It has been a long week, Fall chums, but this will help you see it out. Chosen as it was...
It’s fun diving into browserworld, through all those devices that aren’t really built for browsing: your TV, your e-reader, your...
Bank holiday, sunny, something light: perfect.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MkAZb6ebSc
TIL: you can add a background gradient to the HTML video element. This is great if you don’t have a...
Five minutes with you
Then you’re off around the worlds
Zagreb day
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PABFgmTXA8
Note to self, for post: a blog should be… viewable on any device, accessible to any reader in any context...
A sign of good quality HTML/CSS is how easy it is to edit in order to change things like font...
I’m on quite a blogging roll since I started using Jekyll how it was intended – i.e. for publishing articles...
Many Fall songs mention the rain (and it is bucketing down here), but this captures today’s mood well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zt2GtiIkaDs
I still have a webmention.io endpoint, so if you do send a webmention to my site I’ll pick it up....
Of course, one benefit of not displaying comments or webmentions on my website is that it makes it a lot...
THEY WERE OVER PEASANTS LIKE YOU.
HAPPY FALL FRIDAY, LOYAL SUBJECTS.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A3cHzFQsqI
If we win today – or Sheffield Wednesday don’t win – Town will be promoted. It’ll be one of those...
Every day you gotta die some. Happy FallFriday.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQMP0G0-hQM
Been doing a lot of work to improve the work website’s performance. The two most obvious improvements you can make...
So, I use Netlify’s webmention integration to send webmentions. It took ages to get just right, but it looks like...
Made a very, very, very big mistake.
This is the high magic, top 10 Fall of all time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RqeNR33bWI
Reply to Andrés Cárdenas on Minimal and usable: I guess our sites are for experimenting with colour, navigation and whatever....
I deserve some prize or remuneration for all this… Number of times “Hovis” is mentioned in Fall songs? 3. That...
Just enjoy the growling bass on #FallFriday
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UmO36vuPts
Obviously extremely happy to be guarantor for my son’s university rent, thereby guaranteeing the landlord (based in Jersey, natch) gets...
Your weekly themed #FallFriday bingo. “Snow on Easter Sunday — Jesus Christ in reverse.” (8 minute Hacienda footage bonus.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTJdWN6BqwU...
Added 30 or so more lyrics to the Fall Lyrics in Caps bank, so there are now 137. It’s quite...
So that’s eight clean sheets and seven wins in a row for #ITFC. 20 Chaplin goals already. Going up 💪...
I’m happy with the how the FALL LYRICS IN CAPS bot autoposts from an RSS feed to micro.blog and Mastodon,...
I spent an hour or so exploring the possibility of creating a trad comments system using webmentions (i.e. fill in...
Happy #FallFriday everyone. It’s been a long month with not enough pay. Still, debt does not exist.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERRc5FMg7WQ
Of an evening, I’ll retire to the study and add a few entries to the FALL LYRICS IN CAPS archive....
Because that’s what I’m doing today, y’see?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5zav2yrC7M
Quick #ITFC v Shrewsbury review: We were superb today, and it was only 2-0 because Shrewsbury are a really well-organised...
This is promising. I copied a bunch of .md files from my Jekyll _posts folder to a Zola posts folder,...
I know I only talk about The Fall and running websites, but I may have found an SSG that meets...
So obvious, but there you go. Have a good #FallFriday everyone!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ru33HtwH81g
Remember! The best form is no form.
Wrote a Fall lyrics in caps bot for Mastodon and micro.blog today. Normal Frankenstein’s monster of Jekyll, Netlify and IFTTT,...
I’ve used gandi.net for dns for years, but had a few domains hanging around on godaddy. Of course, as soon...
I’m nearly at the point where I’m going to shift this website from Jekyll to WordPress. No small thing! I...
Would be really happy using a service where I deleted everything months ago, only for content from 14 years ago...
I SAW YOU CHATTING TO MY WIFE BETWEEN THE LIGHT AND THE DOOR
Happy #FallFriday
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=731xbx_jZMw
(Replying to https://www.jayeless.net/2023/02/reply-to-leon-about-webmentions.html) Thanks Jessica. I think the problem lies in the microformat spec and documentation being unclear, which in...
(Reply to https://www.jayeless.net/2023/02/webmentions-look-good-again-now.html) Thanks, IndieWebify.me is useful, although it says I need to add an image with a u-photo class,...
(Reply to https://www.jayeless.net/2023/02/current-indieweb-status.html) Well, I did have crossposting to Mastodon working well enough with Matthias’ RSS/IFTTT guide, but it’s always...
Current indieweb status: autoposting from my site to Mastodon works around 50% of the time and outbound webmentions don’t work...
More 422 errors this morning… Could be any post with a link in… Anyway, let’s try going via micro.blog…
I’m fairly keen to start my 50 day Krautrocksampler LP challenge, but I’m faced with the problem of time. The...
Sighs at getting the 422 error from the Mastodon server when my RSS feed pushed to Mastodon via IFTTT. Brings...
“Bed wet good grief. Good grief bed wet.” — DEDICATION NOT MEDICATION I like this heavy metal incarnation of the...
I feel the (surprising) effort it took to generate a valid RSS feed warrants displaying a little Valid RSS ✅...
When you’re using an RSS feed to trigger outbound webmentions, remember to validate that feed. The very useful Github Webmentions...
Really, the best use of Github is correcting other people’s blog post typos via a fork and PR. It works...
Hmm… webmention.app appears to be no more and I get an error whenever the Netlify webmention plugin runs. I gueess...
Happy #FallFriday 🎉 As I’m pokey quaint streets in Cambridge bound today, here’s some of the early-80s high magic. Enjoy!...
Reply to https://kandr3s.co/notes/2023-02-06-ycjwj Thanks for the Granary tip-off; works nicely (although it doesn’t show boosts, but I can live with...
Renaming some work website pages, which is only reconfirming my belief that i) dropdown menus are, on the whole, a...
Netlify adds some HTML to forms and images as additional inputs and trailing slashes. The HTML validator now gives a...
Looks like Bridgy can now handle auto-posting from your site to Mastodon (currently using IFTTT, which is convoluted and pretty...
Having posted that my CSS/Is a mess yesterday, I’ve completely rewritten it. I plumped for a going-with-the-grain, non-atomic approach. Only...
My CSS Is a mess Half atomic (millions of classes), half “going with the grain, work with the cascade”. I...
Morning! Bit of a cheap sh*t #FallFriday considering ex-band members’ recent activity, but so it goes. From The Fall having...
Not sure what I think about the House of All. On one hand, they’re talented musicians, Bramah’s a good frontman,...
Well, that’s a first. My single biggest readability gripe on the web is when a site changes its default font-weight...
Drafting something on what a “pure” indieweb web – i.e. with just blogs for writing and RSS for reading and...
TFW you remember a website from 10+ years ago and it was (maybe) really good. Then you Google it and...
…and another thing that’s good about blogging is seeing bloggers riff off each other. When you can tell blogger x...
Morning and happy #FallFriday Ersatz GB is largely unloved — unfairly, natch — but there are some great tracks on...
Realised the moral of the-machines-taking-over science fiction isn’t that we shouldn’t play at being God, or that the law of...
Netlify has some really nice – and free – plugins (look under the Integrations menu). Includes Webmentions, which sends outbound...
Remembering Apple’s all out marketing efforts – TV ads, huge website animations, big scientific images and explanations (“glass-filled nylon fibre”,...
I’ve created a Mastodon RSS feed for my blog for POSSEing. It’ll change the toot depending on whether I’m publishing...
Current social media position: Hoping Twitter doesn’t cut off NetNewsWire’s API access before most people move to Mastodon and NetNewsWire...
“It’s January 20th.”
— City Dweller (or Cab Driver, to me). Happy #FallFriday.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4a3UnCgQFE
I want my Forestry replacement CMS to be as invisible as possible, which means I just want a web interface...
Prose – which is as old as the hills – might well be the answer to my CMS ills. It...
It doesn’t really make sense for a service that makes its (theoretical) profits through ads to offer an API that...
Ah, webmentions… So apparently simple, but so many moving parts. Currently testing my outbounds (Netlify deploy → Ping webmention.app with...
The satellite
He was lucky this week
Midnight
Happy #FallFriday
(This is such a beautiful song!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QyNGkrZiCY
As the current version of Forestry is being sunsetted, I’m on the look out for a new headless CMS. I...
Good, good, always great to wake up to your DNS provider reverting your newly migrated domains to their default settings,...
So #itfc fan group Blue Action are proposing to move into the centre of the North Stand. This is near...
This is our Melie, in her bed, looking fairly adorable and a bit stupid.
Right, I’ve got most the #webmention work done on https://www.thisdaysportion.com They’re now split into links, likes, reposts and replies (I...
Website plans for the weekend: Sort out webmentions so likes and reshares are displayed simply as an icon (they appear...
Morning and happy new year to all #Fall fans. It is #FallFriday and it’s MES in shoulder pads: On New...
Post bubbling around my brain about how to syndicate from your website to your chosen social platform so the toot/tweet/whatever...
The Guardian’s Open Platform API is currently down, which means https://www.skinnyguardian.xyz isn’t updating at the moment. (It’s actually been down...
Michał Woźniak: Not everyone has the privilege to quit Twitter. Not everyone has the spoons to set up an account...
Been fillling my boots with free, out of copyright eBooks from Standard eBooks. These are better than Gutenberg as the...
Finally moved my work site DNS from Godaddy. Been meaning to do this for literally 10 years, mainly because back...
2022
I agree with Michael – ideally, a band should post to a website first and point fans there. Establish a...
I don’t know… a platform where you feel you’ve got to change your password and deauthorise every app because it...
One of the many brilliant things about NetNewsWire is that it lets you follow your Twitter stream as an RSS...
I think “Roseate” is going to be my word for 2023; partly because it’s optimistic, partly because its so Nabokovian....
Hello @help – is it now no longer possible to reply to other people’s posts in micro.blog if I have...
(Reply to How do people integrate their long form blogging with their micro blogging?) It’s all one website with 3...
As Zoho have (without warning) suspended IMAP and POP access to email accounts from their free tier, I need an...
#Fosstodon’s down at the mo, so this is your periodic reminder that posting to your site first and then syndicating...
I’m not so sure it’ll be such a comfortable majority, but hard to see this as anything but the long,...
If I do end up building the Fall Lyric in Caps bot for Mastodon it’ll be with Jekyll (with Zapier...
Slightly baffled by some of the UK left’s attitude to Mastodon. A single, privately-owned service is inherently hostile to the...
Probably unlikely, but I wonder if my blog to Mastodon via IFTTT posts fail because I try and send the...
I cannot post from my site to Mastodon using IFTTT, but it looks like brid.gy might be able to do...
“Kindly look her up in my index, Doctor,” murmured Holmes without opening his eyes. For many years he had adopted...
One thing I prefer about micro.blog over Mastodon is that it rethought things like follower counts. Your follower count is...
I have spent way too much of my two weeks’ leave trying to redo my comments system – simply because...
Realised Airtable only displays a max of 100 records on each API request page, which means some comments weren’t appearing....
Not sure about going ahead and using Mastodon in the same way I used Twitter. It looks really nice and...
Not only did we get a Jekyll update last week, but there’s a version 5 on the horizon. I was...
On leave for a couple of weeks. Do I: completely reorganise the whole posts/notes/links taxonomy on TDP (and possibly leonpaternoster.com)...
I have a Fostodon account so I’m going to test whether I can autopost to it from my website.
Slightly disconcerting seeing a few of my international RSS feeds popping up with Sorry to see what’s happening to the...
Raindrop looks good, and I have a self-hosted Wallabag instance, but the fact the Kobo comes with Pocket built-in means...
I’m currently researching something for work (i.e. actually using the web rather than creating pages) and my number one gripe...
I’ve filtered out all monarchy articles from Skinny Guardian. So if you want to read The Guardian with no royal...
Noted in the field, this site working on a Nokia 225:
(Many thanks to Gary for photo.)
Looks like extractive capitalism isn’t as robust a model for football club ownership as murderous petro-chemical state sportswashing or oligarchical...
Planning a series of articles on designing work sites for mobiles — 1. Set up a local server and view...
Downside to my new(ish) job: using a Windows laptop. I know there’s a feeling Macos quality is declining, but the...
I know one of the downsides of SPAs is managing stuff like retaining your position on visited pages, but is...
Winning in the 37℃ heat by writing a Word doc that has reached the sixth heading level #winninghere
Guess it’s odd my Twitter account is private but I only post to it from my website, which anyone can...
It’s like 2008 all over again! I’m about to publish to the work website for the first time and I’m...
This web page has two search boxes. One is top right, but can you find the other?
The last two posts I’ve drafted ended up at >1500 words, and remain unpublished. Long posts are fine, but it’d...
Ha! I posted about Robin Rendle’s MVP site design just a few days ago. Looks like he’s entered the making...
It’s my last day at Suffolk Libraries, where I’ve been for 9 years. I start at ARU on Monday! Trad...
Quick win for hero and video addicted uni websites. — Add img sizes to markup, squoosh, lazy load where appropriate...
I started on Owen Hatherley’s Modern Buildings in Britain and can report, local followers, that Ipswich is “very ordinary”. Fair...
… Musk said he planned to grow revenue by developing new features such as charging for embedding or quoting popular...
It’s really great having a smart TV because it will display adverts for GB News when you turn it on....
(Sorry for the slew of links. Lot of good articles out there!)
Genuine question. — Is there widespread uptake of the WordPress block editor in the real editing world? I find it...
Perhaps the best lens to examine compulsive, unproductive, inexplicable use of social media is not technical, or sociological, or economic,...
Added a retrospective taxonomy to dozens of articles I’ve linked to from my site. It works – would probably serve...
You don’t see many cats on leads.
This seems right, no? Some people make an awful lot of money from their Twitter accounts, so get them to...
Just when you thought NetNewsWire couldn’t get any better, it implements article themes.
’s good live updating a work web page for someone and taking PageSpeed tests before (with YouTube vids) and after...
Phil Gyford (who I’m pretty sure created Today’s Guardian and indirectly the whole reader mode thing) has webmentions. Which is...
FWIW, this site scores 100 on a (Google) PageSpeed test. If I add a YouTube embed, it scores 37 🤷🏻♂️....
The latest in my The Fall rip off Can series: Oh! Brother is Can’s Oh Yeah, jollied up a bit....
I feel bad and guilty using -moz-osx-font-smoothing: grayscale; and -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;. – How long will it last?
There’s a rich history of The Fall appropriating Can, to which I’d like to be the first to add Shoulder...
Wordle 246 3/6
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Wordle 243 3/6
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Wordle 239 3/6
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In that strange hinterland where a domain has propagated in Hamilton New Zealand, but not London England. I guess it’s...
Wordle 238 4/6
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Wordle 237 4/6
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I love these Rockwell Kent Moby Dick illustrations (and Kent was an interesting man to boot).
Wordle 234 5/6
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Wordle 233 5/6
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Wordle 232 3/6
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Hmm.
Wordle 231 4/6
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Nice twist in this one.
Wordle 230 2/6
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[smug]
Wordle 229 4/6
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Annoying could-have-been-one-of-three-words puzzle, which I only got on the third attempt.
Wordle 228 3/6
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Wordle 227 4/6
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Good while it lasted :-(
Wordle 226 4/6
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Wordle 225 4/6
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Wordle 224 4/6
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Googling Do It Again – 2m24s of driven transcendence by fairly well known pop combo THE BEACH BOYS – returns...
Wordle 223 5/6
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Wordle 222 4/6
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Wordle 221 6/6
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A struggle, this one.
Wordle 220 4/6
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Wordle 218 4/6
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Wordle 217 5/6
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Wordle 216 4/6 ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ 🟨⬜🟩⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Got very lucky on the 3rd guess; was only really trying to confirm...
Wordle 215 6/6
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Learned a repeated letter has to be explicitly added.
Wordle 211 3/6
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Several years after everyone else I discovered Wordle. The share option copies the puzzle image and text to the clipboard;...
When you hover on something, that thing should become more distinct/heavier to indicate potential activation. Examples of not doing this...
2021
Couple of post ideas for this weekend, should I find the time (I do have something else to get written...
If there was one website designed just for me, Design Regression is it. I’ve started with the article on line...
A while back I wrote about how great traditionally static (not SPAs or jamstack) sites are. I’ve had the work...
(The headline reads: Johnson accused of corruption as he tears up system to fight Westminster sleaze.) The headline is clumsily...
I am, however, building a very focused Jekyll theme with no comments. It’ll send webmentions nicely, but not display them....
I’ve done a lot of work getting comments and webmentions working on this (static!) site, but my current urge (which...
(Current mood: Mademoiselle Non.)
Confusingly, individual songs from the Faust 1971-1974 box set are appearing as either singles or whole albums on Spotify. No...
Yes, ironically enough, Safari 15.0’s diabolical tab styling (and Gruber is 100% right about how poorly designed they are), has...
Erm, sorry for all the malformed micro.blog links. I’ve been updating mt MB RSS feed today, fairly unsuccessfully.
Thinking about classifying website and user navigation needs and resultant navigation UI (hiding, laying bare, TOCs, headers and never hamburgers)....
The platform is down but
My website is not.
I wish I’d added a section on how font size, measure and leading relate to the reader’s distance from the...
So, we have a plugin which appears to trawl through a folder of images and output webp versions. I see...
Noted, graffiti on this morning’s walk with Melie, down an unnamed folly.
Colin writes on brutalism in web design: This site is predominantly text (with the occasional image, video or audio file)...
The ZX spectrum cost about £130 back in the early 80s You’re no doubt swimming in nostalgia pieces from (mostly)...
512kb is huge :-) Still, made me look at my home page again. About 77kb, of which 51kb is fonts....
Jessica is right. For example, this exchange would be a lot easier on micro.blog (or Twitter, for that matter) 😃...
Even The Observer is showing him what to do:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/sep/04/pressure-grows-on-starmer-to-back-tax-on-rich-to-pay-for-social-care
Sometimes you get a Saturday where you can do pretty much what you want. For me that would be cycle...
I can’t think of many organisations I’d rather not give my phone number to more than Twitter, but they’ve decided...
I will probably ditch it, but Avenir Next set in bold and italic makes for a grand title font (you...
Added a section on narrow screens such as mobiles to my article about measure (or line width). TLDR: don’t sacrifice...
I’ve added a wide image option to the website. Here’s some art that uses it (you’ll only notice a difference...
Did you know. — Belgians (and presumably denizens of other nations) refer to ragged right (i.e. left aligned) text as...
I’m on leave, so naturally enough I’ve done some work on my website. I’ll stop short of calling it a...
Yesterday I read these two opinions on placing a logo in the top left hand corner of your web page:...
Reading comfort. — Measure (words per line), leading (the gap between lines) and proportion are all related – and let’s...
Noted: Google Search has finally joined the fixed header bandwagon. Does this add anything useful to the page? Sad moment...
A mobile phone tower at Great Bentley, Essex.
So, a couple of body typeface don’ts to start with: i) don’t use a condensed font and ii) don’t use...
Things I remembered (TIR?) today (TIRT?) MacOS comes with the Charter typeface installed, which is very nice indeed.
A butter dish IRL today (cc @Archimage).
As I wrote this on measure, I might do something on choosing a body typeface, looking at family, size, weight,...
I went to a football match with 21,000 other people today. It was a pretty emotional experience, but this image...
Twitter often changes its website login UI. Most of the time it seems to be A/B testing different approaches, which...
One very good thing about Macs is how much life you get from them. This bottom-of-the-range Air is more than...
It arrived today…
It’ll always be a ticket and always the North Stand.
Looks like the Firefox Facebook Container plugin flags all email input fields as a potential risk, which is ridiculous. Also...
Notes for a post on online ads. — If surveillance advertising is made impossible (unlikely, but desirable) then contextual advertising...
Got good comments. — Clarified my thoughts on something I’d blogged and thought I’d got wrong. Yes, I definitely did...
Current mood: Ascending to heaven with the aid of the Lo Boob Oscillator morphing into Hallogallo.
Anybody else having problems grabbing their @Feedbin feeds with @NetNewsWire? Got the problem with NetNewsWire on MacOS and iOS. Feedbin...
Thinking about :– Putting lots of space between big things makes them easier to read, lightens the cognitive load etc....
There are few better sights than the Netherlands in orange playing skillful, attacking football at a big tournament 👍
To get up in the morning, in the fullness of youth, and open a book — now that’s what I...
Noted: Tom MacWright is selling his website (Jekyll) theme. Which makes me think I could sell a version of this,...
My blogging “set up”. MacOS in full screen mode, Typora on the left and Firefox on the right. You can...
We took Melie here today as it’s her fourth birthday – it’s enclosed, so we could let her off the...
Forget looks a great service (via @hjertnes) – automatically delete older tweets according to whatever rules you set. If you’re...
I spent a day this week using Linux (Zorin, specifically) as my work OS. It was horrible. Buggy, endless workarounds,...
Websites! – Please don’t make me have to change your body (or even html!) font-weight to normal from 300. Thanks!...
Not really looking forward to everything going “back to normal”, but I have missed lunchtimes in the St-Mary-le-Tower churchyard when...
I think adding a webmention like or reply to is as simple as adding the appropriate class to an a...
To tell the truth and to shoot well with arrows: that is Persian virtue — Nietzsche, Ecce Homo Which is...
I will say this for WordPress. — Our work intranet has been built on it for three years and handled...
Favourite Carpenters song? Superstar is pretty peerless: The Carpenters’ 20 greatest songs – ranked!
Looks like a strong pro-independence majority in Scotland. From a selfish point of view, this offers me a route to...
This is great. If you’re hosted on Netlify, you can use deploy notifications to send sites webmentions whenever you post...
I’d somehow missed that the webmention API has a per-page parameter – handy as my Jekyll API plugin can’t handle...
It is easy to imagine a language consisting only of orders and reports in battle. Or a language consisting only...
Melie’s first encounter with the sea at Langard Fort in Felixstowe.
Looking at Wordpress again and taking a child theme approach. I guess it’s just indicative of front end development in...
It got through :-) Couple of things: i) I have a comment form switch, so the form only appears on...
Taking this opportunity to write a blog post as we get absolutely outplayed by Wimbledon, but pluckily hang on for...
Signal versus Noise ended today. That’s a big thing, I think. It was the only management kind of blog I...
He he he! Looks like the ESL lasted less than 48 hours ⚽️ Ed Woodward quits Manchester United after Super...
Very strong want for Berlin Typography by Jesse Simon, found via an excellent Tribune article on the meaning of city...
Hello @aaronpk is it possible to increase the number of webmentions per page the API returns? The default appears to...
If discussion doesn’t take place below the line and you’re publishing everything on your website before syndicating it to social...
I know it’s not news, but, since enabling comments and webmentions on my site, it’s become clear to me that...
It’s that time of year when my pension statement arrives – usually the cause of some amusement. Evidence of neoliberalism’s...
TIL today: Anthony Burgess gave the address at Benny Hill’s funeral.
I’m enjoying micro.blog at moment, having spent time bothering to follow people, chat and post short updates. The micro.blog world...
After nearly four months of lockdown glad to report that my hair has settled on looking like Shaun William Ryder’s...
This is Melie having agreed not to lay her head across the laptop keyboard.
Common web wisdom is that the web itself is some form of huge archive, to be categorised, searched, tagged and...
Is there any particular reason micro.blog sites are built on Hugo? Of all the popular static site generators, I think...
Lolz at my SEO failures. Although why Google thinks my alt text is what sums up this page more than...
Grr. I’d assumed micro.blog would generate a link to a user when I tagged them in a syndicated post from...
I thought this post on the primacy of blogging in the indiewebsphere from @AndyNicolaides was interesting as it indirectly touches...
I had a vague feeling this might have been a slightly early April’s fool from The Quietus, because, of course,...
Melie, in the garden, capable of sleeping anywhere, anytime.
Melie, 31 March 2021
It’s spring, warm and I’m on leave.
Rushmere Common, 30 March 2021.
Gyms in the UK re-opened today, for outdoor classes only. I got to spin for the first time since 23...
Something I do need to think about should webmentions take off on my site. — I can get the site...
I’ve managed to roll my own webmentions on thisdaysportion.com, which is built on Jekyll. I should post something, but in...
Not sure if this is a bug… the comments link on this page just beneath the title should link to...
I guess as I’ve actually got a couple of webmentions on this site now, I should dust down the code...
As I order cases from Wines of Interest, I should probably review wine here. A very nice 🍷🍷🍷🍷 for this....
This is interesting. My Apple RSS reader of choice NetNewsWire now has a feature where you can convert your Twitter...
Been using Forestry (a headless CMS) to publish and edit content for a week now, and it works well. A...
I’m not sure, really. A noble effort to wrest content from the man and fight the pernicious influence of Facebook?...
These days, CMSs should offer editors ways to build pages from smaller components, such as callouts, promos, accordions etc. But...
I’d forgotten about Forestry, a headless CMS provider for a range of SSGs, including Jekyll. It’s virtually zero config, so...
I’ve come to the conclusion that loading fonts on a blog is unnecessary – the system sans and/or Georgia will...
TFW the words are flowing nicely and you’ve got to paragraph three of a medium length blog post only to...
Your RSS feed list probably has some value to advertisers and bad faith political actors – it may well provide...
Having one of those moments when you start writing about one thing – in this case what’s so good about...
Looking at my site through time via the Wayback Machine is an impossibly melancholy process – all those people in...
We bought this poster for the front room. Yes, it’s predictably Swiss, Kraftwerk too, but I like it a lot....
You can put pretty much anything (or nothing) in an RSS feed’s title or content elements. You can therefore set...
I publish notes, I publish links, I publish posts. Publish, publish, publish, write about publishing posts, notes and links. —...
Think I would like this Remarkable 2 tablet. Remarkable 2 tablet I had a real need to sketch a simple...
I’m posting a series of website aphorisms as part of a refocusing exercise. Obviously, the real world doesn’t allow us...
We may regard our websites with some fondness (or they may be a millstone), but the effort we spend on...
PDFs are for paper, HTML is for digital.
The Fall, Lovecraft and communists. That’s probably how you’d sum up my cultural interests these days, and my two book...
:-(
Gutenberg’s txt version of Anna Karenina consists of 2,068,079 bytes, while this picture of a disused mill between Dunwich and...
People are not “visual” (nor verbal, kinetic, social etc.) learners or interpreters of information; to start with, how one learns...
Websites are UI and decoration in any form should only serve the purpose of making the interface easier to use....
2020
Mozilla Corp laid off a quarter of its staff and promptly announced a new search deal with Google. Odd timing,...
It was our 20th wedding anniversary today, so we went for a walk. Westwood marshes mill. I can confirm there...
I wrote a page explaining what RSS is for someone who had no idea, perhaps seeing the Subscribe to RSS...
Would like text-decoration: solid underline 2px #0000FF to work so the text colour could differ from the (slightly thicker than...
Been off Twitter for 2 weeks and can attest to how good that is for you. I do miss some...
As just posted, Netlify has started to charge me. I’ve had five or so really good years with Netlify, but...
So, I got my first Netlify build minutes bill for $7, probably because I’ve been caning this site over the...
… web performance will suffer if you don’t say no to the marketing department because you’ll suddenly find yourself with...
2019
Whenever you add things — even if the app remains just as fast, even if there are no bugs —...
Obtrusive design is the result of every project manager, business analyst, designer, and developer unwilling or unable to question ill-considered...
2018
(Dons marketing hat.) Perhaps Labour’s got itself in a position post-austerity, post-Brexit, post-whatever where it can talk about a grand...
This is very good (via @adrianshort) on how recreating offline government online isn’t bold enough (bearing in mind just how...
This is apposite for me at the moment, and something I need to explain. Gerry McGovern: Findability, navigation, search; these...
Hiding things on web pages. Why? Hiding skip links, hiding navigation menus on a narrow screen, hiding an antispam field...
My twopenneth on #itfc’s current (early doors) position: Not surprised if we do worse having got rid of MM, but...
This is worth re-reading over time, one of those once-every-two-years posts that changes how you how you think about —...
Designing for yourself (and maybe a few others) — for when you’re using a system font (probably the right thing...
This is a great Ask Jack article – typically detailed and methodical – on buying “ethical” (in this case “not...
One way to put it is that New Puritan, like many of the best Fall songs, isn't content to say...
There’s more than one way to skin a cat, but this was easy and quick. My project builds and serves....
1) is absolutely the best approach: Don’t use AMP. There’s also an interesting point about historical efforts to make websites...
This is to test production environments in Jekyll. If you’re interested, I will post something in a bit more detail...
…the problem with Thatcherism is that eventually you run out of other people’s assets has become the quip du jour,...
Almost a badge of honour to achieve a Jekyll site build time of more than 90 seconds.
The nation awaits Amber Rudd’s resignation. Dinner is cleared from tables, families settle on sofas. It’s hard to express how...
At the start of every WordPress project all is sunny because you can do absolutely anything with plugins. Two months...
What’s your space? — All post-2000 internet innovation is vile, always was vile and must be ruthlessly excised from our...
Noted: Apocalypse now for Britain’s retailers as low wages and the web cause ruin: But major change can require major...
Mark as a lyricist on sickness: Fit and Working Again, Dedication not Medication, Dr Buck’s Letter, Everything Hurtz, Sleep Debt...
2017
Ipswich is an old town, and I work in the oldest part, opposite Pykenhams Gate (1470). I often eat a...
Smashing Magazine asked a common question in web development circles: Do you use a framework? Interestingly enough, I guess, about...
Listen to the first few seconds of this song. When and where do you think it’s from? (Perhaps you know...
So Labour wasn’t destroyed and the Tories failed to even get a parliamentary majority. Politics changed over the space of...
Jaki Liebezeit died yesterday. Perhaps surprisingly, he was 78, born just before the Second World War, nine years ahead of...
2016
Like 24 Ways, we have an advent calendar on the Suffolk Libraries site, consisting of a staff Christmas present suggestion...
Speed is important. We know this, and there are a few ways to gauge how fast your website is. These...
My iPhone has stopped charging without me having to perform an antagonistic dance with the charger and the phone’s port....
Your vision isn’t 20/20 anymore, just like 65% of the population, it’s worse than that. Like 4.25% of people on...
Specialize. Put in the effort to be the best—or one of—at something. “Full service“ is not a positive. — Oil change...
We tried a new way of coming up with ideas for web pages today. The normal process is: A colleague...
If you publish a website someone will try to hack into it in order to flog Viagra (read my sorry...
Noted: if you were looking for a cheap smartphone, the Wileyfox Swift (cheesy name and logo aside) looks a good...
Today I finished moving posts from various places to this website. Give or take a handful of things I posted...
Is it worth getting bothered about the Forbes’ full screen hijack? I wondered. After all, this is Forbes, a magazine...
Florent asks an interesting question, from a feminist/race perspective: So street photographers are white men because… who gets to linger...
2015
Labour needs to overcome itself. At least the Labour that’s failed to win an election for a decade, and the...
Gideon is in trouble – or rather, Gideon should be in trouble. In fact, Gideon should have been in trouble...
There is a type of product that does require lots and lots of content marketing and will continue to require...
Even in Living in the End Times Zizek strikes a modest tone when it comes to the idea of revolution....
So much to read into that May defeat. Yet no-one seems willing to learn the hard lessons and make some...
I’m old enough to remember this: A pre-1997 Tory election poster Got that wrong, the Tories. Not sure it’ll work...
Maybe I’ll post something more cogent on Labour’s tragedy soon, but, as the players learn their fate and the clock...
Show me the Next is an incredibly simple app (or rather, an incredibly simple website). You visit, it displays an...
… language in general actually tends to the simplistic, offering a reductive account of what it seeks to represent –...
British elections are won from the centre. But where is the centre? As in all things philosophical, the centre is...
Dieter Moebius died earlier this week. Dieter Moebius performing in 2010. Image: Wikimedia If you haven’t heard of him, that’s...
OK, so I’m no analyst, academic, journalist, politician or philosopher and, if you’re interested, you will have heard or read...
Reader, I am rich. And, because I’ve been gaming the benefits system, George Osborne is about to crackdown on me....
… if one looks closely at the proposals offered by Syriza, one cannot help noticing that they were once part...
Sunny makes a good point about some leftwing communication, quoting Podemos’ Pablo Iglesias: The enemy wants nothing more than to...
Mondeo Man, White Van Man, squeezed middle, aspirational working class, white working class – Labour’s search for a constituency continues...
The newspaper reader says: this party will ruin itself if it makes errors like this. My higher politics says: a...
… in keeping with a technocratic mindset, you appear utterly oblivious to the notion of interest, that the organisations of...
Harry poses an interesting question: Is there a word for the practice of sugar–coating deplorable business models with a fantastic...
Gideon is popular. But why? we ask. I think Andrew Rawnsley’s reasons are all plausible, but I’d add another. Being...
This is interesting. There’s a French film adaptation of (or rather, a French film about) Sebald’s masterpiece Austerlitz, something I...
I really wouldn’t pay for any type of news because as a citizen it’s my right to know the news....
Tommy asks for some advice: Saw @bryony1963 et al earlier in my local. Still undecided. Leaning towards @IpswichGreens but need...
Adrian argues – quite rightly – that libraries shouldn’t block websites on the basis of commercial practices. That includes gambling...
2014
Warning: this is inessential stuff. It was going to be so long, too, a detailed analysis of my site’s font...
Went to see Mr Turner earlier this week, Mike Leigh’s biopic of (arguably, obviously) Britain’s greatest artist. I’ve always loved...
At work, our approach (or ‘strategy’, if you like) is to incorporate as many services on our own website as...
Today I updated the work site to WordPress version 4. Updating WordPress work sites is never a pleasant experience. It...
You have, of course, read the best article of 2014: Labour’s message to the electorate is clear – austerity is...
I’ve been reading Matt Gemmell’s blog recently, which is definitely worth subscribing to if you’re interested in writing (and I...
Unless you’re an academic or a journalist, writing to a deadline every day is a perverse past time, and not...
We had training at work today, where we talked about employee engagement; a buzzphrase that seems to have lasted a...
I taught a few GCSE groups in my short career as a teacher of English. As well as studying Romeo...
Noted: an article on the Nieuwe Bibliotheek in the Dutch town of Almere. This is what you want libraries to...
I was bad and didn’t get to blog yesterday so I’m going to cheat and give this post yesterday’s date....
I’m wary of blogging about politics and economics; partly because I’m underqualified and partly because I may not seem to...
I, uh, I think I’m gonna get better as I get older, you know? I think I’m gonna be the...
Like most reasonable people, I try not to use Amazon, but yesterday I sinned and bought an album because it...
Two problems that affect millions of UK people (me included): Transport The train service in East Anglia is awful, and...
I saw this idea in the comments on a post somewhere or other, and my immediate reaction was nope. Too...
Thought I’d share my current website set up and some links I used to get to this stage. If you’re...
My blog’s older than Twitter and Facebook, and it will outlive them. It has seen Flickr explode and then fade....
History repeats itself quickly in the world of web design – it seems like only yesterday we were lambasting Design...
Just in case you were wondering how it’s done: [Vodafone] has parked losses of around £70 billion in Luxembourg. These...
Liked this picture of an 18th century book Conjectures on Original Composition by Edward Young: From Collision Detection It shows...
Overall, Ukip has not so much won new friends as polarised public opinion. Ukip did better this time at turning...
2013
Enough. If an employer hires me to do a job, it means they have deemed me qualified to do it....
How is a football club related to its community? Should it offer anything beyond match tickets and merchandise? For example,...
Well, I liked this spirited Morrissey/40–somethings hatchet job: The class that he now represents – a middle–aged, capital–rich, metropolitan elite...
Switzerland will hold a vote on whether to introduce a basic income for all adults, in a further sign of...
According to Hechinger Report, a scheme to roll out iPads for students in California has been an unmitigated disaster (via...
As I might be on Radio Suffolk tomorrow to discuss two books (Nabokov’s Pnin and Madeline, by Ludwig Bemelmans) I...
Just a quick note to mark my move from WordPress to Jekyll. If you were using this common WordPress permalink...
I’m referring to this article about… well, what exactly it’s about I’m not sure, but it’s a superlative 167 words....
But in the Sudetenland, news of the Anschluss provokes an extraordinary enthusiasm. Suddenly people talk only of their ultimate fantasy:...
A month or so ago we bought a new television. We’d used a trusty 20 inch Toshiba for 10 years...
A bunch of people seem to find >20 pixel body text readable/preferable. Something weird afoot here. And… Yes, the further...
… the traditional broadcast advertising model feels increasingly intrusive and annoying. Why should we be forced to sit and watch...
Enjoyed this Smashing Mag piece on building layouts based on line width, particularly the I’m no expert tone. Exactly what...
You could do very much worse than browse this database of Krautrock reviews on a Sunday evening, read Julian Cope’s...
2012
Borgen–the Danish political drama–returns to BBC4 next Saturday. It’s my favourite television programme of the last ten years or so....
It’s a (not entirely unexpected) irony that since going back to teaching I’ve stopped reading. Actually, that’s not quite true....
The Magazine (which is, as far as I can tell, an iPad-only magazine that you pay for) has been generating...
Does anyone actually come from Aldeburgh, Southwold or Woodbridge? I ask because I’ve visited all three recently and overheard the...
Had one of those going through the boxes in the garage days on Saturday. Rediscovered my (small and completely boxed...
The industrious races find leisure very hard to endure: it was a masterpiece of English instinct to make Sunday so...
The irony of being a teacher of English (and an English teacher) is that you don’t get to read much....
Today we learnt: The h1 element. It makes things bigger and thicker. The font tag. We use it to change...
I sometimes think about a web typography apprenticeship, especially when I’m fiddling around with blog themes at the weekend. The...
Here’s how I’d go about building websites now. Strip the design back to the bare minimum. Use just one column...
The republican, radical protestants have all the best poetry. I wonder if I would have enjoyed Paradise Lost if I’d...
Reading Sebald again, which is always a deep pleasure. This is my second run through his East Anglian pilgrimage. On...
A few stories tagged onto The Kreuzer Sonata. A bit meh, apart from some somewhat socialist visions of the future...
I went to see Patience (After Sebald) at the Ipswich Film Theatre last night. Highly enjoyable, it touched on some...
The problem with the Queen’s English Society wasn’t its obsession with apostrophes (tiresome though that no doubt is to 99%...
Some inbetween reading while I consider my next move. Tolstoy was a serious man. He’s one of those true Christians....
If you design long form texts for the web your readers shouldn’t sigh or wince when they open one of...
I don’t mean Conservative and Labour, Democrat and Republican or Socialist and Christian Democrat (the correct answers are Labour, Democrat...
—’My sister, mayhap,’ quoth my uncle Toby, ‘does not choose to let a man come so near her….’ Make this...
Beguiling. Starts with some some beautiful descriptive stuff; seems like a standard novel. Folk–like feeling to the story of Bela....
Incredible, really. A seemingly impenetrable account of a Dublin day. Often the narrative becomes unfollowable as the voice changes mid...
A Žižek essay I’ve restyled on my website because it’s unreadable on the original website. The answer to the essay’s...
Tolstoy’s meditation on marriage. Obligatory scene where the husband to be presents his diary to his wife to be just...
A free short story by Téa Obreht, winner of the 2011 Orange prize. In a normal world the relationship between...
So it begins. It’s a beast (a megalosaurus, to be precise). The original was published in twenty instalments. Perhaps that’s...
The job of book design is to make a text as easy to read as possible. Once it’s done that,...
First, the confession. I have never read a complete Charles Dickens novel (and yes, I know, Dickens died before completing...
I don’t own an iThingy. Partly because I can’t afford one, partly because I don’t need one and partly because...
Been meaning to read this for a long time. Partly because I really liked ghost and horror fiction in my...
See: A website with two pop over adverts. The background has been dimmed. New(ish) year, same old problems. This time...
Read to accompany Francis Wheen’s biography of Marx and because the British left is debating what it stands for at...
Wheen argues that mythologising or demonising Marx for twentieth century mass murder misses the point. From this point of view...
It is good to be reading Sebald again. Had a rather odd moment when a description of something suggested Nabokov...
A collection of aphorisms dealing with the lives and (mainly) deaths of artists. Not a narrative so not a novel...
Read most the short stories, none of the poems and none of the essays. From what I remember, Poe’s poetry...
2011
The Grapes of Wrath is partly about homelessness (or landlessness). What happens to people when they lose the connection with...
Been reading The Grapes of Wrath. It suits these times. See how the haves describe the have–nots: Outlanders. Foreigners. Sure,...
Many moons ago I linked to the Rainfall Daffinson website as an example of confident, simple design. At lunch today...
If you write long form texts for the web you should know HTML. If you don’t know HTML and you’re...
I’m not a McDonald’s snob. We eat there occasionally and it’s fine: the staff are friendly, the food’s OK and...
A little knowledge goes a long way. Conversely, a little technical knowledge is a very dangerous thing. Far better to...
You’ve made it when your brand name becomes interchangable with an object. These things take time. Meaning accrues over decades....
The failure of the markets goes hand in hand with human blight. Meanwhile, the view is gaining ground that social...
Cities appear to be burning (well, there’s some rioting) but the thing that’s keeping me awake at ten to two...
Fittingly enough — given Julius Caesar’s fondness for long, declamatory speeches — Chris Shiflett has asked us to write a...
Not Martin Amis. The most vile and hateful thing about money is that it even imparts talent. And will go...
Item. It is no better for laymen to say the pater noster than to say “bibull babull” Conclusion no.18 of...
Came across this wonderful passage from The Idiot: Here you have the large round writing common in France during the...
I’ve really been enjoying the BBC’s Human Planet series, which films some of the most extreme and isolated environments and...
Finally got round to watching The White Ribbon (Das Weisse Band), a German film set in a North German village...
On the theme of circularity and time (and William Blake fans) — there’s lots of temporal playfulness in Your Future,...
The child was calling out to someone. Hamo turned the corner of Paternoster Row, into the street of the illuminators...
It’s fun to be able to see meaning in our name or place of birth. There’s a Nabokov short story...
To celebrate the new office tea pot: We had a kettle, we let it leak; Our not repairing made it...
Two ways to say sorry for the same misdemeanour. First, Andy Gray: I am very sorry that certain comments made...
Another Radio 3 discovery. The presenter suggested an emotional response beforehand; something along the lines of meekness. I guess this...
Today I got a short, jolly email from the WordPress theme reviewers: Congratulations, your new theme Scherzo is now available...
One of the few good things about never going out at the weekend is BBC4 and Scandanavian cop shows. For...
I’ve been somewhat gushing but unspecific in my praise for Freedom. I do like the book because of its satire...
Reading eminent WordPress blogger Justin Tadlock’s latest post on his goals for 2011. The first — to read more —...
Occasionally I get to listen to Radio 3’s lunchtime concert. And I was very lucky to do so today; I...
There’s a lot of references to creativity in my world at the moment, most of them unflattering. I’m reading Jonathon...
2010
The notion of tethering content delivery to a particular proprietary platform or hardware device is admitting defeat Arc 90 This...
2009
[caption id=”attachment_828” align=”aligncenter” width=”762” caption=”The rather lovely looking Apple tablet (image from Gizmodo: https://gizmodo.com/5370252/apple-tablet-aiming-to-redefine-newspapers-textbooks-and-magazines)”][/caption] The Tablet and (maybe) the future:...
This image has been doing the rounds on Twitter recently: [caption id=”attachment_715” align=”aligncenter” width=”590” caption=”Online newspapers: now and then (from...
Pah. Graphic designers. As we all know, typography isn’t about choosing a font face. If we only have a handful...
2008
Preliminary notes for an article: What is a ‘good’ font size for reading from a screen? Lots of variables: screen...
I’m a Fall fan. Any Fall pop biog will inevitably mention two facts about the band: Singer Mark E Smith...
I actually rather like the design of this site, but one does have to wonder if the writers have written...
Referring to A Wainright; a rather likeable if somewhat stereotypically uptight Englishman who was famous for writing guides to walking...