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Ever since Piccalilli started to get traction, I’ve always seen CSS-Tricks, Smashing Magazine and A List Apart (among others) as peers. We all help each other behind the scenes and importantly, back each other. When CSS-Tricks was initially acquired by DigitalOcean, I was really happy for Chris. The work that he’d put into that publication […]
My music collection is ever-growing and I have a habit of listening to the same stuff on repeat. Mostly, it’s overwhelm-related because as you can see by this album covers view, there’s a lot to choose from. I thought RSS could be useful here, so I wrote a little feed that picks a random album, […]
Recently, during a very relaxing holiday in Cyprus, I had a revelation of sorts: my brain was rotting. I know this because I read a lot of books on holiday. It’s the only time I do read books! Well, I did read a lot on holiday, but the last couple of years I really struggled […]
Pretty grim day of news in the industry today, with Salma Alam-Naylor stepping away from developer relations work permanently, Josh Comeau taking a sabbatical from making courses and GSAP’s once-vibrant forums descending into a ghost town. The reason your token guzzler “produces” anything that could be described as “good” is because of the years of […]
I’m a huge Zelda sicko and recently — maybe it’s the buzz of Ocarina of Time being re-made — I’ve decided to play the games in timeline order. Well, almost, because I’ve already started Minish Cap, which also inspired this little challenge because I forgot how rad the four swords stuff is. I’ve beaten a […]
I really like this blog by Barry Prendergast. I’m getting quite into the AT protocol stuff and their writing is really helping with my broader understanding of how this stuff works. Barry does a great job of shining a light on not just the technical stuff, but everything else too, which is great because this […]
Graze, the company that do really good stuff around AT protocol user controlled algorithms, have announced that they’re trying to “Billionaire proof inference” by creating an AI cooperative called co/core. It’s quite an interesting idea, where users share their own personal spare compute, from devices like an old MacBook, with a network of other users […]
Was it all a bit of a faff to integrate? Yes. Did I get rate limited multiple times? Absolutely. But do I think it’s worth doing? I think this is going to do *wonders* for website discovery, so without a doubt.
Nothing fancy is needed here and certainly nothing “smart”, but my one actual use for an Apple Watch — as a chill alarm clock — is silly really. I’m so fed up of my Apple Watch, so has anyone got a recommendation for an alarm clock that: Thanks!
You know what I’m talking about.
I’m bored of hearing about it, bored of seeing people I respect(ed) fawn over it and it’s really not doing my mental health any good. I’m going wait for the inevitable bubble burst and then be ready to help people burned by this harmful technology via Set.studio and Piccalilli. We’ve recently made our viewpoint very […]
I only discovered them in July 2025 and I’ll let this last.fm chart do the rest to illustrate the point. I think this chart sums me up as: Anyway, I think they rip. They’re a bit cheesy, sure, but this record especially sounds massive, so if you’re into metalcore etc, give ’em a try.
I made a prototype 8 years ago and I’d love to see what people could do with that idea now, 8 years on..
I’ve talking about 2026 being the year of the website, so I’m actually doing it now. I’m completely redesigning and re-building my personal website and doing it all in the open, so I hope you’ll follow along.
Less of a retrospective and more of a call to action.
Unlike a lot of places in tech, my company, Set Studio/Piccalilli has no outside funding. Bootstrapped is what the LinkedIn people say, I think. It’s been a hard year this year. A very hard year. I think a naive person would blame it all on the seemingly industry-wide attitude of “AI can just do this […]
It was one year to the day that Complete CSS went live. It was Piccalilli’s debut course at the time. Now we have three courses. Anyway, I just wanted to mark this moment and take another opportunity to thank everyone who has purchased Complete CSS. It’s changed everything for us and your continued support of […]
I delivered my talk for the last time at beyond tellerrand last week, so I thought I’d just mark it on my blog. I did it first at ffconf in response to a chat Remy and I had, so it’s only right that the video comes from there. Here’s my favourite image captured, from beyond […]
Alright, we recently launched our second course on Piccalilli and it’s completely different to my course, Complete CSS. I just want to break down why I think that’s important, along with how you teach making a huge difference.
I published an email for our JavaScript for Everyone campaign and thought it should be published more widely, for the community too.
I just want an app for iPhone and Mac that: I’ve tried OpenVibe and I’ll be honest, it’s cool, but the UI is not for me. Any ideas?
I’m making some demos for an article and I wanted one of those smooth gradients. It’s still not quite possible with standard CSS, so I used this trusty resource. I generated my gradient (truly who here hand-writes them) and wanted to grab the background property only. 🚨 Strobe warning I can’t select text as it’s […]
I’ve just come back from a nice week away in Cyprus with my family and to ensure I had a proper break I deleted Bluesky, Mastodon and LinkedIn off my phone with a view to putting them back on my return. I’m not gonna do that though. LinkedIn is obviously a work thing and I’m […]
Recently we ran a survey that turned out some interesting results. We decided to do the survey off the back of the success of redesigning Piccalilli last year and launching our first course. The response to all of that blew our mind (thank you). We’re launching two more courses this year: JavaScript for Everyone and […]
It’s bloody scary setting up an Open Collective and hoping people will back you when you’re trying to do something tangibly good. Stuff like this really fills me with hope. Clan KN, I can’t find any way to contact you, so I’ll thank you here on my personal website. If we hurt someone, their pain […]
I said we’d work in the open and I mean it. This content is on my blog for now because I’m literally building the infrastructure on Piccalilli as we speak. Let’s have a look at what’s happened prior to this point: This clip shows the ticket I’m working from. The aim is: Today’s task I’ve […]
I’ve been talking about being fed up making the rich, richer on this blog recently. We’ve started doing something about it, which I blogged about over on Piccalilli. I’d love you to read it. I also Posted On The Work Account™ but here’s the thread again, on my blog… We’ve helped so many companies grow […]
This is a niche post for the dozens of us that listen to vinyl via AirPlay/HomePods. I used Airchord for ages. It’s fantastic and very clever. I do find it cuts out quite a bit. I stumbled upon Quanta today and it works impeccably. It scrobbles to Last.FM too, somehow. For £3, it’s a steal.
We quite recently set up advertising on Piccalilli, but explicitly not in the tracking users and polluting the reading experience sense. I was (and am still not) comfortable with rolling ads because they have such a bad reputation — rightly. The problem is, running Piccalilli is not free, so the idea is that ads sustain […]
I’ve always been a bit meh about webrings but I’ve noticed they’ve evolved a bit, like this one. I clicked through to Ariel’s site because I knew she would have nailed the UI for that typically, footer-based nav. Imagine my surprise when I found this interesting alternative instead. It’s really cool because I can see […]
I’m absolutely blown away by the response to I’m getting fed up of making the rich, richer. It’s brought some real positive vibes my way, so thanks for that. So many people have said they’ll back this sort of movement too, which I really appreciate. We’ve got so much work to do to get this […]
After being rather miserable about the work we do vs the work we want to do, I have come up with a possible solution that helps everyone.
There’s a cool service that bridges bluesky and mastodon accounts together called Bridgy Fed. It’s pretty cool because you can interact with accounts across platforms, from the platform you’re happy in. That’s bluesky for me, personally, but I know a lot of folks are happy on mastodon. That’s great, we should all be happy, especially […]
If you head over to Complete CSS and you’re in a country that we support for Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), you should see a discount code. I think we’ve got the vast majority of them but I think we’re also missing some. If you normally get a PPP discount for courses and we’re not offering […]
I was lucky enough to appear on the legendary Shoptalk Show podcast to talk client work, courses and Piccalilli. It’s been 5 years since I was last on it, so it was extra nice to speak with Chris and Dave again IRL. Check it out! They also put the episodes on Youtube now, so if […]
I’m from Yorkshire so this recipe is right, but so is yours if your Yorkshire puddings are good. There’s so many different ways and ratios. This one works really well for me. You want to be making this batter at least an hour before you need it. Allowing it to rest at room temperature means […]
Man, I remembering this being a big deal for me. I was lucky enough to be in the last (I think) .NET Mag (pour one out) 5 years ago. Timehop reminded me earlier. Screw it, here’s a transcribed version. Meet the educator and web designer who’s helping the community via an astonishing array of side […]
You can do what you want with your website and that’s what I (try) to do, that’s for sure. I stuck a music collection in here because why not? Yeh I’ve got a blog and an about page — y’know, the usual stuff — but the thing I really like is my links page. Everything […]
I’ve finally watched the finale of season 2 of Severance. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone, but I’ve got two sentences here that may or may not break your brain. Spoilers, don’t open if you haven’t watched At the end, it was Helena, not Helly. Gemma has no idea Mark is severed, so […]
I am bad at posting on my website, admittedly so I thought I’d just acknowledge some work we’ve done that I’m really proud of. First up, we’ve completely rebranded and redesigned the Set Studio website. The much-loved industry-focused design worked really well for, well, The Industry™, but did not do us many favours in communicating […]
I love newsletters. They feel intimate, focused and I love reading them, especially on a weekend like today. The problem with newsletters is they can clog up your inbox. Your inbox is often a source of stress too. That’s certainly true for me. There is another option though: RSS. It’s been around forever and a […]
Do you know what I want — what I really really want? A little shortcut on my phone and Mac on the share sheet that does the following: prompt me for a title and a description, smoosh all that together and give me the following: The dream scenario then would be that it prepends it […]
I’ve just read last year’s wrap up and it made me quite sad. I really was in a rough spot, mentally. What makes me the most sad though is I couldn’t honestly tell you I’m in a much better place. Things are on the up though. I don’t really have a will to sit here […]
This week, I published Complete CSS. After 15+ years of teaching, architecting and delivering CSS for global organisations and startups, I’ve collated that experience into an extensive course. It’s been by far the biggest piece of work I’ve — sorry, we’ve — ever delivered in this industry and I just wanted to acknowledge that for […]
I’ve tried Notion, Obsidian, Things, Apple Reminders, Apple Notes, Jotter and endless other tools to keep me organised and sure, Notion has stuck around the most because we use it for client stuff, but for todo lists, all of the above are way too complicated. I’ve given up this week and gone back to paper […]
I am not good actually at this social media thing so messed up my accounts, moving stuff around for piccalilli. Anywho, this is where we’re at. My mastodon account is messed up. If we’re mutuals I am either following you or you are following me and very likely, not at the same time lol. Sorry […]
To celebrate valentines day, here’s 14 ways you can supercharge your workflow with AI