This is the current rebuild of my site, click to see the Old version (before you tell me I know that the url is new.letorey.co.uk that is because the ssl certificate works for this but not old).
So this week I went to Bristol for Web Dev Conf.
I got there by getting on the Elizabeth line, no problems whatsoever, super awesome railway line through London now. I got to Paddington about two o'clock.
My train was at half past two and when I went to the boards to find out which platform my train was on, my train did not exist, which was worrying.
I found somebody on the platform who worked for the Great Western Railway (GWR) and I asked them what's going on with my train, the one at 14:30 and he said have a look at the boards and I said it's not there and he looked and he said "let me go and find somebody to find out what's going on".
A few moments later I saw him again and I said so what have you found out and he went "oh sorry forgot".
So off he went again and this time he came back and he says it looks like the trains cancelled and when I pointed out that the other trains that had been cancelled on the board they said cancelled but this one just did not exist and so he suggested that I go to the ticket office and off I went, get to the ticket office, queued for a while and it gets to 28 minutes past and I'm thinking my train's in two minutes and then I get served.
So I said to the guy at the ticket office so my train's not appearing anywhere and he just went probably cancelled mate and I asked well can you confirm that and can you confirm that I can get on the train at three o'clock instead and he said I can't seem to find any information about this train but we're going to assume it's cancelled and yes you can get on the three o'clock train.
So off I went back to the platform, did some research online to find out roughly where the train was and I noticed that the train that was supposed to be coming in just before from Bristol was way delayed so that meant the train going out at three o'clock was also way delayed, not to worry.
I just had to wait a long time.
Eventually I got on the train just before four o'clock and there was so many people on the platform as you can imagine, loads of trains cancelled and so off I went and I went right down to the end carriage because I could move faster than people carrying suitcases and things like that and I got to the end carriage and surprise surprise I actually got a seat which was awesome.
And then when the train set off they alerted us that it wouldn't be stopping at Didcot or Swindon and this is due to some incident happening at Didcot and the line was closed and this is why loads of trains were cancelled.
And then we eventually headed off, we got through Reading and then it went south instead of towards Didcot and this meant that the train was going very slowly.
Eventually I got to Bristol about six o'clock in the evening and went and checked into my hotel.
Then I went to where the speakers hotel was so I could probably meet up with a few people to see how they are.
I had a quick beer with Josh and Heydon and was introduced to Ryan Hegarty and Maeve who were also speaking at the event.
Eventually it got to the time that the speakers all had to head off to the speakers meal so off they trotted and I went to a restaurant that I tried to get into last time I was in Bristol called 7 Lucky Gods which is like a Japanese/ Korean Tapas restaurant.
I had three dishes because I was advised two or three and I thought yeah I'll go for three.
I had:
The food was exceptional and I can't recommend 7 Lucky Gods highly enough if you are ever in Bristol.
The next day I got up early, had some breakfast and headed off to the watershed for Web Dev Conf.
All of the talks throughout the day were fantastic. The structure of the day was bang on and there was loads of cool people there to chat to during the breaks.
The first talk of the day was Amy Hoop talking about how design systems can affect people who are in vulnerable situations and how part of it was about how Gov UK in collaboration with Gov Scotland have been adding a feature to exit this page.
So that means if somebody is viewing some content on the Gov UK website that is sensitive, they have a way to get out of the webpage so that people don't see what they're looking at, which is a fantastic idea.
Then we had a talk by Ryan Hegarty.
He was talking about his experiences working frontline customer support. People were coming and saying these are the problems with the product that I have bought. I'm absolutely sure that he worked at somewhere like Currys, but that was never discussed. He enlightened us of his experiences, on the frontline, to how we might design user experiences.
After the break, Josh came and talked to us about communities and how communities are built, which was super interesting.
I learned loads of stuff that I can take away for London Web Standards and State of the Browser.
Then we had Olu who was talking about the best webs and how we can build better websites and not just rely on the garbage that's given to us by JavaScript.
Then we had a talk from James about the technology firm he works at called Smartbox. They build interfaces for people that need a different way of interacting with the web, whether that be using their eyes to communicate or trigger interfaces. The software looked really cool. Check out Smartbox, they are doing some really interesting stuff.
Then we went off to lunch and we went to Gambas, the Tapas place that we went to the previous year. Fantastic!
Then in the afternoon, Dave Darns gave the same talk that he gave at State of the Browser, a fortnight before. I'm not going to say too much about that because he's given it again in a couple of days time.
Then after a short break, we had two final talks.
The penultimate talk was by Maeve. She was talking about whether good design is really good business and how you can go about proving that design is really important to the business.
She framed it in a way that you can give key bits of information to the stakeholders of the business and not just saying a good design does this, but saying doing this with design and having great research means that we skip so much of the refactoring later on down the line.
All the communications between the design team and the business stakeholders were aimed at the business stakeholders, highlighting why having good design is really great for the business.
Then finally, we had Heydon. Heydon gave a fantastic talk. It was all about – it's so hard to explain, so I'm not even going to bother. All I can say is Heydon gives great talks every single time he gets on the stage and I can't wait to see what he does the next time, which I believe is next week at Converge.
I'll be at CONverge and if you want, come find me. I'll be wearing a red hat!
Then after the conference, there was an after party at the Golden Guinea and I had to run. I got there, had a quick pint and then I had to say my goodbyes and leave because the next adventure of the day was to begin. .
So after the Golden Guinea, off I ran back to my hotel to drop off my bags before heading across to the train station. I get to the train station, I've got enough time to buy myself a sandwich and some snacks before I get on the train. I get to the platform and I get on the train and I have to change at Bristol Parkway to get a train from there over to Cardiff.
The train was late, then it was changed to a different platform, then we found out it was even later and then we found out the previous train was actually cancelled and we could get on the next train which was in half an hour.
All of this meaning that the time that I was supposed to be at Cardiff was going to be half past six when I was going to meet all my friends and head into the gig and it meant that I actually didn't arrive in Cardiff until ten past seven and the gig was starting bang on at twenty past seven.
Not only is that an issue but it was a ten minute walk to the venue and then I had to deal with all of the security and getting through.
Fortunately I had no bags, all I had was my phone and I could go straight in and start dancing and that's what happened.
So as I knew that I was going to be late, I told Ian that I would be at the front right speaker as usual and I sent him a picture of Wendy and Tez and said "you need to look for these people, that's where I'm going to be when we start dancing".
So I eventually get through and I get in and I go all the way to the front and there's Ian, he's found Wendy and Tez and there's Sid as well and then literally 30 seconds later the music started.
So it turns out that the best thing about Orbital playing the same gig as Leftfield is that they got to use Leftfield's sound system and their speakers are just phenomenal. The quality of the audio was just off the scale. They opened with the Tilda Swinton version of Deeper and it was just so crisp and so clear and so loud. Oh I loved it.
It was a great set overall. I'm not going to go through all of the tracks but they did play Satan and when they play Satan they have a video in the background with the evil people of the time and of course it's got people like Donald Trump in there. And when I went to see them in Australia it coincided with George Pell being convicted for being naughty with lots of kids even though he was the head of the Catholic Church in Australia. And they managed to get George Pell into the video for the Sydney and Melbourne sets.
So this time I'm thinking who they're going to have? And I turned to Steve and I said "they're going to have Al Fayed in there aren't they?" And I don't think that I saw him. But I did see Stephen Yaxley and I'm not going to use his name that he uses. He's Stephen Yaxley and he's just a knob and it was great to have him in the video for Satan. Great work!
Then towards the end they played Spicy which was great again and Phil's got a new wig because he gave his previous wig away to somebody at a festival earlier this year.
And then right at the end of the gig they said their thank yous and Phil came out on stage and took some photos as he does of every gig of the crowd. But this time he was wearing bunny ears. Great work mate. Great work.
So in order to get my train back to Bristol I worked out that I'd need to leave just as the last song came on. So I checked the previous setlist from Margate and found out what song was coming on last.
Gutted though I was, I said to Ian "I'm going to have to leave during the last song so that I can manage to catch my train because it's going to be tight otherwise." And I don't want to have to deal with all these people getting out. And then he said "Don't worry, I'll give you a lift." Which was really nice of him. So I no longer needed to worry about missing the last track.
So there was about a 30 minute changeover whilst I got rid of Orbital's equipment and brought on all the drums and percussion instruments and synthesizers for leftfield to play. And they came on and just made the most incredible noise. At the end of the evening the last song they played was 'Phat Planet'.
And Ian pointed out to me on the way back that he hadn't realised out of all of these years, it came out in 1998, that the noise at the beginning was the words 'Phat Planet'. But hey, that was quite funny.
But the noise was just thunderous. And at the end of the night my knees absolutely hated leftfield. But my ears and my heart absolutely loved it.
Thank you guys.