The Garden
A collection of essays, notes, talks, podcasts, and half-baked explorations I'm always tending to.
The Expanding Dark Forest and Generative AI
Causal Islands, Toronto+4
Possible Futures for AI in Interaction Design
Complementary
Becoming an AI-native Designer
Dive Club
On Opening Essays, Conference Talks, and Jam Jars
How to open pieces of narrative non-fiction writing, conference talks, and sticky jars
A Collection of Design Engineers
Collecting people I know who work at the intersection of design and engineering, in an attempt to figure out what a design engineer is
Speculative Calendar Events
Designing tentative calendar events to solve complex scheduling problems
Why You Own an iPad and Still Can't Draw
The failure of drawing materials without mediums and meat
Nope
BBC's Digital Human
Computational Notebooks
Shareable, browser-based documents that can compile and run code
The Dark Forest and Generative AI
Clerestory
The Dark Forest and Generative AI
Proving you're a human on a web flooded with generative AI content
The Dark Forest and the Cozy Web
An illustrated diagram exposing the inner layers of the dark and cozy web
A Digital Anthropology Reading List
A few favourite books from the field of digital anthropology
A Picture Worth a Thousand Programmes
React Live, Amsterdam+2
The Block-Paved Path to Structured Data
Structured Content Conference, San Fransisco
Building a Second Brain: The Illustrated Notes
Illustrated notes on the Building A Second Brain course
Interoperable Personal Libraries and Ad Hoc Reading Groups
Exploring ways to build social infrastructure around books and reading on the open web
Assumed Audiences
Naming your invisible audiences to free yourself from unspoken obligations
Algorithmic Transparency
Algorithms that make their reasoning visible
Pink, Soft, Glittering Developers
A collection of observations on the rise of soft, sparkly, baby pink aesthetics among developers
A Meta-Tour of This Site
A video tour through how I build the old version of this site
Illustrating Gatsby's Key Concepts
Illustrated notes on the key concepts of how Gatsby.js works
Making Programming Visual, Spatial, and Learnable
What's wrong with linear, static programming mediums and how might we improve them?
Visual Programming
Metamuse
Natureculture, Moral Purity, and Cultural Boundaries
Why there is nothing natural about the idea of 'nature'
The Echo & Narcissus Writing Club
A Hyperlink Academy writing club where we mimic the work of others
The Linear Oppression of Note-taking Apps
What we lose when our digital notes remove the freedom to move
Unique Roles of a Developer
She's in Tech
Fetishism & Mechanical Keyboards
Developer self-expression through coloured switches, keystroke actuation, and LED light displays
Growing Digital Gardens and Tending the Web
The Swyx Mixtape
Are Data Unions the Future of Data?
Illustrated notes on how data unions work and what problems they might solve
Technology as Process
Hope in Source
The Bare Essentials of Greensock
Notes on the basics of the Greensock animation llibrary
Digital Anthropology, Digital Gardens and Illustrated Notes
RoamFM
A Naive Exploration of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning
Notes on the academic field of CSCL and major papers in the discipline
Visually Workshopping the AWS Cloud
Some insights into how I collaborative with experts to create illustrated notes on technical topics
Embodied Knowledge - Part 1
Hope in Source
The Power of Mental Models
React Podcast
What the Fork is xState?
Illustrated notes on how to build state machines with the xState library
The Art and Craft of Gatsby Themes
Illustrated notes on building Gatsby themes
Immutable Data with Immer and Personal Assistant Bots
Illustrated notes on how work with immutable data in the Immer state library
A Fresh Serving of JavaScript ES2019
Illustrated notes on the new language changes in JavaScript ES2019
Building VR Apps with React360
Illustrated notes on building VR web apps with React360
Turning Technical Concepts into Approachable Illustrated Metaphors
egghead.io Podcast
What the Fork is Babel?
Illustrated notes on how Babel works
JavaScript's ...spread Operator
Illustrated notes on how JavaScript's spread operator works
Aesthetic Command Lines with Hyper, Spaceship, and Oh My Zsh
My fairly banal, basic, but beautiful command line setup
Leaving Elicit
Reflections on two years of working at Elicit and why it's time to leave
Faking William Morris, Generative Forgery, and the Erosion of Art History
Buying fake William Morris prints on Etsy and other early signs of epistemological collapse
The Finest Narrative Non-Fiction Essays
Narrative essays that I consider ideal models of the medium
AI Tool Design and Tending a Digital Garden
Sketchnote Army
Ambient Co-presence
Creating a subtle, peripheral, and synchronous sense of shared space and context on the web
Language Models, AI, and Digital Gardens
Shoptalk Show
Squish Meets Structure
Smashing Meets AI, Online+2
Why We Write and Language Models
Clerestory
Teenage Skeuomorphic Desktop Designs
An archive of my high school desktop designs, circa 2009
Empty Pointers and Constellations of AI
On the fuzziness of calling things “artificial intelligence” and moving the goalposts
Tools for Thought as Cultural Practices, not Computational Objects
On seeing tools for thought through a historical and anthropological lens
Programming Portals
Small, scoped areas within a graphical interface that allow users to read and write simple programmes
Joining Ought
A new role at an AI research lab working on tools for open-ended reasoning
Daily Notes Pages
Daily notes as a frictionless default input for personal knowledge management systems
On Digital Gardening
Reverb
Metaphors We Web By
A history of our metaphorical understanding of the web
The Eponymous Laws of Programming
A collection of laws named for specific people in the field of programming
Frequently Asked Questions
Questions I am often asked to answer
The Best Illustration Books and Courses
My favourite resources for learning to draw and developing your visual thinking skills
Tracking Humanity
The introduction to my thesis on the Quantified Self movement and the culture of self-tracking
A Brief Introduction to Digital Anthropology
A discipline at the intersection of cultural anthropology and binary logic
Plebeian Programming with Keyboard Maestro
How to write macros without touching the terminal
The Cultural Anthropology of React
React Rally, Online
Tending Evergreen Notes in Roam Research
A walkthrough of how I manage and tend Evergreen notes in Roam
A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden
A newly revived philosophy for publishing personal knowledge on the web
Douglas, Dirt, and Matter Out of Place
Mary Douglas defined dirt as matter out of place – the crossing of boundaries
Problematic Proteins
How to offend everyone with boundary-crossing steak and nuggets
Meat Planet: The Illustrated Notes
Visualising the cultural narratives around cultured meat
A Short History of Bi-Directional Links
Seventy years ago we dreamed up links that would allow us to create two-way, contextual conversations. Why don't we use them on the web?
Organic, Local, Artisan Data Storage
Data is currently dislocated – our narratives and metaphors around it try to convince us it is immaterial
Embodied Knowledge - Part 2
Hope in Source
The Gift Economy
Illustrated notes on the idea of Gift Economies and cultural historys of economic exchange
Growing the Evergreens
Illustrated notes on the concept of 'Evergreen notes' and how to write them
Silent Synchronous Reading Sessions
Notes on how to run silent meetings and reading sessions
Drawing the Invisible: React Explained in Five Visual Metaphors
Women of React, Online+1
Open Source as a Gift Economy
Hope in Source
How to Become a Neo-Cartesian Cyborg
Building a Second Brain Meetup, London
A Journey into Vue-Router
Illustrated notes on how routing works in Vue.js
JavaScript Bits You Skipped the First Time Around
Illustrated notes on advanced but fundamental topics in JavaScript
Speaking the GraphQL Query Language
Illustrated notes on the basics of the GraphQL query language
The JAMStack, Gatsby & Contentful
Illustrated notes on the JAMstack, Gatsby & Contentful
A Shelfish Starter Guide to Databases
The absolute minimum you need to know about data storage
How Are Compilers & Transpilers Different?
Illustrated notes on how compilers and transpilers are different
JSX is a Lovechild
Illustrated notes on how JSX in React works
Barefoot Developers, AI, and End-user programming
Localfirst.fm
Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers
The emerging golden age of home-cooked software, barefoot developers, and why the local-first community should help build it
Visual Storytelling in Tech, Designing for Al, and the Future of Coding
Devtools FM
Spinning Worlds, Seasickness, and Dealing with Vestibular Neuritis
Gaining a strange disease and losing my ability to see straight
Gathering Structures
How to gather people and create communities in ways that are low-stress and high-payoff
Historical Trails
Giving people a visible, useful trail of where they've been over the course of an exploratory journey
On Digital Gardening
The Informed Life
Language Model Sketchbook, or Why I Hate Chatbots
Sketchy ideas for interfaces that play with the novel capabilities of language models
Neologisms
A collection of interesting words that have recently been coined
Reverse Outlining with Language Models
Using language models to generate reverse outlines of writing drafts
Tools for Thought as Cultural Practices, not Computational Objects
Google Tools for Thought Symposium, Online+2
Command K Bars
Command line bars you can quickly summon with a keyboard shortcut
Folk Interfaces
People reappropriating existing software to solve their own unique problems
Positioning Elements & Scrollytelling in CSS
Notes on how to use the position property in CSS to make scrollytelling stories
Want to be Great at UX Research? Take a Cue from Cultural Anthropology
The Stack Overflow Podcast
Programmable Notes
Agent-based note-taking systems that can prompt and facilitate custom workflows
Spatial Web Browsing
Adding spatial affordances to the experience of browsing the web
Epistemic Disclosure
Providing clear metadata on the epistemic validity of content
The Pattern Language of Project Xanadu
Project Xanadu as a pattern language, rather than a failed software project
Pattern Languages in Programming and Interface Design
Notes on pattern languages and Christopher Alexander's legacy on software programming
A Metaphorical Reading Collection
A collection of my favourite books on conceptual metaphor theory
New Harvest & Illustrating the Cultivated Meat Podcast
Illustrations made for a set of episodes of the Cultivated Meat podcast
Fortress of Solitude
Frontend Heroes
Paleolithic Nostalgia
Longing for the paleolithic past in the Anthropocene
Digital Gardening for Non-Technical Folks
How to build a digital garden without touching code
What App is That?
A guide to the apps and tools I use to create illustrations
Digital Disembodiment
Hope in Source
How to Draw Invisible Programming Concepts: Part I
A case study showing how I make illustrations for abstract programming concepts
Painting Roam Research with Custom CSS
How to customise Roam Research with your own CSS themes
Transclusion and Transcopyright Dreams
The lost permissioning and copyright system of the Web
A History of Cyborgs
Notes on the history of cyborgs and why the idea still holds historical weight in Western narratives
GreenSock Animations with React Hooks
How to use the Greensock animation library inside React using React hooks
Synecdoche: Drawing the Part for the Whole
Notes on the metaphorical varieties of synecdoche and metonymy
The Knowledge Hydrant
Illustrated notes on the Knowledge Hydrant guide to collaborative learning
What the Fork is React Suspense?
Illustrated notes on how React suspense works
Fixing Common Git Mistakes
Illustrated notes on common mistakes people make in Git, and how to fix them
A Chat with Henry Zhu on OSS & Gift Economies
Notes from my podcast episode Open Source and Gift Economies on Maintainers Anonymous
Defend Your Cookies with Essential Web Security Tactics
Illustrated notes on the essentials of web security
What the Fork is Rust?
Illustrated notes on the core concepts in Rust
Building Custom React Hooks
Illustrated notes on building custom React hooks
Meet the Robowaiter APIs Serving Us Data
Everything you need to know about what API's are and how they work
Instachatting with Vue & Socket.io
Illustrated notes on how to implement web sockets with Vue.js and Socket.io
Testing Apps with Cypress
Illustrated notes on how to test web apps with Cypress
A Fruitful Guide to JavaScript's Comparison Operators
Illustrated notes on how JavaScript's comparison operators work
What the Fork is the React Virtual DOM
Illustrated notes on how the React virtual DOM works