Decompressing 33 signal bytes [blog] 🔗
In my RSS reader, I stumbled upon this code-golfed (i.e. minimised to death) snippet that's fairly clever, but from the code, utterly opaque. I couldn [...]
remy sharp's b:log
Posts
Platform Decay (The Murderbot Diaries, #8) [book] 🔗
Solid entry into the series. I've read all the previous Murderbot books, but since the last, I also watched the TV series - which I equally enjoyed, b [...]
Accessible (I Think) Split-Cell Table Headers by Eric Archived Thoughts [link] 🔗
This really isn't the intended take away from Eric's post (which is worth reading), but I needed a CSS rule that targetting Safari (because their supp [...]
FFConf 2026 is live: Things I Learnt [blog] 🔗
As with each year for the FFConf web site, I have a distinct idea of the visual style I want. It has zero to do with the content we're presenting each [...]
prop-for-that: CSS reacts, JS just listens [link] 🔗
This is neat. Effectively injecting a tonne of JavaScript based sensors into the elements that ask for the particular category via data-props-for, suc [...]
A bouncer in your pocket by Sacha Judd [link] 🔗
Sacha has an in depth analysis of the UK's recent announcements around social media websites and children's access to them. I wanted to pull a few quo [...]
20 Years of Blogging [blog] 🔗
Today is the anniversary of the first blog post on this website from two decades ago. It was about client side JavaScript to automatically (albeit bli [...]
Enhancing with CSS Grid Lanes [link] 🔗
I've been catching CSS Grid Lanes in the socials this week, but somehow had it in my head that it was to do with the gaps (the lanes) between the grid [...]
Social media to be banned for under-16s in landmark government move to give kids their childhood back - GOV.UK [link] 🔗
The UK government has announced they're going ahead with a social media ban for 16 year old and under. In our household we've already had this restric [...]
AI designed pages and prompts [link] 🔗
Based on the output of this article the author has styled their project with different AI prompts. I think what I find interesting here is after the j [...]
The “Nude” Ultimatum: Privacy Is Dead - The Unknown Universe [link] 🔗
The UK government's ultimatum to Apple and Google is a blueprint for mass surveillance. A warning on why "nothing to hide" won't protect your digital [...]
More molly guards [link] 🔗
I love these little deep dives into bits of UX that we take for granted. Admittedly I think extending the idea of a Molly Guard to a "Are you sure" pr [...]
Landmark German ruling declares Google's AI Overviews are Google's own words and makes it liable for false answers [link] 🔗
The "AI overview" is its own content, not just a list of search results. This is really interesting and I would love to see this set the tone for oth [...]
No, Artificial Intelligence Is Not Conscious - Ted Chiang [link] 🔗
I didn't really need to read much past the title or subtitle, but it's still an excellent essay that does a good job of drawing comparisons to concept [...]
Are you standard.site? [link] 🔗
Another (shorter) entry in how how devs are adding Standard.site to their web sites to enrich the social cards.I suspect we'll start to gravitat towar [...]
How I foot-gunned our newsletter this week [blog] 🔗
For the second year running, as part of our "stay sane" strategy for FFConf, Julie and I write and send a weekly newsletter. It's structured the same [...]
The 30 year game [blog] 🔗
Today I'm releasing my Game Boy game called Marbles² (or Marbles Squared). It's a port of a game that I originally wrote back in 2002, but is a game t [...]
When the Cranes Fly South [book] 🔗
Took me a minute to get into, but then…I cried. The good kind. It took me until around 20% of the book to get on with it properly. I was struggling to [...]
NES Programming in 6502 Assembly [link] 🔗
Source: pikuma.com [...]
A popover backdrop anti-pattern [blog] 🔗
After attending recent conferences and learning that I can swap out buckets of JavaScript for the HTML native popover property, I've been using it lib [...]
devtools: how to query through the shadow DOM [blog] 🔗
This is a literal TIL but was so handy I had to put it my blog so that I wouldn't forget it later. Thanks to Big Brain Keith Cirkel for sharing this. [...]
Apps I use, that you might not know [blog] 🔗
This is a cheap post to share some of the apps (macos, sorry Windows users) that I use on a fairly regular basis and think some of you might not have [...]
Lost Lambs [book] 🔗
Enjoyable, well drawn characters, a pleasure to read. I really enjoyed reading this book. The story floats like a butterfly from one character to the [...]
Another England: How to Reclaim Our National Story [book] 🔗
"Our diverse literary heritage reveals that we do not need a single national story" I bought and read this book after seeing Caroline Lucas speaking w [...]
Fixing my slow Mac network speeds [blog] 🔗
For a while now both my desktop Mac (running Sonoma) and my laptop (running Tahoe - do not recommend) have had sub-optimal network speeds. My Android [...]
Web of State of the Browser Day Out [blog] 🔗
Okay, that's a stupidly obscure title. It's meant to represent the combined events: State of the Browser and Web Day Out - two events I attended in th [...]
Rivers of London (Rivers of London, #1) [book] 🔗
Vivid voice, fun and dark and original. I wasn't sure what I was getting in to reading Rivers of London (recommended multiple times on socials), espec [...]
git recent: what branch did I work on? [blog] 🔗
Mega short blog post, mostly for me to remember, but also might be useful to you. In a project I'll often work on and move around different branches t [...]
Try text scaling support [link] 🔗
I've had a larger phone because I got fed up with squinting at my screen, but because of that I also have the OS level font bumped to 115% (and I know [...]
Bear Head (Dogs of War, #2) [book] 🔗
Really enjoyed this follow up to Dogs of War. I accidentally read Dogs of War in 2018 - I never went looking for it and loved it. Equally, I can't rem [...]
JS Bin down in 2026 [blog] 🔗
January 27th I got an email notification saying that JS Bin had become unavailable. Then next day real life human beings were asking what's going on. [...]
Bytes I can delete after all this time [blog] 🔗
For the last few years my work-work has mostly focused on back end software (particularly around APIs). This meant that any front end work I was doing [...]
A Very Merry Murder (Malvern Farm Mystery, #6) [book] 🔗
Fine. Easy read. Guessed the murdered though 🤷 Grabbed it for the Christmas period (slightly annoyed I finished it on Jan 2nd). It's decently written [...]
Books I read in 2025 [blog] 🔗
This post is mostly data driven (from my own web site's data) to give me a sense of the quality of the books I've read, otherwise individual reviews a [...]
My 2025 [blog] 🔗
I've been doing these posts ending my years, aiming to publish on the 31st, so I'm pleased that I've managed to get this post out the door. Mostly for [...]
The Satsuma Complex (Gary Thorn, #1) [book] 🔗
Light on the brain. Just the kind of read I wanted after a few longer books. Not 100% even throughout the book - but I'll come to that. The squirrel f [...]
Butter [book] 🔗
Made me hungry and could even smell the foods, but took me a long time to read which made it feel extremely stretched and disconnected. I really don't [...]
An opportunity to learn: Advent of Code [blog] 🔗
I've written about Advent of Code in the past, but that was 5 years ago, so this warrants a new post, and there's an extra opportunity, I think. [...]
Handing over to the AI for a day [blog] 🔗
Context: back in March 2025 I decided to put aside my scepticism and try AI driven development for the day. I appreciate that in 8 months, the AI land [...]
FFConf 2025 [blog] 🔗
I've been wanting to write and share my experience of this year's event but a number of things have slowed me down - not least of all that it was Juli [...]
Building an AI Sandbox with Docker [link] 🔗
As I think about how command line AI tools can be used, I know it's already a bit of the wild west not disimilar to the way we install npm modules. I' [...]
Syntax Highlighting in Web Component Templates [blog] 🔗
A simple but effective fix to working with web components and VS Code. I wanted to get syntax highlighting and prettier support (to auto fix indenting [...]
Automerge [link] 🔗
Version control for your data: Automerge is a local-first sync engine for multiplayer apps that works offline, prevents conflicts, and runs fast. Inte [...]
How has FFConf changed since it was known as Full Frontal? [blog] 🔗
Besides the name, the entire core foundation has changed. This question came up recently by someone who had either attended back in the early days or [...]
What Happened to Apple's Legendary Attention to Detail? [link] 🔗
I accidentally upgraded to Tahoe (I didn't know it existed and thought I was moving to Sequoia and the UI design is all over the place, and it's const [...]
Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI [book] 🔗
I'd recommend anyone who wants to understand the emergence of AI and OpenAI in particular to read this book. I do struggle reading non-fiction, and th [...]
Making a low-budget conference look high-budget using an ATEM video mixer and a long USB cable [link] 🔗
Niels Leenheer goes through a detailed setup on how to take a single HDMI to projection into a mini event setup with holding screens. The technical de [...]
CSS HDR Gradients [link] 🔗
Very cool CSS gradient tooling by Adam Argyle.It's so pretty all I want to do is play with UI forgetting that it'll actually give me CSS.I also like t [...]
Signal Pollution [blog] 🔗
Very recently I was forced to sign up to Meta due to a product purchase (don't at-me!) and I had forgotten what it was like to be part of the algorith [...]
Fifteen [blog] 🔗
I'd been waiting for the grief to find me. I wasn't actively looking for it, I know which memories to poke to feel real pain, but I wanted to create s [...]