Author: Joshua

  • Config 2024

    I’ve been away from work the last week, so I’ve been catching up on little bits and pieces of Config 2024. The biggest thing to come out of it, and the most impactful to designers, is the AI elements. I haven’t had a chance to test things yet; I fired up Figma and updated, but…

  • The tech industrial complex

    At least I have my integrity. The machine may grind on, but I’m glad to have stepped off the treadmill. Joan’s openness on the topic of being involved in tech’s greater whole is so refreshing. To feel hampered, unable to share the words you actually feel, to couch everything in a specific language catered to…

  • Kindness and the taste gap

    Nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish somebody had told this to me — is that all of us who do creative work … we get into it because we have good taste. But it’s like there’s a gap, that for the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re…

  • Things 3 and Reminders

    Things 3 is my main to-do list. Its design is simple, elegant, and fits well with how my brain works. The funny thing (ha) is, Things 3 is not too dissimilar from Apple’s built-in Reminders app. The app’s layouts are strikingly similar; there are two columns: one for lists, one for tasks. The features are…

  • RSS and Email Subscription

    There are no ads, no engagement-thirsty UI patterns, no invasive interference. Just pure, uncut, personally-chosen content delivered in a calm, orderly environment. It’s the Marie Kondo method of information consumption – only content that sparks joy, delivered in a way that itself sparks joy. I’ve wrestled with how to share and consume media, separate from…

  • Interviewing as a proxy

    Unless we’re interviewing for people who have interviewing as their job, there isn’t a lot of evidence that doing a great job in the interview means you’re going to do a great job. Learning to interview decently is a skill I’ve acquired over years of effort. I’m glad I have it now, but agree it…

  • Default wins

    Something changed in me today with my password habits. After over a decade of using 1Password as my default for account login management, I finally had a break in my habits. I went to create a new account for a piece of software, saw Apple’s suggestion for a new password, and chose to use it.…

  • Easy vs useful

    There will forever be a struggle between the simplicity of a thing and how useful it is. I deal with this in software every day. I want something to be easy and I want it to do all the things I could dream of. Those two are, of course, complete opposites and generally impossible. Great…

  • Thinking and productivity

    Productivity methods, no matter which you turn to, revolve around intentionality. It’s applying a system, a tool, or a practice to a thing that could be made better. More efficient. But if applied without intention, none of that will help a bit. I’ve found that my ability to get something done is tied to more…

  • Owning my site

    As a followup on the previous post, I’m feeling so disconnected from WordPress these days in terms of my ability to tinker. Back in the day I worked very closely with my templates and files; editing things directly via Transmit in SFTP. Now with the new WordPress page editor I struggle to find where to…

  • Kirby as a CMS

    For the past year or so I’ve been on a journey to look at other options for publishing my writing. I’ve poked around with Ghost, Medium, and others.  I am currently working on checking and adapting the Kirby CMS system to my needs. It is very possible that I will migrate in the near future,…

  • Adobe‘s subscription goes long

    The US government is suing Adobe for allegedly hiding expensive fees and making it difficult to cancel a subscription. Whenever I start a monthly subscription I immediately go in and cancel it. If I need it I’ll renew again the next month. I I’ve been through the pain of trying to cancel an Adobe subscription…

  • Apple Passwords

    I’m excited about the passwords app from Apple. As a 1Password user for years, I’ve love great password management and, controversies aside, feel like 1P has nailed it.  I keep hundreds of logins locked away in my 1Password vault, protected by TouchID and a long safe password, known to my wife and I. I’ve been…

  • Canva for the rest of us

    You can’t blame individuals for taking the path of least resistance. Creating a Canva design takes minutes and requires no skill. It’s fast, cheap and gets the job done for cash-strapped small businesses, students, nonprofits and others who can’t afford a professional designer. An original design carefully crafted from scratch is always going to look…

  • Calendar troubles

    I both love calendars and find myself increasingly frustrated with them. An ideal calendar situation would allow me to add events on my work laptop, personal laptop, and iPhone. I also want to view events on my iPhone and Apple Watch widgets. With this requirement Google Calendar is out of the picture. It just doesn’t…

  • On the slow horizon

    I’m slowly getting back into video games. It’s a nice way to relax a bit at the end of the day. Currently I’m switching (very slowly over months) between the Switch, iPhone, iPad, PC, and PlayStation. The latter two are on loan from my brother with their own libraries.  This approach to playing games is…

  • Vision Pro for accessibility

    i got injured over the weekend and have lost about 80% of motion in both of my arms as I recover, even sitting at a laptop is too hard for me – but the Apple Vision Pro has truly been a life saver. The Vision Pro remains an intriging device. I’ve only used it a…

  • Growing up from Dribbble

    Dribbble became a staple for many designers. We scrolled endlessly, saved our favorites, and even posted a few. It was the promise of a better place where great ideas would thrive. Some of us even built freelance careeres of its job listings.  While I still love places like Dribbble for what they provided, and got…

  • Julia Chesbrough: Subscription business model for fractionals

    This week on Fractional we had the privilege of interviewing Julia, a freelance designer who has been running her own subscription based product design business. As a product designer myself I found this a lot of fun to chat with her. If you’re in the design field, or interested in design or starting your own…

  • Where did Apple get its content?

    Everything was fun and cool until they showed generative image creation that spits out slop “resembling” (strong word) other people; and in this post, everything was cool until they mentioned how – surprise! – Applebot had already indexed web content to train their model without publishers’ consent, who can only opt out now. John nailed my sentiment. The slop part had…