Category archives: Design

Making the WordPress block editor even easier with preconfigured layout options that use standard Gutenberg blocks

This definitely falls into the This is cool! category. The Gutenberg Blocks Design Library is an awesome plugin that used standard blocks to create a range of useful layouts. What's great about this plugin is that it uses blocks that are part of the new WordPress Editor already, and combines them to create a collection…

A new, open source font designed for aircraft cockpit screens

I get a kick out of stuff like this: In 2010, Airbus initiated a research collaboration with ENAC and Université de Toulouse III on a prospective study to define and validate an “Aeronautical Font”: the challenge was to improve the display of information on the cockpit screens, in particular in terms of legibility and comfort…

Watch this if you’re still on the fence about the new WordPress Editor (aka Gutenberg)

If you're still unsure about the new WordPress Editor (aka Gutenberg), it's worth watching Matt Mullenweg's State of the Word keynote at the recent WordCamp US 2018 event in Nashville. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5b-N2RmxS8 You can find links to parts of the talk, along with slides, and commentary in Matt's post, here: https://ma.tt/2018/12/state-of-the-word-2018/ I've been using the new…

I like the new Twenty Nineteen theme, but …

WordPress 5.0 has been released, and with it the new default theme, Twenty Nineteen. I like the theme, except it doesn't support a sidebar, and all my widgets look like they're really packed in there when I test my site with the theme. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72xdCU__XCk WordPress 5.0 "Bebo" I'd love to have a theme that's pretty…

Colourful computer history

I love James Ball's colourful photographic history of computers. These machines are grossly under-powered compared to the devices we use today. Still, they're a wonderful reminder of how far we've come, and what lies ahead for us in technological terms. This Telefunken RA770 (circa 1970) is one of my favourites: Via The Stylish & Colorful…

Scientific papers shouldn’t be published as PDFs

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="469"] Examples of Jupyter notebooks[/caption] I enjoyed James Somers' article in the Atlantic titled "The Scientific Paper Is Obsolete" about how the standard format for scientific papers, namely PDF, is no longer the appropriate format for such data-intensive work. This is, of course, the whole problem of scientific communication in a nutshell:…
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