I often arrive at Google and forget what I was planing to search for in the first place. I assumed there must be a name for this particular forgetfulness, but couldn't find one. So I decided to make one of my own. I give you the Google Blink.

Defined as:

The moment you arrive at Google, and stare blankly at the blinking cursor having forgotten your query. This phenomena is likely linked to having to check the time twice, because you didn't pay attention when you first checked.

E.g. I spent 10 minutes with a Google Blink. When I finally remembered what I was Googling for the moment had passed.

This weekend I finished writing my first Craft plugin. During the move of my site from Wordpress to Craft, I needed to replace the plugin I was using to list my books from Goodreads.

The Craft documentation was an invaluable resource to me whilst building my plugin. It needed to be able to provide a settings panel, and to allow templates to call multiple lists of books.

Read more…

Last Thursday, just before lunchtime, we made public something we'd been working on for a few months – we launched Tide.

When Deer Digital almost closed in September, we made it clear to our investor, that we wanted to try to salvage something from the company we loved. Five of us (Becky, Billy, Jo, Kevin, and I) got together with the mindset of evolving the company based on the values and ideas we all shared.

Read more…

You may have noticed a new look on my blog. There were a number of aspects of the old design that were starting to feel very dated.

Small font sizes, cramped content, and the sidebar, were just a number of things that I wanted to rethink; so when I started to work on the redesign, I made the content the sole focus, increasing the font size, adding some more breathing space, and removing any unnecessary distractions.

The font I selected is Source Sans Pro, it provides a nice thin weight that contrasts well with the colour scheme.

Read more…

We are pleased to announce Refresh is coming to Aberdeen! A web meetup for developers, designers, students and anyone with an interest in the way the web works.

Refresh Aberdeen will be an informal place you can come along and enjoy a beer with other people in the industry. Enjoy some friendly banter, learn some new things and generally have a great time.

Our first meet up will be February 8th 2012. It'll be a chance for everyone to have a beer, decide where Refresh is heading, and what you want to do with other like minded people in Aberdeen.

Every few months we'll be holding mini conferences, inviting speakers to share with us the greatest new techniques in web design, development and management.

You can find out more at refreshaberdeen.com