Mathew Keller

Saturday, 31st October, 2009

London to Brighton Veteran Car Run

This weekend sees the return of one of Britain’s longest running motoring events to Brighton. The London to Brighton Veteran Car Run 2009.

The run will start at sun-rise from Hyde Park in London and the first cars should reach Brighton by approximately 10.00am.

What I love about this event is that it both captures and celebrates a particular moment in history: the Emancipation Run of 14 November 1896 which celebrated the passing into law of the Locomotives on the Highway Act, raising the speed limit for ‘light locomotives’ from 4 mph to 14 mph and abolishing the requirement for vehicles to be preceded by a man on foot carrying a red flag. However it also captures and distills a particular period in history, the transition from the Victorian era to the Edwardian era, by only allowing cars built before 1st January 1905 to take part. That fact these cars still exist let alone still run and can make such a long journey brings joy to my heart.

What particularly caught my eye this year is the rather lovely illustration that features prominently on the events website: http://www.lbvcr.com.

The site was built by MSO.net and i can only assume the illustration was done by one of their designers as there are no other credits visible anywhere.

Monday, 26th October, 2009

HTML5, CSS3 and Me

Way back in September I was fortunate enough to be one of a group of front-end developers, designers, coders, project managers and general web pioneers attending the HTML5 and CSS3 Wizardry workshop run by local design consultancy Clearleft as part of the dConstruct 2009 conference.

The day was split into two halves with my good friend Jeremy Keith running us through the new elements being discussed for HTML5 and the ideas behind them in the morning session, and his Clearleft cohorts Richard Rutter and Natalie Downe giving us a heads up on some of the amazing stuff being added to CSS3 in the afternoon.

One of the first things each of them suggested to do was to a) get involved and then b) get playing around with this stuff, as, although not all of it’s currently supported or even decided upon yet, there is no reason not to start introducing elements into sites to enrich the experience of those fortunate people to be running the latest versions of browsers and to pave the way for HTML5’s eventual introduction.

To that end, I’ve found a bit of time to start doing this very thing here on my own site! With the view of adding much more in the future.

More details of what’s been added after the fold. 

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