16 August, 2024
Hertz doubled the cost of my car rental. Here’s their process design trick.
This year, during my family holiday, I discovered how Hertz – and many other car hire companies – have crafted a process involving dark patterns to trick stressed travellers into paying far more than necessary for their car hire. I’ve used Hertz several times over the years, particularly in the 2000s, so I expected good […]
30 May, 2024
Taller buildings let us design better towns
I lived in a range of places as a kid, partly because my father was a bit of an itinerant who didn’t know what he wanted in life, other than that I mustn’t live with my mother. Go figure. Eventually I got to settle down with my grandmother, but in the process I learned a […]
26 May, 2024
Don’t design in customer traps on your systems
You know that friend, the one who always promises to help you move flat, or help you fix your mower, but then doesn’t turn up? Yes. Or the guy who goes on a date and pays for the meal and somehow that comes with access to your body? Or the airline that makes you think […]
20 May, 2024
A new manifesto for the web
This blog post has now been re-arranged with the manifesto at the top, and the reasoning that led up to it beneath. Because, after all, placing the important content six or seven hundred words in is hardly being pure, is it? Web Dogma 24. By me. Content First. All articles, images, and graphics must be […]
11 May, 2024
Design Dilemmas: When bathrooms become battlegrounds
In the world of transgender rights, the battle for the bathroom has reached fever pitch, especially in the USA. Now, I’m not here to referee in this brawl – because on one side of the debate you have the ‘TERFs”, and on the other, the trans rights activists sometimes labelled “handmaidens”. Both are terms about […]
3 May, 2024
A little change on this website
In the past, this website was sort of my place to keep family and friends in touch. I first set it up in 2005, just before going away to Peru on travels. It was a great. Facebook had been invented but wasn’t generally available or popular yet, other platforms weren’t well thought through or scattered, […]
30 April, 2024
The astonishing power of modern computing
Being very old (or at least, that’s how I feel being in tech!) means that after coming up to nearly forty years in technology, I’ve seen some changes. My first computer at home, that I owned, that I could truly call my own, was a Dragon 32. It was a small, 32KB computer using the […]
28 December, 2023
The productivity paradox
I came across this chart recently and it gave me pause for thought as someone whose life work is designed to improve productivity. It shows that from 2008, although we know technologies have been growing in power, productivity growth suddenly dropped away from the trendline following the global financial crisis. Why? This is where I […]
15 February, 2022
Interesting times in the world of software
About a decade ago, I was at a conference and talking to a fellow developer (I still call myself one, even though I don’t code so much these days) when he giddily told me about the funding he’d got for building a new piece of software he was hoping would make it big. It was […]
26 February, 2012
Why You Should Be A Secularist
All these arguments about Britain being a ‘Christian’ country at heart (see Baroness Warsi here, here and most importantly here) are so much bull, and I’m tired of it. It’s part of an attack on the growing secularist movement but framed in such a way that it’s designed to scare the religious into thinking they’re going to be […]
10 July, 2011
Blog “Reboot”
Hello – here’s the refreshed blog. I’ve decided to revert to a more typical blog format, after many months of soul searching on the issue. I previously had a layout based on a framework we used at interconnect/it for a couple of clients But not only have I opted to switch to a blog layout, […]
17 May, 2011
Homage to Beatrice Warde or a bad idea?
I recently saw in the book “Just My Type” by Simon Garfield a poster by Beatrice Warde, the famous American born typographer who spent much of her career in the UK*. There seem to be many variations of typesetting for the poster, so I’ve no idea if she designed one herself or if it was […]
22 September, 2010
New Spectacu.la Discussion Updates
My colleague James has been extending the threaded comments plugin that I use(d)* on this site. It’s available from http://svn.wp-plugins.org/spectacula-threaded-comments/trunk for those of you with SVN clients, and for download and easy installation from WordPress.org and Spectacu.la within a few days. If you wish to test it out, feel free to comment here… It adds […]
1 September, 2010
F%@*!?g Hell
I’ve done Arica > San Pedro before, albeit with a change at Calama. Thing is, I just remembered one of the more annoying bits… Chile has concerns over various food pests and as a consequence you not only get checked for fruit, cheese etc on boarding the bus, there are also occassional checkpoints. So at […]
12 July, 2010
Live Threaded Commenting on WP
At Interconnect IT / Spectacu.la my colleague James has developed a new version of the popular Spectacu.la Threaded Comments plugin. It’s not yet in release form, but you can grab it from the WordPress.org repository via svn if you know how at http://svn.wp-plugins.org/spectacula-threaded-comments/trunk/ I’m bringing it up here because I’ve decided to trial the plugin […]
14 August, 2009
Old Reel to Reel Tapes
Found these in the garage and have popped them on eBay. Love the old style designs – so simple by today’s standards. Easy to reproduce too. Also realised just how many bands from this era were called “The” something or other. How things change…
8 June, 2009
Five Things Bing Does Better than Google
MS have, at last, come up with what appears to be a competent rival to Google. Here’s five ways in which it beats Google.
25 May, 2009
mySQL Database Search & Replace With Serialized PHP [Updated]
Ever needed to migrate a database to a new server or website (especially with WordPress and other PHP applications) and been stuck because when you do a search and replace some of the data seems to get corrupted?
4 November, 2007
Liverpool Web Designer
Just a little plug, really, to mention that if you’re interested in an unofficial, casual and behind-the-scenes look at the work we carry out at Interconnect IT, along with opinions on the market, head on over to the blog entitled Liverpool Web Designer. It’s hosted at WordPress.com a rather wonderful blogging site that lets you […]