Blogging and all that Malarkey

Year Of Code Director Lottie Dexter, talking on Newsnight. (Skip to 5:30. I was going to add my own commentary, but to be honest what Lottie said is funnier without it.)

A fascinating story in Texas Monthly—not a publication that I often read— about the court battle between the University of Texas and actor Ryan O’Neal over an Andy Warhol painting of Farrah Fawcett. Farrah and O’Neal were the Brangelina of their day—the glamorous Hollywood king and queen whose every move was captured by the tabloids. One of their fans was Andy Warhol, who became obsessed with the couple. He gave them a drawing on a tablecloth of two hearts coming together, and in 1980 he painted two nearly identical silk-screen portraits of Farrah, in which she stares intently, her red lips pressed together, her eyes bright green, and her hair brushed behind one shoulder. One painting went to O’Neal’s Malibu beach house, the other to Farrah’s home in the hills above Bel-Air.

In celebration of the win against SOPA and PIPA two years ago, and in memory of one of its leaders, Aaron Swartz, we are planning a day of protest against mass surveillance, to take place this February 11th.

A nice run-down of typography kerning and the font-feature-settings property in CSS. Ignore the irony of the poorly kerned ‘Web’ in Typekit’s title.

Loz Gray reflects on his eighteen-months working with the Guardian on their responsive site. There is so much experience here to learn from.

A balanced view on performance versus beauty by proud Welshman Ashley Nolan:

One of the things I was talking to Liz about this week on Unfinished Business—you know, the ‘ Net Awards Podcast Of The Year’nominated podcast— was how at Stuff and Nonsense, we devote twelve days every year to supporting good causes pro-bono.

This week on ‘Net Awards Podcast Of The Year’ nominated Unfinished Business, Liz Elcoate, from some other podcast, joins me to talk about why it’s acceptable to admit when we’ve availability and to ask people for work. We talk more about having flexibility in our rates and why it’s reasonable to quote different rates to different people. We also touch on whether web designers should charge ‘rush rates’ and why working for free can be good for the soul. Speaking of the Net Awards, did I mention that Unfinished Business has been nominated for Podcast Of The Year at the Net Awards? No? If you’ve liked what you’ve heard over the last 55 episodes, please vote for us. After-all, this is the only podcast where you hear about the things that are really important. Apes (obviously,) soap, weeing in kettles and of course Purple Rain.

Eclipsed by most of the nonsense going on at the Grammys—Honestly, people actually like Daft Punk?—were two good country music wins.

I’m not sure how I forgot to link to this last week, but our phone rang and I spoke to BBC technology reporter Dave Lee about Easter Eggs. Not the chocolate kind, but the much less tasty and much less interesting hidden delights in websites.