New Book: “The Little Book of HTML/CSS Coding Guidelines”

Out of the blue! My latest book, The Little Book of HTML/CSS Coding Guidelines, is now available. It’s a brief introduction into the theory and practice of coding standards. Emphasis, as the title suggests, is on HTML and CSS, and furthermore on Google’s guidelines…

Published on December 14, 2015, filed under Development.

Philosophy Factoids

Meanwhile.

Published on November 30, 2015, filed under Philosophy.

On Mistakes

What is a mistake, really?

Published on November 16, 2015, filed under Philosophy.

On the Anatomy of Beliefs

From a philosophical viewpoint, here a strictly solipsistic one, any statement is a belief. Beliefs are important because they determine how we interpret, and per some schools of thought, make our realities…

Published on November 8, 2015, filed under Philosophy.

Crowdfunding, 5 Years and 81 Projects Later

I’m a Kickstarter and Indiegogo backer. I’ve backed my first campaign in February 2011, and the so far last one in May. In the five years on Kickstarter and Indiegogo, I’ve bid on 81 projects of which 73 funded successfully…

Published on November 4, 2015, filed under Everything Else.

Personally Speaking

After my eternal travels I’ve had entered a new stage of my life. Now that I and the dust have settled a little, the position that I assume in the world is a bit more clear, at least for the next couple of years. A few notes…

Published on October 30, 2015, filed under Everything Else.

The 1,000 Lives Thought Experiment

Open up a text editor or grab a piece of paper, and write down what you’d do if you had another life. Or what you’d wish for in another life. Assume that anything goes…

Published on October 27, 2015, filed under Philosophy.

Rules for the Media: Independence, Transparency, Accountability, Comparative Reporting

I’ve suggested to opt out of following news for the simple reason that news rarely constitute reliable and actionable information, and in the spirit that even ignorance may be preferable so to at least keep an open mind. Now, what would make me change this view?

Published on October 10, 2015, filed under Everything Else.

Media: The Choice Between Misinformation and Uninformation

“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.”—Our media, generally speaking, are not trustworthy. They are not trustworthy because of conflicts of interest…

Published on October 6, 2015, filed under Everything Else.

What I’ve Hated and What I’ve Loved About Web Development

In On Web Development and in other contexts I’ve alluded to wrapping up, ending my old career. That’s only correct to an extent. (In keeping with the intelligence community, always put everyone at risk by adding backdoors.)

Published on September 30, 2015, filed under Development.

The Problem of “Fire and Forget” in Web Design

If I were to pick the main issue in web design… I couldn’t answer immediately. I don’t think there are so many, but there are a few, they are very different, they operate on different scales, and so they’re hard to compare. One, however, is “fire and forget.”

Published on September 17, 2015, filed under Development and Design.

On Science Experimenting on Life

There are boundaries, and some boundaries must be non-negotiable.

Published on September 10, 2015, filed under Philosophy.

The Teaching Dilemma

Maybe we’re here to learn, but is it at all said that we can be taught?

Published on September 7, 2015, filed under Philosophy.

Fear and the Creative Dilemma

In the Seth school of thought there’s an interesting issue, the creative dilemma. In short, there’s identity which constantly attempts to maintain stability, there’s action which inherently drives towards change, and that combination results in a particular imbalance—

Published on September 3, 2015, filed under Philosophy.

Love Reciprocity

Love! What a wonderful topic. My mind would instantly turn into a good number of directions, from love in our personal lives to different forms of love, to the powers of love, to the possibly universal character of love. Let’s be more specific.

Published on August 26, 2015, filed under Everything Else.

Several Lives

I have no doubt that we live several lives. I have no doubt for there’s an entirely different belief system, an entirely different thought framework, that supports this model. Here, though, I want to isolate a single idea, the one of multiple lives, as opposed to one life.

Published on August 20, 2015, filed under Philosophy.

Two Realities

Wundt wrote in 1911 how “a human being is a psycho-physical and not only a physical unity,” and here we’re thinking about that a little, aloud.

Published on August 13, 2015, filed under Philosophy.

The One Belief to Cultivate

There’s a particularly important belief, habit, or trait for us to cultivate: that whatever it is we want to be or master, we can learn how to be or master whatever it is we want.

Published on August 11, 2015, filed under Everything Else.

New Book: “Journey of J.”

Mostly for planned closure, somewhat for playful curiosity, I wrote another book. Journey of J.—Around the World in 557 Days, 1,017 Photos, and 291 Personal Notes is about the long and eventful trip…

Published on August 6, 2015, filed under Adventure.

The Law of User-Generated Code

Whenever you allow users to edit code of your website, you’re doomed. It’s only a matter of time until you need to give up and redo the entire website—and, adding insult to injury, alienate your users.

Published on August 4, 2015, filed under Development.

Analytics: Only When We Actually Use It

Here’s something so obvious, it isn’t anymore. Which is: We should only use analytics software when we actually use it. Not when we think we could might want to need it. And not when we only glance at it, every now and then.

Published on July 27, 2015, filed under Development.

New Book: “On Web Development”

I wrote another book. On Web Development. On Web Development is an ebook that collects most of the articles about web development (and web design) that I wrote between 2005 and 2015. Most articles as in most useful, most important, and also most controversial.

Published on July 1, 2015, filed under Development.

Travel Intelligence: Global Country Information for German Travelers

Traveling the world one inevitably runs into places one cannot simply enter. Other places one doesn’t want to simply enter. For purposes of tracking both I had, during my 18-month world trip, set up a special country intel sheet…

Published on June 22, 2015, filed under Adventure.

On Conspiracy Theories

These days, many a serious inquiry into significant events leads to something marked a “conspiracy theory.” Use of the expression “conspiracy theory” has gone as far as to be used as a blanket dismissal…

Published on June 2, 2015, filed under Everything Else.

Web Standards: We’re F’ing It Up

It’s a problem to just change specs. But it’s an increasingly bigger problem not to clean and prune them. The intimidating complexity of web standard specs should precisely be a motivation, not a threat, to come up with a plan. It follows the populist version.

Published on May 18, 2015, filed under Development.