Category: notes
- Rules for swearing in client meetings ()
IF: Client does not swear at all during first meeting. THEN: Do not swear until and unless client initiates swearing in future meeting. IF: Client drops a casual “shit” during first meeting. THEN: Respond with anything in the “dammit – bugger” range. IF: Client does not swear in first meeting, but manages a “tosspot” in […]
- Doing something about diversity in the tech sector ()
My fellow Public Digital affiliate Davina Sirisena, founder of the Difference Digital agency, has created something new: an online community called DINT: “A global online community set up to make connections between people who care about diversity and inclusion in tech.” DINT meets online once a month for live person-to-person discussion, and runs a Slack […]
- A big bright yellow Alfred theme ()
I use Alfred all the time, have done for years. I also have a plain grey desktop background, mostly grey windows, a grey-on-grey theme in BBEdit. There’s a lot of grey. And, as I stumble further into middle-age, my eyesight is getting worse. So I made an Alfred theme that’s big and bright and stands […]
- Digital ribbon maps ()
Ribbon maps are an old, old idea. Rather than carry a whole map or a whole atlas on your journey, you just take a map that shows you the route you’re going to take. Ribbon maps were literally long ribbons of paper wrapped around a spool. You could keep the spool in your pocket and […]
- An idea for self-service checkouts ()
Here’s a little idea I had months ago – you can tell, because this is a photo I took in the real world, in a shop, before everything went weird. I was buying something in WH Smiths in Paddington Station. I can’t remember what it was, probably a Twix or something. Anyway the self service […]
- No longer hand-coded ()
For years and years, this website was hand-coded, and I was proud of that. I stubbornly stuck to my ways: writing HTML in BBEdit and uploading it via SFTP to a web host. It worked back in 1999, it still worked now. Why change? Well, because sometimes change is good thing and a good idea. […]
- 4AD and floppy hair ()
A label, with love I’m very grateful to Phil Gyford for creating this playlist on Spotify: Facing the other way: the story of 4AD. It’s given me a chance to remember some music I’d forgotten, and one or two haircuts I’d rather not think about at all. I wouldn’t say 4AD defined my music taste during the late […]
- Start in the middle, write the beginning later ()
Matt Jukes tweeted about a familiar situation the other day: “Home early as I really needed to write a paper – but now I am staring at a blank text file and occasionally writing then deleting a title.” I know what he means. A lot of people do. That terror of the blank page is something I’ve […]
- Say no to notifications ()
The only way I’ve found to make Yosemite shut up pic.twitter.com/urJgRzcWsb — Giles Turnbull (@gilest) December 3, 2014 I switch off notifications from as many applications as possible, on as many devices as possible, as often as possible. I do it because I don’t want or need to know when I get incoming email. I’ll find out […]
- Exploring London’s place names ()
I’ve been having lots of fun flicking through the Oxford Dictionary of London Place Namesby AD Mills. There’s some wonderful things about it that I wanted to note. The intricate links between place names and people names Places are named after people; and vast numbers of personal names are a reflection of the place they came […]