Journal tags: brighton

Not long now until the last ever dConstruct. It’s on Friday of next week, that’s the 9th of September. And there are still a few tickets available if you haven’t got yours yet.

I have got one update to the line-up to report. Sadly, Léonie Watson isn’t going to be able to make it after all. That’s a shame.

But that means there’s room to squeeze in one more brilliant speaker from the vaults of the dConstruct archive.

I’m very pleased to announce that Seb Lee-Delisle will be returning, ten years after his first dConstruct appearance.

Back then he was entertaining us with hardware hacking and programming for fun. That was before he discovered lasers. Now he’s gone laser mad.

Don’t worry though. He’s fully qualified to operate lasers so he’s not going to take anyone’s eye out at dConstruct. Probably.

The last ever dConstruct will happen just over three weeks from now, on Friday, September 9th.

That’s right—if you don’t have your ticket for this event, you won’t get another chance. The conference with its eye on the future will become a thing of the past.

dConstruct is going to go out with a bang, a veritable fireworks display of mind bombs. A calligrapher, a writer, a musician, and a nueroscientist will be on the line-up alongside designers and technologists.

Here’s the schedule for the day:

8:30	Registration begins
9:50	Opening remarks
10:00	George Oates
10:30	Lauren Beukes
11:00	Break
11:30	Seb Lester
12:00	Daniel Burka
12:30	Lunch
14:00	Sarah Angliss
14:30	Matt Webb
15:00	Break
15:30	Léonie Watson
16:00	Anil Seth
16:30	Closing remarks

So the first talk starts at 10am and the last talk finishes at 4:30pm—all very civilised. Then we can all go to the pub.

There isn’t an official after-party but we can collectively nominate a nearby watering hole—the Unbarred taproom perhaps, or maybe The Hare And Hounds or The Joker—they’re all within cat-swinging distance of The Duke Of York’s.

Lunch isn’t provided but there are some excellent options nearby (and you’ll have a good hour and a half for the lunch break so there’s no rush).

The aforementioned Joker has superb hot wings from Lost Boys Chicken (I recommed the Rufio sauce if you like ‘em spicy, otherwise Thuddbutt is a good all ‘rounder).

The nearby Open Market has some excellent food options, including Casa Azul for superb Mexican food, and Kouzina for hearty Greek fare.

And the famous Bardsley’s fish’n’chips is just ‘round the corner too.

So there’ll be plenty of food for the soul to match the food for your brain that’ll be doled up at dConstruct 2022.

Alright, I’ve kept you in suspense for long enough. It’s time to reveal the magnificent line-up for dConstruct 2022.

I’ll now put names to the teasing list of descriptions I previously provided…

A technologist, product designer, and writer who defies categorisation. They’ve headed up a design studio, co-founded a start-up, and now consult on super-clever machine learning stuff. Their blog is brilliant.

This is Matt Webb. Matt previously spoke at dConstruct back in 2007, when he gave a talk called The Experience Stack

An award-winning author from South Africa whose work has recently been adapted for television. Some of their work is kind of sci-fi, some of it is kind of horror, some of it is kind of magical realism, and all of it is great.

This is Lauren Beukes. Lauren previously spoke at dConstruct in 2012, when she gave a talk called Imagined Futures.

An artist and designer who has created logos and illustrations for NASA, Apple, and Intel as well as custom typefaces for British Airways and Waitrose. A lover of letterforms, they are now one of the world’s highest-profile calligraphers posting their mesmerising work on Instagram.

This is Seb Lester.

A Canadian digital designer who has previously worked in the agency world, at Silicon Valley startups, and even venture capital. But now they’re doing truly meaningful work, designing for busy healthcare workers in low-income countries.

This is Daniel Burka. Daniel previously spoke at dConstruct back in 2008, when he gave a talk called Designing for Interaction.

A multi-instrumentalist musician, producer and robotic artist who composes for film, theatre and the concert stage. They play a mean theremin.

This is Sarah Angliss. Sarah previously spoke at dConstruct in 2013, when she gave a talk called Tech and the Uncanny.

An Australian designer and entrepreneur. They work in the cultural heritage sector and they’re an expert on digital archives. Their latest challenge is working out how to make an online photography archive last for 100 years.

This is George Oates. George previously spoke at dConstruct back in 2007, where she and Denise Wilton had a conversation called Human Traffic.

A tireless defender of web standards and co-author of the Inclusive Design Principles. They’re a member of the W3C Advisory Board and of the BIMA Inclusive Design Council. Expect some thoughtful takes on the intersection of accessibility and emerging technologies.

This is Léonie Watson.

A professor of neuroscience who is also a bestselling author. They conduct experiments on people’s brains and then talk about it afterwards. Their talks have been known to be mind-altering.

This is Anil Seth.

That’s quite a line-up, isn’t it?

Deducing the full line-up just from those descriptions wasn’t easy, but Hidde de Vries managed it. So Hidde gets a free ticket to dConstruct 2022 …or, at least, he would if it weren’t for the fact that he already has a ticket (because Hidde is smart; be like Hidde). So a friend of Hidde’s is getting a free ticket instead (because Hidde is generous; be like Hidde).

If you’ve been putting off getting a ticket for dConstruct 2022 until you knew what the line-up would be, well, put off no longer.

You’ll want to be at the Duke of York’s in Brighton on Friday, September 9th. With this line-up of eight supersmart speakers, you know it’s going to be a fantastic day!

The line-up for dConstruct 2022 is complete!

If you haven’t yet got your ticket, it’s not too late.

Now here’s the thing…

When I announced the event back in May, I said:

I’m currently putting the line-up together. I’m not revealing anything just yet, but trust me, you will want to be there.

I still haven’t revealed anything, and I’m kind of tempted to keep it that way. Imagine showing up at an event and not knowing who’s going to be speaking. Is this is the best idea or the worst idea?

I suspect I’m going to have to announce the line-up at some point, but today is not that day. I’m going to string it out a bit longer.

But I am going to describe the line-up. And I’m going to throw in a challenge. The first person to figure out the complete line-up gets a free ticket. Send a tweet to the @dConstruct Twitter account with your deductions.

Ready? Here’s who’s speaking at dConstruct 2022 on Friday, September 9th in The Duke Of Yorks in Brighton…

1. A technologist, product designer, and writer who defies categorisation. They’ve headed up a design studio, co-founded a start-up, and now consult on super-clever machine learning stuff. Their blog is brilliant.
2. An award-winning author from South Africa whose work has recently been adapted for television. Some of their work is kind of sci-fi, some of it is kind of horror, some of it is kind of magical realism, and all of it is great.
3. An artist and designer who has created logos and illustrations for NASA, Apple, and Intel as well as custom typefaces for British Airways and Waitrose. A lover of letterforms, they are now one of the world’s highest-profile calligraphers posting their mesmerising work on Instagram.
4. A Canadian digital designer who has previously worked in the agency world, at Silicon Valley startups, and even venture capital. But now they’re doing truly meaningful work, designing for busy healthcare workers in low-income countries.
5. A multi-instrumentalist musician, producer and robotic artist who composes for film, theatre and the concert stage. They play a mean theremin.
6. An Australian designer and entrepreneur. They work in the cultural heritage sector and they’re an expert on digital archives. Their latest challenge is working out how to make an online photography archive last for 100 years.
7. A tireless defender of web standards and co-author of the Inclusive Design Principles. They’re a member of the W3C Advisory Board and of the BIMA Inclusive Design Council. Expect some thoughtful takes on the intersection of accessibility and emerging technologies.
8. A professor of neuroscience who is also a bestselling author. They conduct experiments on people’s brains and then talk about it afterwards. Their talks have been known to be mind-altering.

Sounds pretty freaking great, right?

Some further clues…

Many of these people have spoken at dConstruct in the past. After all, this year’s one-off event is going to be a kind of “best of.” So you might want to have a nose around the dConstruct archive.

Also, I’ve mentioned some nationalities like Australian, Canadian, and South African, but my self-imposed carbon footprint policy for this event forbids me from flying anyone in. So that’s a clue too.

The game is afoot! Tweet your deductions to the @dConstruct Twitter account or, even better, write a blog post and tweet the link, mentioning @dConstruct. The first correct answer gets a free ticket.

For everyone else, you can still get a ticket.

dConstruct is back!

No, really, for real this time.

We had plans to do a one-off dConstruct anniversary event in 2020. It would’ve been five years since the event ran its ten year course from 2005 to 2015.

We all know what happened next. Not only was there no dConstruct in 2020, there were no live events at all. So we postponed the event. 2021 was slightly better than 2020 for live events, but still not safe enough for us.

Now, finally, the fifteenth anniversary edition of dConstruct is happening, um, on the seventeeth anniversary of dConstruct.

It’s all very confusing, I know. But this is the important bit:

dConstruct 2022 is happening on Friday, September 9th in the Duke of York’s picture house in Brighton.

Tickets are available now.

Or, at least some tickets are available now. Quite a lot of eager folks bought tickets when the 2020 event was announced and those tickets are still good for this 2022 event …which is the 2020 event, but postponed by two years.

I’m currently putting the line-up together. I’m not revealing anything just yet, but trust me, you will want to be there.

If you haven’t been to a dConstruct event before, it’s kind of hard to describe. It’s not a practical hands-on conference where you learn design or development skills. It’s brain food. It’s about technology, culutre, design, society, the future …well, like I said, it’s kind of hard to describe. Have a poke around the dConstruct archive and listen to the audio from previous talks to get some idea of what might be in store.

dConstruct 2022 is a one-off event. I wouldn’t want you to regret missing out, so grab your ticket now.

There was a week recently where I was out and about nearly every night.

One night, Jessica and I went to the cinema. There was a double bill of Alien and Aliens in the beautiful Duke of York’s picture house. We booked one of the comfy sofas on the balcony.

The next night we were out at the session in The Jolly Brewer, playing trad Irish tunes all evening. Bliss!

Then on the third night, we went to see Low playing in a church. Rich and Ben were there too.

It really felt like The Before Times. Of course in reality it wasn’t quite like old times. There’s always an awareness of relative risk. How crowded is the cinema likely to be? Will they have the doors open at The Jolly Brewer to improve the airflow? Will people at the Low gig comply with the band’s request to wear masks?

Still, in each case, I weighed the risk and decided the evening was worth it. If I caught Covid because of that cinematic double bill, or that tune-filled gathering, or that excellent gig, that price would be acceptable.

Mind you, I say that without having experienced the horribleness of having a nasty bout of coronavirus. And the prospect of long Covid is genuinely scary.

But there’s no doubt that the vaccines have changed the equation. There’s still plenty of risk but it’s on a different scale. The Situation isn’t over, but it has ratcheted down a notch to something more manageable.

Now with the weather starting to get nice, there’ll be more opportunities for safer outdoor gatherings. I’m here for it.

Actually, I’m not going to literally be here for all of it. I’m making travel plans to go and speak at European events—another positive signal of the changing situation. Soon I’ll be boarding the Eurostar to head to Amsterdam, and not long after I’ll be on the Eurostar again for a trip to Lille. And then of course there’s UX London at the end of June. With each gathering, there’s an inevitable sense of calculated risk, but there’s also a welcome sense of normality seeping back in.

I went to TEDxBrighton on Friday. I didn’t actually realise it was happening until just a couple of days beforehand, but I once I knew, I figured I should take advantage of it being right here in my own town.

All in all, it was a terrific day. The MCing by Adam Pearson was great—just the right mix of enthusiasm and tongue-in-cheek humour. The curation of the line-up worked well too. The day was broken up into four loosely-themed sections. As I’m currently in the process of curating an event myself, I can appreciate how challenging it is.

Each section opened with a musical act. Again, having been involved behind the scenes with many events myself, I was impressed by the audaciousness, just from a logistical perspective. It all went relatively smoothly.

The talks at a TED or TEDx event can be a mixed bag. You can have a scientist on stage distilling years of research into a succint message followed by someone talking nonsense about some pseudo-psychological self-help scheme. But at TEDxBrighton, we lucked out.

A highlight for me was Dr James Mannion talking about implementation science—something that felt directly applicable to design work. Victoria Jenkins was also terrific, and again, her points about inclusive design felt very relevant. And of course I really enjoyed the space-based talks by Melissa Thorpe and Bianca Cefalo. Now that I think about it, just about everyone was great: Katie Vincent, Lewis Wedlock, Dina Nayeri—they all wowed me.

With one exception. There was a talk that was supposed to be about the future of democracy. In reality it quickly veered into DAOs before descending into a pitch for crypto and NFTs. The call to action was literally for everyone in the audience to go out and get a crypto wallet and buy an NFT …using ethereum no less! We were exhorted to use an unbelievably wasteful and energy-intensive proof-of-work technology to get our hands on a receipt for a JPG …from the same stage that would later highlight the work of climate activists like Tommie Eaton. It was really quite disgusting. The fear-based message of the talk was literally about getting in on the scheme before it’s too late. At one point we were told to “do the research.” I’m surprised we weren’t all told that we’re “not going to make it.”

A disgraceful shill for a ponzi scheme would’ve ruined any other event. Fortunately the line-up at TEDxBrighton was so strong that one scam artist couldn’t torpedo the day. Just like crypto itself—and associated bollocks like NFTs and web3—it was infuriating to have to sit through it in the short term, but then it just faded away into insignificance. One desperate peddler of snake oil couldn’t make a dent in an otherwise great day.

In person events are like buses. You go two years without one and then three come along at once.

My buffer is overflowing from experiencing three back-to-back events. Best of all, my participation was different each time.

First of all, there was Leading Design New York, where I was the host. The event was superb, although it’s a bit of a shame I didn’t have any time to properly experience Manhattan. I wasn’t able to do any touristy things or meet up with my friends who live in the city. Still the trip was well worth it.

Right after I got back from New York, I took the train to Edinburgh for the Design It Build It conference where I was a speaker. It was a good event. I particularly enjoyed Rafaela Ferro talk on accessibility. The last time I spoke at DIBI was 2011(!) so it was great to make a return visit. I liked that the audience was seated cabaret style. That felt safer than classroom-style seating, allowing more space between people. At the same time, it felt more social, encouraging more interaction between attendees. I met some really interesting people.

I got from Edinburgh just in time for UX Camp Brighton on the weekend, where I was an attendee. I felt like a bit of a moocher not giving a presentation, but I really, really enjoyed every session I attended. It’s been a long time since I’ve been at a Barcamp-style event—probably the last Indie Web Camp I attended, whenever that was. I’d forgotten how well the format works.

But even with all these in-person events, online events aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Yesterday I started hosting the online portion of Leading Design New York and I’ll be doing it again today. The post-talk discussions with Julia and Lisa are lots of fun!

So in the space of just of a couple of weeks I’ve been a host, a speaker, and an attendee. Now it’s time for me to get my head back into one other event role: conference curator. No more buses/events are on the way for the next while, so I’m going to be fully devoted to organising the line-up for UX London 2022. Exciting!

On Thursday of last week, Summer arrived in England. I accept full responsibility for this. That morning I left the house early and wore a winter coat. So of course the day was filled with glorious sunshine.

I was up early to head into the Clearleft studio to do a tech check and some pre-records for the upcoming UX Fest. We’ve turned a meeting room into a very swanky-looking recording studio with proper lights, mics, and camera. I’ll be hosting UX Fest, channeling my inner Alan Partridge and Ron Burgundy.

Being back in the studio was nice. Some of my Clearleft colleagues joined the agency during The Situation so this was my first chance to meet some of them face to face (or facemask to facemask at least).

The next day I had even more opportunity to see my co-workers without the barriers of computer screens. We had a workplace walk in the countryside to mark one year of becoming an employee-owned agency. We rendezvoused at Devil’s Dyke and walked a bit of the Sussex countryside, just enough to work up an appetite and a thirst to be satiated at the nearby Shepherd and Dog pub in Fulking (near the brilliantly named Fulking Hill). We sat at tables outside, had pints of ale, and a proper pub lunch, chatting all the while, just like in The Before Times.

When I got back to Brighton I met up with Jessica for a beer in the sun before wandered down to the beach together to meet our friend Kate and celebrate her birthday.

Two days of good weather was a blessing, but it didn’t stop there. The next day, Saturday, was even sunnier. We spent the day working in the garden. We planted salads in our raised beds and then fortified those raised beds to make them impenatrable to the family of foxes living in our neighbourbood. Don’t get me wrong, the fox cubs are very cute. I just don’t want them digging up our salads.

On Sunday, Jessica and I sauntered up the hill to Brighton Racecourse so we could cheer on Jake as he finished his hundred kilometre walk from London to Brighton. Normally this would be a very strange behaviour, but it was all for a good cause.

After that, we had a pub lunch (outdoors, of course) before heading home. I spent the rest of the day sitting out in the garden, admiring the handiwork of the previous day, reading and occasionally dozing.

Today it’s more of the same. Glorious sunshine. Sitting in the garden. Reading. Playing some tunes on the mandolin. Looking forward to grilling outside for the third evening in a row.

It feels like something is changing and it’s not just the weather. The Situation, while far from ending, is certainly morphing. I still don’t plan on spending any time indoors, but with weather this good, I don’t need to.

In two weeks time I’ll get my second jab of vaccine. Two weeks after that I can start letting my guard down a bit more. Until then, I’ll be staying outdoors. If the weather continues like this, that won’t be a hardship.

It was very hot here in England last week. By late afternoon, the stuffiness indoors was too much to take.

If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. That’s exactly what Jessica and I did. The time had come for us to avail of someone else’s kitchen. For the first time in many months, we ventured out for an evening meal. We could take advantage of the government discount scheme with the very unfortunate slogan, “eat out to help out.” (I can’t believe that no one in that meeting said something.)

Just to be clear, we wanted to dine outdoors. The numbers are looking good in Brighton right now, but we’re both still very cautious about venturing into indoor spaces, given everything we know now about COVID-19 transmission.

Fortunately for us, there’s a new spot on the seafront called Shelter Hall Raw. It’s a collective of multiple local food outlets and it has ample outdoor seating.

We found a nice table for two outside. Then we didn’t flag down a waiter.

Instead, we followed the instructions on the table. I say instructions, but it was a bit simpler than that. It was a URL: shelterhall.co.uk (there was also a QR code next to the URL that I could’ve just pointed my camera at, but I’ve developed such a case of QR code blindness that I blanked that out initially).

Just to be clear, under the current circumstances, this is the only way to place an order at this establishment. The only (brief) interaction you’ll have with another persn is when someone brings your order.

It worked a treat.

We had frosty beverages chosen from the excellent selection of local beers. We also had fried chicken sandwiches from Lost Boys chicken, purveyors of the best wings in town.

The whole experience was a testament to what the web can do. You browse the website. You make your choice on the website. You pay on the website (you can create an account but you don’t have to).

Thinking about it, I can see why they chose the web over a native app. Online ordering is the only way to place your order at this place. Telling people “You have to go to this website” …that seems reasonable. But telling people “You have to download this app” …that’s too much friction.

It hasn’t been a great week for the web. Layoffs at Mozilla. Google taking aim at URLs. It felt good to see experience an instance of the web really shining.

And it felt really good to have that cold beer.

Friday was FF Conf day here in Brighton. This was the eleventh(!) time that Remy and Julie have put on the event. It was, as ever, excellent.

It’s a conference that ticks all the boxes for me. For starters, it’s a single-track event. The more I attend conferences, the more convinced I am that multi-track events are a terrible waste of time for attendees (and a financially bad model for organisers). I know that sounds like a sweeping broad generalisation, but ask me about it next time we meet and I’ll go into more detail. For now, I just want to talk about this mercifully single-track conference.

FF Conf has built up a rock-solid reputation over the years. I think that’s down to how Remy curates it. He thinks about what he wants to know and learn more about, and then thinks about who to invite to speak on those topics. So every year is like a snapshot of Remy’s brain. By happy coincidence, a snapshot of Remy’s brain right now looks a lot like my own.

You could tell that Remy had grouped the talks together in themes. There was a performance-themed chunk right after lunch. There was a people-themed chunk in the morning. There was a creative-coding chunk at the end of the day. Nice work, DJ.

I think it was quite telling what wasn’t on the line-up. There were no talks about specific libraries or frameworks. For me, that was a blessed relief. The only technology-specific talk was Alice’s excellent talk on Git—a tool that’s useful no matter what you’re coding.

One of the reasons why I enjoyed the framework-free nature of the day is that most talks—and conferences—that revolve around libraries and frameworks are invariably focused on the developer experience. Think about it: next time you’re watching a talk about a framework or library, ask yourself how it impacts user experience.

At FF Conf, the focus was firmly on people. In the case of Laura’s barnstorming presentation, those people are end users (I’m constantly impressed by how calm and measured Laura remains even when talking about blood-boilingly bad behaviour from the tech industry). In the case of Amina’s talk, the people are junior developers. And for Sharon’s presentation, the people are everyone.

One of the most useful talks of the day was from Anna who took us on a guided tour of dev tools to identify performance improvements. I found it inspiring in a very literal sense—if I had my laptop with me, I think I would’ve opened it up there and then and started tinkering with my websites.

Harry also talked about performance, but at Remy’s request, it was more business focused. Specifically, it was focused on Harry’s consultancy business. I think this would’ve been the perfect talk for more of an “industry” event, whereas FF Conf is very much a community event: Harry’s semi-serious jibes about keeping his performance secrets under wraps didn’t quite match the generous tone of the rest of the line-up.

The final two talks from Charlotte and Suz were a perfect double whammy.

When I saw Charlotte speak at Material in Iceland last year, I wrote this aside in my blog post summary:

(Oh, and Remy, when you start to put together the line-up for next year’s FF Conf, be sure to check out Charlotte Dann—her talk at Material was the perfect mix of code and creativity.)

I don’t think I can take credit for Charlotte being on the line-up, but I will take credit for saying she’d be the perfect fit.

And then Suz Hinton closed out the conference with this rallying cry that resonated perfectly with Laura’s talk:

Less mass-produced surveillance bullshit and more Harry Potter magic (please)!

I think that rallying cry could apply equally well to conferences, and I think FF Conf is a good example of that ethos in action.

Remember when I wrote about adding travel maps to my site at the recent Indie Web Camp Brighton? I must confess that the last line I wrote was an attempt to catch a fish from the river of the lazy web:

It’s a shame that I can’t use the lovely Stamen watercolour tiles for these static maps though.

In the spirit of Cunningham’s Law, I was hoping that somebody was going to respond with “It’s totally possible to use Stamen’s watercolour tiles for static maps, dumbass—look!” (to which my response would have been “thank you very much!”).

Alas, no such response was forthcoming. The hoped-for schooling never forthcame.

Still, I couldn’t quite let go of the idea of using those lovely watercolour maps somewhere on my site. But I had decided that dynamic maps would have been overkill for my archive pages:

Sure, it looked good, but displaying the map required requests for a script, a style sheet, and multiple map tiles.

Then I had a thought. What if I keep the static maps on my archive pages, but make them clickable? Then, on the other end of that link, I can have the dynamic version. In other words, what if I had a separate URL just for the dynamic maps?

These seemed like a good plan to me, so while I was travelling by Eurostar—the only way to travel—back from the lovely city of Antwerp where I had been speaking at Full Stack Europe, I started hacking away on making the dynamic maps even more dynamic. After all, now that they were going to have their own pages, I could go all out with any fancy features I wanted.

I kept coming back to my original goal:

I was looking for something more like the maps in Indiana Jones films—a line drawn from place to place to show the movement over time.

I found a plug-in for Leaflet.js that animates polylines—thanks, Iván! With a bit of wrangling, I was able to get it to animate between the lat/lon points of whichever archive section the map was in. Rather than have it play out automatically, I also added a control so that you can start and stop the animation. While I was at it, I decided to make that “play/pause” button do something else too. Ahem.

If you’d like to see the maps in action, click the “play” button on any of these maps:

• Everything from this August.
• Links from June 2017.
• Photos from October 2014.
• The entirety of 2018—that might take a while.

You get the idea. It’s all very silly really. It’s right up there with the time I made my sparklines playable. But that’s kind of the point. It’s my website so I can do whatever I want with it, no matter how silly.

First of all, the research department for adactio.com (that’s me) came up with the idea. Then that had to be sold in to upper management (that’s me too). A team was spun up to handle design and development (consisting of me and me). Finally, the finished result went live thanks to the tireless efforts of the adactio.com ops group (that would be me). Any feedback should be directed at the marketing department (no idea who that is).

It was Indie Web Camp Brighton on the weekend. After a day of thought-provoking discussions, I thoroughly enjoyed spending the second day tinkering on my website.

For a while now, I’ve wanted to add maps to my monthly archive pages (to accompany the calendar heatmaps I added at a previous Indie Web Camp). Whenever I post anything to my site—a blog post, a note, a link—it’s timestamped and geotagged. I thought it would be fun to expose that in a glanceable way. A map seems like the right medium for that, but I wanted to avoid the obvious route of dropping a load of pins on a map. Instead I was looking for something more like the maps in Indiana Jones films—a line drawn from place to place to show the movement over time.

I talked to Aaron about this and his advice was that a client-side JavaScript embedded map would be the easiest option. But that seemed like overkill to me. This map didn’t need to be pannable or zoomable; just glanceable. So I decided to see if how far I could get with a static map. I timeboxed two hours for it.

After two hours, I admitted defeat.

I was able to find the kind of static maps I wanted from Mapbox—I’m already using them for my check-ins. I could even add a polyline, which is exactly what I wanted. But instead of passing latitude and longitude co-ordinates for the points on the polyline, the docs explain that I needed to provide …cur ominous thunder and lightning… The Encoded Polyline Algorithm Format.

Go to that link. I’ll wait.

Did you read through the eleven steps of instructions? Did you also think it was a piss take?

1. Take the initial signed value.
2. Multiply it by 1e5.
3. Convert that decimal value to binary.
4. Left-shift the binary value one bit.
5. If the original decimal value is negative, invert this encoding.
6. Break the binary value out into 5-bit chunks.
7. Place the 5-bit chunks into reverse order.
8. OR each value with 0x20 if another bit chunk follows.
9. Convert each value to decimal.
10. Add 63 to each value.
11. Convert each value to its ASCII equivalent.

This was way beyond my brain’s pay grade. But surely someone else had written the code I needed? I did some Duck Duck Going and found a piece of PHP code to do the encoding. It didn’t work. I Ducked Ducked and Went some more. I found a different piece of PHP code. That didn’t work either.

At this point, my allotted time was up. If I wanted to have something to demo by the end of the day, I needed to switch gears. So I did.

I used Leaflet.js to create the maps I wanted using client-side JavaScript. Here’s the JavaScript code I wrote.

It waits until the page has finished loading, then it searches for any instances of the h-geo microformat (a way of encoding latitude and longitude coordinates in HTML). If there are three or more, it generates a script element to pull in the Leaflet library, and a corresponding style element. Then it draws the map with the polyline on it. I ended up using Stamen’s beautiful watercolour map tiles.

That’s what I demoed at the end of the day.

But I wasn’t happy with it.

Sure, it looked good, but displaying the map required requests for a script, a style sheet, and multiple map tiles. I made sure that it didn’t hold up the loading of the rest of the page, but it still felt wasteful.

So after Indie Web Camp, I went back to investigate static maps again. This time I did finally manage to find some PHP code for encoding lat/lon coordinates into a polyline that worked. Finally I was able to construct URLs for a static map image that displays a line connecting multiple points with a line.

I’ve put this maps on any of the archive pages that also have calendar heat maps. Some examples:

• Everything from August 2019
• Notes from July 2018
• Links from June 2017
• Photos from October 2014
• Journal entries from December 2012

If you go back much further than that, the maps start to trail off. That’s because I wasn’t geotagging everything from the start.

I’m pretty happy with the final results. It’s certainly far more responsible from a performance point of view. Oh, and I’ve also got the maps inside a picture element so that I can swap out the tiles if you switch to dark mode.

It’s a shame that I can’t use the lovely Stamen watercolour tiles for these static maps though.

Your weekends are valuable. Spend them wisely. I have some suggestion on how you might spend next weekend, October 19th and 20th, depending on where you are in the world.

If you’re in the bay area, or anywhere near San Francisco, I highly recommend that you go to Science Hack Day—two days of science, hacking, and fun. This will be the last one in San Francisco so don’t miss your chance.

If you’re in the south of England, or anywhere near Brighton, come along to Indie Web Camp. Saturday will feature discussions on owning your data. Sunday will be a day of doing. I’ve written about previous Indie Web Camps before, and I really can’t recommend it highly enough!

Do me a favour and register for a spot—it’s free—so I’ve got some idea of numbers. Looking forward to seeing you there!

Back at the end of May, I wrote:

We’re going to have an Indie Web Camp in Brighton on October 19th and 20th. I realise that’s quite a way off, but I’m giving you plenty of advance warning so you can block out that weekend (and plan travel if you’re coming from outside Brighton).

I hope you’ve got those dates marked in your calendar. Now it’s time for the next step: register for the event. Registration is free, but we need to know numbers in advance, so if you’re planning to come, please grab yourself a ticket there.

It’s going to be a lot of fun!

If you’ve never been to an Indie Web Camp before, you should definitely come! It’s indescribably fun and inspiring. The first day—Saturday—is a BarCamp-style day of discussions to really get the ideas flowing. Then the second day—Sunday—is all about designing, building, and making. The whole thing wraps up with demos.

Check out the previous Brighton Indie Web Camps:

• 2014,
• 2015, and
• 2016.

See you at 68 Middle Street on Saturday, October 19th for Indie Web Camp Brighton 2019!

If you missed out on Patterns Day this year, you can still get a pale imitation of the experience of being there by watching videos of the talks.

Here are the videos, and if you’re not that into visuals, here’s a podcast of the talks (you can subscribe to this RSS feed in your podcasting app of choice).

On Twitter, Chris mentioned that “It would be nice if the talks had their topic listed,” which is a fair point. So here goes:

• Yaili’s talk is about design systems,
• Amy’s talk is about design systems,
• Danielle’s talk is about design systems,
• Varya’s talk is about design systems,
• Emil’s talk is about design systems, and
• Heydon’s talk is about a large seabird.

It’s fascinating to see emergent themes (other than, y’know, the obvious theme of design systems) in different talks. In comparison to the first Patterns Day, it felt like there was a healthy degree of questioning and scepticism—there were plenty of reminders that design systems aren’t a silver bullet. And I very much appreciated Yaili’s point that when you see beautifully polished design systems that have been made public, it’s like seeing the edited Instagram version of someone’s life. That reminded me of Responsive Day Out when Sarah Parmenter, the first speaker at the very first event, opened everything by saying “most of us are winging it.”

I can see the value in coming to a conference to hear stories from people who solved hard problems, but I think there’s equal value in coming to a conference to hear stories from people who are still grappling with hard problems. It’s reassuring. I definitely got the vibe from people at Patterns Day that it was a real relief to hear that nobody’s got this figured out.

There was also a great appreciation for the “big picture” perspective on offer at Patterns Day. For myself, I know that I’ll be cogitating upon Danielle’s talk and Emil’s talk for some time to come—both are packed full of ineresting ideas.

Good thing we’ve got the videos and the podcast to revisit whenever we want.

And if you’re itching for another event dedicated to design systems, I highly recommend snagging a ticket for the Clarity conference in San Francisco next month.

Who says the sequels can’t be even better than the original? The second Patterns Day was The Empire Strikes Back, The Godfather Part II, and The Wrath of Khan all rolled into one …but, y’know, with design systems.

If you were there, then you know how good it was. If you weren’t, sorry. Audio of the talks should be available soon though, with video following on.

The talks were superb! I know I’m biased becuase I put the line-up together, but even so, I was blown away by the quality of the talks. There were some big-picture questioning talks, a sequence of nitty-gritty code talks in the middle, and galaxy-brain philosophical thoughts at the end. A perfect mix, in my opinion.

Words cannot express how grateful I am to Alla, Yaili, Amy, Danielle, Heydon, Varya, Una, and Emil. They really gave it their all! Some of them are seasoned speakers, and some of them are new to speaking on stage, but all of them delivered the goods above and beyond what I expected.

Big thanks to my Clearleft compadres for making everything run smoothly: Jason, Amy, Cassie, Chris, Trys, Hana, and especially Sophia for doing all the hard work behind the scenes. Trys took some remarkable photos too. He posted some on Twitter, and some on his site, but there are more to come.

And if you came to Patterns Day 2, thank you very, very much. I really appreciate you being there. I hope you enjoyed it even half as much as I did, because I had a ball!

Once again, thanks to buildit @ wipro digital for sponsoring the pastries and coffee, as well as running a fun giveaway on the day. Many thank to Bulb for sponsoring the forthcoming videos. Thanks again to Drew for recording the audio. And big thanks to Brighton’s own Holler Brewery for very kindly offering every attendee a free drink—the weather (and the beer) was perfect for post-conference discussion!

It was incredibly heartwarming to hear how much people enjoyed the event. I was especially pleased that people were enjoying one another’s company as much as the conference itself. I knew that quite a few people were coming in groups from work, while other people were coming by themselves. I hoped there’d be lots of interaction between attendees, and I’m so, so glad there was!

You’ve all made me very happy.

Thank you to @adactio and @clearleft for an excellent #PatternsDay. 🏆
Had so many great conversations! Thanks as well to everyone that came and listened to us, you’re all the best.
💜

— dhuntrods (@dhuntrods) June 29, 2019

Well done for yet another fantastic event. The calibre of speakers was so high, and it was reassuring to hear they have the same trials, questions and toil with their libraries. So insightful, so entertaining.

— Barry Bloye (@barrybloye) June 29, 2019

Had the most amazing time at the #PatternsDay, catching up with old friends over slightly mad conversations. Huge thanks to @adactio and @clearleft for putting together such warm and welcoming event, and to all the attendees and speakers for making it so special ❤️

— Alla Kholmatova (@craftui) June 29, 2019

Had such an amazing time at yesterday’s #PatternsDay. So many notes and thoughts to process Thank you to all the speakers and the folk at @clearleft for organising it. ♥️

— Charlie Don’t Surf (@sonniesedge) June 29, 2019

Had an awesome time at #PatternsDay yesterday! Some amazing speakers and got to meet some awesome folk along the way! Big thanks to @adactio and @clearleft for organising such a great event!

— Alice Boyd-Leslie (@aboydleslie) June 29, 2019

Absolutely amazing day at #PatternsDay. Well done @adactio and @clearleft. The speakers were great, attendees great and it was fantastic to finally meet some peers face to face. ❤

— Dave (@daveymackintosh) June 28, 2019

Had a blast at #PatternsDay !!! Met so many cool ppl

— trash bandicoot (@freezydorito) June 28, 2019

I’ve had a hell of a good time at #PatternsDay. It’s been nice to finally meet so many folks that I only get to speak to on here.

As expected, the @clearleft folks all did a stellar job of running a great event for us.

— Andy Bell (@andybelldesign) June 28, 2019

Patterns Day is an excellent single-day conference packed full of valuable content about design systems and pattern libraries from experienced practicioners. Way to go @clearleft! 👏🎉 #PatternsDay

— Kimberly Blessing (@obiwankimberly) June 28, 2019

Round of applause to @adactio and @clearleft for a great #patternsday today 👏👏👏

— Dan Donald (@hereinthehive) June 28, 2019

Big thanks to @adactio and @clearleft for a fantastic #PatternsDay. Left with tons of ideas to take back to the shop. pic.twitter.com/GwEtWrxbK8

— Alex 🇪🇺 (@alexandtheweb) June 28, 2019

@adactio thanks Jeremy for organising this fabulous day of inspiring talks in a such a humane format. I enjoyed every minute of it 😊 #patternsday

— David Roessli 🏳️‍🌈 (@roessli) June 28, 2019

An amazing day was had at #PatternsDay. Caught up with friends I hadn’t seen for a while, made some new ones, and had my brain expand by an excellent set of talks. Big hugs to @adactio and the @clearleft team. Blog post to follow next week, once I’ve got my notes in order.

— Garrett Coakley (@garrettc) June 28, 2019

Patterns Day is less than three weeks away—exciting!

We’re going to start the day at a nice civilised time. Registration is from 9am. There will be tea, coffee, and pastries, so get there in plenty of time to register and have a nice chat with your fellow attendees. There’ll be breaks throughout the day too.

Those yummy pastries and hot drinks are supplied courtesy of our sponsors Buildit @ Wipro Digital—many thanks to them!

Each talk will be 30 minutes long. There’ll be two talks back-to-back and then a break. That gives you plenty of breathing space to absorb all those knowledge bombs that the speakers will be dropping.

Lunch will be a good hour and a half. Lunch isn’t provided so you can explore the neighbourhood where there are plenty of treats on offer. And your Patterns Day badge will even get you some discounts…

The lovely Café Rust is offering these deals to attendees:

• Cake and coffee for £5
• Cake and cup of tea for £4
• Sandwich and a drink for £7

The Joker (right across the street from the conference venue) is offering a 10% discount of food and drinks (but not cocktails) to Patterns Day attendees. I highly recommend their hot wings. Try the Rufio sauce—it’s awesome! Do not try the Shadow—it will kill you.

Here’s how the day is looking:

9:00am	Registration
9:55am	Opening remarks
10:00am	Alla
10:30am	Yaili
11:00am	Break
11:30am	Amy
12:00am	Danielle
12:30am	Lunch
2:00pm	Heydon
2:30pm	Varya
3:00pm	Break
3:30pm	Una
4:00pm	Emil
4:30pm	Closing remarks

We should be out of the Duke of York’s by 4:45pm after a fantastic day of talks. At that point, we can head around the corner (literally) to Holler Brewery. They are very kindly offering each attendee a free drink! Over to them:

Holler is a community based brewery, always at the centre of the local community. Here to make great beer, but also to help support community run pubs, carnival societies, mental health charities, children’s amateur dramatic groups, local arts groups and loads more, because these are what keep our communities healthy and together… the people in them!

Holler loves great beer and its way of bringing people together. They are excited to be welcoming the Patterns Day attendees and the design community to the taproom.

Terms and conditions:

• One token entitles to you one Holler beer or one soft drink
• Redeemable only on Friday 28th June 2019 between 4:45 and 20:00
• You must hand your token over to the bar team

You’ll get your token when you register in the morning, along with your sticker. That’s right; sticker. Every expense has been spared so you won’t even have a name badge on a lanyard, just a nice discrete but recognisable sticker for the event.

I am so, so excited for Patterns Day! See you at the Duke of York’s on June 28th!

Homebrew Website Club is a regular gathering of people getting together to tinker on their own websites. It’s a play on the original Homebrew Computer Club from the ’70s. It shares a similar spirit of sharing and collaboration.

Homebrew Website Clubs happen at various locations: London, San Francisco, Portland, Nuremberg, and more. Usually there on every second Wednesday.

I started running Homebrew Website Club Brighton a while back. I tried the “every second Wednesday” thing, but it was tricky to make that work. People found it hard to keep track of which Wednesdays were Homebrew days and which weren’t. And if you missed one, then it would potentially be weeks between attending.

So I’ve made it a weekly gathering. On Thursdays. That’s mostly because Thursdays work for me: that’s one of the evenings when Jessica has her ballet class, so it’s the perfect time for me to spend a while in the company of fellow website owners.

If you’re in Brighton and you have your own website (or you want to have your own website), you should come along. It’s every Thursday from 6pm to 7:30pm ‘round at the Clearleft studio on 68 Middle Street. Add it to your calendar.

There might be a Thursday when I’m not around, but it’s highly likely that Homebrew Website Club Brighton will happen anyway because either Trys, Benjamin or Cassie will be here.

(I’m at Homebrew Website Club Brighton right now, writing this. Remy is here too, working on some very cool webmention stuff.)

There’s something else you should add to your calendar. We’re going to have an Indie Web Camp in Brighton on October 19th and 20th. I realise that’s quite a way off, but I’m giving you plenty of advance warning so you can block out that weekend (and plan travel if you’re coming from outside Brighton).

If you’ve never been to an Indie Web Camp before, you should definitely come! It’s indescribably fun and inspiring. The first day—Saturday—is a BarCamp-style day of discussions to really get the ideas flowing. Then the second day—Sunday—is all about designing, building, and making. The whole thing wraps up with demos.

It’s been a while since we’ve had an Indie Web Camp in Brighton. You can catch up on the Brighton Indie Web Camps we had in 2014, 2015, and 2016. Since then I’ve been to Indie Web Camps in Berlin, Nuremberg, and Düsseldorf, but it’s going to be really nice to bring it back home.

The event will be free to attend, but I’ll set up an official ticket page on Ti.to to keep track of who’s coming. I’ll let you know when that’s up and ready. In the meantime, you can register your interest in attending on the 2019 Indie Webcamp Brighton page on the Indie Web wiki.

Patterns Day 2 is sold out! Yay!

I didn’t even get the chance to announce the full line-up before all the tickets were sold. That was meant to my marketing strategy, see? I’d announce some more speakers every few weeks, and that would encourage more people to buy tickets. Turns out that I didn’t need to do that.

But I’m still going to announce the final two speakers here becuase I’m so excited about them—Danielle Huntrods and Varya Stepanova!

Danielle is absolutely brilliant. I know this from personal experience because I worked alongside her at Clearleft for three years. Now she’s at Bulb and I can’t wait for everyone at Patterns Day to hear her galaxy brain thoughts on design systems.

And how could I not have Varya at Patterns Day? She lives and breathes design systems. Whether it’s coding, writing, speaking, or training, she’s got years of experience to share. Ever used BEM? Yeah, that was Varya.

Anyway, if you’ve got your ticket for Patterns Day, you’re in for a treat.

If you didn’t manage to get a ticket for Patterns Day …sorry.

But do not despair. There is still one possible way of securing an elusive Patterns Day ticket: get your company to sponsor the event.

We’ve already got one sponsor—buildit @ wipro digital—who are kindly covering the costs for teas, coffees, and pastries. Now I’m looking for another sponsor to cover the costs of making video recordings of the talks.

The cost of sponsorship is £2000. In exchange, I can’t offer you a sponsor stand or anything like that—there’s just no room at the venue. But you will earn my undying thanks, and you’ll get your logo on the website and on the screen in between talks on the day (and on the final videos).

I can also give you four tickets to Patterns Day.

This is a sponsorship strategy that I like to call “blackmail.”

If you were really hoping to bring your team to Patterns Day, but you left it too late to get your tickets, now’s your chance. Convince your company to sponsor the event (and let’s face it, £2000 is a rounding error on some company’s books). Then you and your colleagues need not live with eternal regret and FOMO.

Drop me a line. Let’s talk.