Sunday session

Last year I described how I syndicate my posts to different social networks. Back then my approach to syndicating to Bluesky was to piggy-back off my micro.blog account (which is really just the RSS feed of my notes): Micro.blog can also cross-post to other services. On...

YES! THIS!!!

A ban on tracking-based personalised advertising will provide an incentive to reinforce sustainable alternative models and, in fact, will be a condition for making them viable. The advertising industry already has sustainable, proven concepts for effective online advertising that do not require targeted tracking and personalisation (e.g. contextual advertising).

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Technology doesn’t have to be terrible. Here’s an absolutely wonderful use of an e-ink display:

I made as much use of vanilla HTML and CSS as possible. I used a small amount of JavaScript but no framework or other libraries.

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React is a non-transferable skill.

React proponents might claim that React will teach you modern UI, but from what I’ve seen it barely copes with modern UI. autofocus is broken, custom elements don’t work in all but the experimental version, using any “modern” features like dialog or popovers requires useEffect, and the synthetic event system teaches you so little about how DOM actually works. This isn’t modern UI, it’s UI from 2013 at its inception. I don’t have the time left in my career to pick up UI paradigms that haven’t evolved much beyond from when Barack Obama was in office.

When I mentor early career developers and they ask me what they should learn, I can’t say React, they don’t have time. I mean sure, pick up enough React to land you the inevitable job doing it, but it’s not going to level up your career.

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Wednesday session

Looking up the translation for the word “cute” in another language, it’s listed in a dictionary as “cute, a.F” where “a.F” stands for “adjective, Familiar” …but that is not how I read it at first!

I’ve updated my website’s posting interface to allow me to selectively POSSE to Mastodon and/or Bluesky (previously I was using RSS-to-micro.blog for Bluesky syndication)

Sunday session

Sitting in the front row at the Duke Of York’s to see Danny Boyle’s Sunshine projected on the big screen.

It’s daylight saving time!

Lunching and talking design with Daniel and Chris.

Wednesday session

I reckon Musk should’ve been put in charge of mass deportations—I mean, just look at the amount of people he’s already managed to get to leave Twitter.

Tuesday session

The same small dataset visualised in a hundred different ways, with notes on the strengths and weaknesses of each one.

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The slides from Hidde’s presentation at Beyond Tellerrand.

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There are different kinds of buzzwords. Some buzzwords are useful. They take a concept that would otherwise require a sentence of explanation and package it up into a single word or phrase. Back in the day, “ajax” was a pretty good buzzword. Some buzzwords are worse than u...

Monday session

Sunday session

I went to FFConf on Friday. It did me the world of good. To be honest, I haven’t much felt like venturing out over the past few days since my optimism took a big hit. But then when I do go and interact with people, I’m grateful for it. Like, when I went out to my usual Wed...

I think of myself of as an optimist. It makes me insufferable sometimes. When someone is having a moan about something in the news and they say something like “people are terrible”, I can’t resist weighing in with a “well, actually…” Then I’ll start channeling Rutger Bregma...

Well, #FFConf today was a wonderful balm for the soul.

The talks were excellent, and it was really, really good to see people I hadn’t seen in a while—I needed that.

Thank you, Julie. Thank you, Remy.

I think it is beautiful if people have a purpose. But it should be valid to lead a purposeless life too. … Maybe it is okay to not pursue potential and just be okay with being.

— Winne Lim

There’s a lot of great discussion at #FFconf about meaning and purpose, but I keep thinking about this terrific blog post by Winnie Lim on leading a purposeless life:

https://winnielim.org/journal/on-leading-a-purposeless-life/

The Shadow DOM discussion is happening outside #FFconf.

All the talks at #FFconf have been top-notch so far, but Pixel is a real highlight!

Thursday session

If someone uses an LLM as a replacement for search, and the output they get is correct, this is just by chance. Furthermore, a system that is right 95% of the time is arguably more dangerous tthan one that is right 50% of the time. People will be more likely to trust the output, and likely less able to fact check the 5%.

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Hypertext links are an information-density multiplier.

The way I’ve long thought about it is that traditional writing — like for print — feels two-dimensional. Writing for the web adds a third dimension. It’s not an equal dimension, though. It doesn’t turn writing from a flat plane into a full three-dimensional cube. It’s still primarily about the same two dimensions as old-fashioned writing. What hypertext links provide is an extra layer of depth. Just the fact that the links are there — even if you, the reader, don’t follow them — makes a sentence read slightly differently. It adds meaning in a way that is unique to the web as a medium for prose.

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When a country shows you who they are, believe them.