• Had an interesting discussion on Twitter yesterday about design systems. That in itself is not that interesting as there is a bit of a fetishisation of design systems at the moment. It got me thinking though. Paul had a gripe that much of the discussion is from designers (and their egos) talking about creating them rather than using them. Fair enough. I think that’s because mostly we’re not consumers of them, though. Engineering teams, systems like CMS’s or newsletters, product teams. These are the consumers of the systems I’ve been involved with. And Paul’s right, it would be nice to hear from their discussions instead of big tech orgs always talking about design systems as a way to scale and reduce the need for so many designers.
  • Mark recommended a book in his weeknotes by David Reinfurt. I bought it and started reading it yesterday. Pretty good so far. I like the format.
  • My injured leg is getting better. I’ve upped my intensity this week, and tomorrow and Sunday I’m back to full training again.
  • My experiment with tubeless tyres continues with fitting some Hutchinson winter tyres to my new Hunt wheels for my winter bike. The second set went better than the first. The strap technique I saw on YouTube is a winner for seating the bead.
  • Off to Heidelberg next week. Sort of not looking forward to it. The travel is a bit of a drag. It’s nice to see colleagues but it’s busy at home. It’s the price of the remote work for this current role, though.
  • I’m on my way back from the EBI at the rather Gattica-like Wellcome Genome Campus near Cambridge after presenting with Stu and Ken about our foundational work at EMBL. It was ok. A bit rushed and I wasn’t so sure about the mix of developers in the crowd. I only had 15 minutes of our 45 minute slot, so it was a bit tricky. I can only really make one point in 15 minutes.
  • Frank is redesigning his site and documenting the process. It’s a nice idea and a conversation with him on Twitter made apparent the niggling doubts I have over the design of my own site. It’s not right yet. And I’ve tweaked it a lot recently but there is an itch there that needs scratching.
  • Sasha Baron Cohen’s talk for ADL is great.
  • This article about design apis caught my eye. Food for thought.
  • The general election grumbles on. I’m concerned about the affect of the long term ambient anxiety that Brexit, and now this GE, is causing. Not just in me, but colleagues and friends, too. I live the marginal seat of the Vale of Glamorgan, currently occupied by the disgraced Welsh Minister, Alun Cairns. In 2017, he won by a small margin. I’m hoping he loses this time around. I’m increasingly annoyed I feel I have to vote tactically to oust the Tories rather than vote for policy or where I think I sit on the political spectrum. In all honesty I feel a bit politically homeless at the moment.