Acts of Volition

This post, But what if I really want a faster horse?

I appreciated Chris & Dave at the ShopTalk Show taking a few minutes to discuss my Gild Just One Lily article this week.

I’ve always resented the idea of voting strategically: voting for someone other than your ideal choice in order to prevent a worse outcome.

I’ve written an article about adding a bit of fanciness to a design and was proud to have it published at Smashing Magazine.

My kids keep getting text from Pierre Poilievre and his campaign.

I understand why our new Prime Minister of Canada felt he needed to eliminate the consumer carbon tax in Canada.

Around 20 years ago, I used ThinkPad laptops.

A staple of CBC Radio on PEI, Matt Rainnie, is retiring today.

My colleague (actually, let’s upgrade that right now to friend-and-colleague), Nikki, has written a delightful post on how and why she came to work at silverorange.

Brad Sucks has a new album out!

I managed to get my Canadian passport renewed before it expired, and not at the last minute in a panic before a trip.

It was fun to be featured on Manuel Moreale’s People & Blogs series this month.

Conway’s law states that: [O]rganizations which design systems (in the broad sense used here) are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.

As I just wrote about over on the silverorange blog, my friend and colleague at silverorange, Maureen Holland just had an article published as part of the 2024 HTMHell Advent Calendar: You don’t need the isOpen class.

I’ve looked at [young people having bad hair cuts] from both sides now…

My grandmother Mary Nantes (“Nanny”) died in 2018 at the age of 98.

Those of us in Canada are getting a two-month ‘tax holiday’ on selected items.

My mockup for a pumpkin-with-USB-C-port wasn’t as impactful as I had anticipated.

Nilay Patel’s scathing endorsement for Kamala Harris for president at the tech news site The Verge is the first editorial endorsement I’ve read that sounds like it is of my generation.

These early images from the European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope are enough to give me cosmic vertigo.

Proposal: A new national holiday where we all take some time to clean up our list of Interac e-Transfer recipients.

This post is only for the one person searching for this issue – it’s probably not for you: I’ve got an issue that started recently (possibly when updating my M1 MacBook Pro to macOS 15 (Sequoia).

When I was growing up, when I or one of my four siblings was sick and there was a risk of vomit, someone would be sent to fetch the “Blue Bucket”.

The Apple.com home page has over 3,400 words of small-print footnotes.

People who hate Justin Trudeau really like other people to know that they hate him.

Garrity’s Law of Eponymous Laws states that: One should name laws after one’s self.

Just as “every program attempts to expand until it can read mail”, I believe that: Every organization expands until it commissions its own bespoke typeface.

Which ISO standard determines how Jibbitz can work across the greater Crocs ecosystem?

I learned about the row/column grouping feature in Google Sheets.

The company I helped start, silverorange, is now 25 years old.

I wrote in 2021 that my dream car is a mythical 3-year-old electric minivan (that doesn’t exist).

Today some tourists ask me to take a photo of them.

Skype was Zoom before Zoom was Zoom, but how far it has fallen.

I’ve been reviewing resumes and job applications as part of my job recently and was reflecting on what I do these days.

It’s so easy to complain about poorly-designed and poorly-built systems, and just as easy to forgot to note (or even notice) when they are well done.

Is (are?)

There was a minor internet brouhaha over an Apple iPad ad where they crush a bunch of musical instruments and creative tools.

A co-worker of my, James, released a new album with his band brainrust.

In the world of those who build out the web platform, and CSS in particular, there’s some drama.

I posted last year about hiring designers at the lovely company I work with, silverorange.

What color are my teeth supposed to be?

We have a law in our house that I think should be a universal law: A person who stops a kitchen timer bears the responsibility for resetting the timer (if additional time is required) or taking the item out of the oven.

Have you ever heard a story about a veteran software developer who decides a major change in their field of technology is enough, and it prompts them to retire?

You’ve seen tons of eclipse photos today, but I bet you haven’t seen any of the eclipse projected through a delicious Toppalbles cracker.

My experience with COVID isn’t special or particularly severe, but I did experience two mild side-effects I hadn’t considered: fear and loneliness.

With all the press the Canadian Conservative party are getting for rhyming Axe with Tax, it’s unfortunate that there’s no similarly quippy counter-rhyme for those that support a Canadian carbon tax.

Thanks to Chris & Dave for answering my nerdy question on their great web-dev podcast, the ShopTalk Show.

This is a photo of me doing my taxes this year (getting that Canada Revenue Agency T777 form ready in particular).