There have now been two excellent sessions of Oxford Geek Nights at the Jericho Tavern. The basic premise of the evening is a couple of main presentations (15 minutes each), followed by a series of mini-presentations on just about anything under the great sun of web development. As a graphic designer, working in both print and web, I have always been fascinated by the amazing capabilities of web developers to produce always improving functionality across the internet – and the Geek Nights do not disappoint. Ok, so much of the technical explanation goes over my designing head, but I do pick up enough bits and pieces to make the evening valuable. I pick up the names of new programmes, services or technologies for a quality Google-search session the following morning.
Gem of last week: Firebug, an add on for Firefox. Ok, it wasn’t part of the presentations (presumably every web developers knows all about it so it wasn’t even close to being worth mentioning at that level). I picked it up in a conversation with Drew McClellan, a witty guy and, like most web developers that I know, very friendly and willing to share and enlighten the uninitiated. Since everyone else at the Oxford Geek Night seemed to know about Firebug, I won’t bother explaining how wonderful it is. I just wanted to confirm that yet again, I did learn something new that day. (See, mum, I am still learning, even as I grow older still …)