Went and saw Persepolis on saturday and was completely blown away by the experience, so much so that I definitely put this in the top 10 new movies I’ve seen this year (not that I’ve seen 10 movies this year, but I will by year’s end). The movie expertly depicts the dichotomy of someone from one place trying to find their place in the world. Unfortunately the story is one that people from the Middle East can relate to instantly. I say unfortunately because the situation of people leaving their countries for the haven of somewhere safe is all to much a reality for people in the Middle East. For many of us this is the world. War, civil or otherwise, narrow-mindedness and general stupidity are all part of every day life.

The film is directed by the graphic novelist, Marjane Satrapi and is effectively her story that she wrote and drew about in two books of the same title, Persepolis. The story deals with her life during the Iranian revolution, how it effected her family and the war that came afterwards with Iraq before it starts dealing with life for a woman in Iran.

Visually the movie is one that grabs you. It works so grandly as an animated movie because it doesn’t shoehorn any one actor or actress to the role. It also can do things in a humorous way without making it look slapstick. I suppose that is one of the most perfectly executed elements of the story. It allows humour within a terribly serious topic. Inbetween messages of hardship the story still allows elements of joy to come through.

After the end of the movie, I told Yiota that my mum would love to watch this movie. I think it’s definitely something that all feminists should watch mainly because the women shown in this movie, Marjane Satrapi her mother and grandmother are true representation of modern clever Arab/Persian women. Women that actually struggle and fight within the boundaries that have been set around them.

In story doesn’t show the lead character always in a complete shining light as it does take her through her journey and I’m sure showing things that she’s definitely not proud of but had to show the differences in culture, the difference in why she would go back to Iran, knowing the life that would await her.

I really want to see this movie again because of how it was structured, and it’s been a while since I’ve said that about a movie. For my money this movie gets my recommendation as something you owe it to yourself to watch.

Continuing my mini reviews for the last Battlestar Galactica season, I

There is definitely something to be said about a slow burning design. At least from where I’m sitting. I started redesigning the ‘Kode last week but the deal I made with myself was that I would limit myself to doing one small thing every day. One element of the design. Be it the typography, or some colour changes or implementing how the asides look. Nothing drastic, just small increments.

The honest reason for this approach is that my life doesn’t allow me the luxury to come in every single night and just hack away and try and sort the code out test it make sure it’s all pucker both locally and online before I unleash it in one big fell swoop. I’ll average 3 nights a week (usually less) when I’m actually at home at a reasonable time and I guess in part I was also suffering from a bit of design fatigue.

Trying to get to that final result seemed pretty daunting at first. Soo many pages that I want to sort out, so many elements that need to be designed for and implemented that when I’ve tried in the past year to deal with them, I just get overwhelmed and often they just live in an electronic graveyard on my computer.

So my tip for all you hobbiest blog designers that do have a bit of redesign fatigue, I would definitely recommend this approach of breaking the pie into smaller slices. Don’t get too upset if things are not there. Start on a solid foundation (I started from my favourite coding base from a previous design) and add to the design in a slow but controlled and consistent fashion. It might not get there as fast, but you’ll definitely enjoy the process more, at least I can claim that I am enjoying this tweaking a lot more than I’ve ever enjoyed sorting out my site.

Maybe it’s because you’ll have moved the design forward, maybe it’s because there’s something fresh to look at every day, maybe it’s both.

So the title of the new X-Files movie was released at the New York Comic Con that was held this past weekend and it’s ‘I want to Believe’. Which alludes in some respect to that poster on Mulder’s wall in the first season…not sure if was on the wall in other seasons as well. The thing is that when I found out about this, my first question was, ‘Does anyone give a shit?’ I was a massive X-files fan for the first 3 or so seasons and then I effectively gave up completely on the show. Apparently it went on for 9 seasons in total and had that movie (which I might have watched, or not,…obviously memorable).

So seriously is this movie something people have been clamouring for? But then again does Hollywood ever give you stuff that you’re clamouring for?

I saw the PATH graphic novel in the comic book store the other day, but the cover design left a lot to be desired from. However I am all over the artwork on the inside. I’ve got to say that those are some of the funkiest character designs I’ve seen in a while and the colour tones that have been chosen for the art really work with the character’s expressions.

Found this pretty cool calculator at the WWF site. I’m acting like I need 2.1 Earths to support us, you?

Probably been around for a while, but I’ve never actually used the damn thing, to actually see how ‘green’ I am. The honest truth is I think I’m moderately green, in that I do the bare minimum. I recycle (things that the Council of Barnet will allow me to recycle), never use the tumble dryer, don’t have a car or any other personal means of transport, will walk to many places rather than jump on the bus or whatever.

I’m not very good with plastic bags, which is something I’m going to try and work on. I’d like to be able to get stuff that doesn’t have tonnes of plastic involved, however the reality of the situation is that just about anything I buy from a supermarket is probably covered in plastic, so unless I actually start to complain to the supermarkets to change their packaging there’s little I can do about that.

The thing is that plastics should be fully recyclable as well. I should be able to buy something and do it the Japanese way by making only food stuffs go down the waste disposal and have my paper, plastics, glass and aluminium all taken separately.

For the last Battlestar Galactica season, I’ll be reviewing each episode from this 3rd episode, ‘The ties that Bind’. So if you’ve not seen the episode yet, I suggest you stop reading and come back once you’ve done so. I guess you can consider this your SPOILER WARNING (that’s for the entire post in case you were wondering).

Plot Threads

So Kaylee was the centre of this particular episode and the fact that she found out that her husband, Colenl Tai and Tory are all Cylons and obviously her obvious murder once that toaster kills her after she’s taken the child from her.

It’s a shame that this character died in this fashion, but I guess finally we’re dealing with some proper ramifications in this season. It’s been a pretty slow burner as the first two episodes have been pretty mediocre as far as I’m concerned. Definitely did not provide the correct level of punch that you would expect from a final season. There’s no time for them to frak around with silly exposition. Each episode has to be complete dynamite, seeing as they only have 22 episodes (19 now) to wrap the entire story and tie up all the loose ends…after a fashion of course. I’m sure they’ll leave some questions for the audience to decide for themselves, but my hope is that the major elements are discussed and explained.

Meanwhile, Kera is commanding a ship through space trying to find Earth, while fucking off everyone around and acting like more of a bitch than she normally can be. obviously she’s changed and it’s going to be interesting to see what exactly happened in the 2 months that Kera was away and why she’s acting the way she’s acting, completely spaced out. Is she the last Cylon?

Then you’ve got the Lee Adama thread. obviously they’ve put him in this position seeing as his and kera’s love thing is all but over, and she’s got her mission and Anders has his, he can now do his thing and screw around with Rosaline’s administration and play politician. Out of all the characters on this show, I guess Lee has had the most change than any other character on the show. He’s had the most friends become enemies, enemies become friend type scenarios than anyone else and they’re poised to continue that fine tradition throughout this series as well. Do you get the feeling that he’s hoping to take over as President once Rosaline kicks the bucket?

As if that’s not enough plot threads, you’ve then got the crazy civil war that’s going on with the Cylons. So half want them to get the Diana’s up and running again and the other half want to neuter everyone apart from a specific number of models. I’m not sure where this is going to be honest.

CGI Cylons

One thing that i definitely noticed and wish they go back and sort out for the rest of the seasons, is the new look of the kick ass Cylons. The whole chromed goodness is pretty awesome as far as I’m concerned. I used to think that this was one of the weakest aspects of the actual CGI work that BSG elevated but they’ve really brought their game up for this one.

Overall I liked this episode a lot more than the other 2 episodes, however they’re still not giving enough information as I’d like and not progressing certain elements of the story as much as you would hope them to, however looking at the trailer for the next episode, they do seem to be kicking things up to the next gear. Here’s hoping.

Earlier this week I attended a talk with a manufacturer who was giving us a brief rundown of the differences between British/European standards (BS, IEC) and American standards (NEC and NEMA). I came into that talk with a host of mostly founded preconceptions however I left with a changed view for the emerging design philosophies and how certain constraints around you will motivate and influence design.

Preconceptions

I will rightly admit that before this talk my I considered American design over-designed, bloated, over-sized, unrefined (with the exception of somethings of course, this is after all a gross generalisation). The impression I had of American design could be summed up into, BIGGER is better. In fact there was an element of contempt when designing buildings to American standards, because I felt that I was cheating my clients of a superior design due to being constrained by bloated design.

As it turns out I was right, after a fashion. I had considered the reasons but what I hadn’t considered was the added value that could be brought to the table in an attempt to justify the reduction of good design and engineering practices.

External Influences

I don’t want to get into specifics here, but ultimately a lot of gear that I specify for a building is 40-60% larger for a building that is designed to American standards than one that is designed to European standards. The reasoning behind this is partly due to constraints by the standards as set by a bunch of lawyers that have FUCK all understanding of what it is they are lawyering about and thus the end product is already on the back foot in terms of design because the constraint asks for an enclosure (no matter what the inside contains) of a specific size; a one size fits all mentality. The inards are then rated upwards or downwards as required.

The end result is bloated, unrefined engineering/design because of these external constraints. Which does nothing but fuel the fire to preconceptions because they are partly true.

Added Value

You’d think such products would then be pretty hard to sell if their counter parts where that much more supperior right? Well that’s what i thought was well. I thought that the only real reason for going down that route was because it was with stuff that the client or whomever felt comfortable with because that’s all they knew. Maybe as their trusted consultant we should present variations and ideas on this. We are after all engineers that try and push the boundaries and present the best solutions to try and make things run better, provide a more efficient, cost-effective and ultimately greatly design final solution. By their own admission they’re more expensive and bulkier in size.

The guys in America know they can’t compete on physical size and overall design elegance. However one thing that they’ve enhanced (which is where the difference in philosophy comes to play) is the product’s expandability and it’s endurance. The American products will last much longer and take a longer beating because they’ve been designed to do that. They also allow individual components to be augmented within the field. This enables changes and enhancements to a particular component to be done out in the field, sometimes when spares are not readily available or expensive to get.

Therefore these products have their own marketplace outside their origin but it’s really on a case by case basis. For me it was interesting because although I knew the constraints and the reasons what I hadn’t anticipated was the fact that the products were not stagnant in their design and just hid behind the standards. They pushed their design boundaries within the set constraints.

I guess the crux of the matter is that no design is better, except when taken into context. People have to be open to bringing in other elements that they may not be familiar with or uncomfortable with in the hopes of creating a better design.

So I woke up this morning and it honestly felt like 10-15 bed-trolls hijacked by body while I slept and preceeded to beat me with the blunt edge of a feather. Every bone in my body was on fire and my head was about to explode. Of course this happened to me a couple of weeks ago, but luckily I actually hauled myself out of bed ready to tackle the day…kind of. Of course what I hadn’t counted on was forgetting my ipod shuffle, until I got to the tube station.

Now this tiny little bit of kit is like an extension of my morning routine. I NEVER leave the house without it. It’s like going out of the house without my keys, wallet, phone and shuffle. Like my day wasn’t going to be hard enough, I had no tunes to pull me through the graveyard shift (post-lunch). What can i say I’m mediterranean, I need a siesta after lunch. trust me I’ve complained several times to get siesta couches, but alas it falls on deaf ears.

This got me thinking to things I’m generally dependant on and that constitute as habits bad or good. My realisation is that I’m a very methodic person, in fact so much so that if the police were tailing me I’d be caught on the second day.

Nothing new to add to the general conversation of redesigned website to be honest just that this is what has been going on with my thought process lately (ok from yesterday). I’ve been sitting on a redesign for the ‘Kode for many months now. It’s been going on for so long that it’s kind of embarrassing to talk about. So much so that I kept flitting back and forth between designs last year in an attempt to get my act together.

However what I’ve gone and done now is gone back to the design I’m most proud of, from both a functional point of view but also from a code base. It’s a solid and relatively light code base which I’m pretty happy with. There are somethings that I know I can do better with however I don’t have the energy to start from scratch and don’t want to dive into someone else’s code really, especially as I want to be able to tweak this to suit my own needs completely.

So I’m going to be tweaking and adding something new to this site every day. Some of the tweaks may be pretty drastic to be honest, while others will be less than obvious. I’ll bring the copy in my static pages up to speed. I’ll sort out some links that are dead. I’ll start to sort out my categories properly and generally bring the design in an evolutionary method to where I want it to be.

I’m through with these drastic redesigns, maybe a slow burn approach will present me with something that I find more enjoyable to use, as my enthusiasm for writing is directly linked to the look of my site. So if you’re reading this on your feed reader, you might want to check the site from time to time to try and spot the differences.

It’s not a question of getting everything right the first time out, it’s a question of slowly evolving and adding and tweaking in a methodical and periodic fashion.