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A surface-level look at the world of note-taking apps, what the impact of "AI" may be, and why the much-lauded benefits of these tools never really seem to materialise. Ironically, I found the …

What a fun idea. I've obviously seen (and have used) URLs contain state information in the past, such as user preferences (light/dark mode or animation), but building an entire game using nothing but …

For about two years now I've become increasingly annoyed at my PC screen. The left-most edge has been "clipped", missing about 2mm across all programs. I'm not sure when the issue first occurred, I …

Toshl is one of those weird little apps that, on paper, appear extremely useful but which I've never quite clicked with. On at least three separate occasions over the past year I've signed up for a …

There's a trend amongst modern websites and web apps that is becoming increasingly irksome: hiding the damn "Login" button! If you require me to have an account to use your service (which makes …

How do you decide which use cases you should support and which you shouldn't? This question has been hovering in the back of my mind for quite a while now, because it seems to be increasingly …

Forget UI design, let the user decide …

The concept of "card based" web design has been around for at least three years now. So why is it that the following quote from Khoi Vinh, written back in 2014, still appears to be a fundamental …

I am an …

I've had my current Sony Xperia for nearly three years, which is a good run, but it's definitely starting to show its age. First of all the headphone jack broke; it still works, it just doesn't know …

Welcome to the third version of theAdhocracy! It's been a long time coming, but the site has finally been rebuilt, rehosted, and re-just-about-everything else, so I figured I'd actually formalise the launch with a new post explaining what's happened and why.

Oh boy, there's a lot worth pulling out of this overview of upcoming web …

I mostly use my iPad for watching YouTube. So what do I do now that Google has locked my device out of the YouTube app because it's too old? Why is it possible for a company to effectively remove features from my device that worked yesterday?

I finally made it to an IndieWebCamp meetup, even if it was remote only due to the increasingly restrictive implications of the coronavirus. I learnt a lot, I had a great time, and I'm ready to start implementing a whole bunch of new ideas right here. I also took a huge number of notes from the speakers and sessions throughout the day.

Notes from the fully remote React Summit 2020 (or at least the talks I tuned in for). Lots covered, from static-site generators and the Jamstack through to React state management and accessibility. What a fun day!

Two months after Disney+ launched I'm still a huge fan of the content catalogue but swing between feeling bemused and exasperated at the actual experience of using the service.

Marketing needs versus user experience is a topic that I have some deep misgivings over, but a recent post made me want to try and boil some of those thoughts down into their underlying rationale. I'm not sure I totally succeeded, but there we go.

... otherwise known as the Great Vulture Failure of 2020 …

I'm a proud owner of an LG V20, despite the phone's age. With LG's sudden decision to exit the mobile phone market, I've been thinking about why I love this phone, and what I'll do now if it ever dies.

A frankly depressing look at the state of the mobile web in 2021. From lacklustre technological advancement in the past decade, to increasing device saturation, and the overuse of JavaScript, here's …

Baldur has written a wonderfully paced, deeply interesting post on the whole SPA/MPA (AKA normal website) debate with one critical conclusion: SPAs are fine; MPAs are fine; anything will suck if …

Starling Bank frustrates and impresses me in equal measure. Their technical solutions are magical – when they work – but their service is steeped in a privileged bias that makes them hard to truly recommend.

I saw Zach's poll on Twitter when they posted it, so I was intrigued to see what the results were. Most people agree with me, that URLs shouldn't have trailing slashes. It turns out that we're …

An excellent overview from Josh of the pitfalls of using UI frameworks. I particularly enjoyed their focus on why developers often advocate for these tools, and how those needs are often …

Like many other folk, I've been dipping my toes back into the Fediverse and checking out Mastodon. It isn't my first rodeo in this particular ring, but somehow it does feel a little different this …

I read the entirety of the EAA – including all supporting documentation – so you don't have to.

There's been a lot of hyperbole – in both directions – around Apple's much-anticipated first-steps into VR. I feel this write-up from MartianCraft does a fairly good job of weighing up some of …

Need to self-host your front end away from the "modern" services like Netlify or Vercel? As both continue to get a little sketchier with time, it's definitely something I'm having to …

Mastodon makes saving interesting links for later very easy, but getting these into a feed reader or note-taking service seemed impossible until I came across a neat little hosted solution.

I think automatically pumping every article saved to Readwise through an LLM is a bad idea. Luckily, you can turn that feature off!