David Coveney

A personal blog transitioning into an exploration of the intersection of design, technology and ethics

Tag: sea

  • Don’t design in customer traps on your systems

    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…

  • A new manifesto for the web

    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…

  • Design Dilemmas: When bathrooms become battlegrounds

    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…

  • Off-Cloud Backup for Heroku apps – a possible answer

    Off-Cloud Backup for Heroku apps – a possible answer

    The Heroku platform is an absolutely fantastic way to have to not bother with devops within a small development company. We’ve been using it at interconnect for years now, and whilst it’s not entirely perfect, it takes away one set of headaches and does so at a reasonable cost. All the services offer backups, and…

  • Steps and missteps on my path out of poverty

    Steps and missteps on my path out of poverty

    At 18 I was skint and got made homeless. It took a lot of graft, patience and mistakes to get out of that and into a moderate middle class lifestyle. Here’s how.

  • What a difference a tyre makes – mini review of Yokohama Advan Neovas on track

    What a difference a tyre makes – mini review of Yokohama Advan Neovas on track

    Yesterday, finally, after a break of nearly four years, I returned to the race track. Not for a competitive event, but for a track day. And I learned a little… The scene has changed. Maybe. Track days were mostly full of road cars. Lotus Elises were hugely popular, but you’d see a collection of Porsches, various…

  • Finding a missing person in South America (and elsewhere)

    Finding a missing person in South America (and elsewhere)

    I promised, ages ago, that I’d write up some tips on how to find somebody who’d gone missing in South America. Recently I had an email from somebody in the same situation which has spurred me into action. Since 1997 I’ve found or been found by my mother, my brothers and my sister. Here I’m…

  • 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,…

  • Freedom of Information is Abused

    In 2000 in the UK, the Freedom of Information Act gave us all the ‘right to know’ what our public bodies were up to.  We can ask for information about a huge range of items, and it’s a great idea.  Information should, in my view, be as open and transparent as possible. But there’s a…

  • San Pedro de Atacama revisited.

    I remember San Pedro as being quite sleepy, with little accommodation available, but also with plenty of tourists and bars. It was sunny, warm, and pleasant. This time around it’s somewhat less sleepy, a lot bigger (perhaps 2x? 3x?)…however, it’s the off-season and that means few tourists compared to the number of restaurants, so dining…