Writing

Last Friday I jumped on the train to London to see Lumiere, a four-day festival of illuminated art.

I wasn’t going to write about 2015, but reading a few end-of-year reviews has encouraged me to attempt the same, so here goes…

Justin Avery, who curates Responsive Design Weekly, asked me to revisit the four questions I answered as part of an interview series in 2013. Here are my answers.

Ten years ago today, I boarded United Airlines flight 955 from London Heathrow to San Francisco. Here’s what happened next.

The hackability provided by Jekyll’s plugin architecture has brought about an unexpected consequence: I’m starting to learn Ruby.

Freelancing can sometimes feel like a roller coaster of emotions, and this post finds me at one of its lowest points. Eight months in, now seems like a good time to consider the ride taken so far, and consolidate some of the lessons learnt.

Comparing a city with those previously visited might not be the best means of appraisal, but that’s what I found myself doing during a three-night stay in Prague.

A few thoughts on the new Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

Three years after the Web Aesthetic, comes my second article for A List Apart. Intended to inform a broader discussion about the principles that underline our work, I thought I would share some background as to how this article came about.

Just as blogging began to democratise publishing, social media arrived to undermine it.

Responsive web design changed everything about how we think and work on the web. Five years on, we’re still exploring the best ways to approach our practice. If we want a web that is truly universal, we must consider our users, our medium, and our teams in new, adaptable ways. Looking at where we’ve come from and where we’re going, I propose a philosophical framework for our work on the responsive web.

Following a £272m conversion programme, London’s Olympic Stadium can now host both football and athletics. Has this secured it legacy?

In what has become a familiar pattern, having decided to embark on a redesign last February, I then spent the following 18 months iterating and iterating. Now, after many missed deadlines, I have finally launched my new site.

I’m attending my second IndieWebCamp this weekend, with the sole aim of implementing webmentions. This has meant prematurely launching my new Jekyll-based website. That this has been in development since last February, many would say this moment is long overdue.

Though memories of my time at university are murky, one incident stands out.

Lanyards – the piece of fabric that allows you to hang a conference badge from your neck – have a lifespan of just a few hours. How can we change that?

Some thoughts after spending a few days in the Netherlands’ second city.

The work of celebrated illustrator and artist William Kentridge is showcased at the EYE Film Institute in Amsterdam.

I tuned in for just a few seconds, but had to turn it off. That’s not enough time to make a reasoned judgement about the content of Apple’s latest keynote of course, but I just couldn’t continue watching.

Earlier this month I attended UpFront Conference, an event organised by Dan Donald and other members of Manchester’s digital community.

For the last few years I’ve employed a little life hack: signing up my future self to things I would ordinarily avoid.

I recently learnt about a security exploit that can occur when pages served over HTTPS use HTTP compression. Secure or fast, pick one?

The feedback loops and network effects permitted by the internet have allowed companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon to become near-monopolies within their chosen fields.

I’ve returned to 68 Middle Street just in time for the start of 100 days, a collaborative project where the aim is to complete a creative process every day for one hundred days.