Tagged “interview”

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.

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.

Growing up I was never a fan of nature programmes like The Really Wild Show so I didn’t pay Chris Packham too much attention. However in the last few years I've grown really fond of him. That's in part due to his revelations about his punky musical leanings and attitude, but more so due to his candid description of his autism, then his work to bring the true nature of autism and neruodivergency into the public eye and in doing so help others.

He’s also quite inspirational in trying to do the right thing in many ways, despite significant challenges.

This was an enjoyable and insightful interview although some of the parts about his losing beloved animals alongside other dark moments make for tough reading. Still though, I'm now considering reading Fingers in the sparkle jar.

There’s a classic web developer interview question that goes something like this:

What happens when you type in “bbc.co.uk” into a browser? Describe the journey that results in you seeing a page.

You could answer it like this:

Your browser sends an HTTP request which gets routed through a local modem/router then gets sent to a nameserver. That nameserver routes the request to the correct IP address, which will resolve to some sort of web server. That server will serve up either some static files, or run some backend code in order to generate a resource (probably an html page). When the HTML page is returned, your browser will parse it, which will likely generate more requests, and the cycle will repeat.

To do:

• add something about HTTPS
• add more about the front-end aspects: DOM, CSSOM, Accessibility tree, render blocking resources etc

References:

• My favorite interview question, by Ben McCormick
• How browsers work, on MDN

An interview with Ashley ‘Dotty’ Charles, a writer and broadcaster, on the topic of online outrage.

By shouting about the little things, are we neglecting to talk about the bigger issues in modern society? We discuss performative outrage, the role of the social media provocateur and the strange case of Rachel Dolezal.

I really enjoyed this. It totally chimed with how I currently feel about the state of online discourse, and Dotty has some great ideas and insights. I’ve already bought her book, Outraged and am looking forward to reading that soon.

Thanks to Rita (Kelly) for the tip!