2017 Archives

Article — 23 November 2017 — 193 words

Why I wouldn’t reduce the length of my commute

We often think of commuting as wasteful and inconvenient. But is it entirely negative?

Linknote — 22 November 2017 — 74 words

These pictures capture Britain’s brutalist vision of urban utopias

A selection of lecture slides from John Richings James. He was chief planner of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government during the 1960s, when many of the country’s most controversial developments were constructed.

When he became a lecturer, he took with him a fascinating selection of photos that show the good, bad and ugly of the brave new world while it was being developed.

Article — 18 November 2017 — 1,609 words

A summer of cycling for Pedal for Scotland

Personal

This year I took part in Pedal for Scotland, an annual charity cycle from Glasgow to Edinburgh. I had never cycled anything like that distance before.

Linknote — 17 November 2017 — 41 words

Human-centred approaches — Technology

A/B testing ain’t for settling your disagreements — Tom Kerwin

We’re running experiments based on ideas we’ve had and ignoring the very real possibility that the thing we’re testing doesn’t actually matter to our customers.

Linknote — 16 November 2017 — 12 words

Digital

Alpha to live is not a linear progression — Michael Brunton-Spall, Medium

Linknote — 15 November 2017 — 24 words

Culture

How the letters of the alphabet got their names — The Economist

This is revelatory. It all makes much more sense than I realised.

Linknote — 15 November 2017 — 61 words

Web

The web began dying in 2014, here’s how – André Staltz

Highly interesting article about how the dominance of Facebook, Google and Amazon is beginning to damage the web. Facebook and Google are silently conspiring to specialise in social and knowledge respectively, further increasing their dominance. Meanwhile, the weakening of net neutrality threatens to move to goalposts even further in their favour.

Linknote — 14 November 2017 — 48 words

Business

Don’t do what you love – Rachel Nabors, Be Yourself

“Do what you love and the money will follow,” is terrible advice given by lucky people.

A brilliant article, along similar lines to my recent post — Why you shouldn’t follow your passion — but put way better.

Article — 13 November 2017 — 1,239 words

Facebook and Twitter are repeating the catastrophic mistakes of past designers

Architecture — Digital — Technology

Architects had to face up to the problems that eventually emerged with bold modernist designs. Now Facebook and Twitter need to wake up to the fact that their platforms are damaging society.

Linknote — 13 November 2017 — 31 words

Human-centred approaches — User experience — Web