Spaced out and smiling is a site focused on being spaced out and happy written by me, Jamie Knight, and my plush sidekick Lion. Lion never leaves my side and we live with support in London. This websites tracks our move into independent living and some of the things we have found along the way.
We have an ASD diagnoses and will focus on autism related things; but we hope the site is useful to anyone who spends time spaced out or is connected with someone who does.
The whole point of this site, is to focus on how to enjoy and benefit from the good side of being spaced out. Rather than chase some idealised version of normal (and with it, get anxious, overloaded and fail), we instead focus on the how to feel safe, comfortable and happy in whatever form that takes.
We believe that independence takes many forms, and that by sharing how we approach out independence we can hopefully help others.
We embrace the joy found in small things and want to document the effective solutions to managing day to day complexity.
So that the site makes a bit more sense, heres a quick overview of how my autism effects me most.
I am really interested in contributions of reviews or techniques from others. If you have something you want to share, please get in touch using the details below.
Jamie is a developer, writer, public speaker and mountain biker who lives in London. By day he works for the BBC where he is a senior accessibility specialist and spends his time working to make the BBC products usable by the whole audience. Jamie previously worked on the platform engineering team and as a senior developer on iPlayer Radio. Jamie is very Proud he has code on almost every BBC webpage.
Jamie also does lots of public speaking, about the The Web and about autism. He has spoken at the Good Autism Practice conference as well as being a guest lecturer for birmingham university and city university london. In total he has done over 50 public speaking talks. Jamie has written for magazines and other publications.
Jamie also greatly enjoys lego and mountain biking. Jamie can be contacted by twitter ( @jamieknight) or Email
Lion is a 4 foot long plushie who goes everywhere with Jamie. Lion’s main interests are trying to catch antelope and trying to buy smarties in bulk. Lion origins are mostly unknown, but he is very important to Jamie and he is familiar to everyone in Jamie’s Life.
Lion and Jamie have been working together for almost 10 years. Lion holds the fictional post of "Antelope Manager" at the BBC. Mostly because he said he did and no one has felt brave enough to argue.
Outside of work (!) Lion enjoys sleeping, snuggling and pouncing. Lion can be contacted via twitter at @Lickr
