“2015” Archive
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…
#48 · · books, development
Philosophy Factoids
Meanwhile.
#47 · philosophy
On Mistakes
What is a mistake, really?
#46 · 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…
#45 · 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…
#44 · misc
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…
#43 · misc
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…
#42 · 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?
#41 · misc
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…
#40 · misc
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.)
#39 · 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.”
#38 · · design, development
On Science Experimenting on Life
There are boundaries, and some boundaries must be non-negotiable.
#37 · philosophy
The Teaching Dilemma
Maybe we’re here to learn, but is it at all said that we can be taught?
#36 · 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—
#35 · 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.
#34 · misc
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.
#33 · 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.
#32 · 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.
#31 · misc
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…
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.
#29 · 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.
#28 · 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.
#27 · · books, 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…
#26 · 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…
#25 · misc
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.
#24 · development
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…
#23 · 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.
#22 · philosophy
Business Practices, Reframed
Ideas for the next performance review.
#21 · misc
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.
#20 · design
10 Photos
Some of my favorite and most popular photos lately.
#19 · 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…
#18 · misc
No
Have we stopped killing yet?
#17 · misc
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.
#16 · philosophy
The Two Ground Rules for Using a Framework
Follow the documentation, don’t overwrite framework code. These two rules are golden.
#15 · 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—
#14 · 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…
#13 · 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.
#12 · 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…
#11 · 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.
#10 · · books, 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.
#9 · misc
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.
#8 · misc
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.
#7 · 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.
#6 · misc
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.
#5 · · design, development
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…
#4 · development
On the Deterioration of HTML/CSS Practices
Presentational markup for everyone.
#3 · 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.
#2 · misc
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…”
#1 · misc