Jake and I will be guests at March’s London Web Standards meetup. We’re giving a pair of JavaScript themed talks that should give plenty of fodder for the latter half of the evening’s discussion. I’m doing “Pro bun-fighting“, covering how we manage working on a large scale JavaScript project with a small team, our process, the performance and quality testing we do, and how to integrate group hugs, and Jake will be doing “The events left behind“, talking about the horrors of keyboard events, how to work around them and what’s their future.
Although it’s not a Glow specific talk, we will be using Glow in our examples, so feel free to come along and talk to us about the library too, if you’re interested.
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February 18, 2010 – 7:39 pm
One of the things I enjoy doing that isn’t web related is illustration, and last week I was asked to create a set of illustrations and a book prop for Patrick‘s short-film, The Christmas Bunny. The film was shot this weekend past, and is in the editing stages, but I thought I’d share some photos of the prop and illustrations.
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February 13, 2010 – 11:44 am
Barbie has her 125th career – computer engineer! There’s been a few comments around about how Mattel are pandering to further stereotypes – sticking her in a pair of pink glasses is enough to insinuate that she’s now “intellectual”. I don’t think that’s all that bad. The glasses thing, sure, I’m a bit biased, but I don’t see anything wrong with putting Barbie in a pair of specs for her computer engineering job. It’s not an entirely false correlation. Many people who work on computers need glasses because they stare into the pixel void for 12 hours a day. So what? I think it’s kind of cute – and why not portray a computer engineer as cutesy? The fact is, that’s the only wearable “accessory” they felt she needed to portray her new job. That’s right, isn’t it? What more do you want? Computer engineers should look however they like – there’s no uniform. The bluetooth headset is a bit daft, but small details.
Rachel Andrew blogged today about a very sad incident yesterday, where herself and her fellow female speakers were mocked by audience members of Boag World’s live podcast event. Essentially, viewers in the backchannel decided to concentrate on their physical attributes rather than their well educated views, with suggestions that they were far too good-looking and well presented to be there for their abilities alone.
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February 4, 2010 – 11:50 am
This year, I thought it might be fun to try taking part in something that would get me writing more. Anton Peck started Project52 with a simple aim to produce a blog post a week for all of 2010.
It’s hard. Really hard.
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January 28, 2010 – 11:24 am
I’m generally completely non-plussed about petitions and marches and all that freedom of speech type gubbins that angry people get involved with all too easily. I think you should pick your battles and save up your bile and wit for when it really counts. But there’s something about the 1023 campaign that really strikes a chord with me. There were government reviews in 2009 as to whether the NHS should continue to fund homoeopathy, so I think this could be the year we see it finally get cut and I’m happy to help tip the balance by picking a side.
If you haven’t already stumbled across the many manic rants about homeopathy, and why it’s such a ludicrous load of rubbish, then here’s a selection of posts I could recommend (Update: Here’s an excellent one from New Scientist today that covers everything up to now). The videos on the 1023 site alone are good and will help explain things quickly and often hilariously.
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