Paul Lloyd has an excellent style guide which I'm frequently sending to people who are looking at creating their own. Now he's just released his first version of Barebones on Github.
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Articles
nth-of-type and media queries
At the moment I'm refreshing an old site and adapting some code I wrote 3 years ago. A few of the pages have lists of teasers to full articles which are displayed in a grid. They use nth-of-type to remove margins off every 3rd block on a row, and clear the block after that.
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Chrome transform:rotate bug
I just wanted to quickly document a bug I've found in the latest build of Chrome (18.0.1025.142), just in case anyone else experiences the same thing.
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Style guide round-up
Last year, I started bookmarking front-end style guides for an article I was writing for 24 ways. When the article was published, I got loads of great recommendations of others to include in the list. So I just wanted to write a little bit about some of the ones I didn't talk about in the article, and the things that I like about them.
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Responsive Summit
I was at Responsive Summit yesterday, where we spent the day discussing the experiences we've had and challenges we've faced with responsive web design projects.
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Computer Science curriculum to be taught in schools
Today I got the news I thought I'd have to wait a lot longer for. The Education Secretary is announcing that ICT in schools is to be replaced by a computer science and programming curriculum.
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Tiling textures in Fireworks
I've been using Fireworks pretty much every day since around 2005, yet every project opens up the opportunity to learn something new. Perhaps this is one of those "well, duh" posts, but I'm writing it up anyway in case it benefits someone who didn't know this technique.
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Prototyping with CSS Flexbox
Since giving my first UX Bootcamp workshop on Prototyping in Code, I've been looking at ways to make it easier to teach CSS layout. I've tried demonstrating floats in a fish tank and how positioning works using diagrams and sketches, but it still seems pretty abstract to a CSS beginners.
I've been having a read through the specs for the Flexible Box Layout Module. The name describes the behaviour of the boxes which can stretch and expand to fill content, with unused space being distributed amongst the boxes.
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CreativeJS workshop
I've just attended Seb's CreativeJS workshop in Brighton. After seeing Seb talk at last year's Full Frontal, and this year's Update Conference, I was inspired to learn more about what new and exciting things can be done with Javascript.
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Running code workshops in schools
During Brighton's Digital Festival, I ran 2 Hackasaurus workshops in local schools for students aged between 13 and 15. I did this with Aral Balkan who taught the concepts of programming using Scratch.
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Hackasaurus Game Sprint
At the moment I'm in Toronto visiting Mozilla's new offices and helping with a Hackasaurus sprint. This week we're concentrating on games as a code learning experience, and had a group of kids aged between around 8 to 11 in to test out what we'd prototyped.
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Experiments with Adobe Edge
A development version of Adobe Edge came out today, and I thought I'd give it a quick play to see whether it would be useful for any of the projects I'm working on.
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Firefox on a stick
I ran my first UK Hackasaurus workshop on Friday at the University of Birmingham for the Computing at School teacher conference. Most of the attendees were IT teachers from secondary/high schools, and the session was designed to be adapted by teachers for use in lessons.
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Google Zeitgeist 2011
A few weeks ago I got a call saying I'd won a competition to attend Google's Zeitgeist conference. I'd submitted a 1-minute video for the talking about Scrunchup for a Young Minds contest, and it had been picked for the final 12. So on Sunday I took the train to Watford to meet the other winners.
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This changes everything
This week I've been planning Hackasaurus workshop venues. I've been looking for IT suites in schools and libraries where I can hold hour long workshops teaching kids how to remix the web using the Hackasaurus tools such as the X-Ray Goggles and HTMLpad.
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Working on Mozilla's Hackasaurus
Since launching Scrunchup back in 2009, I've been looking for a way to incorporate my love of web development with my passion for improving the state of web education. When Matt Thompson asked if I'd like to work with Mozilla as Hackasaurus Event and Curriculum Manager, I knew this was the opportunity I'd been looking for.
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How to be terribly British
In a couple of weeks, everyone in Britain will be taking a day off work to heartily celebrate The Royal Wedding. People in other countries will be celebrating too because the Royal Family is absolutely marvellous.
To get the most out of your day, I've prepared a little guide so you can practice being all British before the big day. Splendid.
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My first SXSW
I first heard about SXSW Interactive on the Boagworld podcast when I was 16. Paul and Marcus interviewed some people while they were there for the show, and I thought it'd be pretty cool to go one day. I've had to wait an agonisingly long time because so much of the event circulates around the parties, so it's pretty inaccessible to someone under 21. I thought about going last year but it would have meant sulking in my hotel room every evening and shelling out a lot of money for the privilege. Last month I turned 21 so very shortly afterwards I was able to enjoy the full experience of SXSW.
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The Gentlewoman
Way back in November, I got an email from a magazine saying I'd been recommended for an interview. As I skim-read the message on my phone, I assumed it was for a job. Although, I thought it was a bit strange that they were asking for my age and a full length portrait.
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Naace Curriculum Review Think Tank
Today I attended a Think Tank organised by Naace. We were discussing the curriculum review, and ICT's role in education. I was invited along after Naace picked up on the blog post I wrote; Help keep ICT in our schools.
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Marking up relationships
A couple of weeks ago I was encouraged by Jeremy Keith to put some rel values on links in my website, so I read up on them to find out when it's appropriate to use them.
I was particularly interested in the way in which they're used to denote relationships between people. rel values can be put on links and are used to indicate the relationship of the target to the resource on which they appear. Since it's Valentine's Day, I want to use this opportunity to see how we can mark up human to human relationships.
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Starting out in the Big Wide Web
The audio for my talk at Heart and Sole has been published. I spoke about starting out in the industry, discussing my experience of setting up, and some of the mistakes I made along the way. I also talk about stuff like contracts, finance and getting your first clients.
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Help keep ICT in our schools
I've grown up in a society where computer literacy is just as important as knowing how to read and write. I can't think of many jobs where some form of IT knowledge isn't useful (or essential), and this is a time when the IT sector is crying out for more skilled workers.
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Speaking at Heart & Sole
Last Friday, I had to confront two of my biggest fears simultaneously; public speaking and heights.
I was giving a talk at Heart and Sole, an evening event at Portsmouth's Spinnaker Tower, about starting out in the industry.
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