Journal

How was 2023 for you? For me, it was like this.

David cleverly uses CSS alone (and only a few lines) to show a “back to top” link only after the user has started scrolling, then pin its position to the bottom-left of the screen.

Clair and I just rounded off the year in style with lunch and drinks at Bar Brett on Great Western Road. We had a bird’s eye view too, sat overlooking the pass watching the chefs at work.

Between us we enjoyed a variety of small dishes including oysters, sourdough bread with chicken fat butter, cod toast, smoked beetroot with tahini, clams, lobster ravioli, mushroom XO linguine, Peterhead Coley with curried mussel sauce and a Basque cheesecake.

We tried a few glasses of wine: Veiled Vineyards Old Vine Semillon (white), a Delamotte Blanc de Blancs (champagne), and Le Grand A (Burgundy white) – all lovely.

Brett is fantastic and the staff made us feel very welcome.

We just enjoyed a lovely festive visit to Doug and Zoe’s house where we hung out with them and their girls Zara and Nina. As an unexpected bonus our friend Pablo also stopped by.

After the rush and stress of organising Christmas it was just what the doctor ordered. Doug made a delicious and light panzanella salad. I taught Zara how to play hangmam on good ol’ pencil and paper. We enjoyed a chat and a laugh.

Cheers, pals!

Heather explores why we no longer have “web designers”.

It's been belittled and othered away. It's why we've split that web design role into two; now you're either a UX designer and you can sit at that table over there or you're a front-end developer and you can sit at the table with the people that build websites.

Over the years I’ve seen Herr Henke (of Monolake fame) doing variously-themed live shows and in a variety of locations. I loved this particular show and it was made even better by catching him at The Tramway Theatre, one of my favourite venues and just 10 minutes walk from home.

This is a great one-hour interview and a fantatic insight into John Kennedy’s brief but eventful career – the highs and the crushing lows.

I already liked John Kennedy but after hearing him speak so candidly and well, and getting more of an insight into his “don’t waste a minute” attitude, he’s gone even further up in my estimations.

My folks haven’t managed a holiday outside of Scotland in a long time. So it’s been nice to spend a week together in Spain.

In this talk at State of the Browser, Amy offers some suggestions for making work feel more meaningful.

I found this postcard from Lockdown. (Actually it’s a post-it note however that doesn’t sound as good). It provides a record of a difficult moment. I was suffering from isolation during lockdown and the only times I was getting out was to walk a reactive dog who lost his shit in a fairly upsetting way on a regular basis. Anyway I must have felt moved to empty my thoughts on paper (not someting I do too often) either for my own sanity or to help gather my thoughts to be able to confide in someone, likely Clair.

Minimal time out of the house. Most of that’s with him. My nerves are shattered. My concentration’s broken all the time. I can feel my mental health dipping.

Of course I’m aware that this pales in comparison to challenges people on the front-line of Covid/lockdown were dealing with. And in fact, I don’t think feeling a degree of shame at expressing mental health issues will ever leave me – I know it’s not just whining, but it can feel that way. Nonetheless, it wasn’t a fun time. Just noting it before I bin the post-it.