Beach Offsides
I have invented a new rule for swimming at the beach: When swimming at the beach, you can never be the furthest from the shore. Frequently asked questions (probably):
Acts of Volition
Latest posts
Duck Race
I must have made some good choices in my life, because I have a duck reserved for the harbour run rubber duck race more than a week ahead of Naufrage Harbour Day.
You want ghosts?
CBC: Underwater images reveal 1st look at Quest, the final ship of Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton You want ghosts? Because that s how you get ghosts.
The Goalkeeper’s Parent
The most difficult position in soccer must be the goalkeeper’s parent.
Uber for Dogs
My friend and colleague at silverorange, Jacky, is a great designer and a great writer. For years, we ve used Uber for Dogs as a shorthand for a hypothetical example of a solution coming before the problem. I love Jacky s writing style, and found this article to be a lovely serving of human thought without AI
AI floss
Saying I always review what the AI gives me and I don t let it write for me is the new yes, dentist, I do floss every day.
Connections Band Names
When playing the New York Times Connections game, it occurred to me that it would be a good band name generator. This day in particular had some great band names: I d go see Hobo Mosey opening for Octopus Breeze.
Countdown Standard
I endorse this Countdown Standard proposed by XKCD:
Sound design of old
I was talking about sound design for user-interfaces with some colleagues today and remembered this gem. Back in 2004, I asked Brad Sucks to help with some sound design for the open-source instant messaging app, Gaim. The sounds he came up with hold up well even 22 years later. I remember an interesting debate around
The Web is a Guitar Amp Now (Literally)
I ve been working with the web platform for years and I was pretty blown-away to be able play my guitar through a website, and have it processed like a vintage amp. I wrote about it over at the silverorange blog.
The perfect book for the 10-year-old soccer / football fan
My son is 10 years old and loves soccer. He received a novel for Christmas called The Academy by T.Z. Layton. When we started reading it together, I felt like someone had plugged directly into my son s brain and formulated the perfect book for him. The dialog among the characters sounds like my son talking
Shipping a button in 2026
Every web developer should enjoy this (and if you re not a web develop, skip it):
As it is with bacon, so it is with life
We have a saying in our house that s about our approach to cooking bacon, but it applies in many different aspects of life: Cook the bacon until the fat turns to meat.
It goes without saying
I don t like writing, or thinking, about Donald Trump and everything is presidency represents. First of all, it s gross. He s awful. Second, the situation seems so obviously terrible that my comments don t add anything to the discourse. If it s not obvious to you why threatening democratic allies, promoting dangerous misinformation, and encouraging hate towards trans
Yellow snow warning
Environment Canada has a new color-based weather warning system. How do they know the snow is going to be yellow before it comes?
Simulating consumption
When we create simulations, we seem to simulate passive consumption rather than active participation. Two examples come to mind: I’d love to hear of other examples. Sports TV simulators First, sports video games. When you see someone playing FIFA, Madden NFL, or NBA 2K on a PlayStation from across a room, it can be difficult
Bonus fish
In our home we some times enjoy some prepared frozen breaded fish. A box usually comes with four pieces of fish. Occasionally, when the stars align, there are five pieces. When this happens, we celebrate this bounty by singing Bonus fish! Bonus fish! to the tune of Laura Branigan s 1982 hit Gloria. So, things aren t
The max q of a puzzle
When you see video of a rocket launch, you hear them talk about max q. This is the point where the rocket is under the maximum amount of dynamic pressure from the atmosphere. As the rocket accelerates, the pressure from pushing through the atmosphere increases. Eventually, though, the atmosphere thins, and the pressure reduces. There s
Old browser, new tricks
You might think someone in their late-forties, like myself, is too set in their ways to change their life. Well, dear reader, I switched to putting the tabs on the side of my browser! It s never too late.
Emotional nail biting with YouTube
If you re anything like me, when you can t sleep and your phone is too nearby, you might find yourself going down a YouTube rabbit hole. Maybe it s heart-warming surprise virtuoso performances at TV-show singing contests (the apparent shock here is often than people who aren t traditionally attractive can be talented). For me, it s live concerts
It’s all trade-offs
The further I get through life, the more I realize that most things in live can be seen as trade-offs. Some things are obviously trade-offs. Should you take that new job? On one hand, you ll get better pay. On the other hand, you may not get on as well the the team as your current
HTMhell all over again (now with feeds!)
My friend and co-chief-blogger-in-chief over at silverorange, Maureen Holland, has written again this year for the venerable (but evil) HTMhell Advent Calendar. This year, Maureen has written about something close to my heart: The Wonderful World of Web Feeds.
The Guitar Golden Rule
There s no sense in making sweeping absolute statements about aesthetics. That said, no electric guitar should have gold hardware.
Computers are solid now
My MacBook Pro froze the other day. Like, really froze. The cursor didn t move, the keyboard didn t do anything, and even the haptic feedback that makes the touchpad feel like it clicks didn t trigger. This frozen touchpad added a physical layer to the freeze. It felt almost like it would if you could no longer
Resumability
Resumability is not a word, but it’s an important concept to me. When I say Resumability, I’m talking about the ability to quickly interrupt and later resume a task. The task doesn’t have to be productive. The greatest resumable device I’ve ever owned is the Nintendo DS. The DS was a clamshell-shaped portable gaming system.
Unintended consequences of net metering
Where I m so fortunate to live, on Prince Edward Island, we have a Net-Metering system for electricity (see the legal act). My oversimplified explanation of PEI s net-metering policy is: A 1-to-1 credit system like this is pretty good. It means I benefit of every bit of energy I can generate even if I can t use
The 1,000 Day Stopwatch
It turns out that if you start a stopwatch in the Clock app on macOS, it will keep counting through reboots and upgrades. As of today, my stopwatch has been running for over 1,000 days. I wonder what it was I was originally timing. Looks like the first lap was 100 days long.
Don’t prescribe values to the weather
I have a pet peeve about people talking about the weather, particularly on the radio, which is where I hear most of my weather-talkin . You ll often here the weather-person express a kind of value judgment on the weather: it s going to be a nice day , or the weekend looks good , or they have good news
Meetings need margins
In the world of CSS, there are two different types of spacing between elements: I ve come to believe that scheduled meetings have MARGIN and PADDING too. Meeting Margin is the space between two meetings. This needs to be explicit. The screenshot below shows two meetings with no margins. They re bumping up against each other. Meeting
Printers are the new trucks
Everyone knows that if you have a truck, you have a social responsibility to help your friends and family move stuff. It s in the Bible. Now, if you have a working printer, you have a social responsibility to help your friends and family print stuff. I humbly accept this responsibility.
Heavyweight (née Wiretap) is back
The Heavyweight podcast from Jonathan Goldstein is back on a new network after being lost in the shuffle of Spotify acquiring Gimlet Media. I loved the show back when it was Wiretap on CBC Radio. In the latest episode, Gregor is back. I love Gregor.
Digging ditches
I work hard at my job, but nothing can compare to how hard I will work on redirecting a stream at the beach. I will dig in the hot sun until my hands are blistered.
The second day of school is harder than the first
The first day of school each fall is challenging. There s some excitement, but also some dread and anxiety. The second day, you no longer have the novelty or excitement, and you re exhausted from getting through the first day. The second day of school is harder than the first.
YouTube is making money on scams
This week YouTube started showing me an ad with an obviously (to me) fake video of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney asking people to sign up for some AI program. The link points to a form hosted on TypeForm. I ve reported this ad as a scam at least three or four times, yet YouTube continues
Hanson + Smashing Pumpkins + Fountains of Wayne + Cheap Trick
Did you know there was a super-group that released an album in 2009 that consisted of: Weird but true. Enjoy Kind of a Girl by Tinted Windows. Update: I learned from Wikipedia that the guitar play from the Lemonheads also performed with Tinted Windows. And the Lemonheads have a great new song out.
Figma annotations inaccessible for free accounts
I learned this week that the Annotations feature in Figma is not accessible for people with free accounts. Instead, you need to have a paid account with Dev Mode access. This is a major hindrance and disincentive to use the feature. While I understand that Figma will want to drive subscriptions, and I m happy to
The Schwartzman eye roll
I feel that this six second clip of Jason Schwartzman reacting to someone taking too long a drink of orange juice in the movie Mountainhead will come in handy.
Our long Google Slides keyboard nudging nightmare is over!
You know how in many design apps you can select an object and move it with the keyboard arrow keys? Often, if you hold SHIFT while using the arrow keys, the object will move at larger increments. Until recently, Google Slides had the opposite behaviour with large move increments by default and the SHIFT
On Falls
As a self-declared upper-middle manager at a technology design company, I have a mantra that I repeat slightly more often than is appropriate: The greatest risk to our company is falls. It s not market instability, or hackers, or inadequate planning. It s falls. Your company is made up of people. People are made up of
ChatGPT in the shower
My shower-thought today: ChatGPT can write a book for you, but it can’t make you a person who wrote a book. Caveat: I have neither had ChatGPT write a book for me, nor have I written a book.
Maximum Raisin Bran
If you re still eating Kellogg s Raisin Bran, you are a fool. Using Kellogg s own metric for the value of a raisin-and-bran cereal (the amount of raisins) there is a vastly superior option. The Compliments: Maximum Raisin Bran cereal has so many god-damn raisins in it there should be a warning on the bag. It s awesome.
Text is a shadow of thought
With more LLM-generated text floating around, and this thoughtful post about dealing with people s AI- writing output, I m noticing something about the point of writing. I assume anyone writing something for me to consume has a perspective they want to share. The writing isn t inherently valuable in of itself. It s the thought behind it that matters.
Naming things is hard: Conferences
As someone who helped create a conference called Zap Your PRAM, I m either supremely qualified or completely unqualified to comment on how well conferences are named. I ve noticed three conferences lately that I think are particularly well-named:
Naming things is hard
Naming this is hard. I ve written about this a few times here before. Here s a quick recap:
A horse faster than Spotify
This post, But what if I really want a faster horse?, does a great job of articulating what I don t like about the experience of services like Spotify — despite the inexpensive access to a mind-boggling catalogue of music.
Gild Just One Lily at ShopTalk Show
I appreciated Chris Dave at the ShopTalk Show taking a few minutes to discuss my Gild Just One Lily article this week. Dave brought up his optional SVG custom blog-post titles on his own blog a great example. The whole show is always worth a listen (especially this week, where you ll be taken
Strategic voting sucks. Let’s do it!
I’ve always resented the idea of voting strategically: voting for someone other than your ideal choice in order to prevent a worse outcome. I thought (and wished and hoped) that people should vote for the candidate they think is best. Otherwise we’ll always end up in the middle-of-the-road, at best. Then Donald Trump became president
Gild Just One Lily
I ve written an article about adding a bit of fanciness to a design and was proud to have it published at Smashing Magazine. The article is called Gild Just One Lily. The phrase “gild the lily” implies unnecessary ornamentation, the idea being that adorning a lily with superficial decoration only serves to obscure its natural
Pierre Poilievre keeps texting my children
My kids keep getting text from Pierre Poilievre and his campaign. Where did they get these phone numbers?
We’re too stupid for a carbon tax
I understand why our new Prime Minister of Canada felt he needed to eliminate the consumer carbon tax in Canada. His opponent managed to weaponize it with a stupid rhyme. Prime Minister Carney explains that the carbon tax had become too divisive. At least he s honest about why he s removing it – not because he