A Vision of Web Development

There is one thing every web developer should aspire to: writing the most minimal, semantically appropriate, valid HTML, and then never changing it. “Never” not in a sense of denial and refusal, but in the sense of a guiding light…

Published on May 13, 2015, filed under Development.

Loving Technology

I love the idea of caring, of loving technology. I believe we need technology that is loving. I think we have ample opportunities to envision and build technology that is loving. Here I’ll be brief and merely bring up the concept.

Published on May 8, 2015, filed under Philosophy.

Business Practices, Reframed

Ideas for the next performance review.

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

Museums Should Always Allow Photography

The observation that there seem to be good reasons to allow most photography—to charge extra for it if necessary—, but none to offend visitors by banning it.

Published on April 30, 2015, filed under Design.

10 Photos

Some of my favorite and most popular photos lately.

Published on April 24, 2015, filed under Design.

The 1% Hypothesis of Mass Surveillance

A few weeks back I read this security article about how it’s odd that no one has ever suspected and detected anything related to all that mass surveillance we learned about through Edward Snowden. In particular, physical manipulation of devices…

Published on April 13, 2015, filed under Everything Else.

No

Have we stopped killing yet?

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

On the Problems and Limits of Science

Science can’t explain everything. It never could. It never will. Yet science is run as if it could explain everything. It is run completely unchecked. And this unchecked pretense of omniscience and omnipotence is a problem for us for a number of reasons.

Published on March 31, 2015, filed under Philosophy.

The Two Ground Rules for Using a Framework

Follow the documentation, don’t overwrite framework code. These two rules are golden.

Published on March 26, 2015, filed under Development.

Remember: April 9 Is CSS Naked Day

CSS Naked Day is coming up! Why the excitement? Because CSS Naked Day is a magnificent custom; the magnificent custom to, on one day of the year, strip websites of all styling. It’s awesome because—

Published on March 19, 2015, filed under Development.

What to Carry When Traveling the World

For my 557-day journey around the world I had prepared thoroughly. Emphasis had been on light luggage, and so I had focused on necessities and gear that didn’t weigh much and, for clothes, could dry quickly. Here I’ll share some parts of my inventory…

Published on March 16, 2015, filed under Adventure.

180 Little Stories After Traveling the World for 18 Months

It’s over. A couple of weeks ago I came to a halt, after traveling the world for what now feels like a lifetime. Here’s one way to tell the story.

Published on March 13, 2015, filed under Adventure.

The Truth About “!important”

Sometimes I wake up at night, full of agony, tears in my eyes. The Holiest Alliance Against !important is haunting me. I see their countless crusaders gallop at innocent web developers with merciless force, incessantly blowing their deafening horns…

Published on March 10, 2015, filed under Development.

New Book: “The Little Book of HTML/CSS Frameworks”

It’s out! My new book, The Little Book of HTML/CSS Frameworks, is now available. I myself have been surprised by the sudden release, and while I’m still unsure about how print copies can be obtained, the book can now be downloaded for free at O’Reilly.

Published on March 4, 2015, filed under Development.

News Headlines I Want to Read

A brainstorming with assumptions and implications. We shouldn’t use our creativity to come up with ever horrid scenarios; we could use it to envision awesomeness.

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

A Population Control Primer

An incomplete, roughly sorted sketch of actions, methods, and developments that don’t serve us, that instead divide, distract, confuse, manipulate, exploit, demotivate, control, and dominate us. We have a lot of work to do.

Published on February 24, 2015, filed under Everything Else.

On Taking Life

We cannot accept killing. The default must be to respect, to cherish life. We should get help to those who suggest to take lives. Eight theses on a most critical matter.

Published on February 14, 2015, filed under Philosophy.

On Age

Age is wonderful. Aging is wonderful. Age is wonderful for in a life reasonably lived, in a life not exclusively spent idly or hedonistically, age signifies the accumulation of experience and knowledge, and perhaps even wisdom.

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

Web Design and Principles

Web design has become complex. More people, more ideas, more use cases, more technical innovations, more design variations, &c. pp. More makes for more complex. However, there’s a life line helping us with this complexity, as well as trends.

Published on January 30, 2015, filed under Development and Design.

Web Frameworks in a Nutshell

My next book is coming! “The Little Book of HTML/CSS Frameworks.” I’m wrapping it up with the team of O’Reilly as we speak. In the book, I share much of my experience architecting, developing, and maintaining web frameworks, as I’ve done for Google, Aperto, and GMX…

Published on January 24, 2015, filed under Development.

On the Deterioration of HTML/CSS Practices

Presentational markup for everyone.

Published on January 22, 2015, filed under Development.

Love

Love is vulnerability. First and foremost, love is vulnerability. It took me many years to recognize this. Many years in which there wasn’t much love in my life, even permitted in my life. I had locked it all out, out of fear to be… vulnerable.

Published on January 15, 2015, filed under Everything Else.

Character

A couple of weeks ago I read Samuel Smiles’ Character, a book extraordinarily useful and important. I think you’d like it. “Character is one of the greatest motive powers in the world. In its noblest embodiments, it exemplifies human nature in its highest forms…”

Published on January 12, 2015, filed under Everything Else.