Journal

With the release of a new Salter Cane album I figured it was high time to update the design of the band’s website.

Here’s the old version for reference. As you can see, there’s a connection there in some of the design language. Even so, I decided to start completely from scratch.

I opened up a text editor and started writing HTML by hand. Same for the CSS. No templates. No build tools. No pipeline. Nothing. It was a blast!

And lest you think that sounds like a wasteful way of working, I pretty much had the website done in half a day.

Partly that’s because you can do so much with so little in CSS these days. Custom properties for colours, spacing, and fluid typography (thanks to Utopia). Logical properties. View transitions. None of this takes much time at all.

Because I was using custom properties, it was a breeze to add a dark mode with prefers-color-scheme. I think I might like the dark version more than the default.

The final stylesheet is pretty short. I didn’t bother with any resets. Browsers are pretty consistent with their default styles nowadays. As long as you’ve got some sensible settings on your body element, the cascade will take care of a lot.

There’s one little CSS trick I think is pretty clever…

The background image is this image. As you can see, it’s a rectangle that’s wider than it is tall. But the web pages are rectangles that are taller than they are wide.

So how I should I position the background image? Centred? Anchored to the top? Anchored to the bottom?

If you open up the website in Chrome (or Safari Technical Preview), you’ll see that the background image is anchored to the top. But if you scroll down you’ll see that the background image is now anchored to the bottom. The background position has changed somehow.

This isn’t just on the home page. On any page, no matter how tall it is, the background image is anchored to the top when the top of the document is in the viewport, and it’s anchored to the bottom when you reach the bottom of the document.

In the past, this kind of thing might’ve been possible with some clever JavaScript that measured the height of the document and updated the background position every time a scroll event is triggered.

But I didn’t need any JavaScript. This is a scroll-driven animation made with just a few lines of CSS.

@keyframes parallax {
    from {
        background-position: top center;
    }
    to {
        background-position: bottom center;
    }
}
@media (prefers-reduced-motion: no-preference) {
        html {
            animation: parallax auto ease;
            animation-timeline: scroll();
        }
    }
}

This works as a nice bit of progressive enhancement: by default the background image stays anchored to the top of the viewport, which is fine.

Once the site was ready, I spent a bit more time sweating some details, like the responsive images on the home page.

But the biggest performance challenge wasn’t something I had direct control over. There’s a Spotify embed on the home page. Ain’t no party like a third party.

I could put loading="lazy" on the iframe but in this case, it’s pretty close to the top of document so it’s still going to start loading at the same time as some of my first-party assets.

I decided to try a little JavaScript library called “lazysizes”. Normally this would ring alarm bells for me: solving a problem with third-party code by adding …more third-party code. But in this case, it really did the trick. The library is loading asynchronously (so it doesn’t interfere with the more important assets) and only then does it start populating the iframe.

This made a huge difference. The core web vitals went from being abysmal to being perfect.

I’m pretty pleased with how the new website turned out.

Back in July 2023 I went into the studio along with the rest of Salter Cane.

We had been practicing a whole lot of new songs for over a year beforehand. Now we were ready to record them.

We went in with a shared approach. We were going to record everything live. We were going to prioritise the feeling of a particular take over technical accuracy. And we weren’t going to listen back to every take—that can really eat into the available time and energy.

This approach served us really well. We had an incredibly productive couple of days in the studio collaborating with Jake Rousham, who we had worked with on our previous album. We ended up recording eleven songs.

After that burst of activity, we took our time with the next steps. Chris recorded additional vocals for any songs that needed them. Then the process of mixing everything could start.

After that came the mastering. We hired Jon Sevink—fiddler with the Levellers. He did a fantastic job—the difference was quite remarkable!

We decided to keep two songs in reserve to have a nine-song album that feels just the right length.

The album is called Deep Black Water. It’s available now from all the usual digital outlets:

• Bandcamp
• Spotify
• Apple Music UK
• Apple Music US
• Amazon UK
• Amazon US

We decided not to make any CDs. We might make a vinyl version if enough people want it.

I really, really like how the album turned out. These are strong songs and I think we did them justice.

I hope you’ll like it too.

I’ve been tagged in a good ol’-fashioned memetic chain letter, first by Jon and then by Luke. Only by answering these questions can my soul find peace…

Why did you start blogging in the first place?

All the cool kids were doing it. I distinctly remember thinking it was far too late to start blogging. Clearly I had missed the boat. That was in the year 2001.

So if you’re ever thinking of starting something but you think it might be too late …it isn’t.

Back then, I wrote:

I’ll try and post fairly regularly but I don’t want to make any promises I can’t keep.

I’m glad I didn’t commit myself but I’m also glad that I’m still posting 24 years later.

What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it? Have you blogged on other platforms before?

I use my own hand-cobbled mix of PHP and MySQL. Before that I had my own hand-cobbled mix of PHP and static XML files.

On the one hand, I wouldn’t recommend anybody to do what I’ve done. Just use an off-the-shelf content management system and start publishing.

On the other hand, the code is still working fine decades later (with the occasional tweak) and the control freak in me likes knowing what every single line of code is doing.

It’s very bare-bones though.

How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that’s part of your blog?

I usually open a Mardown text editor and write in that. I use the Mac app Focused which was made by Realmac software. I don’t think you can even get hold of it these days, but it does the job for me. Any Markdown text editor would do though.

Then I copy what I’ve written and paste it into the textarea of my hand-cobbled CMS. It’s pretty rare for me to write directly into that textarea.

When do you feel most inspired to write?

When I’m supposed to be doing something else.

Blogging is the greatest procrastination tool there is. You’re skiving off doing the thing you should be doing, but then when you’ve published the blog post, you’ve actually done something constructive so you don’t feel too bad about avoiding that thing you were supposed to be doing.

Sometimes it takes me a while to get around to posting something. I find myself blogging out loud to my friends, which is a sure sign that I need to sit down and bash out that blog post.

When there’s something I’m itching to write about but I haven’t ’round to it yet, it feels a bit like being constipated. Then, when I finally do publish that blog post, it feels like having a very satisfying bowel movement.

No doubt it reads like that too.

Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?

I publish immediately. I’ve never kept drafts. Usually I don’t even save theMarkdown file while I’m writing—I open up the text editor, write the words, copy them, paste them into that textarea and publish it. Often it takes me longer to think of a title than it takes to write the actual post.

I try to remind myself to read it through once to catch any typos, but sometimes I don’t even do that. And you know what? That’s okay. It’s the web. I can go back and edit it at any time. Besides, if I miss a typo, someone else will catch it and let me know.

Speaking for myself, putting something into a draft (or even just putting it on a to-do list) is a guarantee that it’ll never get published. So I just write and publish. It works for me, though I totally understand that it’s not for everyone.

What’s your favourite post on your blog?

I’ve got a little section of “recommended reading” in the sidebar of my journal:

• Split
• Web! What is it good for?
• Seams
• Hyperdrive
• Design doing
• Iron Man and me

But I’m not sure I could pick just one.

I’m very proud of the time I wrote 100 posts in 100 days and each post was exactly 100 words long. That might be my favourite tag.

Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?

I like making little incremental changes. Usually this happens at Indie Web Camps. I add some little feature or tweak.

I definitely won’t be redesigning. But I might add another “skin” or two. I’ve got one of those theme-switcher things, y’see. It was like a little CSS Zen Garden before that existed. I quite like having redesigns that are cumulative instead of destructive.

Next?

You. Yes, you.

I’m going to be hosting Research By The Sea on Thursday, February 27th right here in Brighton. I’m getting very excited and nervous about it.

The nervousness is understandable. I want to do a good job. Hosting a conference is like officiating a wedding. You want to put people at ease and ensure everything goes smoothly. But you don’t want to be the centre of attention. People aren’t there to see you. This is not your day.

As the schedule has firmed up, my excitement has increased.

See, I’m not a researcher. It would be perfectly understandable to expect this event to be about the ins and outs of various research techniques. But it’s become clear that that isn’t what Benjamin has planned.

Just as any good researcher or designer goes below the surface to explore the root issues, Research By The Sea is going to go deep.

I mean, just take a look at what Steph will be covering:

Steph discusses approaches in speculative fiction, particularly in the Solarpunk genre, that can help ground our thinking, and provide us—as researchers and designers—tenets to consider our work, and, as humans, to strive towards a better future.

Sign me up!

Michael’s talk covers something that’s been on my mind a lot lately:

Michael will challenge the prevailing belief that as many people as possible must participate in our digital economies.

You just know that a talk called In defence of refusal isn’t going to be your typical conference fare.

Then there are talks about accessibility and intersectionality, indigenous knowledge, designing communities, and navigating organisational complexity. And I positively squeeled with excitement when I read Cennydd’s talk description:

The world is crying out for new visions of the future: worlds in which technology is compassionate, not just profitable; where AI is responsible, not just powerful.

See? It’s very much not just for researchers. This is going to be a fascinating day for anyone who values curiosity.

If that’s you, you should grab a ticket. To sweeten the deal, use the discount code JOINJEREMY to get a chunky 20% of the price — £276 for a conference ticket instead of £345.

Be sure to nab your ticket before February 15th when the price ratchets up a notch.

And if you are a researcher, well, you really shouldn’t miss this. It’s kind of like when I’ve run Responsive Day Out and Patterns Day; sure, the talks are great, but half the value comes from being in the same space as other people who share your challenges and experiences. I know that makes it sound like a kind of group therapy, but that’s because …well, it kind of is.

I’ve been reading lots of modern takes on Greek classics. So when I saw that there was going to be a short of run of Sophocles’s Electra at Brighton’s Theatre Royal, I grabbed some tickets for the opening night.

With Brie Larson taking on the title role in this production, it’s bound to be popular.

I didn’t know anything about this staging of the play—other than it was using the Anne Carson translation—which is how I like it. I didn’t know if it was going to be modern, retro, classical or experimental.

It turned out to be kind of arty, but not in a good way. Arty like art school with all the clichés.

The production somehow managed to feel packed with gimmicks but also seriously underbaked at the same time. There must have a been a lot of “yes, and…”s during the workshopping, but no subsequent round of “no, but…”s. So we got lots of ideas thrown at the wall like spaghetti. Very few of them stuck.

Instead of enhancing the core text—which is, thankfully, indestructable—most of the gimmicks lessened it. It’s like they were afraid to let the play speak for itself and felt like they had to do stuff to it. Most of it ended up creating an emotional distance from the story and the characters.

It wasn’t bad, per se, but it definitely wasn’t good. It was distinctly mediocre.

Now, take all of this with a big pinch of salt because this is just my opinion. The very things that turned me off might tickle your fancy. Like the way it was half way to being a musical, with characters singing their dialogue in that monotone way that they do in Les Mis (but this is like Les really Mis). And the vocal effects that did nothing for me might be quite effective for you.

Even as I was watching it, I was thinking to myself, “Well, this isn’t really for me, but I can kind of appreciate that they’re trying to experiment.”

But then towards the end of the play, it went too far. Over the PA came samples of reporting of recent news stories; graphic, grisly, and crucially, real. If you’re going to attempt something like that, you need to earn it. Otherwise you’re just cheapening the real-world suffering. This play absolutely did not earn it.

Elektra has finished its run in Brighton and is now heading to London where it’s supposed to play until April. I’m curious to see how it goes.

It always annoys me when a politician is accused of “flip-flopping” when they change their mind on something. Instead of admiring someone for being willing to re-examine previously-held beliefs, we lambast them. We admire conviction, even though that’s a trait that has been at the root of history’s worst attrocities.

When you look at the history of human progress, some of our greatest advances were made by people willing to question their beliefs. Prioritising data over opinion is what underpins the scientific method.

But I get it. It can be very uncomfortable to change your mind. There’s inevitably going to be some psychological resistance, a kind of inertia of opinion that favours the sunk cost of all the time you’ve spent believing something.

I was thinking back to times when I’ve changed my opinion on something after being confronted with new evidence.

In my younger days, I was staunchly anti-nuclear power. It didn’t help that in my younger days, nuclear power and nuclear weapons were conceptually linked in the public discourse. In the intervening years I’ve come to believe that nuclear power is far less destructive than fossil fuels. There are still a lot of issues—in terms of cost and time—which make nuclear less attractive than solar or wind, but I honestly can’t reconcile someone claiming to be an environmentalist while simultaneously opposing nuclear power. The data just doesn’t support that conclusion.

Similarly, I remember in the early 2000s being opposed to genetically-modified crops. But the more I looked into the facts, there was nothing—other than vibes—to bolster that opposition. And yet I know many people who’ve maintainted their opposition, often the same people who point to the scientific evidence when it comes to climate change. It’s a strange kind of cognitive dissonance that would allow for that kind of cherry-picking.

There are other situations where I’ve gone more in the other direction—initially positive, later negative. Google’s AMP project is one example. It sounded okay to me at first. But as I got into the details, its fundamental unfairness couldn’t be ignored.

I was fairly neutral on blockchains at first, at least from a technological perspective. There was even some initial promise of distributed data preservation. But over time my opinion went down, down, down.

Bitcoin, with its proof-of-work idiocy, is the poster-child of everything wrong with the reality of blockchains. The astoundingly wasteful energy consumption is just staggeringly pointless. Over time, any sufficiently wasteful project becomes indistinguishable from evil.

Speaking of energy usage…

My feelings about large language models have been dominated by two massive elephants in the room. One is the completely unethical way that the training data has been acquired (by ripping off the work of people who never gave their permission). The other is the profligate energy usage in not just training these models, but also running queries on the network.

My opinion on the provenance of the training data hasn’t changed. If anything, it’s hardened. I want us to fight back against this unethical harvesting by poisoning the well that the training data is drawing from.

But my opinion on the energy usage might just be swaying a little.

Michael Liebreich published an in-depth piece for Bloomberg last month called Generative AI – The Power and the Glory. He doesn’t sugar-coat the problems with current and future levels of power consumption for large language models, but he also doesn’t paint a completely bleak picture.

Effectively there’s a yet-to-decided battle between Koomey’s law and the Jevons paradox. Time will tell which way this will go.

The whole article is well worth a read. But what really gave me pause was a recent piece by Hannah Ritchie asking What’s the impact of artificial intelligence on energy demand?

When Hannah Ritchie speaks, I listen. And I’m well aware of the irony there. That’s classic argument from authority, when the whole point of Hannah Ritchie’s work is that it’s the data that matters.

In any case, she does an excellent job of putting my current worries into a historical context, as well as laying out some potential futures.

Don’t get me wrong, the energy demands of large language models are enormous and are only going to increase, but we may well see some compensatory efficiencies.

Personally, I’d just like to see these tools charge a fair price for their usage. Right now they’re being subsidised by venture capital. If people actually had to pay out of pocket for the energy used per query, we’d get a much better idea of how valuable these tools actually are to people.

Instead we’re seeing these tools being crammed into existing products regardless of whether anybody actually wants them (and in my anecdotal experience, most people resent this being forced on them).

Still, I thought it was worth making a note of how my opinion on the energy usage of large language models is open to change.

But I still won’t use one that’s been trained on other people’s work without their permission.

When I was looking back at 2024, I mentioned that I didn’t give a single conference talk (though I did host three conferences—Patterns Day, CSS Day, and UX London).

I almost spoke at a conference though. I was all set to speak at an event in the Netherlands. But then the line-up was announced and I was kind of shocked at the lack of representation. The schedule was dominated by white dudes like me. There were just four women in a line-up of 30 speakers.

When I raised my concerns, I was told:

We did receive a lot of talks, but almost no women because there are almost no women in this kind of jobs.

Yikes! I withdrew my participation.

I wish I could say that it was one-off occurrence, but it just happened again.

I was looking forward to speaking at DevDays Europe. I’ve never been to Vilnius but I’ve heard it’s lovely.

Now, to be fair, I don’t think the line-up is finalised, but it’s not looking good.

Once again, I raised my concerns. I was told:

Unfortunately, we do not get a lot of applications from women and have to work with what we have.

Even though I knew I was just proving Brandolini’s law, I tried to point out the problems with that attitude (while also explaining that I’ve curated many confernce line-ups myself):

It’s not really conference curation if you rely purely on whoever happens to submit a proposal. Surely you must accept some responsibility for ensuring a good diverse line-up?

The response began with:

I agree that it’s important to address the lack of diversity.

…but then went on:

I just wanted to share that the developer field as a whole tends to be male-dominated, not just among speakers but also attendees.

At this point, I’m face-palming. I tried pointing out that there might just be a connection between the make-up of the attendees and the make-up of the speaker line-up. Heck, if I feel uncomfortable attending such a homogeneous conference, imagine what a woman developer would think!

Then they dropped the real clanger:

While we always aim for a diverse line-up, our main focus has been on ensuring high-quality presentations and providing the best experience for our audience.

Double-yikes! I tried to remain calm in my response. I asked them to stop and think about what they were implying. They’re literally setting up a dichotomy between having a diverse line-up and having a good line-up. Like it’s inconceivable you could have both. As though one must come at the expense of the other. Just think about the deeply embedded bias that would enable that kind of worldview.

Needless to say, I won’t be speaking at that event.

This is depressing. It feels like we’re backsliding to what conferences were like 15 years ago.

I can’t help but spot the commonalaties between the offending events. Both of them have multiple tracks. Both of them have a policy of not paying their speakers. Both of them seem to think that opening up a form for people to submit proposals counts as curation. It doesn’t.

Don’t get me wrong. Having a call for proposals is great …as long as it’s part of an overall curation strategy that actually values diversity.

You can submit a proposal to speak at FFconf, for example. But Remy doesn’t limit his options to what people submit. He puts a lot of work into creating a superb line-up that is always diverse, and always excellent.

By the way, you can also submit a proposal for UX London. I’ve had lots of submissions so far, but again, I’m not going to limit my pool of potential speakers to just the people who know about that application form. That would be a classic example of the streetlight effect:

The streetlight effect, or the drunkard’s search principle, is a type of observational bias that occurs when people only search for something where it is easiest to look.

It’s quite depressing to see this kind of minimal-viable conference curation result in such heavily skewed line-ups. Withdrawing from speaking at those events is literally the least I can do.

I’m with Karolina:

What I’m looking for: at least 40% of speakers have to be women speaking on the subject of their expertise instead of being invited to present for the sake of adjusting the conference quotas. I want to see people of colour too. In an ideal scenario, I’d like to see as many gender identities, ethnical backgrounds, ages and races as possible.

Back in 2019 I had the amazing experience of going to CERN and being part of a team building an emulator of the first ever browser.

Remy was on the team too. He did the heavy lifting of actually making the thing work—quite an achievement in just five days!

Coming into this, I thought it was hugely ambitious to try to not only recreate the experience of using the first ever web browser (called WorldWideWeb, later Nexus), but to also try to document the historical context of the time. Now that it’s all done, I’m somewhat astounded that we managed to achieve both.

Remy and I were both keen to talk about the work, which is why we did a joint talk at Fronteers in Amsterdam that year. We’re both quite sceptical of talks given by duos; people think it means it’ll be half the work, when actually it’s twice the work. In the end we come up with a structure for the talk that we both liked:

Now, we could’ve just done everything chronologically, but that would mean I’d do the first half of the talk and Remy would do the second half. That didn’t appeal. And it sounded kind of boring. So then we come up with the idea of interweaving the two timelines.

That worked remarkably well.

You can watch the video of that talk in Amsterdam. You can also read the transcript.

After putting so much work into the talk, we were keen to give it again somewhere. We had the chance to do that in Nottingham in early March 2020. (cue ominous foreboding)

The folks from local Brighton meetup Async had also asked if we wanted to give the talk. We were booked in for May 2020. (ominous foreboding intensifies)

We all know what happened next. The Situation. Lockdown. No conferences. No meetups.

But technically the talk wasn’t cancelled. It was just postponed. And postponed. And postponed. Before you know it, five years have passed.

Part of the problem was that Async is usually on the first Thursday of the month and that’s when I host an Irish music session in Hove. I can’t miss that!

But finally the stars aligned and last week Remy and I finally did the Async talk. You can watch a video of it.

I really enjoyed giving the talk and the discussion that followed. There was a good buzz.

It also made me appreciate the work that we put into stucturing the talk. We’ve only given it a few times but with a five year gap between presentations, I can confidentally say that’s it’s a timeless topic.

I have a feeling that 2025 is going to be a year of reflection for me. It’s such a nice round number, 25. One quarter of a century.

That’s also how long myself and Jessica have been married. Our wedding anniversary was last week.

Top tip: if you get married in year ending with 00, you’ll always know how long ago it was. Just lop off the first 2000 years and there’s the number.

As well as being the year we got married (at a small ceremony in an army chapel in Arizona), 2000 was also the year we moved from Freiburg to Brighton. I never thought we’d still be here 25 years later.

2005 was twenty years ago. A lot of important events happened that year. I went to South by Southwest for the first time and met people who became lifelong friends (including some dear friends no longer with us).

I gave my first conference talk. We had the first ever web conference in the UK. And myself, Rich, and Andy founded Clearleft. You can expect plenty of reminiscence and reflection on the Clearleft blog over the course of this year.

2010 was fifteen years ago. That’s when Jessica and I moved into our current home. For the first time, we were paying off a mortgage instead of paying a landlord. But I can’t bring myself to consider us “homeowners” at that time. For me, we didn’t really become homeowners until we paid that mortgage off ten years later.

2015 was ten years ago. It was relatively uneventful in the best possible way.

2020 was five years ago. It was also yesterday. The Situation was surreal, scary and weird. But the people I love came through it intact, for which I’m very grateful.

Apart from all these anniversaries, I’m not anticipating any big milestones in 2025. I hope it will be an unremarkable year.

There goes 2024.

It was a year dominated by Ukraine and Gaza. Utterly horrific and unnecessary death courtesy of Putin and Netanyahu.

For me personally, 2024 was just fine. I was relatively healthy all year. The people I love were relatively healthy too. I don’t take that for granted.

Looking back on what I did and didn’t do during the year, here’s something interesting: I didn’t give a single conference talk. I spoke at a few events but as the host: Patterns Day, CSS Day, and UX London. That’s something I really enjoy and I think I’m pretty darn good at it too.

I was wondering why it was that I didn’t give a talk in 2024. Then Rachel said something:

I really miss An Event Apart.

That’s when I realised that An Event Apart would usually be the impetus behind preparing a conference talk. I’d lock myself away and spend ages crafting a presentation to match the calibre of that event. Then, once I had the talk prepared, I could give modified versions of it at other conferences.

With An Event Apart gone, I guess I just let the talk prep slide. Maybe that’ll continue into 2025 …although I’m kind of itching to give a talk on HTML web components.

In most years, speaking at conferences is what allows me to travel to interesting places. But even without being on the conference circuit I still travelled to lovely places in 2024. Turin, Belfast, Amsterdam, Freiburg, west Cork, Boston, Pittsburgh, Saint Augustine, Seville, Cáceres, Strasbourg, and Galway.

A lot of the travel was motivated by long-standing friendships. Exploring west Cork with Dan and Sue. Celebrating in Freiburg with Schorsch and Birgit. Visting Ethan and Liz in Boston. And playing music in Pittsburgh with Brad.

Frostapolooza was a high note:

I felt frickin’ great after being part of an incredible event filled with joy and love and some of the best music I’ve ever heard.

Being on sabattical for all of August was nice. It also meant that I had lots of annual leave to use up by the end of the year, so I ended up taking all of December off too. I enjoyed that.

I played a lot of music in 2024. I played in a couple of sessions for pretty much every week of the year. That’s got to be good for my mandolin playing. I even started bringing the tenor banjo out on occasion.

I ate lots of good food in 2024. Some of it was even food I made. I’ve been doing more and more cooking. I’ve still got a fairly limited range of dishes, but I’m enjoying the process of expanding my culinary repertoire a bit.

I read good books in 2024.

All in all, that’s a pretty nice way to spend a year: some travel, seeing some old friends, playing lots of music, reading books, and eating good food.

I hope for more of the same in 2025.