talks are a way of bringing everyone back into the same space after spending ...
Lesbian necromancers in space. That’s the usual pitch for Gideon The Ninth and it’s not wrong. Though there’s a lot more necromancy than space or lesbianism.
The book begins in an environment fairly dripping with death, all bones and darkness. It sounds like it should be gr...
There’s just under a month to go until UX London 2026—exciting!
You can peruse the full schedule if you need to decide wether you’re coming for just one day or for all three. The event is designed to flow together, from discovery day to design day to delivery day, but each ...
In the latest issue of Matthias’s excellent Own Your Web series, he describes the recent betrayal by Google:
The search engine no longer says “here, go read what this person wrote.” It now says “here, I’ve already read it for you.” The contract is broken.
He’s absolute...
Nothing can travel faster than light. And if you manage to travel close to the speed of light, things get weird.
Technically, we all experience time differently depending on how fast or slow we’re moving. But the differences are so imperceptible as to be non-existent. That’...
After reading The Morrigan I was hungry for more retellings of Irish myths and legends. I tracked down the 1994 novel Finn Mac Cool by Morgan Llywelyn.
When I was devouring modern retellings of Greek myths, I commented on an interesting difference in the tellings:
The b...
People talk about the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of large language models as though all tasks are comparable. But it strikes me that there are three broad categories of work that large language models are applied to:
Compression.
Transformation.
Expansion.
Compressi...
Times are tough out there. I know that a lot of people are looking for work, which can be a very stressful experience.
One of the things that can make the job search stressful is uncertainty. There’s a real taboo around talking about salaries. This taboo ends up benefiting ...
Sometimes I look back through my blogging archives and notice what’s changed over time.
For example, I used to write quite enthusiastically about the arrival of a new operating system from Apple. That is no longer the case, to put it mildly. I’m currently holed up on Sequio...
Four years ago I wrote about something that has long puzzled me in the world of front-end development. Trust:
The mindset I’ve noticed is that many developers are suspicious of browser features but trusting of third-party libraries.
Developers are more likely to tru...
People of Brighton, mark your calendars: Saturday, April 4th. That’s when Salter Cane will be playing in The Hope And Ruin.
It’s not just Salter Cane though. We’ll be joined by Skyscrapers from Lewes, and The Equatorial Group from Eastbourne. We’ve played with them before, and they’re superb!
Tickets are available now. They’re £8 in advance. It’ll be £10 on the door. So please get your ticket in advance!
Doors are at 7:30pm. Skyscrapers will be on stage at 8pm, The Equatorial group at 9pm, and Salter Cane at 10pm.
I’m really, really looking forward to rocking out playing songs from our newest album and I would love it if you could make it.
I was in the library the weekend before last when I spotted something on the shelf of recently-returned books. Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.
I knew the film adaptation was coming out later that week. Ideally, I’d like to read the book before seeing the film. It would be a...
You should come to UX London in the first week of June. Why? Because it’s going to be awesome, that’s why!
You probably knew that already. You probably already decided to get a ticket because you’re smart like that.
But don’t dilly-dally! Early-bird tickets are available n...
When I was summing up my reading habits in 2022 I said:
I think the lesson this year is: you can’t go wrong with Octavia E. Butler or Ursula K. Le Guin.
I stand by that. But maybe I’d recommend some Ursula K. Le Guin books more than others.
A Fisherman Of The Inland S...
On March 12th, 1989, Tim Berners-Lee submitted Information Management: A Proposal. This would form the basis of what became the World Wide Web.
On March 12th, 2026, Web Day Out happened in Brighton.
Coincidence?
Yes. Yes, it is a coincidence. But it’s a pretty nice coinci...
The Session has been online in some form since the late 1990s. That’s long before web fonts existed.
To begin with, Times New Roman was the only game in town if you wanted serif type on a website. When Microsoft introduced Georgia it was a godsend. A beautiful typeface desi...
In my previous post, I mentioned that I’ve used the web install API in production. Specifically, I’ve used it on The Session. In order to do that, I had to register for the origin trial.
I’ve just signed up for another origin trial. This time it’s for the proposed focusgrou...
I have websites in my dock on my computer. I have websites on the home screen of my phone. When I open these websites from the dock or from the home screen, they behave just like native apps. It’s brilliant!
But knowing that you can add a website to the dock or to the home ...
If you wanted to make a really crude approximation of project management, you could say there are two main styles: waterfall and agile.
It’s not as simple as that by any means. And the two aren’t really separate things; agile came about as a response to the failures of wate...
Patricia Lockwood’s No One Is Talking About This knocked me for six when I read it back in 2022:
It’s like a slow-building sucker punch.
Like my other favourite book of that year—A Ghost In The Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa—it’s hard to classify. I think it’s autoficti...
I went to State Of The Browser in London on the weekend. It was great!
I mean, it’s always great but this year the standard felt really high. All the talks were top quality. I’ve been at events with ticket prices a literal order of magnitude greater but with quality nowhere...
It’s the 25th of February and it’s a beautiful day here in Brighton. I had lunch sitting outside—that’s how unseasonably warm it is. Like a little whiff of Summer to remind us of what’s yet to come.
It’s also my birthday. The beautiful weather is an auspicious augery.
Mozi...
Not long now ’till Web Day Out — just three weeks!
It’s also not that long until the start of a new financial year so if you’ve got training budget that needs to be used this year, send your team to Web Day Out. Not only is it excellent value for money, it’s also going...
I don’t like magic.
I’m not talking about acts of prestidigitation and illusion. I mean the kind of magic that’s used to market technologies. It’s magic. It just works. Don’t think about it.
I’ve written about seamless and seamful design before. Seamlessness is often toute...
Every culture has its myths and legends. Greece has its gods and warriors. England has its stories of Arthur. Ireland has the Tuatha Dé Danann, The Ulster Cycle, and more.
But while the Arthurian legends and the Greek myths have been retold many times, the stories of ancien...
I watched a good film last night. Tornado from the same writer and director of the also-excellent Slow West.
Tornado is a Scottish Samurai Western set in the 1790s. Although it’s not likely that many Samurai would’ve been in Scotland during the sakoku period, I was willingl...
Towards the end of 2025, I wrote:
I think I might change things up in 2026. Instead of waiting until the end of the year to write all the little reviews at once, I think I should write a review as soon as I finish a book. Instead of holding onto my reckons for months, I ...
If you’re the kind of person who likes Web Day Out, you’re probably also the kind of person who likes State Of The Browser.
Web Day Out is all about what you can in web browsers right now, with an emphasis on immediately practical techniques and technologies. State Of The B...
For the past few years, I’ve been taking a trip to Spain at the end of September for the Cáceres Irish Fleadh. Last year I convinced my friends Liam and Monica to come along and they had a great time.
Like me, Liam just loves playing in sessions. Also like me, Liam likes to...
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