Journal

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.

This recipe from Gousto, with a few tweaks from Clair, is a straight winner. Although I’m sure it’s delicious as they list it, Clair substituted linguine for rigatoni and as a treat added some artichoke hearts which took it to the next level.

Here are some recurring development decisions I make when maintaining my personal website/blog, with some accompanying rationale.

The naturalist, TV campaigner and activist on growing up, autism and asking himself “what is the best use of me?”.

He’s such a brilliant, sensitive soul, but it must be hard work being Chris Packham.