Journal

I’ve just read Rise by Gina Miller.

In 2016 Miller took the UK government to court for attempting to force through Article 50—the mechanism for starting Brexit—which would have lead to the nation leaving the EU without parliamentary consent.

Its title a reference to the Maya Angelou poem Still I Rise, the book is partly the author’s story of how she has been shaped by the successes and failures in her life, and partly a personal manifesto stating that every person can stand up and make a positive difference, even in the face of adversity.

Miller begins with her fight, in the aftermath of the Brexit vote and the “festering wounds” it exposed, to ensure that the UK’s democratic process and constitution be upheld. She traces her background as a child born in Guayana, a British colony at the time. As the daughter of a self-made man who became the country’s attorney general, she and her family saw Great Britain as the promised land, “a culture where the rule of law was observed and decency was embedded in the national fabric.” Since moving to the UK, forging a successful career and speaking up for her beliefs, that notion of justice and decency has come under scrutiny as she has been met with racist and sexual prejudice and abuse from all walks of society.

The author goes on to describe some of the specific challenges she has faced in her life including vicious hate mail, attacks by the press, being in an abusive marriage, and raising a daughter with special needs. In the end however, as a successful businesswoman with a happy family, hers is a story of strength and survival and a message of hope.

As a man, at times I felt that the book—which often returned to themes of female empowerment—perhaps wasn’t intended for me. Then on other occasions I felt that it was as important (if not more important) for me and other men as for anyone else to absorb these stories of sexist bullying, discrimination and abuse told from the female perspective.

Other core messages of the book were universal: finding your voice, speaking up when it is important to do so, overcoming adversity, and demonstrating tolerance in a divided society.

This was a book I picked up on a whim as a departure from my usual reading subjects, and I’m glad I did.

Cloudinary is a very handy tool for image and video upload, storage, optimisation and CDN.

Store, transform, optimize, and deliver all your media assets with easy-to-use APIs, widgets, or user interface.

This was brought to my attention by Jason Grigsby at An Event Apart. We were discussing his article series on Responsive Images and I asked if he could recommend a tool which auto-generated all of the images you needed for your responsive image code, if you provide a single source image.

I’ve been trying Cloudinary out and so far, so good.

(via @grigs)

The original call-to-arms and manual for Design Systems.

Brad Frost explains why Design Systems are necessary, provides a methodology for Pattern Library creation, discusses Design System benefits and offers strategies for maintenance.

A handy tool for identifying colours – provided in numerous different CSS-ready formats – and creating a complimentary colour palette from an image you upload or provide as a URL.

No CMS, no installation, no server, no coding required.

Another quick and clever way of creating a website; this time by collecting a bunch of files (HTML, video, images, bookmarks) into a folder, connecting Dropbox and Small Victories to that, choosing a theme and Hey Presto, you have a website.

I could see this as maybe being useful for some sort of transient campaign idea that doesn’t need a CMS and that you want others to be able to collaborate on.

Note: to get a custom domain and host CSS and JS files, you need to sign up to a paid plan, but at $4/month or $36/year it’s pretty cheap.

These days when friends tell me they want a personal website, it’s often just a single-page profile that they’re really after rather than something pricier and more complicated.

In the past there were services like http://flavors.me/ but it seems to have fallen by the wayside. This looks like a decent option to point friends toward if they’re not looking for a blog or want to take baby steps toward that. Incidentally, I came across Carrd through Chris Ferdinandi’s Vanilla JS List which features organisations which favour Vanilla JavaScript over JS frameworks.

Great video (in German with subtitles) which shows and tells the most important elements of this serve, namely:

1. Brush the ball sideways extremely fast;
2. Swing your wrist about 90° extremely fast when touching the ball; and
3. The third bounce should be close to the side-edge of the table so that the opponent cannot easily attack and your spin has the strongest effect.

I’ve just read 1984 by George Orwell. I know, I know… I should have done this a long time ago. Anyway, here’s what I thought.

I remember a copy of 1984 being around the house when I was growing up but for some reason I never got around to reading it. I did, however, see the film when I was young – the “Room 101” scene in particular being unforgettable – and have always known the general plot.

On a recent work trip I realised while in the airport shop that I’d left a book at home so it seemed like as good a time as any to pick up a copy of 1984 and scratch this particular itch.

As a book about a dystopian future, I knew it would be dark, but it was even darker that I imagined. The constant sense of dread was really palpable.

I loved the concepts Orwell created – the Two Minutes Hate, doublethink, Thought Crime, Room 101 to name but a few.

I also loved the language in general and the appendix, The Principles of Newspeak.

And even though it was heart-wrenching and pretty harrowing, I loved the final descent into brainwashing (or “re-education”) and ultimately, betrayal.

This was an amazing book that I loved reading, while not necessarily always being ”enjoyable”.

When watching presentations recently I’ve noticed that a few speakers use this tool to generate animated images for their slides.

Gifox is a menu bar app that records your screen into animated GIFs – a great compromise between static images and full-size videos.

I was introduced to this smile-inducing website by Val Head’s An Event Apart Talk “Building more expressive projects”.

TunnelBear describes itself as “A more secure way to browse the web” and it does this by encrypting your internet connection to keep your online activity private on any network.

More interestingly to me, it succeeds at making a techy subject friendly by the use of illustrated and animated bears. And who doesn’t like bears?