The chaos has slightly calmed now…

MERRY CHRYSLER

Christmas Eve DS question (nobody is stupid enough to be building a design system on xmas eve, right 👀) - do you use semantic spacing variables/tokens, or just use the primitive scale variables/tokens in most places?

Apparently it's HDR images/videos. So not necessarily a platform thing, but the advertisers realising it can be brighter

Has anybody noticed the shitty behaviour on insta that all posts in the feed are like the brightness is down and then when you reach an ad BAM FULL BRIGHTNESS?

My annual beer and music matching podcast is now live. Listen to us ramble about beer with increasing amounts of slurring over the two hours

Utterly random, but if anyone has ever seen me give a talk before and liked it, would you be interested in giving me a quote to put on my speaker page? Very self-centered, I know... Also, if you didn't like it (or haven't seen one), give me a quote anyway. Who knows, I might use all of them...

Currently existing on mango vape and boyz ii men christmas

We're getting close to selling this baby out on Friday, so if you fancy some Christmas cheer, then get a ticket! dice.fm/partner/how-...

FINALLY

Granola out here winning the best year in review

Every festival organiser in 2025: "You know what would be super unique and interesting on this bill? Turnstile." Not complaining, but reckon they'll hit peak saturation in about 6 months time

It's not the most exciting first pass, but I've been wanting to do responsive versions of gig posters for a while, with little bits of animation. So here's the first one for the @crywankband.bsky.social show in January lurkmoophy.com/posters/cryw...

Winter Sprinter 2026: Announcement #1: Gutted to have to say that sadly @cheerbleederz.bsky.social can now longer play Friday's show with @fightmilkband.bsky.social and New Starts... ... but @brutalligators.bsky.social have stepped in and will be opening proceedings!

A week and a bit after release and we're starting to see some differences in plays in individual songs from the @brutalligators.bsky.social album. I'm always fascinated to see which ones end up coming out on top! Very happy to see Wrong Words climbing up, as it's all of our favourite 🥰

Actually doing Whamageddon at Christmas is a moral failing, you should be listening to Last Christmas at least once a day if not ten

Fantastic run down why even if you are using AI to do front end, you still need to actually know front end to get good results…

Friday release time! Here are some of my favourites from this week: @breakuphaircut.bsky.social have released their sophomore album and it's delightful, heavy indie-pop. If you're a fan of @fightmilkband.bsky.social you should give them a listen (but tbh you probably already know them)

This course will transform you as a designer, regardless of level, I promise. The thing I really like though is that for developers wanting to get into design, this is *the course* for that. You do the visual stuff, but that's built on the all important knowledge of the brain too. Truly unique.

After three years of recording the album we’ve worked on for way too long is finally here! The new @brutalligators.bsky.social hath risen open.spotify.com/album/6GKNtO...

Put the podcast episode for my favourite track of the album up today. Go and have a listen - open.spotify.com/episode/1DcH...

Added in another part to my website today - a whole bunch of the gig posters I've done. lurkmoophy.com/illustration/ Played with writing scripts that would optimize the images, and then do OCR to see if I could auto extract the details (with mixed results). Then I added the title, which is stupid.

It's a Hadouken kind of day open.spotify.com/album/1MIvX2...

Had some #uksnow for about an hour in SG6. This means Christmas music is blasting all day now.

Just in case anyone is looking for some low energy Christmas songs to be sad to, I made a playlist - open.spotify.com/playlist/4bG...

We're now 5 issues into @nothingsoundsgood.bsky.social! We'll be cutting off subscriptions for the Dec issue on 30 Nov if you fancy signing up. Dec is a beautiful album that comes out this week 👀. If you're a fan of Soccer Mommy or Soot Sprite, you might like this one... www.nothingsoundsgood.club

Alright Brighton folks, now's the time to get your tickets to the @brutalligators.bsky.social album launch on Dec 6! We're playing the album in full and it's going to be emotional. www.fatsoma.com/e/zdorxkny/b...

Look mum a bit of a set from Manchester Punk Festival is on Youtube! www.youtube.com/watch?v=GekW...

Finally did another weeknote, thinking about digital patina, how we make decision and svg filters. No, those things aren't related. lurkmoophy.com/blog/weeknot...

I have @zeroheight.com socks and pin badges at #ffconf if anyone can find me! Looking forward to a day of learning* *vaping and seeing friends, with some talks in between

On a pre-7am train to get to @ffconf.org. I need at least three stewards on the way to the venue handing me coffees pls.

I’ve been tinkering with my website a bit more (I really need to focus on adding some more sections) www.lurkmoophy.com (And added the now page lurkmoophy.com/now)

Fun fact: Charterhouse Square, a gorgeous little park around the corner from Barbican, is London’s largest plague pit. There are over 50,000 bodies buried under here!

Anyone I know at Leading Design today?

Is there a hacks way to target emojis in css? Want to set a global style and can only figure out ways to do it with classes or js 🥲

Left my headphones at home so I’m having to raw dog my commute. Pray for me.

Over on @zeroheight.com's blog, I wrote about using some of the CSS' modern colour features that you can apply to your design systems. zeroheight.com/blog/leverag... #DesignSystems #CSS

Go listen pleeeeease

Whoops

Best. Series. Ever

Well fuck me, Turnstile are a pretty amazing live band, aren't they

To celebrate the new album, we ( @brutalligators.bsky.social ) have started a little podcast where we're doing track by track breakdowns of the new album songs. You'll also get to hear them before the record actually comes out! open.spotify.com/show/1jK2IvU...

@soysaucechin.bsky.social and I are back at Design Systems WTF and recording our first episode of season 2 on Wednesday, talking about whether MCPs are the unlock that allow us to get to actual contextual documentation. Join us at 4pm GMT! webinars.zeroheight.com/register/zer...

The sad part of packing down converge for another year 🥲

This is your five day notice to sign up for Nothing Sounds Good before the November cutoff!! Hints for next month's record: - It's a sophomore album - It's about acceptance and moving on - It's for fans of PUP, Los Campesinos and Pkew Pkew Pkew

Get yr dang votes in people!

Another new #SystemsOfHarm Episode just dropped and this week’s very special guest is… 🥁… ME! In a self-indulgent twist, I recruited the lovely @lurkmoophy.bsky.social to play host this week and we talk about design systems and big life events. Apple: apple.co/4nlt2rI RSS: bit.ly/43gtLkB

Lasted until 23 October this year before listening to a Christmas song. For me, this is pretty great.

"Their sound has a lot of similarities to the current pop punk scene in the States, using these gritty guitars to build up and deliver a punchy hook in the chorus, not unlike recent hits from Joyce Manor and the like" Austin Town Hall on the new single Train Wreck from @brutalligators.bsky.social

We also released a very silly music video for it that was super fun to make www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofby...