• The drive back from France last week was pretty brutal so it’s taken me most of this week to recover, I think. Working through the aftermath of a snowboarding trip our house now resembles a cross between a laundrette and a car boot sale.
  • I wrote a blog post this week about design tasks, a growing norm for design interviewing in tech that I find increasingly annoying. I’m not going to go on about it here. Read the post.
  • Cycling has been a bit challenging and frustrating over the past month. Every weekend there has been a named a storm hitting the coast line of Wales. Where I live, I generally ride on some quite exposed roads which means gusts of 70-80mph are not uncommon. So I’ve been inside week after week. Motivation is waning. But I can see my fitness isn’t suffering so I’ll be glad of this work come summer.
  • Speaking of which, a trip to the Pyrenees might be in the offing for early June. Something to aim for.
  • I’m on my way back from Cambridge after a couple of days spent with colleagues on handover stuff. Hand overs are weird. This time around, despite being asked to write loads of documents by management, I’ve spent my time in discussions with people instead. Much more valuable, I think.
  • Two weeks left at work. That three months went quickly. I’m on the lookout for project work, so let me know if you have something you think we could work together on.
  • This weekend sees me tear down and replace the battery in my daughter’s iPhone 6s. Looks pretty straight forward, but I know how these things can go. Wish me luck.
  • Loads of stuff caught my eye this week…
  • How to Enable the Mac Startup Chime on New Macs. Perfect. Brilliant. The comforting return of the chimes I’ve lived with for over two decades.
  • Now this is interesting: TailwindUI. Tailwind has been on my radar for ages. A ‘utility-class first’ framework, it allows for rapid creation of interfaces. I know several people who are big fans. However, my web standards, old skool ‘content and presentation’ alarm bells go off about every three seconds. Maybe I should get over myself.
  • Funnel Teardowns. Like many people, I can shy away from funnels, multi-variant testing, and hyper optimisation. Lots of reasons why I do it, but mostly because I find it pretty boring. This website does a good job at very quickly critiquing successful funnels.
  • Refreshing design from The Markup. Not only is the typography solid, but they are doing some interesting things with images and hover states.
  • And I’ll leave you with the most frustrating website experience you are likely ever to experience. Genius.