Vague But Exciting

Things I hate about Adobe XD

2020-04-14T00:00:00Z

Oh Adobe XD, sometimes you are quite good, but other times, you drive me up the fecking wall.

The List #

The stupid tiny hit state to select an artboard
The guides implementation (constantly having to zoom in and out to grab a new guide)
No native bookmarking (and the one available plug in is a bit clunky)
Aligning shapes and lines is harder than it should be
There is no way to change ownership of cloud docs (crap for design systems)
The way the sharable preview/prototype doesn't display at the same size as the artboard. It's scaled down a bit.
The way you have to click on the tiny arrow next to a value to open a dropdown
The way you can only drag to resize a shape from it's central point, necessitating unnecessary zooming and scrolling
Overly aggressive inheritance of contents in hover state within components e.g. set a background colour hover state on one menu item and all menu items now get the first menu item's text on hover.
The way the scroll bar can overlap the clickable icons in the layers panel, making them unclickable
The way you need to zoom out and click on the artboard title every time you want to toggle a layout grid on or off.

To be continued...

What I learnt building this site

2020-04-14T00:00:00Z

New-ish year, new blog. I thought I'd kick it off with some thoughts on what I learnt setting up this site.

I'd wanted to have a play around with Eleventy for a while, so this seemed like a good opportunity.

After a couple of false starts, this site is (for now, pretty closely) based on the Eleventy Base Blog starter repo.

An earlier incarnation was based on based on the Hylia starter theme, but after a fair amount of noodling around with it, I decided it was a bit over-engineered for my needs. My needs being a very simple blog. The json design tokens were cool and all, but I never figured out why all the classes were wrapped in square brackets, and I could only get the site to build if I changed a template file (as opposed to e.g. a scss file). I daresay I config'd it wrong somehow, but in the end it had more bells and whistles than I needed. I may well revisit Hylia, most likely after I've done this Learn Eleventy From Scratch course in the coming weeks.

The site is hosted on Netlify. Setting this up was mind-bogglingly easy. Just clicked a button, connected with my Github account, waited for 20 seconds, and there it was, an actual site at a temporary url. Felt almost magical.

In the past I'd built a lot of prototypes using Jekyll, and liquid templating, so it's been a pleasure to see that some of that knowledge has been so easily transferable to building with Eleventy and nunjucks, in terms of templating, but also the odd loop and if statement.

In glorious technicolor

2020-04-30T00:00:00Z

I've updated the site design a little. Mainly all this colour that you see around you, but also adding in some curves and organic shapes.

Thanks to The Separator Generator for the nice curvy line betwixt header and content.

And also to UI Gradients for the colour inspiration, even if I went with solid colours in the end.

And also also to this Fancy Border Radius Generator which saved me having to noodle around with an svg for a blob shaped background (although I do quite enjoy noodling around with svgs, so maybe I'll update this bit in the future).

I need to make the layout work better on smaller screens, but everything should at least be legible on most devices.

Things I miss from before Coronavirus

2020-05-13T00:00:00Z

I didn't really have a clear idea of what this blog was going to be when I started it, but I think it might end up being (mostly) a collection of lists.

Here is a list of things that I can't do right now, and that I miss doing:

Going to a cafe for a bacon sandwich whilst my son is at his dance class onn a Saturday morning.
Sitting in a quiet pub of an afternoon, having a pint, a packet of crisps and flicking through a newspaper.
Going swimming.
Stopping off at the Spar on the way home on a Friday night and picking a couple of beers to enjoy that evening.
Listening to podcasts on the train to and from work.
Bookshops.
Going to Waitrose or Booths for a "leisure shop".

All the ways I do to-do lists

2020-06-26T00:00:00Z

A list of all the different ways and techniques that I use to try to keep track of all the things I want and need to do:

Keep
- Medium-to-longform notes.
- Notes that I think I might come back to more than once.
- Text, links or images that I want to be reminded about at a specific time.
Any.do
- One-off reminders for personal tasks ("Call the dentist" etc).
- Recurring menial tasks ("Bins out tonight").
Google Calendar
- Non-work-related appointments (dentists, school events etc).
Open browser tabs
- Stuff I want to read or need to act on in the next 24 hours or so. Firefox for work stuff, Chrome for personal stuff.
Momentum browser plugin
- A simple virtual list for tasks I want to do today or the next day.
Lists written out on paper
- When I'm trying to hold too many things in my head and just need to get it recorded somewhere for reference.
Items scribbled on post-it notes
- Transient one-off work items when I don't have the time/focus to create a virtual to-do. I try very hard to avoid these, but they do creep in.
Slack
- Reminders: Anything that comes in via Slack that I can't/don't want to deal with immediately.
- Saved items: A collection of things that I remember to look at once a year, if that.
- Draft messages: Messages I need to respond to/haven't finished responding to.
- Messages marked as unread after I've read them: See above.
Jira
- At work I have a personal to-do board set up that I use effectively in short bursts, and then forget about, and then don't use for a while because of the effort it takes to clear it out and make it fit for purpose again.
- Sometimes I remember to look at all my outstanding tickets, have a mild panic attack, then don't look again for a few weeks.
- I really hate Jira.
Trello
- I have a private board that I use for tracking work tasks. I use the Jira power-up to link to Jira tasks when relevant.
- Also have several shared boards that are not maintained frequently enough to make them actually useful.
Emails
- Opened in their own window: Messages that I don't want to forget about that and definitely need a response/action before the end of the day
- Marked as unread after I read them: See above.
- Sent to myself: Usually things I want to read or refer to at work.
- Snoozed messages: Usually non-work-related life admin stuff that I don't have time to deal with at work, so I snooze emails until the evening, when I'm too tired to care about doing them, so I snooze them until the following morning.
Outlook tasks
- When I know a work email needs my attention, but I don't have time to extract it out into any of the other systems I use, I'll sometimes drag it onto the Tasks tab. Where it withers and dies, never to be looked at again.
Files saved on my desktop
- Files saved somewhere visible that relate to something that needs doing in a vague-but-still-somehow-urgent timeframe. Every couple of months I will stare at huge clusters of them, baffled as to what they could possibly be or mean, before uneasily deleting them all.
Sleeping my laptop instead of shutting it down so the currently open windows and tabs remind me what I was doing when I open it up again.

Things I haven't done for a year

2021-03-08T00:00:00Z

A list of things that I haven't done for the last year or so, due to covid/lockdowns/etc:

Been on a bus
Been on a train
Been in a pub
Drunk a pint sourced from a pub
Shopped in a big supermarket
(although I did nip into big Tesco in September to buy some donuts, and have been into M&S Food a few times)
Eaten any food from Greggs
Been inside a McDonald's
(have had a delivery from there though)
Seen any of my family (that I don't live with) in person
Been more than about 8 miles from our house
Been to a gig or a festival
Been to the cinema
Been inside a bookshop
Spent a night away from home
Been on my own for more than, um, 2 hours, I reckon

A year ago, the idea that I might not do any of those things for a year or more would have seemed pretty outlandish. Especially the Greggs one.

Things I hate about the Sonos desktop app

2021-07-08T00:00:00Z

It's easy to pick holes in something from the sidelines, blissfully unaware of any constraints that the people working on that thing might have been working under.

But it's also fun. So with the aforementioned caveats applied, I'm going to do it anyway.

Oh, Sonos desktop app, how do I hate thee? Let me count the ways... #

When you start the app, it doesn't remember what you were listening to the last time, so you're forced into the clunky source selection menu straight off, every time, before you can listen to anything.
The annoying title text that appears when you hover over an item that is a) pointless, because it just duplicates the text that's on the screen anyway, and b) then gets in the way of reading the text that you're hovering.

The repetitious and redundant labelling when you have no source selected. I get it, I haven't selected anything yet. You don't need to tell me in quintuplicate.

When you have selected a source, the play control icons are unlabelled, irritatingly tiny and they look fuzzy on a retina display. The Repeat/Repeat With a Dot/Repeat With a Dot and a Blob icon is particularly baffling.

This thing that look like a play/pause control, but isn't actually in any way interactive, and shows the opposite of what the actual play control shows
This whole panel that basically doesn't do anything, apart from this mystifying icon that is apparently how you control which speakers you're sending audio to
The play button has no touch, focus or "playing" state, so you get novisual feedback at all that touching the button has done anything at all.
The delay when you click play, when nothing appears to be happening, so you hit play again, but it starts playing a fraction of a second before you do, so you're actually pausing it
There's no way to search within a particular music source. You just have to search across all of them, and them try and guess how the thing you want has been categorised (is it in Podcasts & Shows? or Episodes? or Shows? 🙃)

A small update

2022-03-08T00:00:00Z

I've made a couple of small changes to this site:

Updated the divider up there ^^^ to a fancier looking wavey shape, courtesy of https://omatsuri.app/page-dividers/.
Simplified the fonts. The plan was to move to various variations of the rather lovely Recursive variable font but I had some technical issues, so it's all just Roboto for now.
Shifted some content around between the Home page and About Me page.

Would like to update the colour palette too, so maybe I'll get around to that in another year or so.

Three Figma features I'd love to see

2022-08-24T00:00:00Z

Three things that would make my life much easier when designing in Figma:

I would love it if I could, from within any Figma file, pop open the Quick Actions menu, type a file name, and jump right into that file.

Having to navigate back to the home screen, and browse/search from there always feels clunky and slow to me.

I often want to widen the left sidebar, to see deeply nested design elements, but it's really fiddly to get the mouse hovered over the area that let you do this. So it's easy to acccidentally drag a guide from the ruler rather than drag the edge of the sidebar. Which is annoying.

A wider "grabbable" area, and/or a keyboard shortcut to maximise/minimise this sidebar would remove this frustration.

Native table layout #

I spend more time fiddling around with hacky ways to build things-that-look-like-tables in Figma than pretty much anything else. But however you do it there are always compromises:

Row based components: you can't move columns around
Column based components: you can't adjust row height

Some (any!) sort of native table-aware layout functionality in Figma would make my life so much easier, and speed up my design process by a factor of a lot.

Transatlantic Short Haul Hip Hop Mix

2022-10-11T00:00:00Z

A shortish (24m) mixture of UK and US hip hop, some old, some newish.

Tracklisting #

Turn It Up A Little - The Nextmen (Rae & Christian Remix)
Kick In The Door - Amerigo Gazaway
Oooh - De La Soul (Rae & Christian Remix)
Left (REMIX) Rodney P Feat. Life Mc "Skitz - Dj Nappa
The Ride (feat. Lain Gray) - Dobie
Hip Hop Yaself - Nextmen Edit/Fake Recordingz
Straighten It Out - Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth (Amerigo Gazaway Remix)

Why Bluetooth sucks

2022-11-08T00:00:00Z

Yesterday I misplaced my wireless earbuds, which I use a lot during the day for music and work calls. So I dug out an older pair of wireless, over-the-ear headphones (Sony WH-C500).

I charged them up, put them on, switched them on, and a friendly voice in my ear told me "Bluetooth connected".

But what device were they connected to? Not my laptop. Not my phone. Not any of the other phones or tablets in the house. But they're connected to something, and until I find out what, I can't actually use them.

What would be really useful: for devices like headphones to have a "disconnect" function, that disconnected them from whatever device they were connected to.

Groovy Little House Mix

2024-02-12T00:00:00Z

I threw together 7 of my favourite groovy house tracks.

Tracklisting #

Crazy Penis - There's a Better Place (Original Mix)
Session Victim - Matching Half (Original Mix)
Phil Fuldner - Take me (Extended Mix)
The Streets - Weak Become Heroes (Ashley Beedle's Love Bug Vocal)
Bent - Magic Love (Ashley Beedle's Black Magic Remix Edit)
Discreet Unit - Shake Your Body Down
Jimpster - Porchlight and Rocking Chairs (Kink Remix)

I still listen to your podcast

2024-02-12T00:00:00Z

I read this blogpost by Dave Rupert the other day: I used to listen to your podcast, and it made me think about why I still listen to his podcast (ShopTalk Show, the podcast about building websites that he cohosts with Chris Coyier).

I've been listening to that show, on and off, for at least a decade. I started listening while I was working as what would be called a front end developer nowadays, but back then I was just a web designer. The show was a useful source of CSS and WordPress tips and tricks, and a handy proxy-horizon-scanner, surfacing things I might need to care or learn about. I drifted away from the podcast for a few years, mainly because I drifted away from all podcasts for a while, for various reasons (starting a family, moving across the country, a different commute).

But I started listening again regularly about four years ago, at about the same time I was transitioning away from front end, and into UX/UI design. I was enjoying the new challenge, and learning new tools (XD, Figma), but I did (and do) miss writing html and css every day. It's a very different feeling, drawing pictures of websites for others to build websites from, rather than actually making websites yourself. And I like how listening to ShopTalk Show makes me feel I'm still connected to that world.

But it's also kind of comfort listening for me these days. Partly because I've been listening to Dave and Chris for so long, it's just nice to "hang out" with their voices for a while. But it's also that, becuase I don't need to know about the latest JS frameworks or Github GUIs, I can just let that stuff wash over me, and be interested if I want to be, but feel no anxiety if I don't. There's something very relaxing hearing someone talk about, I don't know... Astro templates, or programming in Rust, and not feeling like I need to immediately start watching YouTube tutorials.

Plus, they do cover stuff that is relevant to me in my work, and that I do want to learn about. And who knows, one day maybe I'll transition back to front end. And the fact that I have ShopTalk Show running as a continuous thread in the background makes me feel like that's still a possibility. It's holding a door, if not open, then at least ajar.

Back to a Mac

2024-03-12T00:00:00Z

I recently switched to a Mac, after almost 10 years of using Windows devices as my primary work machines. I'd used Macs before, in other jobs, and and my personal laptop is a Mac, so I'm no stranger to them, and in all honesty, it's felt like coming home after a decade in the wilderness.

That said, I have had to do some tinkering to get my new machine set up how I like it, so I thought I'd detail that tinkering here. In no particular order.

The TinkerList #

Downloaded Arc as my primary browser. I'd been keen to give Arc a go, but hadn't been able to as it wouldn't run on my Windows 10 machine, or my ancient personal Mac. So far I've loved it, it feels like a great new paradigm for how browsers could and maybe should work.
Set the dock to auto-hide, and removed most of the items from it. It currently looks like this:

Installed Git, mainly so I could clone the repo for this site, and deploy it via Github/Netlify. This meant installing xcode and homebrew from the command line, which is always vaguely stressful. And I'd forgotten about having to do all that defining path stuff, so it took me a while to get everything up and running, but it's all good now. There could definitely be better documentation around this though, as you quite quickly hit "computer says no" issues that take a bit of googling to figure out.
Installed the Raycast launcher. I used to be an enthusiastic Alfred user, but thought I'd give the main alternative a try. It was pretty straight-forward to get set up, and now I love it and use it constantly. For opening apps, files, folders, accessing my clipboard history, but my favourite thing is the widows management (one thing Windows does much better natively), which lets me easily resize windows, or move them between different displays. I've configured keyboard shortcuts to make this even quicker, so I just have to hit e.g. option + left arrow to ping a window to or from my second monitor. I also really like some of the extensions, the Spotify one is great, to quickly see what's playing, or search for something to listen to directly in the Raycast interface.

Installed the Bartender 5 app, to help tidy up what appears in my menu bar and when. I'm still on the free trial but will probably end up paying for this app, it's really handy.

Installed the One Thing menu bar app, a tiny but brilliant app that lets you add a single task to your menu bar. For when there's one thing that you really need to do that day.
Changed the cursor repeat speed. The system preferences didn't let me set it to move as fast as I would like, but this incredibly helpful website lets you preview different timings, and then gives you terminal commands to run which let you speed things up quicker than the standard UI allows. I'm very happy to have my cursor zipping along through text nice and fast now, just how I like it.
I have a bluetooth mouse that I like, but when I first started using it there were problems:
- it was janky and slow, especially the scrolling
- I couldn't set the scroll wheel on my mouse, and the scroll direction on the trackpad to be different. I like the natural scrolling setting on the trackpad, but that feels weird and wrong on the scroll wheel on a mouse. But macOS doesn't let you set these individually (it looks like you can, but the setting is linked, so e.g. changing it in mouse settings also changes it in trackpad settings).
So far, so annoying. But I guess other people have come up against similar issues, as there are quite a few apps that promise to fix them. I went for Mac Mouse Fix, which not only gives you specific control over scroll direction for your mouse, but also somehow magically fixes a lot of the slow, janky scrolling and interaction I had before installing it. I'm still on the free trial, but I'll happily pay the $2.99 when the trial ends. Although it is a bit aggrieving that a third party app is necessary to do something as basic as using a mouse.
Bought a folding stand. Just a cheap Amazon Basics one, but seems to be doing the job so far, and I like how small it folds up, making it easy to bring into the office or wherever.
Bought a (small, cheap) dock. Mainly so I could plug the USB A receiver my mouse needs into something. But also nice to be able to plug the hdmi into it, and so have less cables trailing out of the laptop itself. Slightly regretting not getting one that could do the power as well, but not sure what the deal is with docks and the magsafe power connectors.
Bought the Cleanshot X app for screenshots and screen recordings, both things I create multiple times a day. Pretty impressed with it so far, it's quick, user friendly, and seems to do everything I need it to.

I think that's all the tinkering I've done so far. I'm sure there will be more.

A quick shout-out to Kitty Giraudel for the Eleventy Footnotes plugin I've used on this post, and will no doubt use in many others. It's pretty much out of the box, I just added a pseudo element using this character: ⇣ to differentiate footnote links, and added:

scroll-behavior: smooth;
scroll-padding-top: 120px;

to my css, just to make jumping back and forth feel a little nicer.

Vibey Drum & Bass Mix

2024-03-13T00:00:00Z

I was quite pleased with this vibey drum & bass mix. It runs to just under an hour, and moves from some chill vibes to some more lively vibes towards the end. Vibes 😎

Tracklisting #

Lurch - Someday
Tokyo Prose - Lights Down Low ft. Sati
Muffler - Can You Feel (2020 Mix)
Furney - Much of a Deepness
Utah Jazz - Mile High Club (Instrumental)
Electrosoul System - Love Is Illusion
Mark Rae - Free Rolling (Marcus Intalex Remix)
Skalpel - Why Not Jungle
Nu:Logic - Nova
Makoto - YGMYC
Gardna - Good Time Not a Long Time (Watch The Ride Remix)
Swindle - Elevator ft. TC
Safire & DRS - Holding On

Some Good Newsletters

2025-01-10T00:00:00Z

These are my current favourite newsletters. They're mainly themed around design, UX, front and and culture.

TLDR Design #

https://tldr.tech/design
Design Tools, Trends & Inspiration in 5 Min

Hey Designer #

https://heydesigner.com/
The go-to newsletter for product people, UXers, PMs and design engineers.

Dive Club #

https://dive-club.beehiiv.com/
Where designers never stop learning

Figmalion #

https://figmalion.com/
Curated collection of design resources and a weekly roundup of news in Figma and the design tools community

Friday Five from UI Prep/Molly Hellmuth #

https://www.uiprep.com/newsletter
5 practical tips about Figma and design systems every Friday.

Dense Discovery #

https://www.densediscovery.com/
A weekly newsletter about design, tech, sustainability, urbanism and more

Shift Nudge/The Saturday Shift #

https://shiftnudge.com/weekend
Hot and spicy design tips from MDS

https://www.learnui.design/newsletter.html
Become a better designer in 5-minute lessons

Ben's Bites #

https://bensbites.beehiiv.com/subscribe
Learn about AI. Curated news and products, daily. How businesses are using it, weekly.

Adam Silver (GDS designer) #

https://adamsilver.io/newsletter/
Evidence-based design tips (in 3 minutes or less). Mostly about forms UX, but not always.

Design Systems News #

https://news.design.systems/
A publication full of interesting, relevant, and curated links.

Picked & Mixed House Mix

2025-03-19T00:00:00Z

An hand-picked hours worth from a recent Beatport Melodic House & Techno top 100 playlist.

C/D Challenge 1 - First in a series of mixes in collaboration with https://www.mixcloud.com/chrsmrrtt/

Tracklisting #

&ME, Black Coffee, Keinemusik - The Rapture Pt.III (Original Mix)
Golden Hour - Magenta (Original Mix)
Rhye, Adam Ten - 3 Days Later Extended
Romain Garcia - Next To You (Extended Mix)
Abuk - With You (Original Mix)
Nimino - I Only Smoke When I Drink (Club Edit)
Alex Wann - Milkshake (Original Mix)
Rebuke - Along Came Polly (Konstantin Sibold, ZAC, CARMEE Remix)
Max Styler - Time To Go (Original Mix)
Vintage Culture & Artbat - She The Last One (Original Mix)
Hidden Empire - Feel Free (Extended Mix)
Last Men on Earth - Childhood (Original Mix)
John Summit Feat Cloves - Focus (Extended Mix)

Afro House Mix

2025-05-28T00:00:00Z

An hand-picked hours worth from the Beatport Afro House top 100 playlist from May 2024.

C/D Challenge 2 - Second in a series of mixes in collaboration with https://www.mixcloud.com/chrsmrrtt/

Tracklisting #

Selaelo Selota - Thrrr... Phaaa! (DESIREE Remix)
DJ Gregory & Africanism - Block Party (Original Mix)
Natema - BMW (Afro Latin Mix)
Minow & Vale feat. Sepia Brown - Si Tú (Original Mix)
Allan Piziano, Maité Inaé & Fabi Hernandez - Oya (Extended Mix)
AMEME - TORERO (Extended Mix)
Fly & DJ Hermes - Pasilda (Afro Mix)
STAY GOLDEN & Touzani feat. NIZAM - Hold Them On (Original Mix)
Celestial Mayan - Papaoutai (Extended Afro House Mix)
Satori feat. Vieux Farka Touré - Believer (Original Mix)
Natema - Serpiente (Original Mix)
Domenico Palumbo - Don't Stop Now (Extended Mix)
Enzo Siffredi feat. BAQABO - A.F.R.O (Original Mix)

Decades Apart Mix

2025-09-25T00:00:00Z

Around an hour of tracks that alternate from before the year 2000, and after the year 2020. Including two acts with tracks from both eras. Was fun to put together.

Tracklisting #

Pete Heller - Big Love (Eat Me Edit)
O'Flynn - Sunspear
Cassius - Cassius 1999 (Radio Edit)
Jamie xx - Baddy on the Floor (feat. Honey Dijon)
Basement Jaxx - Red Alert (Jaxx Club Mix)
Basement Jaxx feat Martina Camargo - Bambina (Dream Edit Instrumental)
DJ Rolando - Knights of the Jaguar (Original Mix)
Leftfield - Pulse
Leftfield - Space Shanty
Jorkes - Super Hot Lover (Original Mix)
Laurent Garnier - The Man With The Red Face
Barry Can't Swim - Sunsleeper
Mory Kanté - Yeke Yeke (Short Mix)
Anish Kumar - Hummingbird
Nalin & Kane - Beachball (Extended Vocal Mix)
Chaos In the CBD - Higher Elevation

Vague But Exciting

Things I hate about Adobe XD

The List #

What I learnt building this site

In glorious technicolor

Things I miss from before Coronavirus

All the ways I do to-do lists

Things I haven't done for a year

Things I hate about the Sonos desktop app

Oh, Sonos desktop app, how do I hate thee? Let me count the ways... #

A small update

Three Figma features I'd love to see

Jump to files from Quick Actions menu #

Maximise/minimise left sidebar #

Native table layout #

Transatlantic Short Haul Hip Hop Mix

Tracklisting #

Why Bluetooth sucks

Groovy Little House Mix

Tracklisting #

I still listen to your podcast

Back to a Mac

The TinkerList #

Vibey Drum & Bass Mix

Tracklisting #

Some Good Newsletters

TLDR Design #

Hey Designer #

Dive Club #

Figmalion #

Friday Five from UI Prep/Molly Hellmuth #

Dense Discovery #

Shift Nudge/The Saturday Shift #

Design Hacks Newsletter #

Ben's Bites #

Adam Silver (GDS designer) #

Design Systems News #

Picked & Mixed House Mix

Tracklisting #

Afro House Mix

Tracklisting #

Decades Apart Mix

Tracklisting #