With my new gig at Sentry I’ve returned to product design again as I hope to move as far away from design systems for as long as I can. Buttons and colors and fonts will catch up to me eventually, as they always do, but for the moment I need to slow down, be quiet, hands placed firmly in pockets. Because in order to...

Helena Fitzgerald made some lovely notes about her favorite band: Most of the things we love are the things that embarrass us. [...] I had never loved a band like I loved this band, and the truth is I never really have since. I acknowledge that quite a lot of music is better than the National, more accomplished,...

This talk by John Roderick is still outstanding. Dammit, ugh! I remember sitting in the audience that year and swooning the whole way through this thing (you can actually see me in the video sat next to two people I love and at one point in the recording I swear you can hear my goofy laugh, too). John talks about...

San Francisco is now warmer with each passing day, the winter chill almost tuned out from the evenings. It’s the sort of weather that I completely adore, the very cusp between winter and summer, and it’s the reason why I can’t imagine living anywhere else whilst I’m sat here in my kitchen with the window open...

Seraph is equal parts stately and weird—it’s a new type family from Bernd Volmer and the specimen site happens to be simply outstanding. This is mostly thanks to the wide range of styles available; from slab, sans, wedge, tuskan, and calligraphic. But Seraph also happens to be a great showcase for what’s possible...

This week was mostly good. It’s hard to say that during the pandemic (to care about your own well-being seems so very selfish). But the daily exercise is helping me concentrate and be a bit more upbeat. Although...the weigh in was certainly disappointing. I know I shouldn’t expect too much in the first week but I’ve...

Here’s Maciej Cegłowski on why we should wear a mask when walking around in public: In countries like Taiwan and Japan, even before this pandemic started, it was common for people to put on a mask on at the first sign of a cold, or to wear one at all times in the winter months, particularly on public transportation....

I’ve been listening to Planet Hearth by Calibre relentlessly over the past couple of days and I’ve found it to be excellent web-surfing and work music. It’s more gentle than Calibre’s previous stuff. Last night I was listening to it whilst making this CSS carousel below—I quickly fell into a little trance,...

I like this bit from an interview with Ted Chiang: ...traditional “good vs. evil” stories follow a certain pattern: the world starts out as a good place, evil intrudes, good defeats evil, and the world goes back to being a good place. These stories are all about restoring the status quo, so they are implicitly...

I have news! This week I found out that my visa has been approved and so now I’m ready to start work at the ever-so-excellent Sentry. My first day will be at the end of the month and I couldn’t be more excited; the team is fabulous, the product is useful, and the business model is sound. Not only that, but everyone...

It begins with sticky notes: everyone in the room has been given five minutes, maybe ten, to scribble their ideas down, a few minutes more tacking them up on the wall, and then talking through each one—an example might be a suggestion for a new feature or a product. Another ten minutes is then spent grouping all...

To spread out the anxiety a bit during the Quarantimes, I’ve transformed my apartment into the Hyperbolic Time Chamber; I picked up an exercise bike and I’ve started to treat my health more seriously. I also noticed that throwing all this excess attention into one thing is incredibly calming, alongside it being good...