About
about the 200ok weblog
header photos
You can see original versions of most of the header photos on Flickr.
tech
The 200ok Weblog is published using Blogger, since I am more interested in writing the blog than maintaining the blog tool. That in turn means the site is almost valid and could be quicker. Blogger unfortunately hard-codes some invalid markup and unnecessary resources.
200ok?
200 OK is the HTTP status for "The request has succeeded." (RFC 2616 10.2.1). Need I say more? :)
the stamp, and the logo
For a very long time my logo and avatar were derived from a stone stamp/chop, with "200ok" translated as closely as possible in Chinese. The top two characters are a direct translation of two hundred; the bottom two... well, it varies regionally, but generally it forms something like "you can" in the sense of "you have permission". That seemed like a reasonably close interpretation of OK. The translation and stamp were created by a lovely gentleman at the Paddington Markets in Sydney, around 2005/2006. The SVG version was created by a coworker. I used the stamp digitally but also created badges and stickers with the image - and they ended up all over the world!
In 2023 I decided to change to a new logo, with obvious design references to the stamp but not replicating it directly. I still love the original, and I still have the chop, it was just time for a change. Even if I don't use it again as an avatar, the chop is a powerful reminder of a time when my life and career brought me to Sydney; and to a shaded stall in Paddington on a Saturday morning.
about ben buchanan
I make some bits of the web. I taught myself web development while goofing off at university (I majored in Journalism and Philosophy) and published my first website in 1996. I worked as a copywriter for a while, but went full time as a web developer when I realised people were willing to pay me to stuff around with computers.
I currently work as an engineering team lead for Culture Amp. Previously I have worked for Quantium, Ansarada, Bigcommerce, Atlassian, News Digital Media and Griffith University. If you need them, there are details on LinkedIn.
I grew up in Brisbane, lived in Sydney for nearly 20 years, and I'm now located in Melbourne (Australia).
speaking
See: Speaking.
judging
Member of the judging panel...
- Australian Web Awards 2013.
- Australian Web Awards 2012.
- Australian Web Awards 2010.
- Australian Web Awards 2009.
- WA Web Awards 2008.
writing
- Contributed an article to Web Directions 'Scroll', Edition 4 (Code 2016).
- Contibuted articles to the Opera Web Standards Curriculum, which has since been adapted as the W3C Web Standards Curriculum, which in turn has been incorporated in Web Platform Docs... in fact I really can't keep track of where that content ended up, nor how many languages it's been translated into.
- Had an article published in the inaugural Local Government Web Network magazine.
you may remember me from such events as...
I've been somewhere in the crowd at most Web Directions events since 2006, plus other conferences including ReactConfAU 2020, CodeHeartDesign 2018, Generate Syd 2016, UX Australia 2014, Web Essentials 2005 and OZeWAI 2004.
I ordered the beer and pizza for SydJS for a few years, and it was probably my best-received work of all time. I have helped run other events like SydCSS and SWAG; and I've also hosted and arranged sponsorship for a range of other meetups and events (I may well have paid for your coffee at some point!). In the mid-00s Ajay Ranipetra and I ran a few social events under the banner 'Geeks On The Grass' before it was naturally subsumed into STUB and other groups. Webjam, BarCamp, Ignite, WDYK, a11y Bytes and a bunch of others lost to the mists of time and memory... went to them all.
Basically... Were you at (local web thing)? Yeah, probably!