Eclectic Dreams

Getting a hosts file onto an Android Emulator

Matt — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 14:36:15 +0000

So we’re doing some mobile/responsive design work and I wanted to check what they might look like on various devices before we actually got to full testing. Fortunately having a Mac means the iPhone emulator is a mere 3GB download away in the iPhone SDK… And great, it picks up the systems /etc/hosts so all [...]

Python, Pylons, Dads and Development

Matt — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 17:52:56 +0000

Way back in February, I did a quick talk at the Show & Tell event on a new side project of mine (slides over here) and forgot to publish this related blog post, hey ho! Here it is in reduced form: Finder is simple web app to help parents discover and catalogue local child-friendly businesses, [...]

Thoughts on a Decade of Professional Web Jobs

Matt — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 23:12:52 +0000

Apparently I seem to have lost a decade somewhere… Maybe down the back of the sofa? No? Oh, that’s right, it went mostly on building websites, with occasional sitting in pubs ranting about usability. I thought, given that it’s 2010 and clearly the future, it would be worth distilling some of the wisdom of ten years [...]

What would you build to save the planet?

Matt — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 20:02:31 +0000

That’s the rather broad, but exciting, question that Multipack are attempting to answer tomorrow. Let me explain… The whole thing began back at the Multipack Presents event last year, Being Green, where Paul gave a presentation about his frustrations with waste in the web industry (particularly conferences like SXSW and their regularly-binned goodie bags). Paul envisioned [...]

Twitter and your new job

Matt — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 21:49:37 +0000

Recently I gave up the life of a University web developer and moved to the exiting world of semantic web and library web services. One of the nice things about the whole experience has been that Twitter has worked as a great bridge into the new role. It’s that whole ambient intimacy thing. Before I’d [...]