My Year in Cities, 2013

Traditionally I post a list of all the new places I visited during a year in some sort of year-end review, too. This year is no exception.

#20 · Dec 30, 2013 adventure

My Year in Activities, 2013

The same procedure as every year: a brief look back at new things I tried.

#19 · Dec 29, 2013 adventure

On Writing a Book With Google Docs and Amazon KDP

Google Docs is okay to write short books and when making limited use of the comment feature. Amazon KDP’s HTML format is a technical disgrace, and Amazon needs to fix it. A few thoughts and tips on completing a book using either.

#18 · Dec 20, 2013 · development, misc

How to Become an Everyday Adventurer

In “100 Things I Learned as an Everyday Adventurer” I’m not just sharing my own view on one hundred different activities and things I tried, but also some ideas and tips on what I think it takes to become a more adventurous person. That part is something I like to…

#17 · Dec 12, 2013 adventure

Travel, Photos, Art?

I started another side project. It’s about taking a ton of photos of street scenery, working some magic that I talk about in this very post, and putting the results up on Tumblr. On the one new travel tumblr art installation that I call Animated Traffic.

#16 · Dec 9, 2013 · adventure, design, photography, art

CSS, HTML, and the Problem of Spec Fragmentation

We have not one but two fundamental problems with CSS. One is unrestricted growth and complexity leading to poor understanding and poor code. Another one is spec fragmentation, also an issue with HTML, which results in inefficiencies. We should look for a better balance.

#15 · Dec 5, 2013 · development, css, html

No to DRM in HTML

It’s been quiet around DRM lately so I like to share my opinion, in brief: DRM doesn’t belong into nor anywhere near HTML. For one, HTML is a language to describe documents and, since HTML 5, applications. I don’t deem DRM in scope for HTML…

#14 · Nov 22, 2013 · development, html

New Book! “100 Things I Learned as an Everyday Adventurer”

I wrote a new book! Not about web development, again, not about philosophy or social sciences, yet, but about all the different activities I’ve been doing over the last few years, in all my infinite free time. And what I learned in one hundred of them.

#13 · Oct 30, 2013 · books, adventure

How I Read 10 Books a Month

I read 10–15 books a month. As I’ve been doing this for a few years and thus developed a routine, I thought it could be interesting to share a few notes, tips, and quirks—I remember how hard it can be to even read 1 book a month.

#12 · Oct 16, 2013 misc

The Curious Case of Breadcrumbs in HTML

We had an interesting thread about breadcrumbs on W3C’s public-html the other day. At first just targeting delimiters, it spawned a debate about the appropriate markup. Here’s my view on breadcrumbs in HTML.

#11 · Oct 3, 2013 · development, html, semantics

About Cost in Web Development

Cost is an interesting topic. Oftentimes we think of cost as in “this costs so-and-so much.” Like, the software license costs $2,500. Or three man hours cost $450. I’m not an economist but I like to think of this as something like primary cost. Yet, there’s more…

#10 · Oct 1, 2013 development

A Social-Philosophical Journey in 25 Quotes

I was reviewing my Google+ posts the other day. In there I rediscovered a good number of quotes. What connected most of them were my studies. And when I looked at them I found they sort of tell a little story.

#9 · Sep 23, 2013 philosophy

9 Tips to Become a Better Driver

What makes a good driver? I don’t know whether I know. I’ve driven much, have deepened my skills, I fit stereotypes—and I’ve also screwed up. What I do know is that I’m a driver who cares. A few ideas on what could make people better drivers.

#8 · Sep 10, 2013 misc

The Art of Saying Thank You, One Thousand Times

But not here, on onethousandthankyous.org.

#7 · Aug 29, 2013 · misc, advocacy

A URL Policy for Web Projects

Do your projects suffer from URL inconsistencies? I just noticed how mine do. I also noticed that I did some unnecessary things, like omitting protocols when they were actually useful. And I noticed that I’ve seen similar problems in corporate projects before. So I jotted down a quick “policy.”

#6 · Aug 22, 2013 development

Surveillance Kills Democracy

I meet people who think that mass surveillance, as with NSA and GCHQ spying, is okay because they don’t have anything to worry about. The argument is either that they don’t have anything to hide or that what they’re doing is not important enough…

#5 · Aug 18, 2013 · misc, advocacy

The Meanings of Googliness

The words “googley” and “googliness” are not found in common language. Even at Google, where they’ve been coined, it’s not clear to everyone what these words mean. And that’s no surprise: You don’t get a handout with a description…

#4 · Aug 12, 2013 misc

Object-Oriented HTML, and OOCSS

“Object-oriented CSS” is the idea of treating page elements as objects, giving all these objects classes, treating objects’ classes as single entities in style sheets, and taking it from there. I reviewed the old OOCSS site and Smashing Magazine’s introduction.

#3 · Aug 6, 2013 · development, html, css

Goodbye Google, San Francisco, California, and United States

I’m resetting my life. I’ve quit at Google, I’ve quit my apartment in San Francisco, I’ve sold most of what I own and put the rest in storage. I’m now about to backpack the world to pursue my studies and goals and to build a new life somewhere else. Here’s a little story.

#2 · Jul 31, 2013 misc

How to Order CSS Selectors

There are a number of ways to write style sheets. The domain of style guides, many of them go into some detail. What I, despite my work on a number of guides, have so far missed, is a reference to sort selectors and rules, as proposed here.

#1 · Jan 30, 2013 · development, css