Jeremy Keith's Blog, page 100

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The Open Market is situated just off London Road in Brighton. For the longest time, it���along with London Road itself���was the kind of place you really didn’t want to venture into. It was sort of seedy, and not a little bit off-putting.

But in the past few years The Open Market has had a complete overhaul. Now it’s downright pleasant. There are funky stalls, a great butcher shop, a good fishmonger, multiple fruit’n’veg places, and a truly excellent Greek caf��.

The atmosphere on the weekends is particularly convivial. If this is gentrification, then bring it on I say.

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Today was a Salter Cane practice day. It was a good one. We tried throwing some old songs at our new drummer, Emily. They stuck surprisingly well. Anomie, Long Gone, John Hope …they all sounded pretty damn good. To be honest, Emily was probably playing them better than the rest of us.

It was an energetic band practice so by the time I got home, I was really tired. I kicked back and relaxed with the latest copy of Spaceflight magazine from the British Interplanetary Society.

Then I went outside and watched the International Space Station fly over my house.

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We had an epic front-end pow-wow today. With plenty of Beerleft Goldenrods on hand we ploughed through discussing current client work and then turned to our guests. Today we were joined by Tracy Osborn, who told us all about her lovely new self-published book, Hello Web App. Then we got a demo from our friends at the confusingly named Ind.ie���no relation to the indie web���who gave us a demo of what they’ve been working on. We gave our feedback, including a heartfelt plea to dial down the rhetoric in their public pronouncements.

Then we went to the beach.

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The future Earth we see in Interstellar is a post-apocalyptic society. The population of the planet has been reduced to just a fraction of its current level. There have been wars and food shortages. And now the planet is dying and the human race is on its way out.

But instead of showing a dog-eat-dog battle for survival in the wasteland, we see people just getting on. It goes against the conventional wisdom that presupposes that if our Hobbesian Leviathian of civilisation were to be destroyed, our lives would inevitably revert to being nasty, brutish and short.

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Today was tiring. I didn’t do anything too strenuous���I was in the office in the morning and then up in London in the afternoon, but for some reason I just felt very tired out. Travelling to London and back will do that.

So when I got home, I had a nice relaxing evening. After dinner, I opened a bottle of Dark Star Sunburst ale, made some popcorn, and put on Interstellar.

This was my third viewing and it was just as gripping as the first two.

It’s a film that’s really divided opinion but I’m most certainly a fan.

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Today was a day full of meetings, as so many Mondays are these days. But they weren’t bad meetings. These were necessary meetings. Not a single one of them was a client meeting. Instead I spent the day bouncing from one Clearleft meeting to another.

There was the weekly Monday morning meeting. We even managed to have that outside, before the raindrops started to fall. Then there was a resourcing meeting. Then I had a meeting with Anna about some potential upcoming work. Then there was the director’s meeting with Andy and Rich. Sounds cabalistic but it’s actually quite pedestrian.

Indie Web Camp Brighton 2015

Indie Web Camp Brighton is happening again. It will be on the weekend of July 11th and 12th (coinciding with the big US Indie Web Camp in Portland at the same time) and it will once again be at 68 Middle Street.

You should come.

If you haven’t been to an Indie Web Camp before, you should definitely come. The event is always inspiring and productive in equal measure. The first day consists of Barcamp-style talks and discussions. The second day is filled with heads-down work, made all the more productive by the presence of other people working on similar issues that are more than happy to help out.

There are two kinds of people who should come to Indie Web Camp Brighton:

Someone who has their own website and is looking to make it better, and
Someone who wants their own website.

That’s basically it. There’ll be nitty-gritty discussions and implementations of formats and tools to help out, but basically it’s all about having a place on the web to call your own.

At Indie Web Camp Germany a few weeks ago���which was excellent���there was a really nice emergent thread on building blocks: microformats, webmention, micropub, and all that nerdy stuff.

At the same time, there was a really great thread on interface design. How do we make writing on our own websites as nice as writing on Medium?

I can imagine a similar two-pronged approach emerging at Indie Web Camp Brighton. That’s why I’d love to see just as many designers as developers showing up.

So basically, whether you’re in the world of UX, design, or development, and whether you’ve already got your own website or you’d like to have your own website …you should come.

You can sign up to attend here.

Once you’ve done that, if you’ve got your own website, you can log in to the Indie Web Camp wiki using your domain and add yourself to the list of participants (if you don’t have your own website or can’t log in, I can add you to the list).

It’s going to be a lot of fun, and I guarantee it’s also going to be highly productive���hope to see you there!

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My friend Jeffrey has been writing on his website for twenty years. There are very few things on the web that last that long. I’m very, very glad that his website is one of them.

I remember finding Zeldman.com���and Ask Dr. Web, and the Ad Graveyard���back when I was first “going online.” I remember being so grateful for his generosity, but I also remember that what really struck me was the warmth and humility in the writing.

My own website will turn twenty in another few years. I never would have started it if it weren’t for Jeffrey.

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I made mention already of an exercise that myself and Charlotte came up with to help developers to think in terms of granular components: using a humble pair of scissors to cut up screenshots or mockups into their constituent parts.

Recently we repeated and added to this exercise. Once the groups of components are gathered together���buttons, form elements, icons, whatever���we go through each group. Everyone writes on a post-it what name they would give this component���button, formField, icon, etc. Then everyone slaps down their post-it notes at the same time. See any overlap? That’s your class name.

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Today was a bittersweet day at Clearleft. It was Sophie���s last day. She���s moving on to pastures new, where I have no doubt she will kick ass as finely as she has done for the past few years here at our little agency.

She guided us through quite a tricky time; our move into our new building was a scary transition that coincided with some uncertain financial waters. If it hadn���t been for Sophie, I���m not sure how we would have coped.

And so tonight we broke bread together and toasted her time with us. I���ll miss having her around.