Blogging and all that Malarkey

Three podcasts for the price of one. One Footer in the Grave, Troika, and Unfinished Business. In this special crossover episode, Rich and I are joined by Jon Hicks and Marcus Lillington to discuss which three tracks we’d want with us if we were marooned on a deserted planet.

In this episode of Unfinished Business, Rich and I talk about how AI coding tools fit into our workflows at ClearLeft and Stuff & Nonsense. Then, I explain how I used AI to help me build Sho!io, a new app for sharing designs.

I’ve been quietly working on a side project called sho!io, and I’m opening it up to a few people. It’s meant to be a quiet place where you can share one thing you’re making each day, without the usual social noise. It’s early and very much still in progress, but I’d really value your honest feedback if you’re up for trying it.

This week on Unfinished Business, Rich and I are joined by developer and organizer of London Web Standards and State of the Browser, Dave Letorey.

I bought my first mechanical watch back when we were living in Australia for those couple of years. It was a Flieger 47 from the Australian brand Panzera, and it sparked my love of pilot watches.

Yours truly over at the Smashing Magazine: “CSS relative colour values are now widely supported. In this article, pioneering author and web designer Andy Clarke shares practical techniques for using them to theme and animate SVG graphics.”

Talk to my family and friends, and they’ll tell you I never bloody stop talking about the IWC Big Pilot 43 watch that I bought to celebrate my 60th in November. Mechanical watches are all over my social media feeds, and the other day I did a double-take when the algorithm suggested I might like a new design from, of all companies, Timex.

Although we’ve had a smattering of snow here in the Rhineland—where I’m basing myself for a couple of months—at home, an “arctic blast” means snow is threatening. Last week, I added a snow mode to my websites, but my pioneer characters still looked toasty and warm, and unaffected by the wintery conditions. So, it was time for them to get chilly.

I redesigned my contact page animation as a gold mine scene. Here’s how I approached the artwork, structured the SVG, and added subtle ambient animation using CSS.

Winter’s definitely arrived, and there’s a chill wind blowing. We haven’t had snow in the village yet, but it’s falling on my website, courtesy of a new ‘snow mode.’