theAdhocracy
Notes from my second fully remote conference, this time Sparkbox's UnConference. Being able to freely access talks from the US is a rare bonus of everything going on right now, and this did not disappoint. Musical cameos, great talks on UX, accessibility, design systems, and amazing speakers. Great event (despite the time difference).
Andy has built a career considering the impact of note-taking and ways to maximise it as a way to gain deeper insights and develop general knowledge. This notes microsite is one of their related …
I've been enjoying They Can Talk for a while. It's a simple concept, executed extremely well: what would animals say if they could talk? Worth a …
Apparently, the 1930's saw a craze flooding Britain's pubs: bar billiards. It's a particularly mad (but intriguing) looking game that's 50% pool, 30% shuffleboard, 15% bowling, and 5% quidditch. In …
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!
Another month, another big and fully remote JavaScript conference. JSNation fit into my schedule a little less (and didn't quite overlap with my interests as neatly) but it was a fun event with some interesting talks on topics that are often only on my periphery. Much to think about!
I've chopped out the middle here, but I really like this sentiment from Seth on the nature of media, control, and the illusion of …
I have read this article half a dozen times since I first discovered it a couple of months ago. Each time, it angers me, saddens me, and reminds me that people are inherently, well, just people. …
Ryan always has some interesting thoughts around the ethics of online communities, and this is no exception. There's a lot of great questions and thoughts in here around whether or not we should be …
A succinct and to-the-point teardown of why 2FA (two-factor authentication) is beneficial for user verification by businesses, but terrible for preventing things like phishing attacks (because the …
I've never understood the appeal of TailwindCSS. I've watched friends and colleagues get amped for it, seen their code, and just felt like it was a meaningless abstraction of the existing technology. …
Surely I'm not alone in wanting YouTube playlist …
An excerpt from How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi, which I really need to pick …
An interesting read into designing UIs for LLMs and other generative ML algorithms, particularly given the author's relatively extensive work in that field. The main takeaway seems to be that pure …
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 …
Today contained dull, "adult" stuff regarding accounts and filing. Not very inspiring, but a good excuse to test Spotify's latest feature: Discover …
I've been using Last.FM for nearly six years, but it isn't the community or music discovery that keeps me around: it's the …
Thanks to the constant barrage of live music over the last week, I've been frequently pondering my Last.FM API hack. Coco and the Butterfields seriously highlight the Last.FM problem: since Monday …
For nine months common sense prevailed, but once again it's illegal to rip a CD in iTunes. I just can't …
Looking back over what I've previously written about Last.fm is a little, well, shameful. Since as long ago as July 2015 I've been noting how the service has a large void: analog music. I love having …
Last night involved a lot of brass, beats and beer, courtesy of Too Many Zooz and some unexpected friends. Needless to say, it was a huge amount of fun, so I figured I'd jot down a few thoughts that occurred to me over the course of the evening.
What a great day. My work runs a quarterly rewards scheme known as The Club and I was lucky enough to qualify this time around, so that meant a half day and then off to a fancy restaurant for an …
It's my third time seeing Goldfish and the first time with Alison and pretty much all the usual suspects. In other words: it was amazing! Goldfish pulled out a blinder of a set, with several of their …
Having spent several years without managing to get to Printworks, I've now been twice in a month. This time was to see DJ Koze; not quite the immense personal favourite that Goldfish are, but still …
Progressive summarisation may not be ideally suited for me right now, but it's an idea which stuck with me whilst I was undergoing my own taxonomy building process. It's worth stepping through the …
Whilst sorting out some old hard drives I discovered some videos from the cancelled 2013 Harfest festival (only link I could find now). I was one of only about a dozen people who didn't live locally …
Another really neat music-related tool, Stems claims to be able to split tracks into their various components e.g. drums, piano, vocals, instrumentals etc. It's something I've always …
The summer solstice started like most Sunday's of the past year: we had a fairly lazy morning, ate brunch, Alison read a bit whilst I tinkered on the microsite. And then we pulled out our drumming …
Y'know that thing where Spotify is on shuffle but refuses to play certain songs in your playlist? And you can shuffle the same playlist several times over the course of a week and it'll seem to have …
A full write up of our trip to Devon and the Chilterns a few weeks ago, from folk festivals to Whipsnade Zoo to tree cathedrals. We had a great, highly varied time, exploring some places we know very well from a new angle and some entirely new parts of the country.