Search

Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and …

So I've owned a set of Logitech z4 2.1 desk speakers for about five years now, ever since a good friend of mine effectively gave them to me because they couldn't fit in his car. They remain one of …

I'd really love to get micropublishing up and running on theAdhocracy. I've recently started dabbling in Flickr and it would be great to upload here and automatically have my photo's fired over …

Have you ever heard of Marc van Roosmalen? No, I hadn't either - although that is slightly less surprising for you, unless you also have a degree with a heavy focus on primatology. So who is this …

Reddit has once again directed me towards a very interesting online resource: Interneting is …

You find yourself in a magical cave, holding an old oil lamp, spilling out of which is a magical Genie. You know the drill: you have three wishes and you cannot request …

Today I corrected somebody on the internet. Of course, the correction was entirely warranted because it touched on any area of very specific specialist knowledge of which I inexplicably know enough …

A List Apart has long been a fantastic source of knowledge and inspiration in terms of both website design and writing, but on top of these accolades every now an then it manage to …

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.

I was recently given a new laptop at work (🥳), but failed to realise that my Git author details weren't syncing correctly with GitHub for almost a month... 🤦 Rather than simply accept those white squares, I decided to rewrite the repository history. The process turns out to be quite simple, but I still hit several snags so figured it could be useful to document my fixes and errors.

A step-by-step guide to installing Craft CMS 3+ on the Arcustech hosting services, because sometimes all the command line steps can seem a little daunting if you aren't used to it!

An amalgamation of all the data you get fed at the end of a year. From Spotify Wrapped, to Google tracking, to my own beer journal, a look back over 2019 from a (mildly) data-centred viewpoint.

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

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.

I've followed the news over the new species Oculudentavis with interest. The initial find was stunning; the follow up discussion around whether or not this is a basal therepod, a stem bird, …

After the success of digital beer and neigh-neighs, various of our friends arranged a follow-up get together over Zoom which took the shape of a team quiz. A few people volunteered (including Alison) …

Well, it only took about a week of dazed puzzling, data tables, and tearing my hair out in clumps, but I think I may finally have a rough content taxonomy for theAdhocracy. A rough first version, that is. Let me explain...

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).

Some thoughts on Code Institute's "5 Day Coding Challenge", having just completed it.

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 …

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.

I think there's some real merit to Andy's ideas behind Cube CSS. It's a middle-ground between everything-in-JS or BEM that throw out the cascade entirely and the free-for-all that can happen if you …

The idea of a great divide in front-end development resonated with me. I'm worried about how the erosion of certain skills could lead to a less inclusive, accessible web, for both users and developers. On the other hand, there are some massive advantages to our new tools. It's a double-edged sword.

A wonderful article about the early web, and how it evolved from a medium where one person could truly own an entire site into the behemoth that takes teams of people to wrangle that we know today. …

For our third day trip we wanted to give the car a rest, so packed our bags and struck out for Richmond Park. Despite living in south-west London for over two years, we still hadn't made it past …

I've been thinking a lot about an article I read recently that called out technical writing online for being overly trusted. But shouldn't that same argument apply more universally to third-party code coming from any source?

I love books. I have a huge collection of them and I routinely add to it. But when it comes to the topic of spreading knowledge and information, I think the web wins. It may not be as nice to use, but it is more accessible, and that means it's more valuable.

The utterly bizarre tale of East Grinstead, a small town in Sussex that appears to be cosplaying as the fictional town of Twin Peaks. It …

A look at how I've been using Git aliases to remove repetitive tasks, automate workflows, and generally optimise working on the command line. They're small tips, but they've had a big impact on me.

CraftCMS has a habit of imploding when running software updates, for which I have developed several coping strategies.