Phil’s Blog

Disce, ludere, creare. Soli Deo gloria.

  • Fit for Forty

    This is a post which I’ve had brewing in the back of my mind since September. This year marks the end of my 3rd decade, September will be my 40th birthday the end of what has turned out to be quite a hard decade. A look in the mirror and I can see how hard…

  • Trying again

    One of my aims for this year is to try and develop some more healthy foundations or habits in my life. For many years now I’ve wanted to blog more regularly like I did in the very early days of discovering what the small web could be. It was a place of individuals sharing their…

  • The Royal Mint has released its designs for a new set of coins, the first since the accession of King Charles. I think they are an outstanding piece of design.

  • Derek Kedziora neatly sums up The Hidden Complexity of Static Sites and why I decided to move back to WordPress. It’s just easier and integrates with a lot things without having to jump through a load of hoops.

  • I’ve begun the long process of adding in some of my old posts from previous iterations of this site. My apologies if this triggers a load of posts in your RSS. I’m working backwards, and I’ve now added all the posts from 2023 and 2022. It will be a slow process as I’ve decided to…

  • El Fenix

  • Archangel

  • Buenavista

  • Benjamin Paz

  • Kabira

  • These photos from 2023 Ocean Photographer of the Year competition are amazing. I particularly like the one of the polar bear and the hump back whale but all of them show fascinating glimpses into the life of the ocean.

  • It’s been about one month since I restarted my blog back on WordPress. I say restarted rather than moved because so far I’ve yet to add all my old posts to the archive, something I still plan to do, but which I’ve yet to find the time for. The change was triggered by a combination…

  • A few months ago I came across a blog that has been a mainstay in my RSS feeds ever since. I enjoy each and every post for the simple reason that it is the only place to find them and the thoughts of the author. He is introducing a new series called People and Blogs…

  • Label Craft by Jordan Bell is a fantastic little piece of the internet I stumbled across while having my morning coffee. It’s a preservation of craft beer labels removed from cans. I particularly like the label from Transmitter Brewing, and the accompanying Flickr gallery.

  • Ireme

  • I will always be fascinated by the tools people use, whenever someone posts to their blog with a tour of their desk, office, or a list of the tools they use it’s an instant read. This one from Devon Dundee is no different. Maybe I should write my own version.  

  • brr

    I really enjoying reading things about daily life from people living in unusual parts of the world. So this perfectly titled blog (brr) about life at the South Pole fits the bill. An instant addition to my RSS feeds. (Via Robin Rendle)

  • I’ve a long standing interest in the power of habits and what they can help us accomplish. Oddly I’d never considered the impact of bad habits, but in a post on his blog Chris talks about a recent process he went through in listing out his bad habits. It’s a really interesting idea, something I’ll…

  • Kern Type

    Once in a while the internet pops up a great little typography game. This time around it’s called Kern Type and is an addictive challenge to correct the kerning of random words.

  • I really like blog posts that give a behind the scenes for design changes. I’ve just written an internal post for my work on the reasoning I’ve made changes to a key part of our user experience. This is an interesting look at the effect of a new icon design for Foodnoms has increased downloads.…

  • This is a rather concerning piece of research. I hadn’t considered this angle of decentralised social media services. One thing that the large corps have is resources and urgency to tackle things like this.

  • When I started this site, I was just a 19-year-old looking to have fun on the internet. After all the twists and turns, I’ve come back around to a very similar place. Now, I’m a 31-year-old who’s still looking to have fun on the internet, share my thoughts and experiences, and make friends. That’s what…