Rowan Merewood
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rowan.fyi
Rowan Merewood
@rowan.fyi
480 followers 680 following 400 posts
It's rowan.fyi
#DevRel with #Chrome at #Google
We should improve the web somewhat.
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rowan.fyi
Long standing issue with pinch zoom + scroll moving too fast on Fractious. Hopped in with Gemini CLI and immediately found a fix, which was neat. It can't quite figure out doing quad precision floats emulated in GLSL yet for super deep zoom... but maybe both of us can.
localhost:4321/made/fractio...
A zoom in view of the Mandelbrot set fractal that perhaps looks like a line of crinoid things swaying in their deep sea current. Could be creepy, could be peaceful. Tell me, o' valued alt text reader what you see here.
November 14, 2025 at 1:34 PM
rowan.fyi
I find daily affirmations help me focus on what's really important.
A cheeky little devil or at least, someone in in a devil costume as they clearly don't have actually goat legs, has a piece of cheese impaled on a small pitchfork. The accompanying text reads verbatim, "I AM NUT OK / HELL OF A CHEESE". Words to live by.
November 2, 2025 at 4:46 PM
rowan.fyi
I just pop to the shop here.
Real gold bouillon.
October 22, 2025 at 9:02 PM
rowan.fyi
I was going to share rowan.fyi/made/color-d... for the #BadUXWorldCup using the Android interface but I wasn't sure you'd believe me it was actually real.
October 12, 2025 at 8:49 AM
rowan.fyi
I've been enjoying the submissions to the #BadUXWorldCup so here's my quick and dirty first shot. Colour is a number, date is a number - so just use your browser's built-in colour picker to find your matching date. I picked this blue Monday. Easy!
rowan.fyi/made/color-d...
October 11, 2025 at 6:12 PM
rowan.fyi
I am pretty pleased with the audio controls. Thank you, Media Session API!
The audio playing widget for Modern Noise Machine on the "Screaming noise" setting. The background is a lively bustle of stylised emoji faces locked in endless torment screaming for all eternity.
October 9, 2025 at 6:11 PM
rowan.fyi
I'm going to keep clicking until I find the secret message.
A container within a container within a container within a container within a container within a container within a container within a container within a container within a container within a container within a container within a container within a container within a container within a container within a container within a container within a container within a container within a container within a container within a container within a container within a container.
October 8, 2025 at 2:32 PM
rowan.fyi
The Online Safety Act could have pushed for age verification without sharing PII. Instead it's resulted in more sensitive data being shared with more third-parties.
discord.com/press-releas...
From Discord's update on their beach: The unauthorized party also gained access to a small number of government‑ID images (e.g., driver’s license, passport) from users who had appealed an age determination. If your ID may have been accessed, that will be specified in the email you receive.
October 8, 2025 at 7:28 AM
rowan.fyi
I can feel the safety already.
Attempting to load imgur.com in a browser just shows a JSON-formatted error message saying: { "data": { "error": "Content not available in your region." }, "success": false, "status": 400 }
September 30, 2025 at 10:02 AM
rowan.fyi
I picked up this delightful minimalist gradient watch from LAWA lawadesign.dk/products/gra... and so naturally I wanted to make a CSS version. This is the quick and dirty pass, I need to add more details and actually write a little blog post for it, but here it is:
rowan.fyi/made/gradien...
September 27, 2025 at 7:44 PM
rowan.fyi
Oh no, I missed my BIOS stop. I hope we don't crash.
It's the interior of a London bus. Below the Bus Stopping indicator is a screen where you might expect useful information about the route... or more recently just advertising. However, it shows the American Megatrends BIOS boot screen: Version 2.16.1242. Copyright (C) 2013 American Megatrends, Inc. ARK-2121V BIOS V1.11 (01/22/2015) Press <DEL> or <ESC> to enter setup. BIOS Date: 01/20/2015 16:51:33 Ver: 5.0.0.9 CPU: Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU E3845 @ 1.91GHz Speed: 1918MHZ
September 7, 2025 at 5:02 PM
rowan.fyi
A helpful and lovable AI Assistant in the form of a paperclip with eyes pops up with an insightful observation, "It looks like you're trying to watch a video..." providing a timely interruption to an activity that may have otherwise threatened to extend your attention span.
August 29, 2025 at 7:32 AM
rowan.fyi
I knew there must have been an origin to the meme.
There's a bus on its way through a scenic mountain vista winding up a cliff-side road. So narrow that it seems perilous close to both the cliff wall on one side and the sheer drop on the other. There are only two people on the bus. One looks sad and depressed at the cliff wall, the other peers out across the land with a happy and content expression on their face. Anyway, it's the two guys on a bus meme and I MS Paint pasted Keith's face in there.
August 28, 2025 at 7:06 AM
rowan.fyi
Post something from your camera roll that comes up when you search yellow car.

This is a delightful little rabbit hole. For me, it's this utter beast that I saw randomly in Edinburgh.
A yellow hot rod with the engine exposed to show a whole mess of gorgeous chrome. There are tribal tattoo style decals on the wheel arches. If this car was a person or would be wearing baggy jeans and listening to Deftones.
August 23, 2025 at 1:46 PM
rowan.fyi
Every Friday I'm just waiting for my feral goblin energy to be released.
Somewhere on the London Underground there's an ad for Feroglobin, but who knows what that it is. There's a distorted reflection of me in the lower left. I say distorted because my forehead isn't actually that big. It is perhaps above average and I sometimes wonder if I should compare my hairline to when I was younger. I worry the ponytail contributes to this. The healthy thing, of course, is to just accept his I look and not worry about it.
August 22, 2025 at 11:30 AM
rowan.fyi
After installing, I don't have a forward button. I can get to it from the three dot quick access menu though.
Chrome 140.0.7339.15 / Android 16 / Pixel 9
A cosy toolbar that's missing a forward arrow.
August 20, 2025 at 5:39 AM
rowan.fyi
Adding to my watch list.
The text says "Excellent suggestion" in a way that communicates an incomparable mastery of graphic design. A titan of typography.
August 18, 2025 at 4:23 PM
rowan.fyi
Some legend dropped these off at the local free library box which is otherwise full of children's books. They're from 1987 and 1989 respectively, over 36 years ago! Time to break out the crimping tool.
The first book is "Understanding Local Area Networks" which features of photo of some networking ports and wires in front of some absolutely sick chunky hardware. The second book is "Communications and Networking for the IBM PC & Compatibles Revised and Expanded". The cover illustration here looks like some Tron-inspired visuals of CYBERSPACE with little block-light nodes connected by glowing beams.
August 16, 2025 at 2:55 PM
rowan.fyi
PR tried to clarify, "So far he seems likely to."
Is it the Perplexity CEO reading his list of holiday activities that includes "bike Rome" or is it a frame from the iconic Two Ronnie's sketch "Four Candles". You decide.
August 13, 2025 at 9:52 AM
rowan.fyi
I like what I see.
developer.mozilla.org/docs/Web/API...
CookieStore API is marked as newly available in Baseline for 2025 and shows it's supported in Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari. That's a satisfying blue check logo that looks a bit like an angular infinity sign. I don't know, maybe one of you alt text reading elites can tell me what the entire logo signifies.
July 29, 2025 at 2:53 PM
rowan.fyi
You're using AI to generate images for presentations. I'm using the Witches and Wizards #clipArt CD with over 1,500 images of warlocks, warriors, wizards, and witches. We are not the same.
archive.org/details/witc...
It's the front of the box for SimplyMedia's masterpiece collection of over 1,500 images of WITCHES AND WARLOCKS CLIPART. It's edited by Jon Gustafson, former Office of the Association of Science Fiction & Fantasy Artists (never shortened to ASFFA) and it's compatible with Windows XP, 2000, 98, and 95 (so, all of them really). The image features a mysterious and serious fellow with a wild beard and red robe. He's making the sign of the horns with each hand and from his finger tips magical lightning doth leap down to the crucible below. There molten metals pours ominously into what looks to be a sword form. What mighty powers could he be imbuing into this mystical blade. I hope it's the ability to cut really even slices of cheese. Always irks me when I can get an consistent thickness for a good grilled cheese. My personal favourite there is using ketchup with a bit of oregano and basil topped with a really sharp cheddar. It's a bit pizza-like, but still very much a grilled cheese. Admittedly it does give me near instantaneous heartburn but it's just so delicious. Anyway, what's your favourite grilled cheese? The back of the box features some intriguing preview images. A little elfin fellow playing a pipe. A rider looking towards a mysterious city in the distance. And finally some kind of swooning maiden. The text reads: - Over 1,500 fantastic original works or art! - Full color and black & white images - Free Windows viewer program for easy browsing (No Mac viewer included) Whether you own your own ruby-red shoes or just like to publish Halloween newsletters for your classroom, you'll love this spooky assembly of ghoulish images. Rendered in many artistic styles, the artwork is high resolution, you can either print them out or display them on your personal web pages. This collection is a must have for every witch or wizard lover. Now, it encourages putting the images on your personal website but then also says copyright 1999, unauthorized duplication by any means is strictly prohibited. I'm assuming they're licensing me for personal use though... man, I don't know. 26 year old clip art. The company does still seem to be around. They've pivoted to audiobooks now. Some of them slightly weirdly political though so I'm really not sure if I want to dig deeper. Let's just keep this a relic of a seemingly more innocent past.
July 27, 2025 at 8:52 PM
rowan.fyi
Oh no, I live in a country that passed a worse than useless and damaging "think of the children" law that's only destroyed small websites and mandates sharing PII with a whole bucket of age verification companies. Imagine if this same effort went towards tackling real problems in society.
A dialog from the Bluesky settings reading: Age Assurance The laws in your location require you to verify you're an adult before accessing certain features on Bluesky, like adult content and direct messaging. Verify now Age assurance only takes a few minutes
July 23, 2025 at 9:40 PM
rowan.fyi
Even more humanising to look at the snapshot from 1998. Just like the rest of us, Ozzy knew you buy the domain first. Actually deploying a website is optional.
Bare, unstyled HTML, your classic black serif on white background. The text reads: Your server's home page This is your server's home page. You can edit this file as /usr/virtual/ozzy/docs/ozzyhome.html . When people want to know what's on your server, they will access http://ozzy.com/ , and get this page in return. Usually this page has hyperlinks to all of the cool stuff your server has to offer. If you're new to the World Wide Web, and want to know more about creating the HTML documents that Netscape and other Web browsers understand, check out our tutorial on creating Web services.
July 22, 2025 at 7:49 PM
rowan.fyi
I wanted to share that I liked this screenshot of a quote post of a post of screenshot of a notification quoted with a screenshot of another quote post.
The post describes the image and here's the link: https://bsky.app/profile/lauraolin.bsky.social/post/3lugw3lar7s24 Otherwise I'd just be posting a blockbuster meme while saying, "Which one of you did this?!? 🤣😵" knowing full will I've stolen it and carefully cropped out the attribution. You know who you are.
July 22, 2025 at 6:50 PM
rowan.fyi
Ridiculous hat featuring Robert Duvall underneath.
July 17, 2025 at 6:51 PM