theAdhocracy
Craft CMS has the ability to accept environment variables as well as aliases. It can be worthwhile understanding how these two seemingly similar concepts differ, and when you might want to use one over the other.
A depressing deep-dive into the world of NFTs (non-fungible tokens), cryptoart, and why crypto-anything is an ecological and social …
A collective approach to the missing fourth R in the oft-quoted environmentalist mantra: repair. Not everyone is an electrical engineer, IT technician, or mechanic, but chances are someone …
Accuracy in carbon footprint tools will always be a little dubious, but the Website Carbon Calculator is still a neat idea. theAdhocracy is currently sitting at 89% "cleaner" than the average …
NFTs continue to get a lot of publicity and debate. Seth has some useful insight into the potential "bubble" of value they …
Monks Wood Wilderness was a regularly ploughed field 60 years ago. Then (for whatever reason) it wound up without clear ownership and became an environmental study well ahead of its time: a rewilding …
A useful rundown of some of the considerations worth keeping in mind when evaluating the "green" credentials of a web host or …
On Thursday, I attended a talk from George Monbiot, given at Ways With Words, Dartington Hall. I enjoyed it immensely, which isn't surprising. I've been a fan of Monbiot's pet philosophy, …
The idea of Air-Ink is a very clever one, taking an approach to reducing pollution that I really like. Rather than using guilt trips or absolution, instead the team at Graviky Inc. have devised a way …
Migrating assets to a new CMS can be a complete pain, but working out which files go with each page or article on a website doesn't have to be a nightmare if you start with a solid foundation. For me, that means tightly coupling my folder structure on the server with my content structure on the website, a workflow that Craft is particularly nifty at automating.
I love seeing new engineering ideas for creating low-energy buildings and the "earth, wind, and fire" method by Dr Ben Bronsema shows promise. Basically it uses a combination of solar energy/heating, …
I've seen some good reviews of Ecologi. For a relatively low monthly cost (<£5) you can fund tree planting, rewilding initiatives, and environmental community schemes all over the world. They've …
Not only that, but slight changes to the alignment between phone and charger decreased efficiency massively, so that millimetre tweaks could result in 80% more energy for a single charge. Plus, …
A great overview of the state of the modern web from a UX and environmental perspective. Gerry notes the impact of image and videos (and JavaScript) on websites …
A powerful and insightful piece by Michelle on the direct environmental impact the tech sector has, the way in which tech workers can demand further accountability and action, and the reality that …
System fonts are often overlooked, but they come with a massive list of advantages: environmental, performance, data …
I continue to be impressed by the commitment Krystal – my web host – shows towards green computing. Their recent milestone of planting a million trees also highlighted a really cool charity: Ecologi.
Various notes from my battle to get a local development environment working for Craft CMS.
For the second year running, Khoi Vinh of subtraction.com is asking for designers/developers to fill out a survey detailing what tools they use in their day-to-day workflow. I'm probably not the …
Standard workday, standard work lunch catching up on RSS feeds. Of course, quite a few of them are discussing the leaked "Anti-Diversity" manifesto from the, now infamous, ex-Google employee (name …
The recent update to Lightroom (and descent into League) means that photography has taken a bit of a backseat once again, but I have actually managed to turn posting to social media into a bit of a …
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 …
I have to admit, after a particularly awful experience well over a decade ago I have deliberately avoided travelling through the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. As a result, I had no idea about …
Who'd have thought it: both Adrian and me set New Year's resolutions to use calendars more, so our first get together actually happened on the date we had planned – despite the tube trying hard to …
Mike Berners-Lee (yes, brother to that Berners-Lee) has carved out a real niche for himself as something of an authority on the complexities of the modern environmental movement, …
Static sites don't make search functionality easy, but luckily there are some excellent services that do. I've been messing around with Algolia and finally have it working with Craft and Gatsby the way I want it... on the backend, at least.
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!
Some thoughts on Code Institute's "5 Day Coding Challenge", having just completed it.
A great review of the differences and similarities between universal design, inclusive design, and plain old accessibility, from one of the originators of universal design within the web community …
Having hooked up Algolia with my Gatsby build pipeline and populated a search index from my Craft CMS API, the next step was the build a frontend UI to enable users to actually query my posts. It turned out to be a pretty simple process.