Photos and Videos

Mighty Morphin’ Power Links

In Design, NaBloPoMo, Photos and Videos, Websites on 11 November 2009 with Comments Off

Because I have a couple of half-written lengthy draft entries that I don’t have the energy to fin­ish before I col­lapse into bed for the night, I’ll share some (admit­tedly work-based) links with you instead.

Typekit
Typekit can be sum­mar­ised as font replace­ment through javas­cript, which in turn can be sum­mar­ised as “magic hap­pens”. I’ve not played around with this as much as I’d hoped, but if you read this on the site (as opposed to the RSS feed), you’ll notice I’m using it for entry titles (and all other h3 ele­ments, too). Dis­turb­ingly easy to imple­ment, this is some­thing I’d genu­inely pay for if the choice of fonts improves.

Brizzly
Man­aging more than one Twit­ter account? Brizzly is the best solu­tion I’ve found, mak­ing it suit­ably dif­fi­cult to announce your per­sonal secrets to your work account. Now includes Face­book integ­ra­tion and has seem­ingly man­aged to get over a bizarre bug where it finds search res­ults over and over and over again, announ­cing them as new every time. This wouldn’t be so annoy­ing had I not pos­ted the tweets that triggered the search find­ing in the first place… (Still invite only, I think. Leave a com­ment or send a mes­sage to @whoopdedoo on Twit­ter if you want one).

Mobile web­site devel­op­ment
Without giv­ing any­thing what­so­ever away about what I’m cur­rently look­ing into for work purposes:

• Smash­ing Magazine on Mobile Web Design Trends. Des­pite my own pre­ju­dices,  Smash­ing Magazine do actu­ally pro­duce con­sist­ently use­ful art­icles, all of which must include the word “trends”.
• Cameron Moll: Mobile Web Design Book.
• Jakob Niel­son: Mobile Web Usability

How to Under­stand Your Users with Per­so­nas
PONIES!

Lost in space

In NaBloPoMo, Photos and Videos on 10 November 2009 with Comments Off

I can’t find my reset but­ton. Maybe I have a key com­bin­a­tion instead? Some par­tic­u­lar but­ton order that will get me into dia­gnostic mode?

Your bat­ter­ies are flat. Please recharge and return to normal.

Do you know where my char­ger is?

I know a bit about fatigue, but it’s not mak­ing this time any easier. I’m try­ing not to beat myself up, try­ing to reas­sure myself that it took me five weeks of virus to get this run down and tired, so it’s bound to take more than a couple of days and a quick nap before I’m back to where I was. But the level of frus­tra­tion is high — I have so much work to catch up on. Doc­tors don’t write you a note if you’re ill and self employed. Instead they say, “well that’s good then,” like your cli­ents and let­ting agency won’t mind if you just take to your bed for a few weeks, sub­mit no work and pay no rent. Self-employment: it’s easy!

For now, I’ll make do with cel­eb­ra­tions of little steps (like get­ting through two-and-a-half to do list items!) before climb­ing into bed and hop­ing for tomorrow.

Rachel’s birthday

In NaBloPoMo, Photos and Videos on 9 November 2009 with Comments Off

It was on this day, a whole 30 years ago, that my big sis­ter was born. When I was little I always had a sneak­ing sus­pi­cion that Rachel being born at 4.11pm was just part of the world’s biggest suck-up trick (my Dad’s birth­day being the 4th, and my Mum’s the 11th. Oh, what a handy coin­cid­ence for someone look­ing to seal their fate as Favour­ite Daugh­ter!), but then I also also, vari­ously, believed that Rachel was adop­ted, I was adop­ted, and Um Bongo had poison in it. One Christ­mas, my only present request was for a burst bal­loon, so you can make your own mind up about the way my mind worked as a child.

I’d claim Rachel got all the good genes, but she is both older and shorter than me, so HAH! When we die, we should prob­ably be bur­ied next to each other and have sep­ar­ate grave­stones with, “which gravestone’s tallest?” engraved on them, although that would be mostly point­less because Rachel’s will be stand­ing on tippy­toes and our skel­et­ons would do noth­ing but fight. She got all of the attract­ive, healthy and soci­able genes, but was also lumbered with a hard time when we were grow­ing up because I got the men­tal arith­metic gene. And look where that one got me, eh, every teacher I’ve ever had? If I went back in time my advice to little me would be to go for attract­ive, healthy and soci­able too: it turns out that nobody ever really needs their seven times table (you can even get a degree without doing any maths past the age of 13) and soon they will invent this thing called Word which will cor­rect all of your spelling anyway.

Happy birth­day, Rachel.

Balgreen from the 22

In NaBloPoMo, Photos and Videos on 6 November 2009 with Comments Off

I’d write more, but I have to go and burn my bra on Twit­ter or some­thing instead.

Fripper’s on a roll

In Hamster, NaBloPoMo, Photos and Videos on 5 November 2009 with Comments Off

Last night all of Italy decided to spam the server, res­ult­ing in a quite stressed Al and a very dis­ap­poin­ted Frip­per who had to make do with my com­pany as he ran around. And me? I am BORING. I never do any­thing inter­est­ing like build things or take things apart on the floor. We made do by play­ing “Sarah tries to take a photo of the ham­ster in his ball while the ham­ster tries to run into the cam­era” but it turns out to be not as inter­est­ing a game as you’d ima­gine and he was off after a few blurry shots.

This is who my spam is from

In NaBloPoMo, Odd, Photos and Videos on 5 November 2009 with 2 comments

Two things about email:

1. Types of emails I don’t like:

1. Lib­rary Elf emails which I inev­it­ably don’t read until after my books are overdue.
2. Those Face­book emails you get because someone you don’t know has replied to someone you don’t know on a dis­cus­sion about some­thing you can’t remem­ber com­ment­ing on six months ago.
3. Invoice emails/emails gen­er­ally inform­ing me about money being removed from my account and put into someone else’s.
4. The emails from Abbey where they use Comic Sans. Hello. You are a bank. This is, for once, not a phish­ing email. At least try and make it look like you didn’t get a bunch of Indone­sian schoolkids to write it.

2. A list of names taken from my Spam folder in a fruit­less search for Nanowrimo char­ac­ter names:

Louve­nia Cardera
Mar­garito Cai
Laur­een Back­bone
Char­main Berdy
Mar­cone Omar
Hufstedler Wayne
Adena Sweat­mon
Sweet­land Bulah
Hanna Had­daway
Alpha Votoda
Blanch Sto­et­zel
Ver­n­ita Treichler
Voc­cia Simonne
Ilu­min­ada Hes­ford
Jim­mie Amorosi
Des­per Debera
Mer­cedes Dress­man
Flans­burg Jone
Maizes Bobby
Romeo Van­v­ranken
Aus­tin Sweezy
Kurt Letcher
Evan Bustillo
Kaili­poni Clyde
Steep Kur­tis
Dina Shopp
Shona Gal­leno
Cor­alie Zippe
Bong Zakar
Assunta Wedge­worth
Char­lotte Pof­fen­roth
Eyre Edgar
Gar­land Mamros