Elvis the cat.
Archive: July, 2014
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Thursday, July 31st, 2014
Man of action, @jvbates.
How we make RWD sites load fast as heck
Scott shares the code that Filament Group are using to determine which style declarations are critical (and can be inlined) and which are non-critical (and can be loaded asynchronously). It makes quite a difference in perceived performance.
By the way, I really, really like the terminology of “critical” and “non-critical” CSS, rather than “above the fold” and “below the fold” CSS.
RWD Bloat - daverupert.com
Dave wanted to figure out if having a responsive site necessarily meant taking a performance hit, so he ran the numbers on his own site. It turns out all of performance-related issues are not related to responsive design.
Lunch in the sun.
Mackerel accomplished!
Mackerel Impossible
Lunchtime BBQ at @Clearleft Towers.
A man and his meat.
Mackerel prepped.
Mackerel secured.
Wednesday, July 30th, 2014
Post-work beach beers.
UI patterns.
Maps and legends.
Code Responsibly
Ten facets of web development that you can choose to focus on. One of them is from me …but other nine are worth paying attention to.
Full-width pinned layouts with flexbox
Zoe uses one little case study to contrast two different CSS techniques: display-table and flexbox. Flexbox definitely comes out on top when it comes to true source-order independence.
Doing a lot of reading. Fighting off that bit of my brain that says this isn’t being “productive” …’cos it totally is too being productive.
The Virtual Haircut That Could Change the World | Design | WIRED
A nice profile of BERG’s Little Printer. That Matt Webb is a smart cookie. He is also a very thoughtful cookie.
Jeremy Keith - Pencil vs Pixel
I met Cesar at An Event Apart in San Diego earlier this year. We had a nice lunchtime chat and he suggested that I come on his show, Pencil vs Pixel. I was, of course, honoured and I accepted his invitation immediately.
Huffduffing myself.
MORNING, COMPUTER | Warren Ellis on Pacific Daylight Time
If you were in any doubt that Warren Ellis is going to blow the roof off the Brighton Dome at dConstruct, this is what happens when he decides to write a little something every day.
How to build a device lab | Tutorial by Destiny Montague and Lara Swanson
A set of slides from Destiny Montague and Lara Swanson at Etsy with their advice on setting up a device lab. Lara also wrote about the device lab on the Etsy code blog.
Simplicity
I can relate to every single word that Bastian has written here.
The longer I look at boilerplates, build tools, frameworks and ways to make my life as a developer easier, the more I long for the basics.
Tuesday, July 29th, 2014
Radio-Controlled Web Design · An A List Apart Article
Turns out that the :checked pseudo-class selector allows you to do some clever interaction without JavaScript.
Chartsngraffs.
Let’s Talk About RTL
Some very handy techniques for working with right-to-left text.
Chloe’s Memorial
There’s a memorial picnic in Central Park on Saturday for Chloe. I wish I could be there.
ZX Spectrum Screenshotter Example - an album on Flickr
Over 700 screenshots of ZX Spectrum games, captured by Jason Scott. Some of these bring back memories.
Monday, July 28th, 2014
A Maintainable Style Guide - Ian Feather
The challenges of maintaining a living breathing front-end style guide for an always-evolving product (the Lonely Planet website in this case).
GitHub’s CSS · @mdo
Mark Otto talks through the state of Github’s CSS and the processes behind updating it. There’s a nice mix of pragmatism and best practices, together with a recognition that there’s always room for improvement.
Sunday, July 27th, 2014
Twelve Tomorrows | MIT Technology Review
This year’s collection of twelve sci-fi stories from Technology Review features three dConstruct speakers: Lauren Beukes, Cory Doctorow, and Warren Ellis.
A Brief History of Bloggering - The Morning News
An alternative history from a parallel timeline.
He started coding his own just weeks after Tim Berners-Lee, a tunnel engineer helping to build the STERN protein collider, discovered ancient scrolls buried in the Swiss soil that revealed the secrets of HTML.
Saturday, July 26th, 2014
Beerkins at @BrtnDispensary.
Burger from @TheTrollsPantry.
Chicken wings at @StreetDiner.
Panorama Fail
The image-stitching algorithm is trying its best.
The Camera in the Mirror
Kubrickian pictures taken by the Google robot wherein it captures its own reflection.
Avocado and tunes for breakfast.
Friday, July 25th, 2014
Software, It’s a Thing — Medium
The first Lunar Orbiter, Andy Warhol’s Amiga, and George R.R. Martin’s WordStar …the opening address to the Digital Preservation 2014 conference July 22 in Washington, DC.
Just as early filmmakers couldn’t have predicted the level of ongoing interest in their work over a hundred years later, who can say what future generations will find important to know and preserve about the early history of software?
(Mind you, I can’t help but feel that the chances of this particular text have a long life at a Medium URL are pretty slim.)
Quarter past beer o’clock.
Breathing in the petrichor.
Danny the Dannerian, devourer of @honeycomb_cakes.
Biscuit tasting at @StreetDiner.
Thursday, July 24th, 2014
Unfinished Business special: Rumpus On The Planet Of The Apes with Brendan Dawes and Jeremy Keith on Huffduffer
This was a lot of fun for us. It might even be fun to listen to.
If you haven’t seen Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes, then listen ye not—this is a spoilerific podcast episode.
On the beach with @TheAvangelist and @Gablaxian.
Wednesday, July 23rd, 2014
Hot, sweaty, and thoroughly rocked out. That was a fun @SalterCane gig.
Come to the Prince Albert this evening to celebrate @wordridden’s birthday in style …with @SalterCane.
Also ready to rock.
Ready to rock.
Had fun talking apes with @Malarkey and @BrendanDawes.
Now to tune up my bouzouki for tonight’s @SalterCane gig at the Albert.
Getting ready to discuss primatology with @BrendanDawes and @Malarkey.
Best bus seat.
The Pattern Library
Literally a library of patterns: y’know, for tiling background images. Old school!
Guy Walks Into a Bar - The New Yorker
If you’re going to check out the New Yorker’s nice new responsive site, might I suggest you start here?
Google’s ‘Nearby’ Lets Your Smartphone Talk to the Internet of Things | Motherboard
An early look at the just-in-time interactions that Scott has been working on:
Nearby works like this. An enabled object broadcasts a short description of itself and a URL to devices nearby listening. Those URLs are grabbed and listed by the app, and tapping on one brings you to the object’s webpage, where you can interact with it—say, tell it to perform a task.
Tuesday, July 22nd, 2014
Brightonians, you should come and @SalterCane at The Albert tomorrow evening. It’ll be fun.
Adactibots
I post a few links on this site every day—around 4 or 5, on average. If you subscribe to the RSS feed, then you’ll know about them (I also push them to Delicious but I don’t recommend relying on that).
If you don’t use RSS—you lawnoffgetting youngster, you—then you’d pretty much have to actually visit my website to see what I’m linking to. How quaint!
Here, let me throw you a bone in the shape of a Twitter bot. You can now follow @adactioLinks.
I made a little If This, Then That recipe which will ping the RSS feed and update the Twitter account whenever there’s a new link.
I’ve done same thing for my journal (or “blog”, short for “weblog”, if you will). You can either subscribe to the journal’s RSS feed or decide that that’s far too much hassle, and just follow @adactioJournal on Twitter instead.
The journal postings are far less frequent than the links. But I still figured I’d provide a separate, automated Twitter account because I do not want to be that guy saying “In case you missed it earlier…” from my human account …although technically, even my non-bot account is auto-generated: my status updates start life as notes on adactio.com—Twitter just gets a copy.
There’s also @adactioArticles for longer-form articles and talk transcripts but that’s very, very infrequent—just a few posts a year.
So these Twitter accounts correspond to different posts on adactio.com in decreasing order of frequency:
Indie Web Camp Brighton
If you’re coming to this year’s dConstruct here in Brighton on September 5th—and you really, really should—then consider sticking around for the weekend.
Not only will there be the fantastic annual Maker Faire on Saturday, September 6th, but there’s also an Indie Web Camp happening at 68 Middle Street on the Saturday and Sunday.
We had an Indie Web Camp right after last year’s dConstruct and it was really good fun …and very productive to boot. The format works really well: one day of discussions and brainstorming, and one day of hacking, designing, and building.
So if you find yourself agreeing with the design principles of the Indie Web, be sure to come along. Add yourself to the list of attendees.
If you’re coming from outside Brighton for the dConstruct/Indie Web weekend, take a look at the dConstruct page on AirBnB for some accommodation ideas at very reasonable rates.
Speaking of reasonable rates… just between you and me, I’ve created a discount code for any Indie Web Campers who are coming to dConstruct. Use the discount code “indieweb” to shave £25 off the ticket price (bringing it down to £125 + VAT). And trust me, you do not want to miss this year’s dConstruct.
It’s just a little over six weeks until the best weekend in Brighton. I hope I’ll see you here then.
Cotton Bureau – Future Friendly (Red) by Brad Frost
This fetching red future friendly T-shirt would look quite good on you. Just down beam down to any planetary surfaces as part of an away team.
Profits go to the Internet Archive.
Bowl on the beach.
Meet the Online Tracking Device That is Virtually Impossible to Block - ProPublica
Well, thanks to the ass-hattery of AddThis, the use case of your site’s visitors switching off JavaScript for (legitimate) security reasons just became a lot more plausible.
But you’re using JavaScript as an enhancement, right? You’re not relying on it for core tasks, right?
“The Internet Never Forgets” — sixtwothree.org
The Internet forgets every single day.
I’m with Jason.
I encourage you all to take a moment and consider the importance of preserving your online creations for yourself, your family, and for future generations.
Monday, July 21st, 2014
I cooked the trout; @wordridden made the vegetable linguine.
Huffduffing @gavrov.
Every morning I open my chat and IRC clients and this stupid part of my brain keeps expecting to see @ChloeWeil’s username.
Every. Time.
Sunday, July 20th, 2014
Went kayaking on the river Ouse.
Also went in the river Ouse.
Also knackered now.
Saturday, July 19th, 2014
James Bridle’s Critical View From Above | Crane.tv Contemporary Culture Video Magazine
James talks about his latest project, The Right To Flight.
For Chloe Weil : Christopher Schmitt
We are missing someone special this CSS Summit.
Friday, July 18th, 2014
So glad they got my job title right.
http://www.creativebloq.com/netmag/jeremy-keith-building-progressive-enhancement-71412348
I’ve been mondegreened by @WordRidden. Now I hear AC-DC singing “Rock And Roll Dalmatian.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qTtXdqd0ck
“Born To Be Relatively Unconventional” is my new jam.
A storm of swords …er, kebabs.
Grilling lamb kebabs.
I feel like I’m being watched.
Improving Reality 2014 — Visibility Is A Trap
Lighthouse are putting on their Improving Reality conference again this year. It’s the day before dConstruct. Come to both!
Beer o’clock.
“When I finish this cup of tea, I’m going to have a beer.”
—A thought, in my brain, just now.
Cotton Bureau – Future Friendly by Brad Frost
For your consideration.
If enough people want a print run of this lovely Future Friendly T-shirt, then they’ll make a new batch.
The profits go to the Internet Archive.
Daphne!
Troll’s Pantry burger.
Street diner.
Daphne and @qwertykate.
Welcoming Daphne to the @Clearleft HQ.
What’s the design process at GDS? | Government Digital Service
A look behind the scenes of gov.uk. I like their attitude to Photoshop comps:
We don’t want a culture of designs being “thrown over a wall” to a dev team. We don’t make “high fidelity mock ups” or “high fidelity wireframes”. We’re making a Thing, not pictures of a Thing.
And UX:
We don’t have a UX Team. If the problem with your service is that the servers are slow and the UX Team can’t change that, then they aren’t in control of the user experience and they shouldn’t be called the user experience team.
Thursday, July 17th, 2014
Heading back to Brighton after a nice afternoon in London chatting to some people at Auntie Beeb.
Imagining a dystopian alternate reality where gov.uk is a single page app built with the latest monolithic client-side framework.
Breach - A browser for the HTML5 era
A new browser on the block (though not a new rendering engine), this one is written is written entirely in JavaScript. It’s worth taking it for a spin to see some of the interesting interface ideas around tabs and loading indicators.
Personally, I’m all for more browsers. The more, the merrier.
Wednesday, July 16th, 2014
Wishing I could be in Portland with @AndyMcMillan @PetraGregorova @FStorr @SusanJRobertson @MattO for @ChloeWeil’s memorial this evening.
Jeremy Keith on progressive enhancement - YouTube
Almost six minutes of me squinting in the sun and sharing my reckons while seagulls squawk in the background.
Overcast and Huffduffer
Marco Arment has released his podcast app Overcast for iOS—you can read his introduction to the app.
It plays nicely with Huffduffer. If you want to listen to any Huffduffer feed in Overcast, it’s a straightforward process.
Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
It’s pretty straightforward to subscribe to Huffduffer URLs in other iOS apps too. Matt has written up the process of using Huffduffer and Instacast. And there’s also a write-up of using Huffduffer and Downcast.
Planning a trip to London tomorrow and trying to imagine how I would get by without http://traintimes.org.uk/ and its lovely hackable URLs.
Steaks from the grill.
Weird Artificial Intelligence Yankovic.
The Making of Aprilzero
The first in a series of posts looking at the process behind builfing this “quantified self” site:
As with most decisions in my life, I asked myself: What would Tony Stark do?
Apollo 11 Saturn V Launch (HD) Camera E-8 on Vimeo
45 years ago today.
The waves aren’t as big today.
Mackerel sandwich on the beach.
Chloe Weil · Rudiger Meyer
I keep thinking that the world needs more Chloe, not less
Comfy @dConstruct cushion courtesy of @anna_debenham.
Soooo excited to have Cory Doctorow back for @dConstruct ten years on!
Cory Doctorow at dConstruct 2014
This year’s dConstruct will be the tenth one. Ten! That’s a cause for celebration.
The very first dConstruct back in 2005 was a small affair. But we pulled off something off a coup by having the one and only Cory Doctorow deliver the closing talk. You can still listen to the talk—along with every dConstruct talk ever—at the dConstruct archive.
It’s a great talk that still holds up a decade later. Cory’s passion for freedom and technology (and maintaining the intersection of both) is palpable.
Here we are in 2014 and the theme for dConstruct is “Living With The Network.” Who better to deliver a keynote address than Cory Doctorow?
That’s right—he’s back!
I love the symmetry of having Cory at the first and the tenth dConstruct. Also: he’s absolutely bloody brilliant!
Get your ticket for dConstruct 2014 now. It’s going to be a magnificent day.
See you on September 5th!
Smart Fixed Navigation
Here’s an intriguing approach to offering a navigation control that adapts as the user scrolls.
I’m not too keen on the way it duplicates the navigation in the markup though. I might have a play to see if I can find a way to progressively enhance up from a link-to-footer pattern to achieve this.
How to build the sensory web by John Allsopp
John peers behind the surface veneer of the web’s current screen-based setting:
The challenge for us as developers and designers for the web becomes less about screens and pixels and buttons and much more about how the web augments our lives, both actively and passively; how it makes us know ourselves and our homes and workplaces and environments better.
The right to flight: why I’m flying a balloon over London this summer
Watch the skies: James Bridle’s balloon will be hovering above London distributing wifi.
Urban Giants on Vimeo
A look at the architectural history of the network hubs of New York: 32 Avenue of the Americas and 60 Hudson Street. Directed by Davina Pardo and written by her husband Andrew Blum, author of Tubes: A Journey to the Centre of the Internet.
These buildings were always used as network hubs. It’s just that the old networks were used to house the infrastructure of telephone networks (these were the long line buildings).
In a way, the big server hotel of New York—111 Eight Avenue—was also always used to route packets …it’s just that the packets used to be physical.
Tuesday, July 15th, 2014
Continuing.
Pausing.
Updating my job title.
“Pausing, for a moment, he continues.”
Another line, five paragraphs later, from the same @NetMag feature.
“He pauses for a minute before continuing.”
An actual line from the @NetMag feature on me.
L’esprit de l’escalier misanthropique.
People in the Brighton sunshine with “free hugs” signs.
“You look like you need a hug!” shouts a woman at me and laughs with her friends.
Looking forward to making some noise with @SalterCane for a few hours this afternoon.
The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz by Brian Knappenberger
The Aaron Swartz film is available on the Internet Archive under a Creative Commons attribution non-commercial share-alike license.
Navigating the Guardian | Help | The Guardian
A peek behind the scenes of an interesting new navigation pattern on the Guardian’s still-in-beta responsive site.
You can try it out here
Web 2024 | Robin Berjon
Here’s a dystopian vision of the web in ten years time, where professional developers are the only people able to publish on the web.
This is why it worries me when I come across very smart people who don’t seem to see a problem with the creation of web pages being taken out of the reach of any human being with an internet connection and a smattering of declarative languages—HTML, CSS—and into the hands of an elite minority of JavaScript programmers.
Monday, July 14th, 2014
Thank you @kyle_wm, @samanthatoy, @carywood, @fstorr and everyone else who has donated in @chloeweil’s memory:
Picking herbs from the garden.
simpl.info
A handy reference for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript features. Each feature has a bare-bones demo at a nice guessable URL e.g. http://simpl.info/datalist/
Things we learnt designing ‘Register to vote’ | GDS design notes
A concise case study from gov.uk:
Designing for the constraints of mobile is useful – if we get the fundamentals of the service working on small screens and slow network speeds, it can work on more capable devices.
Just got some exciting http://2014.dconstruct.org/ news.
Let’s just say if you don’t have your ticket yet, you might want to change that.
On Brighton beach in the sunshine, watching the tide come in.
The waves are surprisingly big today.
When seagulls attack.
The Developer’s Dystopian Future – The Pastry Box Project
My interest in rich client-side apps has almost entirely reversed, and now I’m more interested in doing good ol’ server rendering with the occasional side of progressive enhancement, just like we did it in 2004.
This post resonates with me 100%.
Where will I be in 10 years? I don’t know. I hope I still will have some in-demand skills to pay the bills. But it feels like all I see are DevOps and JavaScript, and I know less and less every day about those things.
Practical ARIA Examples
Heydon Pickering put together a great collection of accessible self-contained interface patterns that demonstrate smart use of ARIA.
Science Hack Day Shanghai 2014 - an album on Flickr
Photos from the first Science Hack Day in China which just wrapped up.
Monday morning meeting.
The Eccentric Genius Whose Time May Have Finally Come (Again) - Doug Hill - The Atlantic
A profile of Norbert Wiener, and how his star was eclipsed by Claude Shannon.
Sunday, July 13th, 2014
The tide
Thank you to everyone who has donated—or is going to donate—to the Oregon Humane Society in Chloe’s memory.
Thank you to everyone who sent me words of comfort. I really, really appreciate it.
I’ve been surprised by where else I’ve found comfort:
- Sunny weather.
- Good food. Comfort food, I guess.
- Playing music. I practiced with Salter Cane on Friday and playing the louder, angrier songs felt cathartic—I was probably playing terribly, but I didn’t care.
- Documenting tributes to Chloe and making a back-up of her site. I suppose I’m using digital preservation as a coping mechanism.
Tomorrow is Monday, the start of the working week. Tomorrow I will go to work. Tomorrow I will, to all outward appearances, carry on as normal.
Except it won’t really be normal. It’s going to be very strange. The world feels very strange to me. A world without Chloe isn’t right. It isn’t normal. A world without Chloe feels wrong. Skewed. Off-kilter.
But I’m going to go into work. I’m going to do some hacking. I’m going to write about code. I’m going to post links related to web design and development. I’m going to get back to organising this year’s dConstruct. (Can you believe that the last time I was IMing with Chloe, I was bitching to her about lacklustre ticket sales? What a fucking joke.)
In short, I’m going to carry on. Even though the world feels wrong. I’m not sure if the world will ever feel right again.
I thought that grief was like a tsunami. It’s unstoppable. It washes over you completely. It flattens you and leaves you battered and bruised. But then it’s over, right?
It turns out that grief is more like the tide. The tsunami was just the first wave. There will be many more.
Over the course of a single day, many a wave will hit me unexpectedly and I’ll find myself weeping …again. Over time, those waves will abate. But grief is fractally tidal. There are longer waves—days, weeks, months, years.
Remy has endured four years of grief and counting:
Time won’t ever heal this hole in our lives. It shouldn’t either.
But he carries on, even though the world is wrong:
You just get stronger. You have to.
It doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt anymore. It does. I’m just able to carry that pain and make it mine and part of me, because I’ve learnt how to.
Time doesn’t heal. It just looks that way from the outside in.
So tomorrow I’ll go back to work, and I’ll go back to writing and coding and talking and organising. Perhaps those activities might provide their own comfort.
I know that the tide will never stop, but I hope that it will at least weaken in strength over time.
A world without Chloe is wrong, but that’s the world I live in now. There won’t be a day goes by that I won’t be thinking of her.
Clouds. Blue sky.
A thought — Samantha Stocks | Writer
I just feel very sad that she isn’t around anymore, and I can’t reach out to her and say, “Hey, me too.”
Feeling grateful for sunshine, and music, and food, and @wordridden, and kind words from good friends.
Getting out of the house, taking the best bus seat.
Saturday, July 12th, 2014
Rainypixels: Meow Means Woof In Cat
It feels like I have lost one of my own.
RIP, Chloe.
Chloe | susan jean robertson
Even though we didn’t spend loads of time together, I will miss you Chloe; your quirky tweets, your fantastic photos of FACE, and the wonderful things you made both online and in real life.
Glad that the sun is shining today in Brighton.
For Chloe
Chloe often told me about Jill, her friend at work, and how they bonded straight away.
Eating ice cream.
Making music helps a little.
Frank Chimero – For Chloe
That was Chloe. She was exceptional. I hate that “was” is not “is.”
Friday, July 11th, 2014
Chloe – rachil.li
What struck me most - and has always stayed with me - is how Chloe appeared to be the kindest, most sweet person I could have wished to meet. She was the actual definition of “lovely” and “kind”, through and through.
Chloe | Rob Weychert
Chloe was generous with her emotions, but not in a needy or narcissistic way. I think she just found honesty more efficient than posturing. She didn’t hide her depression, but she didn’t let it define her, either. The clouds that followed her around wouldn’t hesitate to part for a good joke or an enthusiastic conversation about shared passions. Her wit was incisive and unassuming, her smile was enormous, and it was tremendously satisfying to make her laugh.
Chloe by Geri Coady
Geri remembers Chloe.
I don’t know which thought is worse: that @ChloeWeil’s suicide was inevitable; or that it was preventable.
Both are horrible.
For Chloe
We all grieve in different ways. We all find solace and comfort in different places.
There can be solace in walking. There can be comfort in music. Tears. Rage. Sadness. Whatever it takes.
Personally, I have found comfort in reading what others have written about Chloe …but I know Chloe would be really embarrassed. She never liked getting attention.
Chloe must have known that people would want to commemorate her in some way. She didn’t want a big ceremony. She didn’t want any fuss. She left specific instructions (her suicide was not a spur-of-the moment decision).
If you would like to mourn the death—and celebrate the life—of Chloe Weil, she asked that you contribute to one or both of these institutions:
- The Oregon Humane Society. This is where Chloe found FACE, her constant companion.
- The Internet Archive. Chloe cared deeply about the web and digital preservation.
If you choose to make a donation; thank you. It’s what Chloe wanted.
I still can’t believe she’s gone.
Anger.
Robin Rendle › Chloe
Someone else who was inspired by Chloe, without ever having met her.
Chloe Weil | Equivalent Ideas
Chloe was an inspiration, even to people she never met.
Thursday, July 10th, 2014
Ramblr — Chloe
I always wondered how Chloe was able to create so much so well from such a young age. I could never grasp web dev, knitting intimidated the crap out of me, and I still think she’s one of the best writers I’ve ever read.
Chloe
I first started hanging out with Chloe at An Event Apart Boston in 2011. We bonded over a shared love of The Go-Betweens amongst other things.
It was very easy to be in her company. She was inspiring. Literally.
We became conference buddies. Whether it was Build, Brooklyn Beta, Indie Web Camp or New Adventures, we’d inevitably end up sitting next to each other. It didn’t matter how long it had been since we had last seen each other, it always felt like no time had passed at all.
Jessica and I spent a day with Chloe and her dad Julius as they showed us around the real Williamsburg when we were in Brooklyn a few years ago. “The Jew Tour” Chloe called it. It was clear that Julius and Chloe had a wonderful relationship—they weren’t just father and daughter; they were best friends.
Chloe and I hacked together at Science Hack Day San Francisco last year. It was so much fun, and I know that Chloe found it very empowering. She even gave a demo in public, which was quite an achievement for her; I remember how terrified she was at the thought of just having to introduce herself at Indie Web Camp in Portland a few years back.
I won’t see Chloe again. Chloe killed herself.
When I heard the news, I couldn’t believe it. I still can’t believe it.
Chloe and I would sometimes communicate online—email, IM, DMs on Twitter—but it was never quite the same as when we were together. I chatted with her just last week. I knew she was sad. I knew that she had many regrets. But I had no idea that she was contemplating suicide.
Now I wonder if there’s something I could have said. Or worse, what if I did say the wrong thing?
I think it’s only natural to look for these kind of causal relationships. “If only I had done X, I could have prevented Y.” But I suspect that the truth is not as simple as that. Still those questions haunt me.
But there’s also comfort. Seeing the overwhelming messages of grief and loss makes me realise how many people cared for Chloe. Even if you only met her briefly, you couldn’t help but be bowled over by her.
Smart, creative, funny, beautiful Chloe Weil.
I want to say how much I’ll miss her, but the truth is that I don’t think I’ve really grasped that she’s gone. I just can’t believe it.
Chloe - Petra Gregorová
I still can’t make peace with the fact, and honestly not sure if I ever will, that Chloe Weil is no longer with us.
Things We Make » Pixel Perfect
I want you to know that she vibrated at a different frequency. I don’t really know how to put it any other way. Her raw talent just seemed so effortless. Her dark discomfort wouldn’t allow her to see how loved she was, or how incredible, or how talented. But you can see it, and you don’t need my help. Read for yourself. She will stop you in your tracks.
Denial.
Pinboard Turns Five (Pinboard Blog)
On the fifth anniversary of Pinboard, Maciej reflects on working on long-term projects:
Avoiding burnout is difficult to write about, because the basic premise is obnoxious. Burnout is a rich man’s game. Rice farmers don’t get burned out and spend long afternoons thinking about whether to switch to sorghum.
…
The good news is, as you get older, you gain perspective. Perspective helps alleviate burnout.
The bad news is, you gain perspective by having incredibly shitty things happen to you and the people you love. Nature has made it so that perspective is only delivered in bulk quantities. A railcar of perspective arrives and dumps itself on your lawn when all you needed was a microgram.
Chloe - Waxy.org
Chloe, I wish I’d told you in life how much I admire you, how incredibly talented I think you are.
Wednesday, July 9th, 2014
Chloe Weil עליה השלום
That feeling when you immerse yourself in an activity—coding, writing, drawing—and the the world falls away.
Wishing I could feel it now.
Trying (and failing) to process some terrible, terrible news.
Tuesday, July 8th, 2014
Writing code to POSSE my photos to Flickr.
Football commentators are beginning to spot the exponential rate of Germany’s goal-scoring, heralding fear of some kind of goal singularity.
Harvesting our first courgette of the year.
Heading for home.
Remembered the sea bass.
Reminding myself that there’s a sea bass in the fridge.
Mustn’t forget that when I leave the office.
Monday, July 7th, 2014
A nice day.
Today was a nice day in Brighton.
Valley of the Meatpuppets | superflux
The transcript of Anab Jain’s talk from the FutureEverything Festival.
Monday, 7 July 2014 – The Pastry Box Project
Words of wisdom from Scott on the clash of brand guidelines and the flexible nature of the web:
One thing I am pretty sure of though, is that having a fast, accessible, user-friendly site can reflect incredibly well on a company, and I’d love to see more guidelines and expectations that prioritize these aspects of a service as branding requirements in addition to the usual visual details.
Adding some accommodation information to http://2014.dconstruct.org/location/
On the beach.
The elements of HTML
This (literally) charts the evolution of HTML, tracking which elements have been added and which have been removed.
People on Twitter criticise my choice of programming language and text editor.
I carry on shipping code.
Highlights of Responsive Day Out 2: The Squishening
Neil Berry writes down his thoughts prompted by Responsive Day Out 2.
Sana’a (Idle Words)
A new essay from Maciej on Idle Words is always a treat, and this latest dispatch from Yemen is as brilliantly-written as you’d expect.
Sunday, July 6th, 2014
A nice day to be beside the seaside.
Listening to music at the bandstand.
On the beach for Paddle Round The Pier.
Coffee with Josh.
Marginalia | Parallel Transport
A brilliant idea (and implementation) from Kartik. By combing webmentions and fragmentions, it’s possible to allow a kind of distributed marginalia: you post a comment on your site about a specific passage in a post on my site and a smattering of CSS and JavaScript can display it in the right context.
Saturday, July 5th, 2014
If you can see this, my code is working.
Writing some code so I can post images to my site.
All these films are your yours except The Europa Report. Attempt no criticism there.
Friday, July 4th, 2014
Thoroughly enjoyed meeting and chatting with @mala at the Indie Tech Summit.
I think he and @textfiles were separated at birth.
Laughing out loud at @jennschiffer’s Medium post on the bus home.
Well done, @aral, for putting together a fast-paced, thought-provoking Indie Tech Summit. Thanks for having me.
The only downside of being at the Indie Tech Summit today is that I’m missing all the dachshund action at @Clearleft Towers.
Watching a great demo of http://transmat.io/ from @GlennJones.
Thursday, July 3rd, 2014
Responsive Day Out 2 | Studio 24
A great blow-by-blow account of Responsive Day Out 2 from Simon R Jones.
What it means to be a Front-end Developer in 2014 – The Pastry Box Project
I can very much relate to what Dan is talking about here. I have no idea what I do any more.
No doubt we’ll always feel we’re behind the curve as there always seems like more to learn. That’s OK. No-one knows it all, but it is hard knowing what people expect of you.
Responsive Day Out 2
Phil Baker writes up his thoughts on all the day’s talks.
Responsive Day Out 2 - The Squishening – Alex Gibson
What follows here is not a full account of each talk, you can listen to the audio recordings for that. This is more a collection of my main take-aways for the day, and what I found most interesting.
Takeaways from Responsive Day Out 2 - Plausible Thought
Marc Jenkins shares his thoughts on Responsive Day Out 2.
Back to basics - Katrin Kerber
Another lovely write-up of Responsive Day Out 2.
Practicing my little spiel for tomorrow’s https://indietech.org/summit/
Should be a fun day.
A British remake of Jaws, set in Brighton, where a rogue great white seagull on a food-snatching rampage terrifies both locals and tourists.
@YouAreCarrying inventory
Good morning, Europe.
Have you seen the lovely new @dConstruct site? http://2014.dconstruct.org/
And have you got your ticket yet?
Wednesday, July 2nd, 2014
That @beep always gives the best feedback…
The Pursuit of Laziness: Thoughts from Responsive Day Out — Paul Robert Lloyd
Now this is what I call a conference write-up. Paul synthesises the talks from Responsive Day Out 2 into five principles for responsive design:
- Responsible
- Polylithic
- Pragmatic
- Collaborative
- Flexible
Launching the new @dConstruct website: http://2014.dconstruct.org/
And writing about it: http://adactio.com/journal/6953/
Huzzah!
A new website for dConstruct 2014
dConstruct 2014 has a new website. Huzzah!
When I announced the original website two months ago, I was very, very excited about the line-up, but I was less excited about the design of the site itself. To be honest, it was a somewhat rushed affair. It did the job but it didn’t have much pizzazz. I had some design direction—colour, typography, texture—courtesty of Mikey, but I didn’t push it to do anything very interesting.
So Mikey took some time to iterate and revise, and he came up with a gorgeous new design. I think this does a much better job of capturing the spirit of dConstruct.
As well as a revised colour palette and lusher textures, there was also opportunity to do something quite playful in the masthead. Making sites for our own projects always presents a nice opportunity to try out some whacky stuff that we might not get a chance to do on client work.
In this case, the plan was to play with the theme of this year’s dConstruct—Living With The Network—and use it as part of the visual design, literally networking up parts of the interface.
It was a nice chance for me to play around with canvas. But I didn’t dive into code straight away. I had a think about how I could add this an enhancement to the responsive layout.
My plan was to generate a canvas element under the existing elements in the header using z-index to keep them separated while maintaining the appearance of having everything connected up.
It worked out pretty well. But I wanted to push it further. How about making it an interactive element that responds to the user?
I know, I know. It’s very silly and frankly a bit wanky, but y’know, it felt like it would be nice and playful.
I had no idea how to do it though. At an internal code review here at Clearleft, I demoed what I had so far and asked for advice. The general consensus was that I should probably be using SVG rather than canvas for making interactive graphical elements. They’re probably right, but I distinctly remember learning about hit detection and mouse events in canvas during Seb’s excellent Creative JS workshop.
So I stuck with canvas and fiddled around with numbers until I got to something that felt lke it reacted nicely to hover events (or touch/clicks if hover isn’t available …or even if it is). requestAnimationFrame was a godsend when it came to getting smooth animations.
Have a play with it. It’s hard to miss. It’s not exactly a subtle easter egg.
The content of the site remains much the same. While I was disatisfied with the original visual design of the site, I’m still pretty chuffed with the copy.
One small change I made was to give the code of conduct its own page (and expand on it a bit). Previously it was included with terms and conditions but there was a good chance that it could’ve been overlooked there.
Anyway, I hope you like the new site. I think Mikey did a terrific job with the design and it was a lot of fun to put together …especially the silly wanky bit. The only slight disadvantage is that the page weight comes in slightly larger than the previous design. But I’ll keep optimising to see if I can shave off some bytes here and there.
Oh, and you might notice one significant change on the home page. In addition to the speakers that are currently listed, there’s an addendum that reads “…and more”. That’s because the line-up for this year’s dConstruct, awesome as it is, is not yet complete. It’s going to get even better.
If you don’t have your ticket to this year’s dConstruct yet, what are you waiting for?
See you on September 5th.
How are apps made? by Craig Mod
With the usual caveat that I wish this were published on Craig’s own site, I particularly like this passage:
Apps, too, are ephemeral. Some of the most ephemeral software we’ve ever produced. Ephemeral if for no other reason than because of their gated homes. Our apps cower below the fickle whim of App Store Gods, struck down for no reasonable reasons or for very reasonable reasons. It doesn’t matter which, the end result is always the same: gone, forever.
Responding to the Responsive Web: Insights on Reshaping User Experience - The Digital Pond (London, England) - Meetup
Sally and I will be speaking at this free evening in London on August 7th.
Tuesday, July 1st, 2014
Excited to see what kind of work @GoodFormAnd gets involved in.
Congratulations, @George08!
Good, Form & Spectacle - design & cultural heritage
The brilliant George Oates has started a new design company with an emphasis on cultural heritage: “explicit notes to the future, local archives of global content.” Watch this space
A no-javascript toggle content feature
A clever way of doing progressive disclosure with CSS.
Learn JavaScript & jQuery - a book about interactive front-end web development
This looks like it could be a great book for anyone looking to get starting with JavaScript.
Dreamt I was in a moonbase. It was surprisingly realistic and undreamlike. Subconscious mundane science fiction.