Bucket hats

3 minute read

I feel tired today. Feel like I'm forgetting something. Work from home tomorrow, excited.

What'd I do today

• last night: Replied to a friends email
• last nigh: put together a metal shelf, while listening to this lecture: Edit or be Dammed
• Got my moles mapped out - nothing too concerning, we will see. Should get results back in a week.
• Got a chilli oil, avo and tomato bagel for lunch. Extremely good.
• Did more UX testing today at work. Was going to take notes but the interviewee cancelled.
• Launched my first UX experiment. Exciting! Hope I haven't fucked it up.
• Biked to and from work.
• Finished listening to Atomic Habits

Atomic thoughts

It was a good listen, I'm glad I listened to it. It's definitely not the same as reading, but it's miles better than not reading it, which is what has happened up until now. Next step I think I'll borrow a copy and photocopy, or note, some important points. There are some really useful and actionable techniques for behaviour change.

• make it obvious
• make it attractive
• make it easy
• make it satisfying

I want to do this for waking up early.

Like my brother mentioned, this could have been a blog post. I did a quick google, someone has summarised it well.

what's on my mind

• Bucket hats. The lady at the molemap clinic said it's really good to get a brimmed hat if possible, to protect ears and a bit of neck.
• I've been thinking about gallery and artist websites, onwards from my thoughts yesterday.

a website for the next 100 years

What if you could only make one website for your gallery, and it had to last 100 years? What would you do differently? What software would you choose? How would you design it? How would you make it usable and teachable?

Today I was thinking - I think a gallery website is a record of:

• Past exhibitions
• Upcoming exhibitions
• Gallery intent
• Board members
• Staff
• Volunteers

Before all else it should function as an unstyled html document that unequivocally makes this information easily available. Test it with users, write and edit. Do everything possible to make this usable.

HTML, before being a tool for a slick website, is a structured document. It's the best candidate for the record.

If the website isn't hand made (and I think every effort ought to avoid this), it should be generated from a source that is robust, easy to edit and update, and belongs to the gallery itself. Text files are good, CSV files too. CMS software is less than ideal, online CMS software is the opposite of what we want.

Files on a computer have been around for a long long time (in computer time). They are the most reliable and most accessible thing we have for storing our information. Chuck them on a usb. Imagine, your website could be passed around, backed up! on a usb!

For the fancy stuff, trendy designs and moving parts, I think you should do it all in javascript by pulling the info from the clean markup. Data attributes, ids and classnames are all fair game, but to be used with the 100 year mindset. No nested divs.

CSS can go a long way to changing something's vibe, so JS never be necessary. Necessary. Flash designs are nice, js frameworks are nice, but nothing should be used if by using it you compromise the core functionality of the website - to serve as a record.

A lot of work would be done with the gallery and the staff, training the, up not in HTML or webdevelopment, but documentation. Maybe this relates to archiving? Not sure, need to flesh it out more. Anyway, that's been on my mind.

Will rewrite this again in time, turn it into something actionable.

listening to

Parfum d'étoiles - Ichiko Aoba found here: fromtheheart.glitch

questions

• What's for dinner tomorrow?
• What habits do I want to develop?
• What habits do I want to let go?