From Chicago to Brighton

I was in the States last week for An Event Apart Chicago. I had a most excellent time. Partly, that’s because An Event Apart is always excellent, and partly because Chicago is such a great city.

I took pictures.

I did the Architecture Foundation’s river cruise (again), which I would highly recommend to anyone with the vaguest interest in either architecture or just cruising down rivers in boats.

Canyons of stone and glass Jessica

I also went to my the second bases-ball game of my life. The first one was at Fenway Park, so going to Wrigley Field feels like the logical next step—maybe I should work my way through all the bases-ball field diamond pitches in chronological order.

Chicago dog in Wrigley Field On the bleachers

To balance out such sportsness, I made sure to spend plenty of time in the Art Institute Of Chicago, taking full advantage of the Lichtenstein exhibition that’s currently running there.

Lichtenlips Lichtendog

I had the opportunity to meet some of the hard-working web geeks of Chicago. I had a look around the Obama campaign HQ, thanks to Daniel Ryan. I also got a tour of the whacky Tribune Tower, thanks to Chris Courtney, and I got to see first-hand how the web team at The Chicago Tribune are doing some very cool stuff with data.

On the Tribune roof Journalism is serious business

Now I’m back in Brighton, which is turning into geek central with the Brighton Digital Festival. It kicked off last night with Seb’s fantastic PixelPyros digital fireworks.

PixelPyros PixelPyros are go!

Reasons To Be Creative starts today. I’ll be popping in out to hear some of the talks, but things are getting pretty busy here at Clearleft Towers, what with this being dConstruct week.

Unsurprisingly, I’ve started having dConstruct dreams this week. I have to remind myself to actually enjoy myself and not spend the whole time stressing out. I think it should be fairly easy to enjoy myself, what with that kick-ass lineup.

That’ll be on Friday. Before that, there’s Brighton SF on Thursday. That’s going to be a lot of fun too, and a total geekfest with Jeff Noon, Lauren Beukes, and Brian Aldiss.

Grab a ticket if you haven’t already. See you there.

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Previously on this day

10 years ago I wrote Testing HTML5

A dConstruct workshop reveals some issues with the HTML5 spec.

13 years ago I wrote Microformats triple bill

Three microformateers at BarCamp London.

13 years ago I wrote Virtual trainspotting

A mashup of trains and maps blows my mind at Barcamp.

15 years ago I wrote The approaching storm

Frances is getting closer to Florida. The good news is that, at the moment, it has decreased from a category four to a category three hurricane.

15 years ago I wrote Waiter, there's music in my DRM

Microsoft has soft-launched its music downloading service. Naturally, lots of people are comparing it to the iTunes music store and evaluating their relative merits.

15 years ago I wrote The calm before the storm

Hurricane Frances is getting closer. People here in Saint Augustine have been stocking up on water and other supplies. Things are still quite calm here though.

16 years ago I wrote Laptop lamentation

I had a horrible experience today. My mobile world literally came crashing down around me.

16 years ago I wrote The Uncertainty Principle Is Untenable

It really takes a lot for spam to be memorable, but this is one of the weirdest I’ve seen a long time.

17 years ago I wrote Stop me before I paint again

Banksy is a London grafitti artist. This is my favourite painting of his.

17 years ago I wrote BBC + RSS = :-)

Excellent news. The BBC now has RSS feeds.

17 years ago I wrote Featured Freelancer

Catch it while you can. I’m a featured designer this month over at the Freelancer Network.