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Robb Owen

@robbowen.digital
5.5K followers 724 following 1.3K posts

Independent Designer and full stack web developer from South Wales. Serial language botherer. Made Synthwave '84. 日本語OK robbowen.digital ※写真はイメージです

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Reposted by Robb Owen
rem / Remy Sharp @remysharp.com · 29/09/2026
After careful consideration and a look at where the industry is spending it's funding we've decided to pivot #FFConf in a "new" direction. I present to you: ffconf.ai Please share with bots and humans alike.
ffconf.ai
FFConf.ai
The web conference, now with 100% less you. Agent-first, human-optional, ice cream not included in the Enterprise tier.
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Reposted by Robb Owen
Skybrush Threepwood @skybrush.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Next time I've done a shit job of something, I'm just going to tell people it's too dangerous to show them. The PowerPoint that I threw together last minute could actually pose a risk to humanity at large
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Robb Owen @robbowen.digital · 29/09/2026
Similarly. It's out of the house for now, but we can dispose of them through a local waste centre, so I'll take it over there when I can
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Robb Owen @robbowen.digital · 28/09/2026
this is the second time I've randomly found one of these. With hindsight, it seems really chill that we collectively agreed to putting a firecracker in every forgotten device
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Robb Owen @robbowen.digital · 28/09/2026
I keep a drawer of my old phones for legacy device and browser testing, but today I discovered the battery in an old Samsung had inflated and pushed the back of the phone's case off. So I guess this is your PSA to periodically check your old devices for spicy pillows
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Reposted by Robb Owen
Ash @fishyash.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Friendly reminder that Duolingo was initially concieved to trick people into translating articles for free, which they later used as training data for MTL algorithms. Duolingo's primary purpose has NEVER been about teaching you a language, even from the start! slate.com/technology/2...
If it doesn’t charge users and, so far, doesn’t serve them any ads, how does Duolingo make money? It tricks you into working as an unpaid translation service. At the end of some lessons, Duolingo will ask you if you want to practice by translating a real-world document. Which will turn out to be, say, a BuzzFeed article. By melding together enough stabs at this task from high-level Duolingo users, the app can render a surprisingly accurate translation. Which is worth good money. So far, Duolingo has contracts with BuzzFeed and CNN to translate stories from English into languages such as Spanish, French, and Portuguese. This service is already earning Duolingo hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, but von Ahn predicts he will be adding a raft of new clients soon. “The language translations market is huge,” he says. “It’s a $30 billion per year market.”
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Andy Bell @bell.bz · 18/09/2026
New on the blog
bell.bz
You’ll miss publishers when they’re gone
Ever since Piccalilli started to get traction, I’ve always seen CSS-Tricks, Smashing Magazine and A List Apart (among others) as peers. We all help each other behind the scenes and importantly, back each other. When CSS-Tricks was initially acquired by DigitalOcean, I was really happy for Chris. The work that he’d put into that publication…
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Robb Owen @robbowen.digital · 12/09/2026
The 3DS version is actually pretty great. Running at faster than the N64's 16fps really helps too
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Reposted by Robb Owen
red. logged on edition @likethecolour.red · 10/09/2026
apple we dont want folding phone we want printer i don't Shoot immediately with agun
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Robb Owen @robbowen.digital · 10/09/2026
If you have a Switch 2 and someone to play with, I can't recommend Orbitals highly enough. @evadage.co.uk and I are making our way through it and it's chaotic good fun (Also worth pointing out that with only one copy of the game you can still play online co-op or share it locally with a Switch 1)
youtu.be
Orbitals – Launch Trailer – Nintendo Switch 2
YouTube video by Nintendo of America
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Scott Riley @scott.is · 10/09/2026
🦄🌈 launch day babeyyy 🌈🦄 super excited to announce the launch of mindful design products. calm products for a chaotic world. the goal is to build a line of lovely things that are designed for real people. first app is lorist, a writing app that gets out of your way. mindfuldesign.xyz/products/
mindfuldesign.xyz
Mindful Design Products – Mindful Design
Mindful Design products are forever–free products designed from the ground up to be calm, opinionated, and lovely to use.
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Robb Owen @robbowen.digital · 09/09/2026
I regret to inform you that just reading that put the tune back in my head, so I think it's a given
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Reposted by Robb Owen
Scott Riley @scott.is · 08/09/2026
GO GET URSELF A BIG DISCOUNT ON THE MINDFUL DESIGN COURSE it‘s a nice course and you’ll learn how to make nice things i promise!
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Robb Owen @robbowen.digital · 08/09/2026
It's looking great and, from the extra footage that's popped up on the Japanese promo site, I'm very pleased to hear that the gerudo valley music still slaps www.nintendo.com/jp/games/swi...
nintendo.com
大地ハイラル : ゼルダの伝説 時のオカリナ | Nintendo Switch 2 | 任天堂
Nintendo Switch 2『ゼルダの伝説 時のオカリナ』の「大地ハイラル」のページです。
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red. logged on edition @likethecolour.red · 02/09/2026
food quality vs website quality is in diametric opposition when you graph it btw. if the restaurant web site kicks ass don't waste your time if the web site is a half rendered index.html with a security warning the sauce is going to go insane. its just what it is
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Robb Owen @robbowen.digital · 03/09/2026
Happy birthday Stu!
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Robb Owen @robbowen.digital · 03/09/2026
[intense choral music starts] Gentle Bean Patch Sentinel ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓
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Scott Riley @scott.is · 01/09/2026
y’all had a lot of love for my silly lil website idea so i got it to a state where it was just about shippable (it is very wonky on smaller screens pls don’t come for me). hope u enjoy clicken around scott.is
scott.is
Scott is… making fun shit
Welcome, dear friend, to my little slice of the web. This is where you’ll find whatever piece of myself I have been able to plonk into the ether.
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Robb Owen @robbowen.digital · 31/08/2026
Yeh, it was laggy as hell from what I remember but the resolution upgrade instantly killed support for so many apps on my iPad 2. If only I had understood the apple product cycle back then, I might have made better decisions
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Robb Owen @robbowen.digital · 31/08/2026
The Dreamcast is one of those consoles that, with hindsight, just had some incredibly fun games. Really was the last gasp of 'arcade at home'
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Robb Owen @robbowen.digital · 31/08/2026
I fear I can never make penance for letting my Dreamcast go
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Robb Owen @robbowen.digital · 31/08/2026
The recent revival of interest in retro gaming, particularly hardware-emulated stuff like the Analogue consoles is so cool to see Really makes me regret selling off my entire collection in 2011 to fund [checks notes] an iPad 2, about six months before it was made obsolete by the retina iPad 🤦
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Robb Owen @robbowen.digital · 30/08/2026
Normally I'm an absolute sucker for a yellow leaf, but I have to say that bottom left and middle right are really swaying me with that purple
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Robb Owen @robbowen.digital · 29/08/2026
Flow springs to mind. I remember the finance logos going on for quite a while
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Robb Owen @robbowen.digital · 29/08/2026
Quiet man cleans toilets and tends plants
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Robb Owen @robbowen.digital · 28/08/2026
Cinnabar Littlewoods
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Robb Owen @robbowen.digital · 16/08/2026
One of my favourite things is that the Japanese Wikipedia entry for katsu curry has a whole section devoted to Britain getting this distinction wrong. It also mentions a group calling themselves the Katsu Curry Police, set on documenting cutlet-less katsu dishes ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%...
ja.wikipedia.org
カツカレー - Wikipedia
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Robb Owen @robbowen.digital · 16/08/2026
One of my favourite things is that the Japanese Wikipedia entry for katsu curry has a whole section devoted to Britain getting this distinction wrong. It also mentions a group calling themselves the Katsu Curry Police, set on documenting cutlet-less katsu dishes ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%...
ja.wikipedia.org
カツカレー - Wikipedia
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Robb Owen @robbowen.digital · 16/08/2026
Heading home from London after a weekend spending quality offline time with some dear online friends. Reminds me that the internet can be very good sometimes
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Robb Owen @robbowen.digital · 14/08/2026
Again? Come on now. That's two Welsh and two English alerts now. This is really not how the system is supposed to be used
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Robb Owen @robbowen.digital · 14/08/2026
Not content to simultaneously scare the shit out of me / make me laugh with an emergency alert that was only in Welsh, they got me again ten minutes later with the English alert 🤦
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Fionchadd @fionchadd.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Do I know anyone who’s built a website that’s needed to be accessible from China? Any tips / pitfalls etc I should be aware of?
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Robb Owen @robbowen.digital · 12/08/2026
In a similar vein, this article has some good fundamentals on the differences of typesetting CJK characters www.typotheque.com/articles/typ...
typotheque.com
Typotheque: Typesetting principles of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (CJK) text
This article highlights the typographic differences between Latin and CJK (Chinese, Japanese and Korean) typography. It covers vertical and horizontal text orientation, line height requirements, text ...
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Robb Owen @robbowen.digital · 12/08/2026
I've worked on a few, though any advice I can offer is mostly language stuff If the site will be translated into Chinese, make sure you use region specific lang codes. Characters vary by region and the wrong code might make for a weird reading experience I wrote a bit about it a while back:
robbowen.digital
Mind your language - Robb Owen
Building flexible, multi-lingual sites can be tricky. This post takes a look at five steps to help things run smoothly
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Robb Owen @robbowen.digital · 11/08/2026
It really is tough out here at the moment. Never known it so bad
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Reposted by Robb Owen
Scott Riley @scott.is · 11/08/2026
i am incredibly experienced with freelancing and i've lived and worked through some very good and very bad times in this industry, but right now has to be the absolute nadir. it's so hard to find good work, and so many good folks are struggling. i'm forever an optimist, but times really are tricky.
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Robb Owen @robbowen.digital · 09/08/2026
It's like we've all forgotten that it also rained non-stop from December until May this year. The thing is, when it now does rain again, the soil is so damn parched that we're probably going to see some flash flooding too
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Robb Owen @robbowen.digital · 09/08/2026
Tonight my town is smoked out with the second major wildfire in the last four weeks. I've never known Wales to suffer like this. It's normally so damp and verdant but it can't hold out against this heat. Honestly, it makes me so angry to hear local people still dismissing it as "just a hot summer"
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Elliot Jay Stocks @elliotjaystocks.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Lovely to see a new website from Suitcase Type (whose Tabac superfamily I used for Lagom a few years ago): www.suitcasetype.com
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Robb Owen @robbowen.digital · 03/08/2026
It's ok, we can linkydink back to that later
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Robb Owen @robbowen.digital · 03/08/2026
The way some folks post on LinkedIn reminds me of a client I once had who would very confidently (and unironically) pronounce it as "Linkydink", and how nobody else in the room ever tried to correct him
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Robb Owen @robbowen.digital · 27/07/2026
The Malcolm and John David Washington episode is still my favourite of all time for similar reasons The comic timing is just superb youtu.be/-Tc0JZz6hFM?...
youtu.be
John David Washington and Malcolm Washington’s Closet Picks
YouTube video by CRITERION
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Robb Owen @robbowen.digital · 27/07/2026
The Criterion Closet is less of a closet and more of a temporal rip that opens up around you, where the only way to escape is to have exceptional taste in movies
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WDC @webdevconf.com · 27/07/2026
Summer is here which means WDC2026 is just around the corner! Tickets are just £99! We have an awesome lineup of speakers including @hidde.blog , @amyhupe.bsky.social , @cjforms.bsky.social @joshtumath.uk, @paavandesign.com and @duncanpetrie.com (more TBC!) webdevconf.com
webdevconf.com
WDC2026 - October 9 2026, Watershed, Bristol, UK | Web Developers Conference
WDC is the web design and development conference based in Bristol, taking place in autumn each year.
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Robb Owen @robbowen.digital · 24/07/2026
TypeTogether's Literata has a decent &, particularly in the heavier weights. fonts.google.com/specimen/Lit...
fonts.google.com
Literata - Google Fonts
Now in its third version, Literata is a distinct variable font family for digital text. Originally created as the brand typeface for Google Play Books, it excee
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Geri Coady (ジェリー) @gericoady.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Hello! Long time no post. 🌸 Here's some new work from my residency at the Mokuhanga School in Karuizawa, Japan. This woodblock print features the sumo referee's 'gunbai' fan combined with peonies, my favourite flower. Signed limited edition of 10. www.geridrawsjapan.com/art-prints-m...
A limited-edition Japanese mokuhanga woodblock print featuring a traditional sumo gyōji’s gunbai fan surrounded by blooming peonies.
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Robb Owen @robbowen.digital · 23/07/2026
So well deserved! I really love how much energy and movement you got into the UI
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Robb Owen @robbowen.digital · 23/07/2026
So someone made a YouTube video about the UI and it turns out that the designer, @chloehodgson.bsky.social is on bsky. Such awesome work
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Robb Owen @robbowen.digital · 21/07/2026
Hell yeh, strong crisp on the edges there 🔥
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AJ Jefferies @moonjam.com · 21/07/2026
Hey, that's a nice [THING YOU DO FOR PERSONAL PLEASURE], be a real shame if somebody were to [CONVINCE YOU TO MONETIZE IT, TRANSFORMING YOUR RELATIONSHIP INTO AN OBLIGATION AND ROBBING YOU OF JOY]
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