Resources
A personal, growing collection of things I've found useful — kept here as notes to myself, not as recommendations for sale.
Books I found useful
A small collection of books that influenced how I think about technology and design.
-
The Design of Everyday Things
The book that first made me pay attention to why some objects and interfaces feel obvious and others don't.
-
A Pattern Language
Written about buildings and towns, but I keep finding it useful when thinking about software structure too.
-
How to Take Smart Notes
A large part of the reason this site exists in its current form. Worth reading slowly.
Tools I keep coming back to
Software and small utilities that earned a permanent place in my workflow.
-
A plain text editor
Most of what's on this site was written in one, with no formatting until the very end.
-
A static file host
Enough for a site like this one — no server to patch, no database to back up.
-
A simple RSS reader
Still the least distracting way I've found to follow other people's writing.
References I return to
Documentation, guides and standards I check often enough to keep listed here.
-
MDN Web Docs
The first place I check for anything about HTML, CSS or browser behavior.
-
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
Not always an easy read, but a good check against assumptions I didn't know I was making.