Posts filed under "disposable-culture"
Great little interview with Jakub Steiner and Andreas Nilsson over at Gnome Journal. The most interesting part of the interview was this little side project, Art Libre Iconset. An integration of Gimp, Inkscape and Scribbus would be great, not that I use Gimp (but that’s another post for another time).
http://www.brokenkode.com/open-source-graphical-applications
Smashing Pumpkins, Zeitgeist will be out on 07/07/07. I remember where I was the last time an official Smashing Pumpkins album came out. Actually this is a funny story, not haha funny but funny. The pumpkins believe it or not where not all that massive over here in the UK, even at their absolute height (you know that Today Today song, or was it Tonight Tonight). Eh, well for those that knew good music sure they were up there but most people over here back then were still into brit pop and the Britney Spears rubbish was starting to take form as well.
So there I was one of the few rangers that had this unhealthy obsession with the pumpkins. Something about their music seriously struck a cord with me (no pun intended). It was like well I could hear the genius in everything they did (except the James Iha stuff, that was always a bit too, soft for me, which is weird since he went on to join A Perfect Circle who are anything but ‘soft’), anyway I digress.
It’s a Sunday and everything shuts at like 10 oclock in Nottingham. I do mean everything. The thing is though the last official ‘new’ album Machina the Machines of God was actually released on the same day as some Oasis album. So HMV had this promotion going on where if you came into the store at midnight you’d get the album a full 8 hours before most sane and normal people would get it, but the real cherry on the cake was the fact that they were handing out these promo cds as well which were limited to the first 100 or something like that. Was I there? You’re damn straight I was.
Thing is there was a bit of a problem with transport. Like I said it was all about Nottingham, 10 oclock on a Sunday everything is shut, even the fekkin buses. Dunno if this has changed or what, but I walked from the house on Cycle Road into town. I’m walking down Market Street (for all those people who are into comic and CDs, you’ve got the BEST comic book store in the UK, Page 45 and one of the best music stores in the UK Selectadisc) at least they were there when I was walking down the road to buy the latest pumpkins CD and it was about this time when I saw the craziest shit I’d seen up until that point in England.
2 guys in a Taxi cab driving up the street, I’m walking down the street. The guy in the back seat of the cab starts pummeling the guy in the front of the seat. I can’t remember completely but the cab driver took his hands off the driving wheel to try and calm the two idiots killing each other in his car. I think the cabbie also took his foot off the pedal so the car started rolling back down the hill. Obviously the guy has no where to go so he takes a few hits to the head and then he opens the door to get out, CAR IS NOW MOVING BACKWARDS. I think he just manages to either get out of the door’s way or to go under the door (and I could be making this part up but it happened so quickly that I think I can be excused if I fuck up my story ever so slightly) but he’s on the floor now and the car accelerates backwards and turns straight into the glass facade of a shopping centre (I think it was Debenhams, not sure). Glass everywhere, cabbie has his head in his hands, but the guy that started the fight hasn’t finished. He gets out of the car and starts looking for bits and pieces off the ground, bits of car, whatever and starts throwing them at the other guy who’s in the middle of the road.
All this is happening with me walking past them which my umbrella (hey it was raining) and a bit of ongoing traffic. For those thinking that this was in some back alleys or something like that, think again, this road is literally off the main square, the police where in the corner having their teas and telling drunken girls to go home rushed over in like 10 seconds. I just walked on, glad to not have been caught up in the foolery and promptly bought my CD.
I miss Nottingham, always had a bit of colour, but most importantly I miss the Pumpkins. It’s good to have you guys back.
Blender 2.43 was released today. To my mind (and I’ve said this many times before) is the most professional open source project EVER. This is how open source should be. Every release is golden, and this one is a keeper. From the new website, the excellent release log, feature videos and the list honestly goes on. Download it NOW!
Battlestar Galactica season 4 official press release! It’s about Frakking time they made this official. After last month’s story on cbr that they were thinking about cancelling the series this is good news. Notice the rubbish about it being renewed for at least 13hours though. What’s that all about? Those assholes got it wrong the first time when the first series aired in the UK for the first time because they thought it wasn’t going to do well in America.
http://www.brokenkode.com/battlestar-galactica-season-4-official
Interesting article on the Guardian regarding the new UK mac adverts, some valid points while others seem like their there to goad people into a reaction.
Let me start off by saying that Inksmith is what I view as my biggest online failure, after a fashion and this is what this particular post is about. Whenever I announce a project or something I usually deliver, notice I said whenever I announce a project. I may be a blabber mouth an I do get excited about things and have the urge to talk about them, however I never announce until I’m 100% certain I’m going to follow through (seriously if I didn’t do that I’d be writing this sort of shit all the time).
I might take some time to bring it forward (usually I take a lot longer that I could possibly want) however the fact of the matter remains that I will see things through. It seems that ever since the ‘announcement’ of Habari a few moons ago, some have brought up Inksmith as a way to bring discredit to Habari (at least the negative connotations that Inksmith is presented in infers this). It’s as though the fact that nothing moving forward on Inksmith is telling of stuff that might not happen on Habari, which honestly is the single most preposterous idea I’ve ever heard. These are two very very different things and I find those that mention them as though they’re linked in the same way done so as an act of ignorance/stupidity/lack of understanding etc. Here’s why.
The first fact brought forward is to understand what the two things actually were. Inksmith simply was an idea to create a community for bloggers. No this wasn’t a rip off on 9rules. I wasn’t creating a blog network but rather an area for bloggers to get around and be themselves. Oh sure there wasn’t really a central theme for us to bandy around, but what I wanted was a nice buzzing community that helped each other out and was open for people to get to know each other re our love for blogging. It wasn’t ground breaking and it wasn’t anything crazy, but it would have been fun and loads of the guys where well up for it. The best part of it all was the pictures on the coming soon site. I really liked the fact that we were all pissed off in those photos. It delivered what Inksmith was all about, angry people on the internet venting :).
Habari on the other hand is blogging software.
So where does the similarities lie you ask? As far as I can tell it’s the fact that some of the names attached to one project are now attached to another. So does this mean I’ve tarnished the credibility of the others on that list (since it was my idea)? Maybe and I guess they are the only ones I owe an apology to, because I didn’t deliver on my part of the bargain, so to everyone that was attached to the Inksmith project I apologise profusely. Let’s get something clear here, if I ask someone to be part of something I take their commitment seriously. I generally don’t like to waste ANYONE’S time as time for me is the most important commodity. So I genuinely feel bad about wasting those people’s time. We had some great discussions and it did prompt a lot of people on the internet to discuss the deal with being anonymous on the internet and using handles.
Why didn’t Inksmith take off? Because I didn’t have the energy to kick it off. 2006 was one of the toughest years on me from many many respects. In fact from May onwards I can definitely consider 2006 as one of the darkest times in my life from many angles. Which is actually reflected in my blog. What, you think that the dark motif was because I was joining in with the trend for darker sites at the time? No, Broken Kode is an extension of me and it reflects my mood in many cases. When my mood changes so to does the colours on my site, and the design itself in many respects.
So why didn’t I get Inksmith started? Honestly it came down to the amount of energy and enthusiasm I had to provide for the project, which after completing FOFR and Shuttle and 2 websites for clients and my on website and a bunch of illustrations I just didn’t have any more to give, until I was in Greece in October/November. At that point I had charged my batteries and I had decided that it was time for me to pull my finger out and build Inksmith all over again. For all the negative assholes that don’t believe me here’s the logo I created on the plane back to the UK:
So why did I stop that momentum? Simply put because the day I got back from the UK Chris had emailed me about Habari. In Habari I basically found another way to solve the problem that I wanted Inksmith to solve in the first place; the difference of course is that we’d have a central idea to gather around and that would be the software.
The community coming together around Habari is one I’m very proud to be a part of in the first instance. Final word to those that decide to put Inksmith in my face one more time, seriously try and do something constructive with your time, I know I am.
Forest was back in town for the weekend and we were catching up as I’ve not seen him since the summer. We’re shooting the shit and he asks me how my artwork and design work is going. Of which I had to answer with the truth, in reality it’s not. Oh yeah sure I’ve recently been playing around with Habari, but to be honest Habari is a hobby which I’m enjoying being a part of, but I wouldn’t say it’s stretching my artistic muscles. It’s definitely making me take a much more pragmatic approach to design and I’ve done this before but I know when my artistic muscles are being flexed and sadly I can’t really claim the last year to have provided me with any level of truly artistic expression and in talking with Forest I kind of inadvertently voiced the reason why.
I’ve heard in the past that there are two sides to the way the brain works (I could obviously be making this shit up so if you’ve got links whatever please do send them over) in that it’s operates and functions with practicality in mind, maths, engineering, science. And then there is the creative side of the brain. These two areas don’t cross over very often but when they do you get freaks of nature like myself who do engineering by day (so it’s all about calculations, making things work/fit) and by night I draw and I create, or at least that’s what I thought I could do easily.
The harsh reality of the situation however is that I’ve obviously FAILED in that respect (chalk another failure on my part, one of many in my life) What I’ve found to be the case however is that if I’m submerged in engineering, my other drawing energy and concentration seems to disappear. I guess much like many people I need to be in a particular frame of mind. The music that I’ll be listening to has to inspire me as well (I draw a lot better when I’ve actually got music I’m really into at that particular moment in time); my mind has to be a blank, and I have to have focus. Cutting my drawing based on pesky stuff like eating and sleeping is the bane of the entire exercise to be honest.
So what’s the solution you ask? Well now that I’ve ACTUALLY identified the problem (which I always knew but I’ve not properly voiced until now) it’s really up to me to MAKE the time for drawing and retrain myself to my current situation. Originally I thought I’d have trouble finding the time to do all these things. See it’s not a question of whether or not you have the time to do something (at least that’s how I see it), the harsh reality of a busy working life is that you’ll never find the time. It’s up to you to seriously make the time and it’s up to you to train your mind and schedule your time in such a way so as to accommodate those things that you want to do. My problem it would see is my psychological status and my willingness to tackle the creative avenue in front of me.
So it’s time to be pragmatic about things one more time and really put in the hours of building and creating once again. Hopefully that’ll manifest itself in several unfinished projects that have been laying around the place in the attempt of making them a reality again.
It’s been a truly exciting time for Habari on the design front (not that it’s not been exciting on the code front, but I can only really properly comment on all things design to be honest). Since the last time we talked, Michael has been a busy boy with absolutely everything under the sun. All these ideas have been filtering through the designs as we build towards a unified look for the administration panel.
Remember these mockups are just that mockups, we’re still meandering trying to sort things out, this is an open design process so things are going to change. Don’t think that what you see here is gospel and how it’s going to be, don’t be quoting me fekking Jakob in my face about usability and whatnot. These are the formation months, trust me we’re going through MANY MANY loops and discussions. So with that in mind let’s begin shall we.
The Installer
The installer now is broken down in several sections, and Owen came up with the idea whereby this area might be further customised by developers to make it easier to do things and incorporate elements so that it’s easier to administer new installations (or something like that, best talk to him about that). The design follows through the idea to keep things simple and as modular as possible.
Stage One:
Final Stage:
We’re still playing around with loads of things here. The header and footer are still up for discussion but the main ideas are there. We’re definitely going for the easiest installer award with this release.
Create Page
The main page has gone back a step. Originally all the Habari mockups were done in blacks and shades of grey however as the design ‘progressed’ colour started being added. We’ve taken a step back to confirm how everything fits together before we move later on down the line for the full branding of the application.
Michael’s been pretty busy and he’s got his ideas regarding the media browser on ‘paper’. Once we’ve ironed out all the kinks and how it’s going to work I think it’ll be the most special media browser on any blogging platform.
We did have a great deal of interation of ideas between us on the logo. Work is still ongoing in this area and probably will be for a little while longer as we try and find ourselves the best fit for what the logo means to the community and how people will view us effectively.
Remember nothing is set, everything’s up for discussion. As always Spread the news!
This is the first (hopefully) weekly instalment of the comings and goings on in the Habari Design Community. As this was our first week ‘out’ it was obviously a pretty wild and exciting ride with an immense amount of interest from all people around the world. What’s fascinating to me is that the people at the table currently trying to shape the design aspect of Habari. We’ve got Michael and myself working on all things admin at the moment, with comments from the entire community. Bryan Veloso has joined the team and he’s going to be handling all the website related stuff (from main site to wiki design to whatever the hell else we can keep him busy with) and we have the truly talented Yoram who’s kindly offered to do the icons, so as far as I’m concerned we’re in pretty good shape regarding the graphical direction the project is going to have.
Logo
A great deal of work has been done in the logo department. However we’re still not really decided on the direction we want to take as the current options on the table haven’t been a unanimous ‘HELL YES’. There are merits to all of them but I think with respect to the logo it’s better to just wait for that one idea that jumps out at us and really makes us all smile rather than settling for a right here and right now solution. Here’s a few examples of what are on the table:
Installer
A lot of work has gone into the installer as well. I’m not going to comment on the design of the installers, because that’s out in the wild going through the motions.
We’re still hammering through these back and forth, but the idea is there, one click install, degradable JS that makes parts of the install appear as and when the previous section has been completed and verified.
Administration Panel
Very minor tweaks going on here, except of course the colours. The pink is displayed for when you hover over the log out button.
Publish
More work going on this part. We’ve been having a lot of discussions regarding the number of buttons we should have. The subtle addition to these mockups is the slider for the tags (think increasing/decreasing the tags on display).
Remember nothing is set, everything’s up for discussion. As always Spread the news!
Gotta thank the guys at Smashing Magazine for putting the Kode on the list of dark sites you should’ve seen list. Dunno if they were partly responsible for bringing the site down for a couple of hours yesterday but it’s an honour to be on the list.
It’s been one hell of a couple of days since we first talked about the Habari project. There’s been a slew of reaction to the news all over the internet (go to the pingback section of that post) and to be honest it’s far exceeded all expectations I could have had because I honestly don’t have any. See I wasn’t completely sure how everyone would react over the news and therefore I was preparing myself for a little bit of a fight, in so much that we would have to prove the meritts of the software before we got people actually wanting to join and help build the community.
This in turn got me thinking to what all this meant and so I’m writing this post for several reasons. A couple of them is to dispell any rumours, a few others is to point everyone in the right direction should they want any more information, while others is to address concerns I’ve heard from people over the last couple of days.
On Community
There’s been a lot of speculation as to why we’re doing this. I’m not going to speak for the others (because they’re doing a pretty good job of it themselves to be honest) but I’ll tell you why I’m doing this. I’ve been talking to (read: boring) many of my offline friends with just how cool this is going to be. The first thing that they ask me is “Why the hell are you doing this to yourself? Why are you working for free again? Why are you spending your free time doing this?” I can only answer by saying that it’s incredible fun to be part of an online community of like minded people who are trying to make one of my favourite pastimes (ie blogging and tinkering with my website) a more enjoyable experience. I love being involved in open source projects and this is without a doubt one of the biggest things I’ve ever been involved with.
When I first started looking for an alternative to Movable Type I had two options. The first was WordPress the other was Textpattern. I chose WordPress for the community. That community however has changed. It’s core has shifted into something different. The thing is though I can’t really say that this is the community’s fault. This shift actually can be attributed to something else. The fact of the matter is that WordPress developement has stagnated as far as the .org user is concerned.
The only explanation I can give is that this is because the WordPress development shifted it’s attention. Shifted from the .org section to the .com section. I’m not going to condem the guys for doing this, in fact in most cases I understand them doing this. However this move and shift hasn’t gone unnoticed and obviously a lot of energy flying about the WordPress community has either gone into the ether, ignored or shrugged aside. All these thousands of people out there that have contributed in the past feel as though they have been forsaken. That could be part of the reason why a great number of people genuinely got excited about the prospect of a new system, written from the ground up that might address questions. It’s all about the community. It’s all about the people that you interact with and that help you along your way.
What you think the latest release of ‘features’ on WordPress.org is a coincidence. It’s obvious (to me at least and this feature could have been in development for months, in which case I apologise) that this is a knee-jerk reaction to a situation that obviously has made them sit up and think about the situation. It’s not every day that several prominent developers (Robert, Owen, Michael), at the very least in the past otherwise they would not be in the credit box on wordpress.org, decide to leave and start something on their own; it’s a sign that something isn’t exactly right in the community. My absolute favourite one however is this one (I only saw this because it was lying in my referrer log), so yeah go and hammer that link and lets get it up there at the top :) lol.
So you’re aiming to kill WordPress?
Don’t be silly. Nobody is trying to kill WP. We’re not aiming to make software that is better than WordPress, we’re trying to make software that is better than ALL blogging software out there. Lets be clear about this there are quite a large number of open source projects that allow you to do essentially the same thing. Their degree of complication obviously varies, however the fact remains that there are many alternatives. As it stands it’s considered that WordPress is the best alternative that’s available on the market. So it’s obvious that people would think that we are in fact trying to create something that out does WP. Also many of us have come from a WordPress user base, however that doesn’t mean other people from other backgrounds cannot join the fun. But would we really be getting involved and doing something if we didn’t feel like there was a void to be filled? Room for one more solution that offered an alternative way of doing things? We’re ultimately here because we feel that we can contribute back and put our efforts into something that can aid people and can provide a fun platform to share their thoughts, photos and media.
We don’t even have a developer’s pre-release. The reason it was announced in any fashion was because one of the core developers moved his site over and was the first person to actively use the code for his site. That’s a MAJOR success, one that deserved to be celebrated. In a weird twist of fate, outing slightly earlier than anticipated was actually an incredible great thing. Why? Because people that were on the fringes, thinking that this was just all wishful thinking might actually hold some legs. As such this little buzz has gotten several people wanting to contribute, and here’s one reason why:
Habari is a fresh start. We’re all in the unique position that we’ve been blogging for several years now. We’ve all had our share of experiences with open source and we’ve all seen several different packages in our time. We’re at the stage now that if we had a fresh start we’d do things slightly differently and hopefully better. And that’s what we’re aiming to do.
Habari Contribution Model
I guess that might be the greatest draw to the Habari project. We’re pretty open for people who want to contribute to the project, in fact the way that this project has been set up, it’s ideal for people wanting to contribute as it’s got a completely different structure in it’s development, in that it’s a meritocracy. It’s a great way to make sure that the software comes first and that there is no one person who veto’s everything or has final say in everything.
So were do we go from here? Well one of the things that I shall be doing as I’m coordinating the designers on this team is to give a recap every Sunday of this week’s activities on the design front. What we finished off and what we’ve got to look forward towards. I’ll be including pics and so everyone is always welcome to chime in and add their two cents to the design either here or in the dev mailing list.
Well Chris broke the news about, Habari, a new open source blogging CMS platform. While he didn’t want feel it correct to mention in the post who was involved, I’m going to step forward and put my hand up as the designated pixel pushing monkey of this motley crew.
What I find amusing is that as this news was released by Chris, I read this post about how any new blogging software would not stand a chance because of WordPress. Man I love a fucking challenge. I mean reading that post you’d think we’d be fools to even consider making a WordPress alternative. I guess all I can say to that is: Colour us DAMN foolish.
History Lesson
Back in November Chris approached a few of us to see who would be up for helping design for the new project he was working on. His timing couldn’t have been better to be honest with you. See I had a MASSIVE itch that just needed to be scratched. I had definitely not said everything that needed to be said about blogging administration panels, especially since the last one I was actively involved with didn’t exactly go exactly the way it should have.
I felt pretty burnt the last time round to be honest, so much so that I really thought it was best for me to steer well clear of any open source involvement in the future. However like I said in that post the most important thing that I got out of the online experience was the collaboration with the guys. If it was anyone else asking me to do something apart from Michael, Joen and Chris I’d have probably declined there and then. I didn’t join the team because I didn’t have anything better to do (as it will become clear in the coming months), but alas because I really want to create something that I can be proud to have been involved with and that I will find a joy to use. Something that I can contribute towards and that others can contribute towards as well in an open fashion.
So when Chris came forward I was all too happy to say yes. Considering that I had actually contacted another developer (I’m not going to mention him by name but needless to say he was also having a similar itch which says a lot about how things stand in the current open source blogging world) about starting our own blogging CMS, it was interesting that others around me felt the need for an alternative as well.
Shuttle vs Habari
The great thing about the Habari project is the fact that it’s a clean slate. Imagine starting on the ground floor. There were no presidencies, no set stringent codebase that couldn’t be altered, no existing userbase that might be confused and the list goes on. This is a decidedly different beast than Shuttle.
Those who don’t learn from the past end up repeating the mistakes again and again. So my approach to the graphical development of Habari is slightly different. Simply put, I’m going to be as transparent about the design process as you can imagine. I’ve seen several times in the past couple of months on the project, that through being open about the design I’ve been able to seriously move it forward in ways that I very well might not have considered. Ideas are what will make things move forward. At the same time it’s important that one person takes the bull by the horns and really goes to town on the design. Others should jump in with as many suggestions as possible, all the time because that’s how the innovation will continue and the project will not stagnate.
The Design
I will be going into a lot more detail in future posts regarding all the design decisions and what everything does and how it all fits together, so be patient, it’ll all pay off in the long run I promise. As we’ve only recently kind of decided about colours (although knowing me I will probably tweak them, but I’m trying to be very good about this and sticking with this colour scheme), posting this will give people a feel of the quality of final product we’re going for (and I’m not going to even talk about the code, the others are more than capable of that).
The following jpg is but a mockup, however Chris has implemented a fair chunk of this believe it or not (with probably like a 2 week old mock up), I’m telling you the man is a machine that will not be stopped. His dedication has forced me to make sure that I bring my very best to the table. It’s a bit of pressure that I’m actually relishing. Keeps me honest about things.
Final Thoughts
If you’ve got ideas you think the ultimate BLOGGING CMS should have drop a comment, I’d love to hear what ideas everyone has and what’s important to them as a user. What is it about your current blogging software that you wish could be simplified/improved, I’m all ears.
Continuing in my series of the best of 2006, just finished my post on the best graphic novels of 2006 over at Splash Panel.
Fantastic bit of writing advise from one of the top (and now Lost staff writer) Brian K Vaughan over on his Myspace account. I’ve got like 150 pages under my belt, only 9851 pages to go :).
Easily one of the coolest gadgets I got this year was the Blackberry Pearl (or 8100 model). I’ve been playing with it for like a day now and I know it’s going to be something really special to use for a good long while. Although it’s a nice site, the images really don’t do it much justice. It’s honestly a thing of beauty in design if you have it infront of you. It’s only slightly larger than my previous Ericsson and packs a serious punch with respect to the number of features it’s got in it.
The only annoying thing I found was the flap you put the SIM card in doesn’t stay set, but opens until you put the battery in there. Minor annoyance but it’s a real shame as this could have scored some more points of rock solid construction. Another thing that is really starting to PISS me off, is the fact that none of these phone manufacturers have clocked onto the fact that it would be nice to have a normal earphone jack as opposed to some piece of shit they’ve concocted for you to plug in your earphones.
The Future was Orange
I’ve been with Orange for the last year and a half. The best part of being with Orange wasn’t the coverage (which is shit where I live) or the price package (which was shit once again but I’ll get to that in a minute) but rather the one little perk of having 2 for 1 cinema tickets on a Wednesday. Of course, based on my previous post, I’ve not been doing that very often either, which means that this little perk, wasn’t all that much of a perk as far as I’m concerned, so I didn’t need much convincing to drop them as my network of choice.
What’s interesting is that I was able to get the phone and a whole new package that suits me down to a T while paying less. The issue with a lot of these packages that many operators provide is that they’re honestly not tailored very well for the average user. They either give you an immense amount of time in “off-peak” hours that are not always useful, so you end up not using all of them, or they give you too little minutes during normal times. The good thing however is that after a year and a bit of using my phone regularly I’ve got enough bills to know exactly how much a use and of what. No need to guess these things (as I’ve had to in the past).
Enter the T
hmm got to check how much that costs on the internet to see if it’s cheaper.In the end T-mobile based on their Flext system which effectively gives you a pot of money every month that you can use for either calls or texts all from the same pot. Obviously I’ve opted for the unlimited internet service on there which is brilliant to be surfing the web while waiting on the train platform or even walking to and from places. You know when you’re in any store and you think to yourself:
Well now it’s just a few clicks to check the net there and then.
Opera Mini
So I’ll be talking about things/software/tips and tricks/links that I find out for the Pearl as I go along. Hopefully other people can benefit from my experiences. The first software tip I’ll throw everyone’s way is the Opera Mini browser.
Seems that Opera is definitely the little browser that could. Seems that this little browser is a hit on the Nintendo market. I’ve got to say that Opera Mini (opera for mobile devices) is MILES better than the standard BlackBerry browser. For a start they’ve cut away a lot of the clutter that the BB browser has when the menu is pressed. People on that size of screen don’t want to scroll FOREVER. We want something quick and to the point. Sure the browser is being updated pretty regularly as far as I can tell. It’s got RSS integration which is essential for all mobile devices as far as I’m concerned.
The Home page is EXACTLY what you want to see when you first log into the browser. Oh sure I’m as self obsessed as the next guy, but having BK as my home page on my BB seems a bit of a waste of space, although it’s definitely interesting to see how the site renders on a mobile phone (I’ll be sorting out a seperate mobile spreadsheet in the not too distant future).
The Application Opera Mini has attempted to access the network. Would you like to allow this?The only annoying thing for me at the moment (which I’m not sure if it’s got something to do with the actual browser or t-mobile’s settings) but effectively every time you use Opera it asks you:
If anyone’s got a way of stopping this fekking annoying message coming up everytime Opera is used please, pretty please with a cherry on top drop something in the comments and I’ll update this post accordingly.
For those in the T-mobile camp wondering how to sort this out onto your Pearl, here’s the steps I took:
From your Pearl go to http://mini.opera.com and follow the instructions.
<li><p>Chance are after you've tried to connect it'll fail on your ass (it did on mine). Thankfully Opera have already forseen this problem and posted <a href="http://www.operamini.com/help/connect/?provider=T-Mobile®ion=UK">this page</a>. Note that this is for the UK market, although as you can see they've sorted everyone out for the rest of the world as well.</p></li>
<li><p>Go to Options > Advanced Options > TCP and then put the information you got from that page.
Turn off, remove battery, turn on and it should all work.
As I continue my review of 2006, go read part 1 if you want to find out my thoughts on The best of the Net 2006, I’m turning my attention to movies. Interestingly I think this year has been one of the worst years for movies in a really long time. That isn’t to say that I haven’t enjoyed a good number of movies this year, it’s just that I found less time for movies this year, which I can probably attribute to the lack of quality flicks being shown this year.
Cinema Movies
This is a list of the actual movies I saw in the cinema (that’s a pitiful 11 (I forgot that I’d watched Pan’s Labyrinth movies, which is completely ridiculous as far as I’m concerned):
Aeroplane Movies
while the rest of the new released movies were watched on flights:
Best Movie of 2006
From the above the best movie was without a doubt Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige. I’ve talked about it more extensively on my review of the movie. Funnily enough Kevin Smith’s Clerks II is a definite runner up as it definitely gave me a couple of hours of pure entertainment. The whole donkey sequence was one of the funniest things I’ve seen on screen. So funny I actually had to stop and catch my breath. Comic genius. Cars is up there as well, although it’s definitely not as good as either the Incredibles or Finding Nemo.
Most disappointing movie of 2006 for me personally was X-men 3. Seriously they were on auto-pilot for that movie. Another minor disappointment for me was Superman Returns. Not because it was a bad movie, but rather because it wasn’t as great as I actually really wanted it to be.
To be Continued…
Here’s a list of movies that were released this year and that I will no doubt try and actually watch sometime in 2007:
However the PRUNE of all prunes surely has to go to Rocky Balboa (and that’s considering some of the stinkers I’ve seen this year, I mean it’s got Last Holiday for fuck’s sake). I mean seriously what the hell were they thinking when they got round and signed all the contracts for this? It’s one of the most ridiculous concepts I’ve ever heard and it’s really strange that Hollywood is so lame that it has to create another sequel. They should have stopped after 2 and called it a night. Hell I might even stomach 4, but seriously Rocky 6? I haven’t even seen this and sure as hell am not going to bother wasting my time with it. What next Die Hard 4? Oh shit yeah they’re going to be making that.
I started writing a best of 2006 about a week ago, however I’ve had to break that down into several posts because it got far too large and I didn’t feel that I would be doing each topic justice, if I bulked all of them into one post. So for the first topic of conversation I’ll talk about the best of the Net for 2006. This is mainly about design on the net, internet applications, websites that caught my attention on the net for one reason or another. So without further adieu here’s the Squeaky Kode Trophies for the year of 2006.
Addictive Site of the Year
Advertising/Design Goodness. This is the one of those sites that even though I might have 500 unread items in my feed reader, I’ll most definitely jump to this site and have a look and see what’s new. The reason is pretty simple really, it provides me with inspiration every single time. Although I hate adverts, I absolutely LOVE good ads. A good ad will go a long way with me to be honest, and this site brings the very best of the advertising world right to your feed reader, generally speaking every day.
Best Advert of 2006
Sony Bravia Paint. On a similar note to the topic above, I couldn’t really not mention the new Sony Bravia advert. How do you top the supreme bouncy balls advert of last year? I’ll tell you how, using a hell of a lot of paint. You’d think this was probably the only advert I’d seen that was special, and I’ve got to say that it definitely had some stiff competition from the Citroen Mutations advert.
Best Designed Site of the Year
UXmag came out of nowhere as far as I’m concerned. Very very slick sight, it combined that attention to detail that Subtraction has and ran it all of a Textpattern install. What I love about it is the attention to detail, the fact that it resizes according to the size of the browser without really loosing any of it’s design intent. I think that’s an absolutely fabulous design for a news portal. I also really enjoyed seeing what Phu’s been doing with his site as well. Honourable mentions include Dave Shea’s new redesign, although his previous design was pretty timeless, the orange and blues really worked very well. Of course Shaun Inman also did a bit of a redesign job which I thought was an interesting concept . Watching Michael sort out his site for several months was fun, so the ‘new’ trend of a live redesign seems to be making a bit of a come back (Mike was ahead of that trend it would seem).
Best Internet Application
Up until last year, I’ve got to say that I only every used personally hosted services, however this year I’ve expanded to several other services that I’ve found to be crucial in how I enjoy the internet. The first on the list was Ma.gnolia. You’re probably using another social bookmarking service out there, I decided on this one because it was well designed. I know sounds fickle, but I’m a fickle designer that likes to be surrounded by nice things.
It’s taken me a long while but I finally bit the Flickr bug as well and got myself an pro account as well. I’ve got to say that I don’t use it as much as I should do but that will be changing in the not to distant future.
For my feed reading I’ve jumped on the Newsgator bandwagon. I’ve got a lot to write about with respect to FOFRedux and will hopefully go to using that application in the not too distant future sometime next year, but in the meanwhile I’ve found the Newsgator service to be exactly what I was looking for.
So I guess it’s not so much that I had a specific internet application, but rather the fact that I actually decided to use several of the plethora of applications out there for use in the first place.
Best Internet Related Software
Firefox 2. Yeah, what did you expect? If you haven’t tried this little browser yet, make your peace with the other browser you’re using and head on over to take back the internet your way. My favourite feature of the new ‘version’ (sorry it should have been 1.6, but I can understand it for marketing purposes) is the dictionary in the text fields, restore session and automatically restart after an update. The icons are also pretty cool I thought as well.
Best Firefox Plugin
Firebug. Yeah well, I created this particular category because FIrebug really blew my mind as I honestly thought that there was no way you could top the Web Developer Plugin which I can’t do anything without, and then comes this exceptional plugin that serious makes my life a lot more easy and lays everything in front of me in a clear manner that was otherwise obscured.
Blogging Networks Politics
While I know it wasn’t fun for any of the 9rulers out there to see our network’s name dragged into the mud, it made for interesting reading to be included in the internet gossip pages. One thing I will comment on however was the fact that Blogging Networks in general felt as though they were soo much less important this year than in previous years. Yeah I’m including the venture capital funding that b5media received. I might be feeling that way due to the fact that networks and the interaction I was having with the people in the network was less this year than in previous years.
If you think I’ve missed something pretty fundamental just drop a comment and I’ll be sure to add it into the list or create a whole new category for it.
Mandolux, easily one of the single best implementations of a good idea for wallpapers on the net. Take some nice high quality photographs, halve them so they’re abstract enough provide them as wallpapers in different sizes. Genius.
This “little” Eboy poster is so apt for capturing what I’ve been experiencing for the past year and a half as I got more into the internet in general. What’s great about the poster is that you actually notice more and more stuff on second and third viewing.
New Citroen ad - Mutation. It’s good to see that they moved their ideas forward and didn’t do another Transformer ad. The Bonobo music is absolutely brilliant. (Hat tip: Pixelsurgeon).
Blue Dragon from the fine folk at Mistwalker. Dammit, they’ve actually got me considering getting an Xbox 360 as it’s what I expected Final Fantasy 8 to look like (7 was and is the only Final Fantasy game I’ve played, but when I mean played I mean bought a Playstation just to play…(thanks to Aurum3 for the heads up, I might have to kill you guys).
Check out the new Sony Bravia Paint Advert. I’ve got to say that these adverts are taking over the same status as the Levis ads of the mid 90s. You know the ones that would propel music artists into the limelight and just make little contributions to pop culture. Even more flamboyant than the bouncy balls.
Flickr Cards. What makes this strange is that I only sorted out my flickr account yesterday (yeah I’ve been resisting this for a while now). I love print as well.
Finally my wishes for a mobile that actually provides me with what I want have been answer with the latest Sony Ericsson M600i.
I honestly don’t care that it doesn’t have a camera, as I find that feature a bit superfluous for my liking in a mobile phone anyway. It’s also fantastic news that mobile phone manufacturers are starting to utilise touch screens a little bit more, thus reducing the overall number of buttons on the phones, simplifying the design completely. Even better than a Crackberry.
In my mind this is exactly what I was trying to get last year. A phone that lets me:
- surf the internet
- check my emails
- all within a nice, small tidy little package, not the size of a PDA.
On a similar but unrelated note, by the very nature of contracts in the UK, I end up getting new handsets every year; while this is a great thing, it’s also a terrible waste, as I’m massing a collection of handsets. All of them work, but they’re different generations. Randing from a battered Ericsson (when Sony hadn’t merged) to an oldie Nokia, the LG chocolate phone and my Sony Ericsson K750i. Definitely make a nice collection of how quickly technology for mobile devices has ramped up in a small space of time, but what the hell am I supposed to do with all these handsets? It’s not like they’re vintage yet so I can sell them on ebay as a collector’s item, and it seems like an awful waste chucking them in the bin. I mean where do ipod mini’s go when they retire? I ask because I’m eying up either a Zune or one of the new ipods.
There seems to be a bit of resurgence in the design and web development UK market. This is a very good thing as it’s been pretty poor the last year or so. When I cleaned up my room a couple of weeks ago I kept looking at my old magazines like I do and there seriously is a great deal of inspiration to still be gleamed from them. For web development I highly recommend .net. The magazine had a makeover a couple of months ago (including their website, which has a lot of great stuff on there) and has a great deal of good people working for them.
Unfortunately for the more artwork/design inclined, the available mags out there are slightly more hit and miss. While I do love the class that emanates from Digit, it does lack a certain amount of fun in their features. It seems less made to showcase designers and their work, and more inclined to actually provide information on what’s going on. Now that Computer Arts has gotten rid of the previous editor-in-chief and promoted Paul Newman into that position the magazine is definitely more readable. The problem is that they still continue to make the majority of the magazine tutorial heavy. Yeah guys move on already. There is a lot more to talk about than how to use photoshop and illustrator to do stuff. You might think I’m just jaded because I don’t use either, however the fact remains that rather than providing tutorials about design and how to development your skills, and more interviews with design firms and creatives, it’s all about filters and put this layer here etc, which in my mind is a complete and utter waste of space that could be used for something more useful.
As a sidenote, the recent Jason Arber (a man whom I have a lot of respect for) article on typography and fonts was completely wrong, which I have no doubt is going to spawn some serious amounts of letters being sent to CA. Basically (and I’m completely paraphrasing, except where I’m going to be quoting the man), he said that he doesn’t understand why there is a need for font designers anymore. We’ve got enough fonts, and here’s the kicker, which is I guess meant tongue in cheek, but he still said it:
In time, and with enough re-training, these poor creatures could become normal members of society.
Oh, dear, he didn’t just say that did he? As if that wasn’t bad he then gives the following as well:
Do you think these sick font designers will be happy when they’ve created a million fonts? Two million? A billion?
Oh dear again. You might as well call all those writers and tell them we’ve got enough books in this world, all the directors we’ve got enough movies in this world, all the musicians that we’ve got enough music in this world and to all artists that we’ve got enough art in this world. This is what is known in the industry as letterbait (read it in the recent Wired). This has got letterbait written all over it.
We definitely need better font management systems (I’ve been using Character map for Gnome and absolutely loving it), but saying we don’t need any more fonts and then insulting the font designers is just plain wrong.