Recently updated blogs

6 years back I posted the Simplest Way to Load CSS Asynchronously to document a hack we'd been using for at least 6 years prior to that. The use case for this hack is to load CSS files asynchronously, something that HTML itself still does not support, even though script elements have supported both defer and async attributes for quite some time. The hack takes advantage of browsers' built-in behavior …

Today's entry is something of a catch-all of recent updates. First, thanks to Bill Wall for sending the above photo showing Public Service Coordinated Transport 5173. This is what remains of a four-wheel snow sweeper from the Newark subway; it burned in a fire in the subway in 1972 but its frame has been owned by the North Jersey Electric Railway Historical Society since 1980. It's been stored in Phillipsburg …

Nicolas Nova left us a few days ago. I, and many many others, will miss his wit, his generosity, his intelligence. Here’s a review of the last book he sent me. I was planning to publish it on Monday, but it’s only now that i’ve accepted that he’ll never get to reading it…. Persistance du merveilleux : le petit peuple de nos machines, by anthropologist, design researcher and writer Nicolas …

Countless geos, mysterious statues, and a leap of death - quite a day! Continue reading →

The first in a series of some quick looks at some gear or gear-adjacent items we still use over the years. Read More ... Continue reading Gear over the years – A look back, Part 1 at PMags.com.

What is xdg-settings? xdg-settings is part of the xdg-utils and according to its manpage it can query, check for and set different properties of an XDG-desktop. Running xdg-settings --list reveals that it only ever got implementations for setting the default web browser and for setting URL-scheme handlers (which is the more generic case of setting a default web browser). The reason I started looking into this is because someone opened …

The UK has been attempting to build a high-speed railway line called HS2 for years. Its development has been dogged by all sorts of problems, but perhaps the most farcical was the revelation that it had spent £100m on a 1km long tunnel for bats, in an area that was home to around 300 bats – an insane £300k per bat. In this great post, Sam Dumitriu talks about why …

Students exit the city bus, catty-corner from Washington High SchoolA walking audit is a good way to assess walkability in a specific area. Walking enables anyone to see how easy or difficult it is to walk there, not only for yourself, but also for others who may not be as experienced or able-bodied. Daniel Herriges of Strong Towns argues: You see how your neighbors go about their needs, how they …

In Principles vs Pragmatism, Pete Moore writes: It’s a mistake to judge others for their software choices, while still making exceptions for ourselves. Our hands aren’t exactly always clean. It would be akin to me blasting someone who is using HEY or Kagi, while disregarding my use of Apple products or occasionally ordering from Amazon. Case in point: I’ve seen discourse and uproar about Tim Cook donating $1M to Trump’s …

The holidays ended and everything sped up. We got home on Sunday afternoon and spent the evening unpacking, doing laundry, packing lunches, preparing for the week ahead. Nighttime crept up on us: we were busy doing all the things that needed to be done and had to put it all down in order to get to sleep in time to wake up for school and work the next day. On …

In short: like any method of working that is copied from one organization and pasted into another, very different organization, there are chutes and ladders. Habits and practices that will help you move faster or skip ahead outright. Anti-patterns and missteps that will set you back days and weeks. Herein, some things I learned whilst using Shape Up over the course of a few years across teams of varied experience …

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) claims to be revolutionary but it is an ideologically-driven sham. It does far more harm than good. Folding in some of the worst learning theory into one 'my way or the highway' approach, it literally makes no sense. It is a barely disguised expansion of discredited Learning Styles theory, with costly and ineffective prescriptions.They claim its framework promises inclusivity, adaptability, and improved access for all …

1925-2025.100 Years Jean Tinguely | Museum TinguelyTinguely100 – Follow the artist’s centenary activities around the worldOn 22 May 2025, the Swiss Artist Jean Tinguely (1925-1991) would have celebrated his 100th birthday. To mark this occasion, his innovative, playful and still topical oeuvre will be honoured across Europe with a range of exhibitions and a multitude of events and activities.Here you can find a selection of activities not to be missed …

(Ed. Note: I’ve been writing about beer for 15 years now, and I feel as though it’s time to see if we can’t condense this knowledge down into useful information that might help explain how we got to this point. We’ve been through a boom, we’re going through some pretty serious consolidation. Did we learn anything, and if so, what? To this end, I’ve come up with a short list …

Bardsploitation?On my many visits to Stratford-upon-Avon, I’d not paid much attention to the sign of the Hathaway Tea Rooms. It’s in a street I don’t often walk along, and if we want tea or coffee in the town, the Resident Wise Woman and I have places where we regularly go. If I noticed it at all, I probably silently condemned it as another arbitrary connection with the Shakespearian reputation (for …