Spring Intern | January 5, 2009

Clearleft is looking for a keen intern to join our team for 10 weeks this spring. We’re looking for somebody with a real interest in front end development. Somebody who is passionate about the quality of their code and willing to go that extra mile to see it implemented correctly. You’ll be the type of person who reads all the blogs, subscribes to all the Twitter feeds and owns at least a couple of our books :-)

This is a hands on position so you’ll need to be willing to roll up your sleeves and get stuck in. We’ll be buddying you up with our superstar programmers, so you’ll get chance to pair program with Natalie Downe and argue semantics with Jeremy Keith. It won’t be a cakewalk either, so expect to have everything you know about web standards challenged.

After 10 weeks of working on real world projects with some of the best front end developers in the industry, you’ll have developed a level of HTML, CSS and Javascript knowledge that would normally take years to accrue. So this is an excellent opportunity for all those web standards enthusiasts and budding front end developers out there.

If you’re interested in the internship yourself, or know somebody who would be, here’s the official job spec.

Posted at 3:38 PM | Comments (6)

UX London Registration Launches | January 2, 2009

Ticket sales for UX London launched today so I thought I’d take this opportunity to outline what we’re trying to achieve with this event.

Posted at 2:28 PM | Comments (3)

Opening Up My Twitter Stream | January 1, 2009

I first started using Twitter when our friend Dunstan used it to announce his new Job at Flickr back in 2006. Back then I had a small number of friends on my buddy list and used it as a more immediate way of chatting to people than our mailing list.

Over the next few months more people I knew discovered the app and my buddy list slowly started to grow. However it was still mostly friends; people who’s email addresses, IM details and mobile numbers I knew and who I’d talk to on a fairly regular basis. So I used it as a way of chatting to friends, sharing links, organising meet-ups and generally staying in touch with people.

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Top 10 Movies I've seen in 2008 | January 1, 2009

This isn’t necessarily a list of movies that came out in 2008. Just ones I’ve enjoyed watching.

• King of Kong
• In Search of a Midnight Kiss
• Dark Night
• Two Days in Paris
• Sharkwater
• No Country for Old Men
• In Bruges
• The Orphanage
• Cloverfield
• Tell No One

Any must see movies I’ve missed off that you’d recommend?

Posted at 1:55 PM | Comments (9)

My Year in Song | December 31, 2008

January – “Forgiveness” by Engineers
I got this album around Christmas time and it’s been my drifting to sleep music ever since.

February – “Catastrophe And The Cure” by Explosions in the Sky
Explosions have been playing in the office for the previous 12 months, thanks largely to James. However it really came to the fore after seeing them play live.

March – “Chemistry” by Unkle
This one’s been on the boil since christmas, but the thumping intensity of Chemistry finally bubbled over in March.

April – “The Salmon Dance” by The Chemical Brothers
Stupid but fun.

May – “Kicking and Screaming” by The Presets
I picked the album up in Australia and it quickly became the soundtrack to my roadtrip and one of my most played albums of the year.

June – “A-Punk” by Vampire Weekend
Another Aussie roadtrip purchase, this one took a bit longer to grow on me.

July – “Salute your Solution” by The Saboteurs
I really liked this song when I accidentally saw the music video on MTV (or equivalent). The album took a while to grow on me but it’s actually quite good if you don’t mind the country aspect.

August – “Latchmere” by Maccabees
Another album that’s been played a lot in the office, it reached it’s peak towards the end of the summer.

September – “Electric Feel” by MGMT
I listened to MGMT loads during my summer jaunt to Devon and just kept playing it.

October – “Is There a Ghost?” by Band of Horses
This haunting track kept getting played throughout 08, with it’s peak in October.

November – “C-C (You Set the Fire in Me)” by Tom Vek
Another artist I’ve played to death, I finally managed to track the album down after scouring all the local record shops to no avail.

December tbc.

Posted at 8:51 PM | Comments (1)

Garth Marenghi's Darkplace Season 2 | December 26, 2008

OK, so that was a bit mean. If you’re a Garth Marenghi fan (and who wouldn’t be) there isn’t a season 2. At least not yet. However there would be if I had it my way. You see I’ve been re-visiting this classic TV comedy show over Christmas and it got me thinking about the possibilities for a second season.

As some of you know, Gath Marenghi’s Darkplace was a parody of bad 70’s and 80’s TV shows, complete with implausible story lines, bad acting and terrible special effects. Supposedly resurrected from the Channel 4 archives to fill a scheduling gap, the show mixed the “original” footage with cast interviews reminiscing about the good old days.

Sadly this show received a fairly lukewarm reception on it’s initial release, although it later went on to generate a cult following and clocked up a load of DVD sales. The writers of this show went on to pen the IT crowd, while other cast members went on to appear is series like the Mighty Boosh. Anyway, enough preamble. Here’s my idea for Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, USA.

Posted at 3:51 PM | Comments (2)