Blogging and all that Malarkey

In this regular “Last week in the studio” series, I write about what I worked on during the previous week. Last week was quiet enough for me to take an afternoon off to enjoy the sunny weather, but I still got plenty done.

Militant was a British socialist newspaper associated with the Militant ‘tendency,’ a left-wing political movement whose members were ultimately expelled from the mainstream Labour Party. I looked back at how the Militant masthead logo evolved between 1964 and 1997.

For the past few years, unless a client insists otherwise, Eleventy has been my go-to for building websites. It gives me complete control without the overhead of a traditional CMS. Recently, I’ve pulled everything I’ve learned into my own Eleventy in a Box system for starting projects quickly, and boy-oh-boy, has it saved me a ton of time.

In this regular “Last week in the studio” series, I write about what I worked on during the previous week. Last week was a good one as I could concentrate on just one thing.

I’ve added a “spring mode” to my animated SVG desert. Flowers bloom, colours shift, and the whole scene feels more alive—all without creating a separate version. Instead, I’m layering changes on top of the same SVG and letting CSS and JavaScript do the work.

I thought it might be interesting to document what I work on during the week, so I started a regular “Last week in the studio” series. Last week was a bit productive but bitty.

The UK local and Senedd Cymru (Welsh Parliament) elections are a few weeks away. If, like me, you want to say a resounding “no” to far-right Reform and its bigotry, racism, and xenophobia, you might like to show it. My Stop Reform t-shirts are now back in my shop.

As well as showing off work in progress on Sho!io, I thought it might be interesting to document what I’ve been working on here. So I’m starting a new regular “Last week in the studio” series.

Although I feel deeply conflicted, I’ve been using AI coding tools more often to speed up particular aspects of development. Recently, I added an AGENTS.md to my setup so I don’t need to repeat my preferences.

I designed an information-rich website for The Shared Homeland Paradigm, using typography and graphics to clearly and visually explain complex political ideas. Here’s how I approached it.