Writing

Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

  • Lithosphere: a theme seed

    I took some time over the holidays to plant a seed and create a new theme for this and a few sites. I had a few objectives this time around that I wanted to achieve and the biggest of these was to create a foundation I could experiment from over the coming year. Keep it…

  • The start of a block building journey

    Over the holiday break, I set myself a challenge of building an editor block. While I have worked within blocks and the editor, I have yet to make a block. The time had come to change that. Now, I want to be clear before I write this post that my JavaScript skills are still light…

  • Design Ops in Open Source

    This post is from a talk given as part of the Joint Futures conference and is the transcript presented. You can find the full slides here. Imagine a space where anyone can comment on everything you create. Where people across the world unite to create something given away for free. Where no matter what your skill you could…

  • Being Brave

    This post is from a talk given as part of the JS for WP conference and is the transcript presented. You can find the full slides here. The word ‘brave’, means different things to different people. What comes into your mind when you think of being brave? Is it of someone saving someone? Is it…

  • Thinking back to the role of design in enabling community

    As 2019 begins and the noise of social networks rings in our ears, I can’t but help reflect on the state of communities online. Can anything be salvaged from this current state of noise? What can design bring to the table in enabling communities. Back in 2013, I was lucky enough in May of that year…

  • Speaking when you are not made for speaking

    This weekend I spoke at WordCamp Manchester and again feel privileged for every chance I get to have space for my voice. This isn’t a talk where I share my slides and notes though, this is a little more personal. Speaking for me often seems something every part of me isn’t made for. This isn’t…

  • Gutenberg design basics

    Have you ever wondered what something is called within Gutenberg? This guide is meant to help by giving the names and the expected behaviour of some of the basic design elements. If you want to build blocks and extend Gutenberg, knowing what to use or not is important. This is meant as a starting point,…

  • Gutenberg inspired redesign

    I set myself a little holiday project this year, to consolidate and create a theme to use across a few of my sites. With this move I merged my two writing blogs into one and began a long needed update to my portfolio. I wanted to do this using Gutenberg and the Gutenberg theme as a…

  • The importance of triage practice

    Every designer at Automattic is writing a monthly design post, this month my post was about triage practice. For me the process is an integral part of being a designer. Triage for me is a constant part of my journey within Automattic and in the wider WordPress community. It continues to be really important to me…

  • Back to Qwerty

    A few months ago I began a journey to learn Colemak. Yesterday I switched back to Qwerty. There were a number of reasons I stepped off my adventure into Colemak, but perhaps its better to start at the why I began that journey. The luxury of trying In my job I have the luxury of…