This evening I listened to Peter Gabriel’s New Blood, after seeing the album mentioned on Thomas’ blog. As I listened, I kept thinking “this is my favourite song so far!” There were so many tracks that I liked. [...]

Ruben and I are doing a collaborative writing challenge where we both write our thoughts on the poem “Repeat that, repeat” by Gerard Manley Hopkins. We’re not trying to do an academic formal analysis, rather share our own thoughts.. [...]

Outside one of my childhood bedrooms there was a tree, a single tree. I see the tree vividly in my mind, and remember tracking it as the seasons changed – watching out for the first blossom, followed by the maturity of the leaves, then again by their browning as summer became autumn and autumn […]

A pink symmetry on the peaceful pond catches my eye. “It’s a lotus!” I have made lotuses with paper before, but cannot remember the last time I saw one (have I noticed one before in the way I did today?). [...]

The horizon is bathed in orange and a faint pink hue as the hills in the middle distance turn blue with the haze of the summer’s evening. Light white clouds are scattered across the sky. [...]

The ninth episode of Wonders of Web Weaving is out:. [...]

You look up from your bed of grass flowers, opening your eyes to see the layers of branches grown by the trees in the grove that surrounds you. The blue sky peeks through the gaps between the leaves. [...]

Artemis, the calm web reader I maintain, supports web feeds marked up with h-feed. h-feed allows you to create a web feed in HTML using microformats. [...]

The eighth episode of Wonders of Web Weaving is out:. [...]

When I announced that I was open-sourcing a quiz maker earlier this week, I noted that there were several limitations to what I had built. Most importantly, my quiz maker was a Python script, which substantially limits how many people can use it.. [...]

I am continuing to experiment with writing some fiction on this blog. Here is a story I wrote today.. [...]

Looking idly out the window of my favourite coffee shop, sipping on a cool iced latte that I needed after a long walk on a warm summer’s afternoon, a thought came to mind: Why am I so fascinated by the outside world when I just sat down inside? Even now, at my desk, I find my eyes occasionally […]

In my “Open sourcing a quiz maker” blog post, I frame my quiz maker as a step toward what could be something better: a script that you can use, but where I see a vision for something more robust and reliable.. [...]

When I designed my “Which HTML element are you?” quiz, I wrote all of the HTML and JavaScript required to make the quiz work by hand. It took a lot of work, but it was a lot of fun! I used that code as the template for my second quiz, the Blogger Archetype Quiz. [...]

Blue light passes through the edges of the black-out blinds as I lie holding a pillow, dreaming. I have been watching Frasier, one of my comfort television shows. [...]

I wanted to try and write a little bit of fiction for my blog. I started with the prompt You've been staring out of the window for the last 3 hours. [...]

The sixth episode of Wonders of Web Weaving is out:. [...]

Approaching a junction, I looked up to the sky and saw a hole in the clouds unlike any I have seen before. I usually look up to the stone that must be at least a hundred years old: to the grey buildings – homes – in which I see so many stories. [...]

Inspired by the Bear Blog question challenge and other blogging challenges, I thought I would make my own: the Taylor Swift question challenge. . [...]

At Homebrew Website Club this evening we had a conversation about how to encourage people to make things together using the web. This could mean writing a blog post with someone, responding to someone’s blog post to continue a conversation, contributing to a wiki, creating a list of links, and […]

The fifth episode of Wonders of Web Weaving is out:. [...]

The familiar sounds of the espresso machine never cease to calm me – the joy of the familiar, but also the potential of the variable: of sounds at new tones, of different cadences. Watching as the barista makes sure to stop pulling the espresso shot at 33 seconds — precision at every step.. [...]

Today I attended my first Magic the Gathering (MtG) draft: a “secret draft,” where players did not know ahead of time what series of the trading card game would be played. The event was held in a breathtaking church building, now used as a community centre. [...]

“No way,” I exclaim with wonder and glee and surprise. I look up and stare for a few moments, transfixed by the delicate wisps of cloud that rest side by side. [...]

I have been thinking a lot about categories over the last week or so. It started by Thomas sharing the work he has been doing to build a category index page. [...]

This is my entry for this month’s Bear Blog Carnival, on the topic of staying connected while practicing digital minimalism. Thank you Juni for hosting the Carnival, and for choosing such a fascinating topic!. [...]

The fourth episode of Wonders of Web Weaving is out:. [...]

Artemis now has a feature to flag websites that you have subscribed to as suspicious. This feature appears in two places:. [...]

Since I am thinking about delicious Scottish treats this evening, I thought this would be an apt time to write about another of my favourite Scottish sweets: milk chews.. [...]

Note: The logic described in this post may be a stepping stone to a more robust system in the future. Please keep that in mind as you read and know that my solution may not be optimal, rather a start toward solving a problem.. [...]

There is beauty in the moments between arriving and reaching your destination. I felt this yesterday in the moments before attending an event in Edinburgh last night. [...]

I have been working on a few new features for Artemis, the calm web reader I maintain. You can read a summary of what’s new below.. [...]

I have been working on a few new features for Artemis, the calm web reader I maintain. You can read a summary of what’s new below.. [...]

Trafalgar Square is a special place. The architecture and views are breathtaking. [...]

This is my entry for this month’s IndieWeb Carnival on the topic “Museum memories”.. [...]

I had spent half of the day travelling and the other half looking at art. Whenever I am going anywhere, I like to arrive as early as I can and either walk around or go to an art gallery; ideally, I like to do both. [...]

The days are getting longer and brighter. The bite of the winter air is being replaced by a delicate breeze. [...]

My blog has an offline mode that lets you view articles you have previously read on my website. This mode allows you to read something on my website even if you don’t have an internet connection. [...]

I am writing about a few paintings to help me build my description skills. My analyses are not formal or comprehensive. [...]

State of the Browser was electric. This is how I summarised my experience at the annual State of the Browser event in London in my notes. [...]

Berthe Morisot’s Girl on a Divan, displayed in the National Gallery, London, caught my eye as soon as I saw it. The painting was the last one I saw in the Impressionist room in the Gallery, but despite having been on my feet for hours before I stood for several minutes looking at the painting […]

I am using Duolingo to learn a bit of German. I have been using the app for a while and enjoy the exercises. [...]

When I was building the search engine for my blog, one feature I wanted to implement was syntax highlighting within the search input field. I wanted special operators (i.e. [...]

Museums and galleries are places we can go to learn about the past, think about the present, and consider the future. Museums are places we can connect: with times, people, and place. [...]

When I was in high school, I used to keep a pencil or pen up my sleeve. I don’t remember anyone else doing it, or why I started. [...]

Last year I was introduced to the idea of “Dopplr colours” in the IndieWeb community. This refers to an accent colour assigned to cities on the now-defunct travel website Dopplr. [...]

Search is one of my favourite disciplines in computing. In 2024 I spent a lot of time working on a NoSQL engine that I called JameSQL. [...]

When I announced Artemis in 2024, I titled the announcement “Artemis, a calm web reader, is available (in beta)”. So central to the philosophy of how I build the software is the principle “calm” that, when I write about Artemis, I still use the phrase “a calm web reader” to describe what the […]

Recently, a feed a few users – including myself – were following with Artemis published a “bookmark”-like post. The markup in the corresponding feed was a bit different than expected, so Artemis ended up linking directly to the bookmarked post rather than to the author’s post itself.. [...]

This evening I added an idea I have had for a while to Artemis: a dense layout.. [...]