It’s October. Autumn is wrapping itself around us, squeezing the leaves from the trees. Summer has slipped away, though it gave us a parting gift of a few pleasant days this week to sit outside at lunchtime.
I’ve got a bit of a ritual now for the end of September. I go to S...
While I’ve been listening to Hounds Of Love, I’ve also been reading Orbital by Samantha Harvey.
Here’s a passage from an early chapter as the crew of the International Space Station watch a typhoon forming:
How wired and wakeful the earth seems suddenly. It’s not one of...
The album Hounds Of Love by Kate Bush turned 40 years old this month. It has really stood the test of time. It still sounds like nothing else.
It’s kind of two albums in one.
There’s the A side with all those perfect pop songs—Running Up That Hill, Hounds Of Love, Cloudbus...
If you work at a clever company, then you should let them know about sponsoring Web Day Out.
All the details are in this PDF sponsorship pack. Basically there are three (and only three) spots available, at three different levels of sponsorship.
One of the best things about the venue for Web Day Out is that always having an excellent auditorium, the Studio Theatre has a really nice space for the breaks. It would be the perfect spot to set up a stand and chat with all the smart attendees.
All the attendees will, by definition, be smart because they got tickets for Web Day Out—a steal at just £225+VAT.
I was going to save this announcement for later, but I’m just too excited: Harry Roberts will be speaking at Web Day Out!
Goddamn, that’s one fine line-up, and it isn’t even complete yet! Get your ticket if you haven’t already.
There’s a bit of a story behind the talk that...
I read recently read two books that had writers as their main protagonists:
Death Of The Author by Nnedi Okorafor, and
Yellowface by Rebecca F Kuang.
They were both perfectly fine. But I found it hard to get really involved in either narrative. The stakes just never fe...
Half of the line-up of speakers for Web Day Out is already on the site. One more is already confirmed.
I’m ridiculously excited about the way the line-up is taking shape, and judging by the zippiness of ticket sales, so are lots of my peers. Seriously, don’t wait to get you...
I’m going to cut right to the chase: Clearleft is putting on a brand new conference in 2026. It’s called Web Day Out. It’ll be on Thursday, March 12th right here in Brighton. Tickets are just £225+VAT. You should be there!
If you’ve ever been to Responsive Day Out or Patter...
When I was talking about monitoring web performance yesterday, I linked to the CrUX data for The Session.
CrUX is a contraction of Chrome User Experience Report. CrUX just sounds better than CEAR.
It’s data gathered from actual Chrome users worldwide. It can be handy as pa...
A few years back, Craig wrote a great piece called Fast Software, the Best Software:
Speed in software is probably the most valuable, least valued asset. To me, speedy software is the difference between an application smoothly integrating into your life, and one called u...
Ethan tagged me in a post. I didn’t feel a thing.
“I’d love to invite a few other folks to share their favorite newsletters”, he wrote.
My immediate thought was that I don’t actually subscribe to many newsletters. But then I remembered that most newsletters are available a...
For a start, you can adjust the distance of the underline from the text using text-underline-offset. If you’re using a generous line-height, use a generous distance here too.
For some reason, I completely forgot that we’ve got a line-height unit in CSS now: lh. So if you want to make the distance of your underline proportional to the line height of the text that the link is part of, it’s easy-peasy:
text-underline-offset: 0.15lh;
The greater the line height, the greater the distance between the link text and its underline.
We shouldn’t rely on colour alone to indicate that something is interactive.
Take links, for example. Sure, you can give them a different colour to the surrounding text, but you shouldn’t stop there. Make sure there’s something else that distinguishes them. You could make t...
I was in Nor’n Irelan’ at the end of July for my annual week of Belfast Tradfest.
It was the best one yet. Classes in the morning, sessions all day, and concerts in the evening.
There were also some excellent events at Ulster University during the afternoons—talks, film sc...
There was a time when you needed to make a native app in order to take advantage of specific technologies. That time has passed.
Now you can do all of these things on the web:
push notifications,
offline storage,
camera access,
and more.
Take a look at the home screen o...
If you’re a front-end developer and you don’t read Chris Ferdinandi’s blog, you should change that right now. Add that RSS feed to your feed reader of choice!
Lately he’s been posting about some of the thinking behind his Kelp UI library. That includes some great nuggets of...
Hi Chris. You mentioned you were off to Portugal soon to explore Lisbon and Porto and I promised I’d send along some food tips from my previous visits.
I’ll skip over the obvious. No doubt you’ll seek out pasteis de nata in Lisbon. And I’m sure someone will convince you to ...
After spending a week immersed in the language and the landscape of Glencolmcille, Jessica and I were headed to Miltown Malbay for the annual Willie Clancy music week.
I could only get us accommodation from the Monday onwards so we had a weekend in between Donegal and Clare...
I had never been to Donegal before my trip to Glencolmcille to spend a week there learning Irish.
I had heard it’s beautiful there. But pictures don’t really do it justice. When our bus was winding its way down into the valley, it looked breathtaking, laid out before us lik...
I’ve been taking some time off after UX London. That was a big project I was working towards all year and it went great, so I think I’ve earned a reward for myself.
My reward is to head off to Ireland to immerse myself in the language and music. A week at an Irish language ...
Ever since Salter Cane recorded the songs on Deep Black Water I’ve been itching to play them live. At our album launch gig last Friday, I finally got my chance.
It felt soooo good! It helped that we had the best on-stage sound ever (note to the bands of Brighton, Leon at the Hope and Ruin is fantastic at doing the sound). The band were tight, the songs sounded great live, and I had an absolute blast.
I made a playlist of songs to be played in between bands. It set the tone nicely. As well as some obvious touchstones like 16 Horsepower and Joy Division, I made sure to include some local bands we’re fond of, like The Equitorial Group, Mudlow, Patients, and The Roebucks.
A bunch of the UX London speakers have been saying very nice things about the event over on LinkedIn. I’m going to quote a few of them for my future self to look at when I’m freaking out about curating the next event…
Valentina D’Efilippo:
Still buzzing … UX London smas...
UX London happened last week.
Working on an event is a weird kind of project. You spend all your time and effort on something that is then over in the blink of an eye.
I’d been preparing for this all year. 95% of my work happened before the event—curating the line-up, plan...
I don’t use large language models. My objection is to using them is ethical. I know how the sausage is made.
I wanted to clarify that. I’m not rejecting large language models because they’re useless. They can absolutely be useful. I just don’t think the usefulness outweighs...
One persistent piece of slopaganda you’ll here is this:
“It’s just a tool. What matters is how you use it.”
This isn’t a new tack. The same justification has been applied to many technologies.
Leaving aside Kranzberg’s first law, large language models are the very antithe...
Also sprach Wittgenstein:
Die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt.
Or in English, thus spoke Wittgenstein:
The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.
Language and thinking are intertwined. I’m not saying there’s anything to the strong ...
I can’t wait to get back on stage with the band! These songs sound great on the new album but I can guarantee that they’re going to absolutely rock when we play them live.
Support will be provided by our good friends Dreamytime Escorts, featuring former members of Caramel Jack. They’ve also got a new EP on the way.
Doors are at 8pm.
I’m really, really excited about this. It’s been far too long since Salter Cane were last bringing the noise live on stage. I hope to see you there!
Here’s a modified version that shows the distance to the nearest Gregg’s. The hub-and-spoke visualisation overlaid on the map changes as you pan around, making it look like a spider bestriding the landscape.
Today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day:
The purpose of GAAD is to get everyone talking, thinking and learning about digital access and inclusion, and the more than One Billion people with disabilities/impairments.
Awareness is good. It’s necessary. But it’s not su...
Meetings can be frustrating. But they don’t have to be.
A lot of the frustration comes from unmet expectations. You go into the meeting expecting one outcome, and when it doesn’t materialise, you declare the meeting a waste of time. But had you gone into that same meeting w...
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