Health and Safe-Tea at Work: Brewing Time YouTube video by Yorkshire Tea

The British and their Health and Safe Tea:

I have been delighting in the series 'james.haha.nice' has been posting about Harold Holt, his disappearance and in general the dark hilarity of the Australian government during that time.

What a crazy story.

www.youtube.com/@jameshahanice

Who's coming then? Let's give this event the send-off it deserves

I'll be there! Maybe even with a conference talk and some slides!

I went to see my first football game in 20 years this evening, the Scotland vs Belgium Women's world cup qualifiers.

It was actually a great time and I got really into it!

I thought I didn't like football, I think actually I just don't like Men ('s football)

Absolutely stellar article. I've been digging into the hosting and devops side of the Chinese web recently which has been a big can of worms...!

China’s Parallel Web Behind the Wall So much for the 'World Wide' Web.

China's internet is shaped by censorship and strict regulations – insulated from the rest of the world, but not completely isolated.

This is the second of three posts I’m publishing this week about China, censorship, and technology: vale.rocks/posts/chinas...

#China #Censorship #InternetFreedom

Yeah, canned chunks! The veggie alternatives are pretty good though aren't they

A former colleague would get a tuna and pineapple pizza, initially to bait everyone but it turns out to work pretty well!

startups are the uwu smol bean (derogatory) of corporations

A white graphic with large text in the middle, stating "1 month, exactly one month until the last conf!". Above it is a cute robot holding a heart balloon. Above that is the logo for Hey! Presents, All Day Hey! which is the word "HEY!" in a bright orange circle with the words All Day next to it. To the right is the information about the event: "Thursday 7th May 2026, 09:00 – 17:00 BST, Everyman Cinema, Leeds UK" Below is a list of sponsor logos for the conference.

85% of tickets have been sold. We're exactly ONE month away.

Celebrating ten years of All Day Hey! with our final conference.

Small crossword with a shape that resembles the letters HTML. Below it, there are two columns with hints for across and down.

April 5 @comicss.art game: HTML Mini-Crossword
comicss.art/games/19/

Today's game is an HTML-themed HTML-shaped crossword. And it's easy(-ish). Can you guess all 15 words?

#html #css #webdev #game #crossword

Stay Away From Accessibility Overlays All the costs with none of the compliance!

Many people with far greater knowledge than I possess have discussed accessibility overlays, but I think the more voices and inputs in the public corpus the better.

Accessibility overlays are harmful and make things worse, not better. Avoid them.

vale.rocks/posts/access...

#Accessibility #a11y

Happy birthday!

Ah yes, truly a curse...
Happy birthday to you too!

All I want for my birthday is no April's fools jokes 🙏

More Projects Please We’re actively seeking new UX design, UI design or hybrid creative/development challenges to solve.

Over the past 19 years, my team @cloudfour.com have shared over 600 articles and resources with the #WebDesign community, absolutely free.

But now, our design practice is in danger without your help. Please read and share: cloudfour.com/thinks/more-...

#OpenToWork #UXDesign #UIDesign

Wiring it up: Now we set up our component within our HTML and let Async Alpine know where to find the component file: <div x-load x-load-src="/components/my-component.js" x-data="myComponent('message')" ></div> In the snippet above, x-load indicates this is an Async component and the x-load-src attribute points to the URL of our component file. Make sure to add your x-data attribute as you would normally with Alpine.js.

Downloads per year chart for async-alpine between 2022-03-22 and 2026-03-31. Total 218,070 downloads. 2022: 2k 2023: 19k 2024: 40k 2025: 99k 2026: 56k (so far)

This month my project Async Alpine hit 4yrs old, and about the same time 200k downloads! 📈

It doesn't feel like long ago I went for a swim and had the idea for conditional component loading for Alpine.js and threw something together.

If you use Alpine.js check it out: async-alpine.dev

Ah yes, I had great fun (gaol|jail)breaking back in the day, discovering the world of Cydia from my iPod touch.
I moved onto Android rooting and ROMs, but even that feels like it's dying too for the same reasons.

now on the blog, hopefully slightly more gracefully-worded.

So yeah, it's been a busy year!

I'm not looking for anything from posting this, but putting it out there and being open to my friends makes me feel lighter.

I think I'm getting there with curating a comfortable online space, so I'm keen to be present in it and our community a bit more.

(3/3)

Since the start of 2025:
- Went to New Zealand for a month
- Wrote a new conference talk (my best yet)
- That open graph copyright situation
- Broke up with my partner of 9 years
- Saw some fantastic live music
- A family health scare
- Bought a house!
- Tore the cartilage in my left knee

(2/3)

I've been pretty checked out of the dev community for a while due to a crazy amount of *life*. I want to get back into it a little more!

I just scrapped my 'life update' blog post that went into a lot of detail on why, but for my sake I still want to put it out there on socials.

(1/3)

16 months with Loop Switch 2 earplugs - Alistair Shepherd My thoughts on the Loop Switch 2, the adjustable model of the hyped-up earplugs company. Here are my thoughts using them over the past 18 months!

Another new blog post! 😁

This is about my experience with the Loop Switch 2 earplugs. Not dev-related, but still probably helpful to many people!

TLDR — I really like them, although their claim you can use them in conversation doesn't ring true for me.

alistairshepherd.uk/writing/16-m...

Salma has written and recorded possibly one of the best descriptions I've found for what I'm feeling right now going on in the tech industry.

I implore you to read or listen to this, whether you find this relatable or not, as it says so much about why the tech industry is so toxic right now.

Hey! All Day. Alistair Shepherd, Lightning Talk Bill and Ted's accessibility adventure: Accessibility testing for developers Thursday 7th May 2026, 09:00–17:00 BST, Everyman Cinema, Leeds UK

As Bill and Ted discovered in their excellent adventure, it can be easier to learn through hijinks, trials and practice than through reading. How can we learn from their experience to get better at web accessibility? With the guidance of Bill and Ted we'll explore the ups and downs I went through teaching accessibility, and why focusing on testing works so well.

heypresents.com/ten. Join us for the final time. In the background is a photo of me in my natural state — standing in a moor, in outdoor kit and a tech t-shirt, grinning like a loon

6 weeks today I'll be speaking at the wonderful All Day Hey by @heypresents.com in Leeds, with my talk "Bill and Ted's accessibility adventure"! 🎸🤘

Come join us for a *most excellent* day, with some great talks and great people!

Tickets & more info: heypresents.com/conferences/...

I've been writing but had a big block on actually publishing, I've got another post I haven't shouted about yet and like 4 more in drafts haha.

Although I'm not sure I'll be getting round to finishing and publishing my "2025 round-up" before NY at this rate!

But my takeaway is still that by my definition Goatcounter is tracking, and someone has explicitly expressed a desire not to be tracked.

So I should respect that by disabling Goatcounter, regardless of the issues with the standard or exact definition.

(2/2)

Yep, I use basically that snippet there to do it myself.

I understand the logic and agree with many of the opinions Martin takes on DNT — it is deeply flawed, makes your browser more identifiable, and unclear in definition. It's definitely not a good standard.

(1/2)

Simple website analytics with Goatcounter - Alistair Shepherd Using Goatcounter as a simple web analytics tool that is good for privacy, low in cost, lightweight, and simple. This is how I got on with it!

New blog post! 🥳

It's about using Goatcounter for small projects as a simple and cheap analytics tool that's pretty good privacy-wise compared to other options.

This post has been sitting in my drafts since September last year. 😅

alistairshepherd.uk/writing/simp...