Web - Sam Hardacre

Staying relevant

Last night saw a group of creative types congregate in Huddersfield for another HuddsDigitals meetup. As a change to the usual format (casual meet in a bar over drinks), we saw ourselves involved in a more structured panel/group discussion talking about keeping up-to-date in a fast moving industry. By

Web

Merging lives

Activity in social media has grown exponentially over the last ten years. It's gone from a way to simply keep in touch with friends to sharing scores of information with the world. The things we watch, read, the places we visit and the things we see in our day-to-day lives

Web

Altering my backend

Those of you with keen eyes will have noticed a few subtle changes have taken place. Those with even keener eyes will see the source code is different giving a big clue about the biggest change that has taken place... I've moved over to WordPress. For years I've avoided it.

Responsive Web Design

nomenclature

This morning has seen some lively debate in regard to few examples of so-called responsive text. I'm not going to discuss my issues with it from a practical point of view as most people on Twitter seem to agree with me anyway and James wrote what I was thinking much

Responsive Web Design

Responsive sketching

Yesterday I saw a few people linking to a sketchbook designed for doodling responsive design ideas, a pretty nice book to be fair but I find the idea of paying for a sketchbook for a single purpose very strange. Of course it is nice to be organised and keep all

Community

Why the web industry rocks

Yesterday morning started like a normal weekday. I waited with my wife at the station until her train arrived then headed off to work. In the five minutes it took me to walk from the station to the office, I had an idea for a project. I fired off an

Community

Out of context

I read a news item on the BBC this morning about an MP who used Twitter to voice an opinion on a recent court case. It resulted in a backlash but the offending tweet was said to have been taken out of context. Everyone has the right to voice their

Photography

McD, WTF?

Sometimes I get rather confused by things I see on the web. Some I can fathom out and apply some sort of explanation, others I struggle to understand at all. This photo has led to one such time where I'm confused by what people enjoy on the web. The photo

Web

A change of location

I first started using Gowalla about 18 months ago. I only used it for a few check-ins but I was addicted by the end of the first day. I loved the idea of keeping a record of the places I went to and enjoyed knowing where friends were at any

Web

Fleeing the nest

Back in 2003, I knew next to nothing about the web except where to find movie trailers and do research for the occasional essay at college. I knew a lot about sinking beer at the local and that's where I met Martin, the CEO of Connected, a web development company

Community

'moff to DIBI

This'll be my third (and likely last) conference this year so I hope to make it a good one. I'm actually a rather shy person when it comes to meeting new people so I'm rarely the one to start conversations unless it's with someone I'm familiar with. That said, if

Web

Epic Fail

Okay, so Epic Fail is a rather over zealous title but it's how I feel about my lame attempt at Ideas of March. I've been bubbling with ideas and things to write about but just haven't had time to sit down and get some solid bits of writing done. I

Community

Ideas of March

Pretty much every day while eating lunch, I spend some time trawling my Twitter stream and going through my Delicious network for things of interest to check out. This particular lunchtime, I came across a post by Drew McLellan expressing his support of an idea spawned by Chris Shiflett, going

Web

Playing with the logo

I've been using the same logo in varying forms for about three or four years now but from time-to-time I start scribbling on a page to see if anything comes out of it. There is never really any intention to replace the existing logo, it's just an exercise to get

Community

New Adventures

Last week saw Nottingham experience an influx of designers and geeks for the eagerly awaited New Adventures in web design conference, the brainchild of Simon Collison, a day of ideas, thoughts and for me, a touch of RSI in my right hand... A week before the conference I was contacted

Web

Get TextPattern on the move

My mate and local web designer, Oliver Ker, is a long time fan of a particular flavour of CMS called TextPattern. I tried it once for a project but for some reason I found ExpressionEngine easier to get my head around. Anyway, for the last few months (or possibly longer,

User Experience

Sainsbury's missing a trick?

This morning I went to my local Sainsbury's to pick up a few ingredients for a birthday meal I'm cooking for Luisa. I wandered around with my shopping list and picked up what I could find. After my shopping trip, whilst eating my breakfast I decided to look up the

Web

Oh hai journal

For the last year or so I've been using this site to experiment with design, giving each entry a unique look. When I first started out doing it, I knew it was going to be a time consuming task to publish a post so I resigned myself to writing at

Web

Simply delicious

I'm a relatively new user of Delicious, despite signing up some time ago, I only actually started to use it regularly in October last year. Since then I've become addicted to it. It's been almost a year since I bookmarked anything on a local machine and it's proven useful on

Web

The beauty of an empty inbox

Over the last few years working at Connected, we've gone through a change in process and attitude to all things digital. What was once stored on one's own machine is now stored up in the cloud and pretty much nothing is hidden from one another. Part of this move to

Web

COFA interview Brendan Dawes

I first saw Brendan Dawes speak on the Future of Web Design Tour in Leeds. Fantastic speaker with a very inspiring approach to design.

Web

How (and how not) to treat your customers

My girlfriend currently resides way down south in Kent and once or twice a month I make the journey down to see her and her family for a weekend. The weekend just gone was no different, I caught the train down on Friday evening and for pure simplicity (as well