Things I learned managing people in 2023
blogpost 20 Dec 2023
I wrote last year about things I learned as an engineering manager in 2022. It’s been another twelve months of ups, downs and sideways, so here’s a couple more things that I learned this year about leading people in tech. Let good people go A... keep reading
Things I learned managing people in 2022
blogpost 04 Jan 2023
The past two years of my engineering management career have been both fulfilling and challenging, particularly in the first half of the period as I rebuilt my self-confidence after a difficult previous role, and sought to define what my role actually was in the absence... keep reading
International Women's Day 2018
blogpost 08 Mar 2018
I’m fortunate to have worked with, been inspired by and be aware of a whole bunch of incredible women. While I’m firmly in agreement with Rachel Coldicutt about how women “shouldn’t need a special day to get public visibility”, I’d also like to highlight (in... keep reading
On being #woke (or: privilege, minorities and ignorance)
blogpost 06 Feb 2018
I’ve experienced being a minority twice in my life. The first time was in 2014 (when I was 27) at a Guardian event featuring Sheryl Sandberg promoting her “Lean In” book. My girlfriend bought me a ticket and I attended in solidarity despite not being... keep reading
Buying a house
blogpost 24 Jan 2018
We left London in 2015 because getting on the housing ladder seemed impossible. Our landlord in our small 1-bedroom flat in zone 3 offered us “first refusal” on the place he was kicking us out of to sell – £370k. We refused. Birmingham was a... keep reading
Things I've learned organising events
blogpost 08 Aug 2017
I’ve been running a regular music meetup event for over two years now, across two cities (London and Birmingham). While it’s a small event and a bit specialist/niche, I’ve learned a thing or two while running it and thought I’d share some learnings here. Put... keep reading
#harkive 2017
blogpost 26 Jul 2017
Note: this blog entry is for the #harkive project, an annual popular music research project that asks people to tell the tale of How, Where and Why they listen to music on a single day each year. You can find more about that project on... keep reading
Five things I've learned being on an innovation team
blogpost 23 Mar 2017
For just under two years now I've been a "Digital Guerrilla", working as part of a team of six in Birmingham, created by the BBC to "pilot and prototype new storytelling ideas", and help the broadcaster to "engage with its audiences and to deliver unforgettable... keep reading
Debunking Private Eye's "gobsmacking" gender/race accusations
blogpost 09 Oct 2016
There's a photo doing the rounds on Twitter of an extract from the current edition of Private Eye magazine. The text concerns the recent Forward prize for poetry, and the chaps from the Eye have decided that the gender/racial demographics of the Forward prize panel... keep reading
A resolution on communication
blogpost 08 Mar 2016
Talking is hard. So's writing. Self-expression is sometimes crushingly futile when we try to reduce the mad, beautiful complexity of the human mind into the crude box we call language. Even with the best will in the world we can still mess up, "misspeak", communicate... keep reading
My Atom setup
blogpost 20 Dec 2015
I recently decided to switch my main text editor for coding from Sublime Text to Atom by Github (mostly because my old work license expired when I changed jobs, but also because I liked Atom's open-source nature). In the six months I've spent with it,... keep reading
Learnings so far after leaving my old job
blogpost 10 Sep 2015
It's been three months, give or take a few days, since I left the Guardian—and London—to move to the BBC (I know, how imaginative...) in Birmingham. It's flown by. Tomorrow I'm off for a visit to the capital where I'll be seeing some former colleagues... keep reading
Past, present and future
blogpost 05 Jun 2015
By the time I press “Publish” on this entry, my employment at the Guardian will be over after just shy of five years working as a developer there. I’m also days away from leaving London, the city I moved to in order to work at... keep reading
Guardian Hack Day February 2015
The Guardian 26 Feb 2015
It’s that time again – the Guardian’s Digital Development team is having its quarterly Hack Day. Follow along to see... keep reading
An apology
blogpost 18 Feb 2015
On Monday night I posted a ranty tweet which I followed up on Tuesday. In essence, I was registering my surprise that a digital journalist at an internal event admitted they didn't know what "CMS" stood for. There were a couple of reactions to the... keep reading
Humans and algorithms
blogpost 05 Feb 2015
Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter, has made headlines this week for his admission that "we suck at dealing with abuse and trolls" as part of an internal memo. While Twitter is unclear about how they currently moderate the platform, it seems that much of the... keep reading
MozFest 2014: creative chaos – in the best possible way
The Guardian 30 Oct 2014
I think the moment I first realised this tech event would be different was when I saw a pile of... keep reading
Book review: JavaScript & jQuery (by Jon Duckett)
blogpost 01 Oct 2014
I was excited to sit down and read the newly-published JavaScript & jQuery by Jon Duckett, produced by the team behind the hugely well-received HTML & CSS book. It's a large and beautifully-designed tome aimed at newbie developers with familiarity with HTML/CSS but no experience with programming... keep reading
#dareconf 2014 review: people skills for digital workers
The Guardian 29 Sep 2014
The tech scene is awash with conferences: it seems every other day there’s a new clique of enthusiastic men (and,... keep reading
London, I love you, but you're bringing me down
blogpost 12 Sep 2014
I turned 28 this week and have begun to find that my life and those of my peers seems to have come to a fork in the road. The ones who live in the general area I'm calling "not London" have taken one fork in the... keep reading
How animated gif selfies fixed our team's morale
blogpost 15 Aug 2014
Lately I've been thinking a lot about software team morale. I've switched teams a couple of times so far this year at work and have had a fairly different experience on each one. Some were large (10+ people), some small (3 people, one on a... keep reading
Guardian Hack Day July 2014
The Guardian 14 Jul 2014
The Guardian’s Digital Development teams are out of the office and spending two days trying new ideas, starting things, breaking... keep reading
In defence of reddit
blogpost 17 Jun 2014
I saw a tweet the other day from Jeremy Keith which piqued my interest: http://twitter.com/mattpointblank/statuses/476453724991537154 You can see my reply below, which went unanswered. Alexis Ohanian himself, though, co-founder of Reddit, did respond to point out the breadth of the site: https://twitter.com/alexisohanian/status/476561714910334976 This must've been... keep reading
How can Mozilla turn a blind eye to its CEO's support of Prop 8?
The Guardian 26 Mar 2014
Do you agree with everything your boss believes? Is this a requirement for working under them? The challenge issued this... keep reading
Why do we think developers are special?
blogpost 11 Mar 2014
I teach a Guardian Masterclass as part of their "Digital Journalism Bootcamp" course. Specifically, my part of the month-long class is a 90 minute workshop aimed at journalists, outlining how developers work, what they do, and how they use process to organise work (there's an... keep reading
Lessons learned self-publishing for Kindle and print simultaneously
blogpost 27 Jan 2014
It was one of those fateful moments where you catch yourself thinking "how difficult could it be?". It's been ten years (almost eleven now) since I started Scene Point Blank, the online music zine which came to define my late teens and the eventual career... keep reading
Guardian Hack Day January 2014
The Guardian 16 Jan 2014
The Guardian’s Digital Development teams are out of the office and spending two days trying new ideas, starting things, breaking... keep reading
Dennis Rodman is 'having fun' in North Korea at the expense of human rights
The Guardian 19 Dec 2013
In the history of unlikely friendships, few perhaps have had the freedom of a nation underpinning them. The apparently burgeoning... keep reading
Tech half-life: it's okay to be wrong
blogpost 08 Dec 2013
Note: this blog entry is taken from the first print issue of the experimental "algorithmic newspaper", The Long Good Read. You can find more about that project on the official site. A developer I work with has been at the company for a decade. His... keep reading
Young Rewired State 2013: mentoring the tech stars of tomorrow
The Guardian 14 Aug 2013
Young Rewired State (YRS) is a spin-off of the popular hack event group Rewired State, aimed at budding developers and... keep reading
The web: less engine, more gas
blogpost 16 Jul 2013
Twenty-four hours ago I posted a mildly ranty tweet (I know, I can't believe it either) about the current proliferation of techniques/tools for modern web development. Here's the tweet in question. This was a frustrated summary of something I've been feeling for quite a while... keep reading
Homebrew beer for busy people
blogpost 03 Jun 2013
After the example set by my friend Andy, a veritable homebrew beer connoisseur, I decided it was about time I took my liking for proper craft beer and real ale to a new level by attempting to make some of my own. Anything that was... keep reading
Google Glass – what is it good for? | Matt Andrews
The Guardian 30 Apr 2013
I was tucking into a greasy burger a few weeks ago in Covent Garden's trendy MEATmarket when a crowd of... keep reading
Why journalism is like pro cycling
blogpost 19 Mar 2013
I'm a cycling geek. I love it: the romance of the road; the century of history; the epic duels; the famous climbs. It's a sport not without its scandals but still markedly different from the world of primadonna footballers with fans shelling out hundreds of... keep reading
Imagine journalism in ten years' time: notes from my talk
blogpost 08 Mar 2013
A few months ago I was approached by John Mair of the University of Northampton who'd attended my class at the Guardian's Digital Journalism masterclass. He asked me if I'd be up for speaking at a mini-conference for journalism students titled "Imagine journalism in ten years'... keep reading
Parisian vignettes
blogpost 10 Feb 2013
Here are some things I saw in Paris on a recent trip. I really enjoyed the weekend and found it a beautiful and fascinating place, and these are some of the moments which stood out to me as different or unexpected. Positive or negative, they'll... keep reading
What will the future make of us?
blogpost 06 Jan 2013
In moments of downtime I think about that Paul Graham post about frighteningly ambitious startup ideas; specifically the part about generating ideas: One of my tricks for generating startup ideas is to imagine the ways in which we'll seem backward to future generations. And I'm pretty... keep reading
Diversity in tech: still an issue in 2013?
blogpost 03 Jan 2013
Note: My last blogpost was about my 2013 resolution: avoiding negativity, cynicism and spite. This entry might come across as negative criticism but my rationale here is to highlight what I think is an injustice, and look toward positive improvements that could fix this problem.... keep reading
A resolution: breaking a very British curse
blogpost 28 Dec 2012
I'm not usually the type for new year's resolutions: generally my attitude for self-improvement (when I can be bothered) is to just get on with it rather than wait around for arbitrary periods. At the end of 2011, though, I decided to make my first... keep reading
Responsive design at the Guardian: an introduction
The Guardian 17 Oct 2012
The rise of "responsive design", as the technique was coined by Ethan Marcotte in his now-classic A List Apart article... keep reading
A £2-a-month levy on broadband could be the worst idea for journalism ever
blogpost 24 Sep 2012
Yesterday evening the Guardian (full disclosure: my employer) published an article by the eminent investigative journalist David Leigh, titled "A £2-a-month levy on broadband could save our newspapers". Leigh, a veteran report who worked (amongst other things) on the Wikileaks data and the Jonathan Aitken... keep reading
Menshn v2: reviewed
blogpost 17 Sep 2012
The dust has now settled on Menshn's recent relaunch, so therefore I'm revisiting the site after my initial write-up about it, written back in July. The headline feature of this new design is a mobile version, so along with my original criticisms, I'll also cover... keep reading
The internet: the world's first true meritocracy
blogpost 20 Aug 2012
Sometimes it makes me sad that I'll never be the King of England. It's not that I harbour secret desires to dress in ermine, or really feel like my morning routine needs a butler awaiting me with a pre-foamed toothbrush. It's more simple: the fact that... keep reading
Discovery Week Diary: Day Two
The Guardian 17 Jul 2012
Today is the third full day of our Discovery Week project, so without further ado, here's a summary of the... keep reading
Discovery Week Diary: Day One
The Guardian 15 Jul 2012
As Monday mornings go, starting work today to the background of multiple sugary snacks, inspirational leadership speeches and gatherings of... keep reading
Talking on Topic: I try Menshn so you don't have to
blogpost 12 Jul 2012
Menshn is a bold idea. Aiming to replace Twitter is no small thing (I say "replace" because the site doesn't augment existing use of Twitter but offers a new service entirely) and it's a brave move to do. It perhaps goes without saying that the... keep reading
The internet isn't killing journalism - journalists are.
blogpost 24 Jun 2012
Earlier this week I read a good article in More Intelligent Life titled "Can the Guardian survive?". As a Guardian employee I'm fairly interested in its extended longevity and I read the piece with interest. A single paragraph stood out to me above all of others,... keep reading
Victims of our own design: digital consumption is killing creativity
blogpost 18 Jun 2012
Note: this blog entry is taken from the third issue of my print zine, "I'm a Pretender". If you'd like to see the original article in print, along with dozens of other pieces of my writing, you can order the zine for free online here, or... keep reading
Applying for a web developer role: CV dos and don'ts
blogpost 15 Jun 2012
(Editor's note: this piece represents my personal opinions and not those of my employer. Now let's begin) In my day job I frequently look over CVs and applications to join my team as a front-end web developer. Of the batch that we receive each time... keep reading
The medium is not the message
blogpost 30 May 2012
Note: this blog entry is taken from the third issue of my print zine, "I'm a Pretender". If you'd like to see the original article in print, along with dozens of other pieces of my writing, you can order the zine for free online here, or... keep reading
Policing love: Anti-gay marriage campaign nonsense
blogpost 06 May 2012
Note: this blog entry is taken from the third issue of my print zine, "I'm a Pretender". I'm publishing it here online because of the recent debate over the British Government's plans to introduce gay marriage. If you'd like to see the original article in... keep reading
Twitter's #ukopenhouse London - my notes
blogpost 25 Apr 2012
Last night I attended the first of Twitter UK's Open House sessions on their engineering work. It was a free event at LBi's London office and sold out very quickly. I managed to get tickets and went along, with little idea of what to expect,... keep reading
Web cookies & the E-Privacy Directive: alternatives and workarounds
blogpost 24 Apr 2012
It hardly sounds like the most stimulating of legal documents. As a title, Directive 2002/58 on Privacy and Electronic Communications lacks the punch of, say, SOPA or PIPA, although its potential impact on European society could be measurably similar. Having gained the dubious privilege of... keep reading
London Mayoral Candidates: their manifestos, critiqued
blogpost 23 Apr 2012
I've been taking quite an interest in next month's upcoming London Mayoral Elections. I threw together a webapp a couple of weekends ago to see how people in a specific London postcode area voted. Today I got home to find an election leaflet through my... keep reading
How I finally understood the value of "Social"
blogpost 21 Mar 2012
I'm something of a sceptic of social media at times, as this blog has previously documented. Having built much of the Guardian's Facebook app, I've experienced much of the social giant's promotional guff surrounding how making your products 'social' can impact their success hugely. While... keep reading
One click to achieve absolute apathy
blogpost 12 Mar 2012
Anyone following the news of late will be familiar with the UK governments' efforts to pass a bill reforming the NHS, apparently in order to save it, but in the minds of sceptics and apparently most health professionals, it's more likely to destroy it. David... keep reading
The love affair of the tech nerd with themselves
blogpost 23 Jan 2012
We in the technology world are a self-centred bunch of people. I recently attended a training course where we were asked to complete Myers-Briggs tests to figure out our personality types. I'd never previously completed one and was initially sceptical, but after receiving my result I... keep reading
Why Private Eye's scepticism of "new media" is as unreliable as Glenda Slagg
blogpost 04 Jan 2012
I've been an avid reader of Private Eye since I was a teenager and my dad brought a dog-eared copy home with him after a trip to London. From that point on it was my connection to a wider world outside of my hazy Midlands... keep reading
Music Hack Day London 2011: a developer's view
The Guardian 06 Dec 2011
While I wouldn't quite describe myself as a hack day veteran, I've certainly attended a few in my time, mostly... keep reading
My favourite film: The Goonies
The Guardian 04 Dec 2011
Picture, if you will, a Midlands household circa 1990. Cable TV was still a distant dream and cinema trips were... keep reading
Business:designed
The Guardian 14 Nov 2011
Bright and early on 4 of November, two members of the Guardian's Digital Development team headed up to Edinburgh to... keep reading
The class struggle, revolution and Alan Sugar
blogpost 03 Nov 2011
“Are you a glory hunter, Lewis?”, Karen Brady asks a teenage scouser. “Yeah”, he quickly assures her, straightfaced. They sit across from one another in Lord Alan Sugar's televised boardroom, as Lewis takes responsibility for his failure to adequately present their product to the buyers.... keep reading
When celebrities Tweet: a Ricky Gervais special
blogpost 16 Oct 2011
Ricky Gervais rejoined Twitter in the last few weeks, having sworn it off almost two years ago with the verbal shrug of "I don't see the point". Now he's back, gaining followers, and tweeting with the frequency of an out-of-work student. For me, it's a... keep reading
Facebook F8 2011: because everyone wants to know everything
blogpost 23 Sep 2011
Last night I attended Facebook's annual F8 conference – their yearly chance to show off new features that will, in the words of Mark Zuckerberg, “change the world”. I'd already had some exposure to the new features, having been a “partner developer” through my... keep reading
The only thing mindless about the riots is the response
blogpost 16 Aug 2011
I'd just walked out of the cinema in Clapham, South London, on Saturday 6th August at around 11pm, having sat through Spielberg's Super 8 and found it pleasant enough. Idly checking my Twitter feed as the lady did the customary bathroom trip, I spotted some... keep reading
The user experience of flathunting
blogpost 30 Jun 2011
As followers of my London blog will know, I've currently been in the process of moving flat. It's been a fairly lengthy effort and it's well-documented on the other blog. What this entry will cover is the mind-numbing frustration the websites of estate agents caused... keep reading
On student journalism and "digital first"
blogpost 19 Jun 2011
Since graduating from Leeds University I've followed the path of the student newspaper, Leeds Student, with keen interest - I spent almost two years of my time at Leeds working on the newspaper and owe my current career to the experience gained writing and designing... keep reading
How not to make me download your mobile app
blogpost 06 Jun 2011
Earlier today I was checking out app recommendations over at reddit's Android community. Someone suggested an app called Glympse, which allows users to share their location, Google Latitude-style, but falling back to SMS when the recipient doesn't use Glympse. Cool, I thought. I checked out... keep reading
Portal 2: Missed opportunities?
blogpost 16 May 2011
I'm a fairly big Valve nerd, having played even the slightly less good outings in their Black Mesa universe with vigour and enjoyment. It was essentially a foregone conclusion, then, that I'd be checking out the recently-released Portal 2 within a few weeks of its... keep reading
On deleting Facebook and being human again
blogpost 01 May 2011
The topic of deleting a Facebook account has been written about in depth in various other places, so it's with hesitation that I begin this entry about my own experiences with it. However, in a post-Social Network world, the site may have beefed up its... keep reading
The arrogance of Google and their quest to store everything
blogpost 11 Apr 2011
At the morning conference in the Guardian's offices last Wednesday we were visited by the Head of Google Europe, Philipp Schindler. He gave an interesting talk about Google's future plans and current achievements, and was asked some tricky questions from the assembled journalists including issues... keep reading
SXSW 2011: Music and hack days - where the girls aren't
The Guardian 14 Mar 2011
A couple of notes to preface this entry: Firstly: I'm indebted to Jessica Hopper of Punk Planet, whose famous column... keep reading
SXSW 2011: How we made our interactive band tracker
The Guardian 10 Mar 2011
Last year I attended my second Music Hack Day, a spirited event encouraging geeks who love beats to get together... keep reading
Why Microsoft will never regain developers' trust
blogpost 06 Mar 2011
In honour of the 10 year anniversary of Internet Explorer 6, Microsoft is promoting a new site they've called IE6 Countdown which lets them highlight the largest culprits still using the crippled software (step forward, China and South Korea) and suggest reasons for upgrading. As... keep reading
Reality TV: escapism from the flaws of, er, reality
blogpost 02 Feb 2011
In the past few days, British TV has graced our television sets with several distinctly working class-focused reality TV shows: celebrity chef Michel Roux's Service on BBC2, Channel 4's My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, and BBC4's Snog Marry Avoid?. Each one of these programmes featured... keep reading
Apple TV: ...and all that could have been
blogpost 23 Jan 2011
Towards the end of December last year I won a £500 Amazon voucher and decided to splash out on some TV/audio equipment. Part of that splurge included the newest model of the Apple TV. It's a little box of Apple's curved-edge magic, weighing barely as... keep reading
Broadcast media: dumbing down or catering for demand?
blogpost 19 Jan 2011
Recently, Britain's Radio 1 performed a kind of broadcasting experiment that got me thinking. They called it the 'daytime takeover' - essentially, their DJs with shows normally relegated to the graveyard shift were given the chance to take over on the primetime slots - breakfast... keep reading
Switching to Google-hosted jQuery
The Guardian 15 Dec 2010
Like thousands of other sites, the Guardian uses the excellent jQuery framework to power our javascript. Previously, our jQuery build... keep reading
The (new) internet: the death of culture?
blogpost 28 Jul 2009
Could the digital revolution have exiled individual thought? MICHELLE IS BORED. Andy wants to go out tonight. Jessica is looking forward to seeing "a certain sum1, lol". This is your brain on Facebook. Or Twitter. "RT @Tehran123: Change your location to Iran NOW to confuse... keep reading