Adactio: Journal

The Firefox team are asking us to weigh in on proposals for Interop 2027—what features should browsers be concentrating on implementing or improving. Here are my top five: Web app installation via <install> and navigator.install(). Prompts the user to install a progressive web app. Speculation Rules API. Hints to the browser to proactively download pages in the background so they appear instantly when the user navigates to them. CSS var() in size container queries. Such as @container (width >=…

Hot on the heels of reading and enjoying The Mountain In The Sea, I picked up Ray Nayler’s next work, this tightly constructed novella. Once again it deals with inter-species communication. This time it’s de-extincted mammoths. Once again, it’s set in the relatively near future. Many of the same gadgets reappear in this book. It may well be set in the same world. There’s a tangible atmosphere to this story. But despite it’s high-tech premise, it’s not escapist. The narrative is driven by the…

Back in 2019, I read the book Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness by Peter Godfrey-Smith and said: I really enjoyed this evolutionary tale. It’s equal parts biology and philosophy. I will never look at cephalopods quite the same way again. Reading Ray Nayler’s The Mountain In The Sea reminded so much of that book that I couldn’t resist flipping ahead to the acknowledgements at the back. Sure enough, Other Minds gets a big shout-out. But that’s only part of…

The term “no-brainer” refers to a suggestion that is so compelling that it would be foolish to even consider not doing it. I came across a no-brainer recently, thanks to Matt Hobbs: Make all UK Government websites free to access without mobile data charges. When I was done slapping my forehead at how obvious this proposal is, I signed the petition. If you’re a UK resident, you should do the same. And then spread the word. This is the kind of proposal that I imagine any politician would be happy…

In some ways, the short story is the ideal format for science fiction. If science fiction is all about ideas, a short story is a way to take an idea and play it out without any obligation to build a bigger world around it. But short stories can work the other way too. If you have a bigger world that’s been established in full-length novels, a short story can be just the right format for exploring another corner of that world. In Lake Of Souls: The Collected Short Fiction by Ann Leckie, you get…

On this day, twenty five years ago, I wrote my first journal entry on this website. Twenty five years! A quarter of a century! That’s a significant portion of the lifetime of the World Wide Web itself. Actually, this site did exist before September 30th, 2001 but it was very different. You can still look at the very first version of adactio.com if you want to wallow in the glory days of framesets and DHTML. But it was twenty five years ago that I started publishing my thoughts here, making…

If you’re anything like me, you’re sick of hearing about so-called “AI”. We are not a fringe. The majority consensus amongst actual regular people is that this is being forced down our throats and stuffed into our eyes and ears. That’s why it pains me that I’m about to add more fecal matter onto the ever-growing pile of shit by writing yet another hot take related to large language models. If you stop reading now, I don’t blame you. In fact, I applaud you. Anyway… The last time I made the…

It was the autumnal equinox a few days ago. For a moment our planet was balanced perfectly, with everyone experience twelve hours of daylight and twelve hours of darkness. Here in the northern hemisphere, the days will get shorter and the nights will get longer until the winter solstice. Summer is officially over. I saw it out with my now-annual trip to Spain for the Cáceres Irish Fleadh. It was, as always, great fun. Nothing beats playing loads of tunes into the early hours while sitting…

This is Ian McEwan’s second foray into science fiction after his alternative history novel, Machines Like Me. I enjoyed that book but it was far too eager to show off its worldbuilding—at one point a character practically looks at the camera like Tim in The Office. There’s a bit of that in What We Can Know with its expository passages explaining what’s been happening in the 21st and 22nd centuries, but it mostly works. As with all McEwan’s work, it’s extremely English. He just has to have some…

I’ve mentioned the ritual that concludes the week at Clearleft: At the end of every Thursday afternoon at Clearleft, we wrap up the working week with an all-hands (video) meeting. Yes, I know that the week finishes on Friday, but Fridays have been declared the no-meetings day at Clearleft: a chance to concentrate on heads-down work without interruption. Besides, some of us don’t work on Fridays. So Thursday really is the new Friday. That gathering usually finishes with a little quiz (like the…

I’m an invited expert at the World Wide Web Consortium. That sounds impressive, but it isn’t. Anyone can become an invited expert. The fact that I am now one proves it. You apply to be an invited expert and once that application is approved, you’re in. So you too could and probably should be an invited expert to a working group at the W3C. I was strongly encouraged to become an invited expert in the web applications working group after weighing in on the matter of installable web apps (or…

Looking for something to do in Brighton this weekend? I’ve got ya covered. Come to the excellent Prince Albert pub on Trafalger Street at 8pm on Saturday, September 5th. Head upstairs with your ticket. There you will be treated to an excellent triple bill. First up is Figure In The Half Light AKA Charlie McConnochie: Expect dreamy, fractured songs of dark and light. Then it’s The Self Help Group: Americana-influenced vocal harmonies, emotional tales and intertwining melodies. The headliners are…

I try to see my friends Dan and Sue as often as I can. The problem is that I live in Brighton and they live in Baltimore (that’s Baltimore, Maryland not Baltimore, West Cork). We sometimes make it work though. Like crossing the Atlantic together. Dan and Sue were in Italy last week. Their son Rex was attending a mandolin academy in Acqui Terme as part of the terrific Mando for Kids programme. As a mandolin player myself, this very much aligned with my interests. Jessica and I flew out to meet…

Remember when I wrote about a session I was at in Belfast where I was sitting next to a fiddler who it turned out had written a book and then I ended up reading the book? Quite an unusual occurrence, right? Definitely not the kind of thing that’s likely to happen twice (you can see where this is going…) During the Fleadh, I went to quite a few sessions at Cumann Cultúrtha Mhic Reachtain. I ended up chatting to a fiddler named Rus from New Mexico. He told me about a book he had written twenty…

I went to plenty of great sessions when I was in Belfast. One of the best was during Belfast Tradfest, out at The Hatfield with Bríd Harper, Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh, and Michael Rooney. I ended up sitting next a lovely local fiddler named John. I saw him again the next day when I was at Ulster University for my workshop. He had a stand there, selling a new book of tunes that he had published. It’s called Pass It On. I couldn’t resist buying a copy. Then he mentioned that he also had a few copies…

Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey comes at just at the right time for me. I spent the last two years reading the Robert Fagles translation, finishing it just a few months ago. When I heard that Christopher Nolan was adapting Homer’s poem, I thought it made perfect sense. I really like the way that he plays around with flashbacks and narrative structure—something that The Odyssey is absolutely stuffed with. Meanwhile, inspired by Madeline Miller’s Circe, I’ve also been reading lots…

When I was immersed in the Irish language for a week in Donegal last month, I made plenty of mistakes. But there’s one mistake that I’m actually quite pleased I made. The emphasis at Oideas Gael is on conversational Irish, so our teacher would often put us into groups of around four people to discuss a particular topic. On one occasion, the topic was food. We had some starter questions to ask one another to get the conversation going. One of the questions was about how we liked our eggs in the…

I spent the last three weeks in the north of Ireland. Myself and Jessica flew to Belfast where we spent the first night. We managed to get to a session that evening where we were warmly welcomed. The next day we travelled to Donegal. A train from Belfast to Derry. A bus from Derry to Donegal Town. Finally another bus from Donegal Town to Glencolmcille, our home for the next week. Oideas Gael This was our second year coming to Oideas Gael to spend a week learning Irish in the beautiful…

I really liked Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls so when I saw a copy of Girls In Their Married Bliss for £1 in a local charity shop, I snapped it up even though it had the worst cover you could possibly imagine. This is the second and final sequel to The Country Girls which means I’ve skipped over the middle book, The Lonely Girl. I’ll have to rectify that. Once again the narrative centres on frenemies Kate and Baba but things are different this time around. For a start, we get the first-person…

I absolutely loved Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch trilogy, particularly the first book, Ancillary Justice which blew me away when I first read it. Since then I’ve enjoyed the other books she’s written in the same universe, dealing with the fallout of the events in the original series. Radiant Star is the latest addition to the canon. I think the story falls into the category of planetary romance; the narrative is very much driven by the unique characteristics of the world we find ourselves on. Or…

At The Web You Want event in Amsterdam last month, Léonie gave an absolutely fantastic talk. You can now read the whole thing: Accessibility is resistance! She makes the very good point that generative tools are a necessary accessibility recourse when humans have failed to do their job properly. Images without alt text? Somebody messed up. But this is damage that can be routed around with large language models. So if you—like me—don’t like the idea of people using extractive generative tools…

In preparation for my jaunt to a Greek island, I figured it would be good to have some Greek-adjacent reading material with me to peruse on the beach. So I scoured the shelves of my local library to find a modern retelling of a Greek myth that I hadn’t already read. That’s where I found Medea by Rosie Hewlett. The book attempts to rehabilitate—or at least give context to—one of the women of Greek legends who has been cast as a villain. See also Clytemnestra, Elektra, and more. On the face of…

Exactly one year from now, UX London 2027 will be wrapping up. Mark your calendar: July 6th, 7th, and 8th, 2027. If you really want to be ahead of the curve, you can grab a very limited super early-bird ticket now before the price goes up. I’m about to start putting the 2027 line-up together. The real reason why I’m mentioning an event that’s still a year away is that I’d like you to consider speaking at it. Yes, you. Here’s the form you can fill out with your proposal. It can be a 30 minute…

“Radharc álainn” I said. Beautiful view. “Nach ea!” he replied. Isn’t it? He sounded surprised to be addressed in Irish. We were, after all, very far from Erin’s shores. The beautiful view in question was of the bay of Loggos on the Greek island of Paxos. But I knew that this person was a fluent Irish speaker. That’s why I figured he wouldn’t mind a chat as Gaeilge while we were both strolling along. I was talking with Liam Ó Maonlaí. We were both on Paxos for the same reason; the annual Irish…

The Vaster Wilds is a remarkable book. It somehow manages to be both harrowing and uplifting at the same time. I had read one of Lauren Groff’s previous books, Matrix, and liked it well enough. But The Vaster Wilds is in a different league. It starts with urgency, suffering, and wonder, and that combination never lets up for the whole book. The plot is decepetively simple. A servant girl escapes a starving colony in 17th century America—probably Jamestown—and runs through the woods in…

It started in Dublin. Myself and Jessica got there in the afternoon and I went straight to The Cobblestone in Smithfield for some tunes. Then I went up the street to the headquarters of Na Píobairí Uilleann, a beautiful Georgian building on Henrietta Street. I was there to deliver my talk on the making of The Session. There weren’t that many people there in person but quite a few people watched it live online. You can watch the video of the talk if you want. I’m pretty pleased with it. The few…

This is a collection of short stories by one of Ireland’s best playwrights. I think you can tell that these stories were written by someone who’s at home with the stage. The dialogue really shines. And some of the stories feel like scenes in a play. But that’s no bad thing. If most short stories are like mini-novels, why not have short stories that are like mini-plays? Some of the stories are very short indeed, just long enough to convey the mood of the piece. That mood is often wistful,…

CSS Grid Lanes has started to ship in browsers. It’s in Safari and behind a flag in Chrome and Edge. It enables masonry layouts, where items get packed together in the most efficient way possible. Unsurprisingly, I’m a fan of a layout tool where the browser does all the hard work. It very much aligns with the idea of declarative design; you specify the boundary conditions, and then browser does the maths and heavy lifting. There’s a handy website called The Field Guide to Grid Lanes where you…

I’m giving a talk this week. Usually this wouldn’t be a big deal. I’ve been giving talks for over twenty years now. But this one is different. I’m going to speaking at Na Píobairí Uilleann, the Society of Uilleann Pipers, in Dublin. They have a monthly series of lectures called Notes and Narratives all about Irish music, and they’ve asked me to deliver this month’s talk. So this will not be my usual audience. I will be talking about a website, The Session, but I won’t be talking about the…

I give Apple a hard time. That’s mostly due to how they treat the web on their own mobile devices. Though iOS ostensibly supports the ability for websites to be added to the homescreen, they make it so difficult for users to do, the functionality is practically worthless. It’s dispiriting to see the web so hamstrung by that decision. The Webkit team has come in for other criticism too. For a while there, Safari was lagging so far behind in features that people were calling it the new Internet…