Monday 30 May 2005

PHOTOGRAPHY: Enter corbis comp.

Like taking photos? Any good at it? Then enter the Corbis photography competition

Friday 27 May 2005

POLITICS: Zimbabwe police destroy shanties

What is wrong with Mugabe. He has no compassion for his fellow Zimbabweans. No sense of duty to his people, making thousands of people homeless. Where is the sense? Read: BBC NEWS | Africa | Zimbabwe police destroy shanties

ENVIRONMENT: Appetite for Amazon destruction

Progress is not always good. The Amazon rainforest is gradually disappearing, tree by tree, year after year, all to fee our greedy western appetites. Read:BBC NEWS | Programmes | From Our Own Correspondent | Appetite for Amazon destruction: "It makes no sense at all to let market forces destroy a precious ecosystem that we all need for our survival and yet somehow we are letting it happen."

Tuesday 24 May 2005

TV AD: Firefox promoted

A well put together ad promoting the virtues of Firefox. Vive le browser revolution. Watch the Quicktime video: firefox

DIGITAL MUSIC: IPod Plug-In Sets Music Free

The battle for control of music we own and/or purchase (!) continues as software and hardware devices are pitted against each other, bypassing controls and copyright issues, as the consumer drives demand. Read: Wired News: IPod Plug-In Sets Music Free

Wednesday 18 May 2005

WEB ACCESSIBILITY: Ten Questions for Joe Clark

Mr Web Accessibility himself, and yes he did write a book! Read: Web Standards Group - Ten Questions for Joe Clark, including: skip links, title tags, PDFs, data tables, maybe not so 'fun fun fun', but relevant.

Tuesday 17 May 2005

MUSIC: Arcade Fire - Funeral

On second listen I understood the passion and energy and melodies within this powerful album. Plenty of strong, memorable songs; a little Franz Ferdianand in its energy, but something of Talking Heads in there as well for me, and some melancholy and sadness thrown in. Well worth a listen, he said in a cliched reviewer style. CD WOW! - Arcade Fire - Funeral

Monday 16 May 2005

HANDWRITING: Tips for improving your handwriting

Strained my right hand playing cricket at the weekend, so writing is a little painful, came across this via the Guardian Newsblog: www.paperpenalia - handwriting tips

Tuesday 10 May 2005

WEB DESIGN: Image Attributes

mezzoblue § Image Attributes: "Questioning width and height values for images."

Monday 9 May 2005

MUSIC: We Are Little Barrie

Get this 'perfect summer soundtrack'. All funky, soulful, rock and roll. See: Amazon.co.uk: Music: We Are Little Barrie

Friday 6 May 2005

MUSIC: Police, nudity, furious punters and taking out U2

Miranda Sawyer follows Chris Martin around. Read: Guardian Unlimited | Arts Friday Review | Police, nudity, furious punters and taking out U2

GENERAL ELECTION 2005: The result in Peterborough

Where I'm living its Labour out, Conservative in. I voted Lib Dem, not a Tory fan, and not impressed with Labour's Helen Clark. See: Guardian Unlimited Politics | Aristotle | Peterborough. Oh and best of luck Tony B. you may have been a fool before, but just don't let the poeple down again!

WEB DESIGN: Content is king

Asterisk talks about the importance of content in relation to design. Read: Content vs. Design

Tuesday 3 May 2005

WEB DESIGN: Usability testing without a budget

An often forgotten or ignored part of the production process, that can go along way to making a site work or fail. Read: Usability testing without a budget | 456 Berea Street: "It doesn’t really matter how much you know about usability – after working on a project for a couple of weeks you’ve become blind to many of the problems."

CULTURE: Why Pop Culture Is Good For You

Protein° Feed reports on whether Pop Culture is good for you or just mindless entertainment. I hope not, or I've been wasting a lot of time...

Monday 2 May 2005

THE ELECTION, T-MINUS 3 DAYS: The war on Iraq was a sham, it wasn't even much of a war, we invaded, booted out Saddam, because George said so, then realised that's where the plan ended. Now the fallout from the episode is continuing to haunt Tony Blair, Guardian Unlimited Politics | Election 2005 | New British death returns war to election spotlight. Yes he was a fool for trusting a fool, but what's done is done, and if it's proven that he has broken laws, then he's got to go, but if not, and all the other MPs backed him up, then the other parties should stop putting up this smoke-screen and start telling the public what the future holds for Britain, rather than continuing to rake up the past.

It's mostly ifs and buts now, and we the people, NEED to know what will happen about education, crime, the environment - although by the sounds of it, someone had better remind the Conservatives about that. These are the things that will make a difference to the lives of the majority of the British public over the next five years. Unless of course George has more crazy taking-over-the-world-because-we-need-more-oil ideas.

INTERNET: The way things are. Sorry to rip a huge chunk of comment from Kottke's comments in A whole new internet? (kottke.org), but it's all true, after the dot com bust, companies panicked and only gave out money to develop sure-fire ways of getting a return on investment, while developing ideas and creative staff was not on many lists.

Read more: "When the dot com economy was crumbling in 2000 and 2001, I remember thinking at the time that although everyone I knew was out of work (myself included), that is was a good thing for the long term. One of the more pleasant side effects of the dot com boom was that billions of dollars were spent training indivduals how to design web sites, program, write, etc. In the years following the bust, when all those people were suddenly unemployed or stuck in high-paying jobs that they didn't care for very much but needed to pay the bills, they responded by starting to tinker around with all sorts of neat things, just for the hell of it. Because they could, because they wanted to, not because they had an artificial deadline to reach or some arbitrary client requests to satisfy."