Posts filed under "featured"
My focus in the last couple of months has shifted. This is probably the longest I’ve not been creative in the traditional sense of how I would describe being creative. I’ve not been drawing, not been designing (graphics at least), not been creating. Which to me is something really painful. I’ve stripped by involvement online down to an absolute minimum and all of this in the persuit of one thing. Finishing off my script.
This thing has been brewing for YEARS now and has taken more turns than I can imagine, but thankfully the last couple of months have been very productive. I’ve got the first half of the book mapped out and written. The thing is that creating a whole world is extremely hard. Every single character is new, every single setting needs to be described and every word of dialogue is analysed.
In order to help me get into the whole script writing, I’ve had to really emmerse myself in the comic production side of things. I’ve been reading scripts that are within the comic books that I read, I’ve been hunting online for various resources and the one thing that I’ve found is that the actual method is completely unique to every single person. I’m sure there are creators that have got the same method of working as I do, however I’ve not really read anyone’s account of this yet. Mainly I guess because the people that I’ve been reading that write and draw their own stuff have reached that level of craft where they can cut corners.
I’m still learning the track, so there is no corner cutting for me. The great thing about this experience however is that I can see the fruits of my labour slowly evolve. I started off with one page which was incredibly difficult to write (how do you start off your epic after all) before finishing off the first arc. It’s a slow process but ultimately once I’ve got the script in my hand I can then concentrate on the next task of drawing the thing. The plan and I will do EVERYTHING in my power to achieve, is to have my first graphic novel completed by the time I hit my 30th birthday (I turn 29 next week). It doesn’t have to be published, but it definitely has to be completed as one package which I can then start shopping around to see if anyone is interested (I have only two companies that I would consider publishing to, otherwise I think I’ll go down the self publishing route).
My creative energies for the next year are going to be fully dedicated to the story.
See those last 4 letters at the end? Yeah got my confirmation from the IET that my application was accepted for Chartered Engineering status. Those 4 letters are the culmination of 29 years (shy of 1 month) of both studying and working as an engineer.
It’s difficult to describe exactly what it all means consicely unless you’re part of the industry to understand what is expected of you and what you expect of other people that hold that same title, but needless to say I’m seriously happy about it and was one of my two goals that I had to achieve this year. This is partly one of the reasons why I’ve taken a step back from my various online endeavours to persue other things that have/had been put on hold for sometimes years.
Now it’s time to start working for that other thing (hopefully I will be able to talk about that in November sometime).
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.
It’s been nearly 4 years since the last Radiohead album ‘Hail for the Thief’. While I enjoyed that album as I’ve generally enjoyed most of what they’ve produced, The Bends and Ok Computer being the zenith of their output as far as I’m concerned, their new album ‘In Rainbows’ is a completely different beast altogether.
The major difference here is the way in which they’ve decided to distribute their album. See they’ve decided not to go the traditional route and release the album via a label. Instead what they’ve decided to do is let you download it off their website. Nothing new there, right? Ah but here’s the catch. YOU decide how much you actually want to pay for it. You can either pay something, or download it for free.
This turns everything on it’s head as far as I’m concerned. I’ve always claimed that the price of music is completely and utterly extorionate. A tiny teeny fraction of the cost of what you pay actually goes to the creators themselves, instead the majority goes to everyone else around. £12 for an album is just too much. So download it you say and just keep the music? You obviously don’t know me very well. When it comes to music from my favourite bands I will buy the CD. It’s just the way it goes. For me it’s not just the music, it’s the package. It’s the entire experience. I’m also a collector of sorts. I like to have physical copies of material by certain bands. I own a proper CD player and Amp that I paid through my nose to get a better sound. If you think that you can’t tell the difference, then you’ve obviously not heard a proper system in action.
Sure, this might be something of a dinosaur mentality however it’s one of those thought processes that I honestly cannot get away from. The thing is Radiohead are known for the amount of effort and creativity that they put into their package as well. They obviously feel the same way about this sort of thing, otherwise we wouldn’t have the school library book for Amnesiac or the Map for Hail to the Thief. Case in point, in addition to the actual download option, there’s also the option to pre-order the physical edition of this album, which comes with 2 CDs with artwork, photographs, lyrics and 2 Vinyls of the material as well. All encased in a hardcover book and slipcase.
I’ve only just found out about all this, since I only found out yesterday that they’ve got a new album out. So I quickly downloaded the album (more on that in a little while). Is it any good? The short answer is that ‘In Rainbows’ is BRILLIANT. It’s one of the best things I’ve heard this year, and this is a year where the Smashing Pumpkins released their return to form album. It’s a mixture of ‘The Bends’, ‘Ok Computer’ and maybe even a little bit of ‘Pablo Honey’. It’s not this heavy rock album. It’s a glass of fine wine, where the drums and guitars are back. Yorke’s voice is crisp and clear over the music in this perfect mixture that only they can achieve. God it’s great to hear well produced music again.
So back to the download versus physical object question, what am I going to do? Well I’ve already downloaded the album for free, and have ordered the physical edition of the album as well.
Over 1000 photos , but here is a small slither of what is to come:
Well, I have not been near a computer for about a week but it’s good to see that the internet doesn’t stay quiet. I am specifically referring to the exodus of members from the 9rules network. Now to all those out there scratching their heads and wondering why I am calling this an exodus, you’ll understand soon enough. A little history for those in the dark or who don’t actually care all that much about such things, 9rules is a blogging network that reached it’s zenith (at least in terms of popularity) about a year and a half ago…give or take a several months. It was an incredibly vibrant place, with a great website and really active members. This was back when bloggers were rock stars….erm you know what I am saying, back when blogging was fresh and new as opposed to the norm in the web landscape.
I have not had the time to formulate my reasons (in a proper post that is) for leaving the network and all my miscellaneous thoughts about the process and aftermath (as I am in Japan at the moment and can’t sleep), however what I would like to do is try and compile a list of all the 9rules members that did leave.
My reason for doing this is to address one of my main gripes about the way in which departures from the network have been handled, or as the case may be, not been handled. While a new site is celebrated, a departing site (or even original member departing) does not even warrent a small mention on the offical blog. While I can understand how the powers that be might feel like a failure that people would choose to leave, I personnally see this in another way.?This should really be a time to wish everyone well in all their future endevours and thank them for being a part of the network (as long as those members were not kicked out for shoddy conduct, which I don’t think any of the listed members were). In this particular case a least 16 sites have left the network, one of which was there from round one, I have been there from round two and several others have been extremely active members in the community (I doubt anyone will reach Paul’s forum count, ever).
So with that in mind I would like to start a little list of the 9rulers that have recently left the network, it was an honour being seen in such great company as yourselves (if you have left recently and I haven’t included you, please drop a comment and I will update this post):
So I’m sitting here in Naoto’s house and writing this after experiencing my first week (more or less) in Japan. Seriously i cannot imagine myself staying away from this country. So many things to absorb in such a little time that i could honestly keep writing for a long time. Of course if i did that then i would be at the bloody computer all day and not actually out there exploring things and soaking in everything. Therefore i will try to actually write down as much stuff as possibly can that has made an impression on me and then hopefully elaborate on everything (and include as many pictures as i can) when i get back. These posts i guess will act as placeholders until i get back.
The greatest thing for me is being shown around by ?aoto as there are soo many things that you could not possibly know or understand until you actually lived here or someone told you. The little red triangles that are place on the windows so that the firefighters can see which ones can be used in the event of a fire. I honestly thought it was some weird architectural statement.
Obviously the biggest thing that is easy to notice is just how clean the streets, tube and all public areas actually are. It is completely unreal. No gum stains on the floor, the paint on the roads is as bright as the day they were painted. Not a spec of garbage anywhere, anytime, anyplace.
We went to the Ghibli museum. Unfortunately you’re not allowed to take any photos in the Museum but I have some photos from the roof (which you are allowed to take photos) which is pretty cool. The highlight here for me was the circular strobe light running animation which was beyond incredible. Several rooms where filled with items that where inspired from the movie.
We went to Kamakura with all the temples (the place has got over 64 temples), however easily the best temple we saw was a hidden one that was far away from everything in the city and that was one of the most serene places on earth.
My first Japanese style breakfast was a complete experience. For those that don’t actually know what this entails, it has miso soup, rise, grilled fish, nato, seaweed and various pickles.
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Walked up Mount Fuji. I am completely sun burnt and tired, but by god the views was completely and utterly incredible. It has to be seen to be believed. In fact I’ll be sure to share when I get back because it was definitely worth the trip. We didn’t make it to the top of the mountain, but we got close and it was a mission going down as much as it was going up.
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Tomorrow we are off to Kyoto and Western Japan which is going to be an experience of epic proportions as it also includes my first trip on the Shinkansen (aka the bullet train).
So this last week I was in Princeton for my ‘little’ project in Egypt. The highlight of the trip without a doubt however was actually meeting Michael Graves. He was very busy looking at all sort of stones and mural paintings and whatnot for this other project that their office is knee deep into, however he spared some time and we had a bit of chat with him (myself, Steven and Reid) and he signed a monograph for each of us. Incredibly nice guy, very softly spoken and has got this great little smile that shows that he’s seriously enjoying himself.
Going through the monograph and buying stuff from their little design store you get a great feeling of all the different things that they’ve had a chance to influence and design. Notably are of course of all the Alessi products.
My price piece however is an Acme Studios pen (designed by MG) which is not only weighty but is a great little writing tool. The closes thing I can give an approximation to is how the front plates of Zippo lighters are used as a design piece, or statement
So I finally got around to doing some work on Habari this weekend, which was awesome. First time I actually used SVN and the guys and gals on the channel gave me a right grilling. Obviously I fucked things up the first time around but alas that’s ok, it’s all part of the experience. Below is the screenshot of what the current dashboard is currently looking like. It’s currently employing Blueprint version 0.5 which honestly has made my life soo easy in that I can actually concentrate on designing rather than setting up grids etc. Still LOADS of work to be done, but steadily this little project is coming along pretty nicely.
One thing that has me kind of stumped however is why the hell the tables appear differently? For some reason the height attribute for td element doesn’t work in Firefox. Anyone got any ideas what can be done about this?
So I’ve started looking at my blog feed reader and it hit me that I don’t really read all of my feeds as much as I skim them to see what new stuff might be happening in the world. The issue is though that I’m finding it harder and harder to find something that I must stop and read. I find that seriously strange. It’s not like I’ve got that much more blogs that I’m reading. I tend to add new blogs to my feed every so selectively.
Sure you have Khoi’s little commentary left and right, you have Paul’s exhaustive hardware reviews of consumer electronics I will never buy nor really care about. Michael’s blog is always an interesting collection of links (mainly movie related ones) from all over the place, Chris’s blog usually throws up some cool videos or interesting youtube snippets that I would never have the energy to look for, Journalista always gives me just about everything I could want in terms of comic book bytes and other assorted goodies (oftentimes more than I can possibly grasp). However one trend I’ve noticed is that the raw bloggers out there have reduced in number.
Oh but Khaled aren’t you part of the 9rules network? I’ve said this before (on another site) but I’ll say it again, 9rules is no longer the place it used to be. I’m not saying this is a bad thing, it’s just decidedly different. When I joined a couple of years ago it had something like 50 blogs in total. That’s 50 people I more or less knew from the forums. Knew and appreciated and liked and worked with and helped out etc. There are hunderds of memebers on there now, and honestly I don’t have the time to go through each one and vet each one.. I guess it was just more manageable in the past, for me at least, as I would add the ENTIRE feed for 9rules. Hell I wouldn’t know where to get it now if I tried. Anyone know where the feed for all the blogs from 9rules can be found? Shouldn’t that be a pretty prominent thing on this site? Shouldn’t you be able to taylor make your own RSS feed of all the various sites that are available to you? Kinda makes sense to me. Don’t know how easy it is to implement but I’m sure the guys are more than capable of doing something like that.
A couple of years ago it was this massive buzzing time, where we as bloggers (all of us, including you) ruled the net. Movies lived and died by our buzz (Snakes on a Plane), TV series got second leases on life (Serenity), well partly because of us.
Somedays I honestly feel like we’re not all that important anymore. Is it because all new fads become old quickly? Have we passed the ‘golden era’ of blogging? Is it that there is far too much noise on the net, and it’s becoming harder and harder to actually seperate the wheat from the chaff? Is blogging relevant nowadays or is it simply part of the general zeitgeist that is accepted and taken for granted?
There is NOTHING I like more during the summer than a cold Greek salad. It’s no wonder I’ll buy all the ingredients on the Monday and make myself one every day at work. However I find it mind boggling that I can’t seem to be able to buy a decent Greek salad in any restaurant that I’ve been to, Greek or otherwise. To spread the love I’m going to give everyone explicit details on how to make the simplest and healthiest dish this side of the Mediterranean.
The ingredients are very simple, for a decent sizes salad (1-2 people) you’ll need the following:
2 or 3 large tomatoes. They have to be the LARGE variety. No cherry tomatoes, no small piddly little tomatoes either. They have to be the big and ripe variety. Pay the extra, get the good stuff. This represents the bulk of the salad so don’t skimp on this ingredient.
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/2 a cucumber. Generally speaking it’s 1 small cucumber, but for some reason I can’t seem to be able to get these over here in UK supermarkets so I tend to use half of the ones available.
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1/4 or a red onion. Don’t get the white ones, go for the red ones. It’s all about the correct flavours and this is pretty important. You can have as many or as little as you like, however I find that if you put more it ends up left at the end.
1/2 a green pepper. You can try and use a sweet yellow or red pepper, but honestly it won’t be the same. The green pepper provides it with that savory taste that you need.
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Oregano. You’ll need lots of this, the dried variety.
Black Kalamata Olives. Yes you could try for another kind of olive. Maybe something in green, or even something stuffed. Rubbish. Get those ideas out of your head. It has to be a black olive. It has to be big and it has to be full of flavour.
Feta cheese. Lots of this stuff.
Olive oil. The more the better. You could make the whole salad swim in the stuff or you could be measured with the amounts. If you’re Greek, you go mental with the olive oil. If you’re a bit more concerned about your waistline, then be slightly more conservative. At least 5 tablespoons I would imagine, although I’ll be honest I never measure, I just pour until I think it’s about right.
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Fresh bread. Yes you heard me. Go to the bakery, go to the supermarket, go to the Deli down the road and get yourself a fresh loaf. It’s got to be a big loaf so you can enjoy soaking in all the olive oil left at the end of the salad. Trust me on this, it’s one of the single best parts of eating this.
Ok so now that we’ve got our ingredients, it’s time to understand the other aspect of what makes it a good Greek salad. It’s all about how you cut the ingredients. I know it sounds slightly strange but it’s true.
Tomatoes - The way to cut these is very simple. Each tomato has to be cut into 12 pieces. The way to do this is to cut the tomato in half. From their each half will be cut into six pieces. You might want to get rid of the central piece that is where it was attached to the vine. I find this piece to be a bit chewy and stringy in texture. Some people don’t seem to mind it, I’m not so keen on this part.
Cucumber - It’s really up to you how you want to eat this, you can either peel the cucumber or you can leave the skin on. I tend to alternate depending on my mood at the time. However the proper way to cut the cucumber is first down the length of the cucumber, so that you’ve got two long halves. From there you start chopping each half so that you’re left with semi-circular wedges about 0.5cm thick.
Pepper - Really there is two ways to cut this, both are acceptable. The first is to cut them as full rings. These should be again about 0.5cm thick. The other option is to cut the pepper down it’s length and then have thin strips of pepper from that half; again cut down their length.
Onion - After you’ve cut the onion in half, cut it in half again. From there you’ll cut thin strips (as in the picture above). Make sure that they’re split from each other (unlike the picture above).
Feta - Again there are two schools of thought about how to present this. Either you have it in a big chunk (or a series of big chunks) or alternatively you crumble the feta cheese (with your fingers) so that it’s all over the salad. I’m again impartial to either fashion, although if it’s a quick job I go for the easier option which is to have big chunks.
Add the olives, sprinkle the oregano, pour the oil, tear off some bread and dig right in.
Summer on a plate.
You know when you’re in the dark about something and then someone wakes you up and you get that realisation that things could have been better, you just didn’t know any better, because nobody bothered to tell you about it?
What am I talking about? I’m making less sense than normal? I’ll tell you what I’m blathering about. I’m talking about how fonts are displayed on the four major web browsers, Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 2, Safari 3 and Opera 9. If you’ve visited the ‘kode in the last week, you’ll have seen some more changes in my every evolving design process. Currently I’ve given up altogether with putting a design mockups and opting for the completely different approach of throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. Subsequently I’ve decided to do things in glorious black and white and start thinking about colours and design elements once I’ve got the basic structure and functionality working as I actually want it. However what I have done is use fonts as big bold elements in the design, going above 16px font-size to bring things to the forefront.
Fortunately for me (as this is what actually opened my eyes) was that this effectively brings out the font rendering inadequacies in my favourite (and de facto) browser, Firefox.
Firefox
Obviously all development occurs in this browser. Everything from the web developer plugin, to ruler, to Colorzilla to Firebug all live on this browser. You’d be taking a huge step backwards if you thought to design in another browser. However the font rendering is actually the worst of the entire lot. Notice the ‘o’s in the main title, completely pixerlised monstrosities. Have a look at the sidebar list of links. Those are meant to be bolder. The letter spacing however is in tack and is looks as it’s intended.
Opera
I’ve tried in the past to use this browser, but to be honest there wasn’t anything there that was bigger than Firefox which has been my de facto browser for many years now. Predictably this little browser renders the fonts in a very similar fashion to Firefox proper. It’s still choppy, no font smoothing at all. Surprisingly however it does provide a very slightly better rendering. The best place to notice this difference is if you take a look at the ‘a’s in Javascript.
Internet Explorer
What the Deuce? This is actually where all of this started. I inadvertedly launched IE7 and the fonts had rendered oh so much better. I was genuinely surprised. I consider this machine (my dad’s) as the vanilla machine. This is what the majority of people have, with respect to fonts, setting etc, in that they remain exactly the same. So imagine my surprise when the fonts where actually smoothed. Of course it wasn’t perfect in that it hadn’t picked up my letter-spacing which is annoying but alas at least they were doing something more right than Firefox, which I’ve got to say I did not expect to say. IE is one up on Firefox.
Safari
Which brings us to Safari. Oh dear. Remember that scene in the first ‘Matrix’ where Cypher is eating the meat and make a deal with Agent Smith and he goes “Ignorance is bliss” taking a big bite out of the steak? Man, that’s exactly how I felt after I had the fucking red pill. Seriously you need to have a look at this to believe it. The difference in rendering is unbelievable. Even though the design is as simple as milk, it actually looks half decent. There are different weights to different types of text.
The fonts are all smoothed (the only part that I felt was a bit off, but that’s only because I’ve been staring at this for a while trying to find faults) is the bottom of rounded characters which become slightly more blurred. I haven’t checked to see what other things this browser has to offer because I’m still a bit gobsmacked by the way it rendered a simple page. I understand that Safari is based on the same framework as Konquerer, is that correct?
Final Thoughts
While Safari doesn’t have the development community that Firefox has, it completely and UTTERLY trounces on it when rendering text. I think this should be the first thing that the Mozilla team address for the forthcoming Firefox 3. Forget all the other bullshit guys, this should be priority number 1 because you guys are trailing EVERYONE.
Geeze that took a long time but I can finally report that I’ve actually sorted out the Kode’s version 6 mockup. Now you might say:
“How the hell is this relevant you lazy fuck? Sort out the full implementation of the site instead of telling us about the damn mockup”.
Ah patience young Padawin one, the significance here you see is the fact that this final mockup has only come after 21 FAILED attempts. 21 attempts, and iterations and tweaks and modifications. That’s an insane amount of time spent on designs that are not going to be used….EVER. Some of the ideas where pretty nice but the overall package lacked a je ne sais quoi.
So how is this interesting to you? Easy, I actually realised what I was doing wrong and to be honest it’s a fundamental element that I employ in all of my works that seemed lacking in this instance and I decided to go down a completely different route, one that was more clinical rather than conceptual as I usually do. I’ll try and elaborate. When I design or draw something, I usually think of a concept and run with it. I may be trying to emulate a specific feel or idea. Version 4 for example was influenced by my rereading Akira at the time. I loved the cables and the detail which is where that particular design came from.
For this one, I just wandered aimlessly. Moving from one idea that I thought was killer to the next. Sadly only some ideas were any good. In general I was missing the overall picture that combined the design.
A new Broken Kode will be appearing shortly.
So a couple of weeks back (maybe it’s more, I’ve got far more annoying things in my life at the moment to really remember the time lines for shit like this) Bryan’s girlfriend Jen posted on his website (that was taken offline at the time) that things were not going well with him at the moment and that Avalonstar might continue and it might not, and it was all terribly cryptic and oh so very very O_o.
What many of those outside didn’t see was what went on behind the scenes, on the 9rules member’s message board and obviously in many people’s email boxes. Scrivs is a bit pissed off at Bryan for many reasons and I got to thinking about this very slightly and I think there’s really two sides to this story with some leeway afforded to both parties, all depending on your perspective I guess.
So what’s the deal you ask? In a nutshell, we’ve got Bryan’s girlfriend posted that he (Bryan) was taking the site down for reasons undisclosed. Didn’t really say why or what the actual reasons were but I guess if you always have the worst thing on your mind you might be forgiven to think that there was some SERIOUS shit going down. Subsequently what happened, IMHO was COMPLETELY over the top. When people tried to contact him, they got no response, which perpetuated the worry/curiosity . Presents were discussed, wallpapers, cards, a website was built to make sure he understood that he had support. Does that sound a little overboard to everyone? I thought so too. I’ve got to say though it’s a terribly nice gesture and it shows that a community does exist for those in 9rules and that they are willing to support one another, which is kinda where some of the resentment is coming from I guess. All this support for false pretences of the equivalent of a bad hairday.
The thing is though, Bryan didn’t actually ask for any of this. Bryan didn’t say “Hey guys, see you later, shit has hit the fan, but if you feel the need to ask what’s going on, don’t email me because I’m not going to be discussing it at all, but email Scrivs, Tyme and Mike over at the 9rules network, or Jon Snook while you’re at it, since I’m part of that company, or Matt Mullenweg since I used to work for him.”
He didn’t ask for people to react in the way that they did. He didn’t ask for all of love that was sent his way (some would now argue that he doesn’t deserve that love anymore). I guess he couldn’t really predict what would happen or how things would shape out. Did he mitigate that? He did eventually but I guess based on the original reaction I guess he might have been feeling a bit like people were going to rip him a new asshole for being so melodramatic about the whole thing and therefore thought it best to keep shut and let people try and forget about the whole thing. Yes, he could have been a lot less cryptic in the first place and decided to take the site down and put it on hold and tell everyone that this is what he wanted to do for a little while because the design of the site was giving him some serious issues that he needed to sort out or whatever. He didn’t for whatever reason. It’s his site, he’s free to do whatever he wants. I mean Oxton did something similar a year ago or whatever.
The thing is that if you reacted to the message in any way, you reacted of your own accord. What I mean by that is that you chose to give this your time, effort and energy to whatever this situation. I personally chose to ignore it and I guess that’s why I don’t feel like my emotions have been cheated. I’ve been on the net a while and have read loads of things. Some nice things, some not so nice things. I’ve read about people’s mother dying, their wife having a miscarriage, loosing their jobs, divorcing one another and the list goes on. People sometime write about these things because it helps them get things clearer in their minds. Maybe helps them get over things. That’s part of what blogging is all about. I feel that when people are ready to talk about things on their sites they will do so (or not) in their own time. Once those things are open for discussion by the person that originated them then it’s an incredible boost if there is additional support from strangers on the net.
Having said all that, I can definitely count at least 5 people on the net that I’ve never met, and whom I may never meet (although it would be damn cool if we did in the future) whom I would really go out of my way to help them out if they so much as whispered it in my direction. These people I consider my friends, but I haven’t placed that level of trust with anyone. Like I said I’ve been reading and doing this for a while now that I know it’s a bit of a waste of time and effort to place that emotion for everyone and anyone, it can be misguided at best or make you feel cheated in the worst case.
I really don’t understand why it is that all Google applications are soo bloody fugly. I mean seriously. Joen recently blogged about being a Google boy and I was thinking the same thing, that I do actually use a lot of Google products. I’m using Google Calendar, Gmail, Google Reader, Google Maps, Sketchup (at work), Google Docs (not the spreadsheets part, although I’m not using it all that much recently) and I don’t know how many times I go to the Google home page on a daily basis. The thing that I’m definitely starting to get annoyed with however is the bloody ugly interface that they insist on presenting for all their applications.
Making these things nicer to look at will most definitely make them more enjoyable to use. What’s mind boggling to me is that not enough people are talking about this. Some people have even taken matters into their own hands and actually tweaked the design interface using greasemonkey and Firefox. It does the job for sure, but you’ve got to wonder what is actually holding these guys back from actually employing 15 Jon Hickes for like 6 months and making them work full time on revamping the interfaces so they’re actually properly designed.
You actually want to take on the big boys like all these people are hinting that you are left right and centre, you’ve got to be dressed for the part. What’s even more interesting to me is the fact that Google has got the money, they’ve got the bloody resource, they’ve got the knowledge. I’m not talking complicated code restructuring here (after all they’ve got the functionality down to a bloody art form); I’m talking about the CSS and the little jpgs, you know simple, basic, shit.
So what is it they’re afraid of I wonder? Every once in a while they’ll change something (like the recent Google images) and then change it back again, so it’s not like they’re afraid of rocking the boat. The thing is though I’m talking about rocking the boat significantly.
The more I write the more I start thinking about this, they’re not changing things because they feel they’re doing well with the ugly interface as it is. That can be seen (although I might be jumping the gun here) as a sign of complacency. Something that an IT company should NEVER, EVER do, is sit on their laurels and pat themselves on the back for a job well done, because guess what, someone else is trying to be one step ahead of them.
Case in point, Facebook. Now here’s a website that is designed VERY well. It’s simple and it’s friendly and is updated and new features are constantly added and the interface is tweaked and icons are designed. The site has a distinct look about it, that’s not in your face, much like Google. All of these ideas all definitely contribute to it’s increasing success.
So my request from Google is to listen to their designers, I know you have them, but at the same time I’m sure the ones that are employed have got their nuts neutered and have to design things to a stupid house style, with no clear reason why, which is a real shame for all of us.
I’m going to post a collection of one liners that are rattling in my head, probably going to make it into a regular sunday evening thing:
The Offspring Greatest hits album dualdisc is pretty damn good listening. Reminds me back to when I was 13 and was about to take on the world. 30 was a lifetime away.
So we’re talking with Rosie and Dom about ethnic minorities and how it’s actually a lot less than you might expect. I know that statistics are made on the spot in general, but the one quoted seemed a bit low, which lead to us talking about the first wave of the black community into Britain in the 50s and 60s and how people of a certain age who had not seen black people until that stage felt/dealt/reacted with the new world order. Which then triggered the memory of me meeting my first black man, must have been 12 years old or something; I honestly can’t remember his name, but he was from Mauritius. I remember he was a very softly spoken guy and very very gentle in nature. The only thing that made an impression on me was his hands and how the palms were slightly coarser than mine. Such a strange thing to take back.
Lewis Hamilton is a great little rookie, however I’m really not liking the shitty HYPE that British media seems intent on throwing his way. I mean seriously you see this shit year after year. They build them up just so that they can slap them down when they put a foot wrong. Really shitty as far as I’m concerned, and I don’t blame Ron Dennis trying to shield his driver from all that bullshit.
Clerks II is how a DVD should be made. It’s got about 6hours of extra material and Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier have seriously spent a lot of time to make it a special experience. You’re not buying the DVD just to watch the movie a couple of times. It’s really about the DVD experience and really using it, with multiple commentaries, bloopers, interviews, behind the scene footage and the list goes on. I put this up as one of the great DVDs of last year, easily.
Just watched Christopher Nolan’s first movie, Following. Seriously, it’s one of the better indie films I’ve seen in a really long time. Black and white, shot in various locations in and around London, check it out, great little twist at the end.
Diet is going well. I must have had a serious fat day last Sunday because I’m about 2kg less this week. Part of that I guess is the running, part is the diet changes, part is the psychology as well I guess. I’ll keep the updates on this going.
I bought an ipod shuffle last week, first Apple product I’ve ever bought myself, and I’ve got to say I’m loving the size. It’s like part of my clothing now. It never runs out of juice and it stores enough music to last me my runs, my trips to work and around the place. It would be nice to have a display but when it comes right down to it I don’t think it’s completely necessary for the function that I am using it in. Does this mean an Apple mac isn’t far behind,…hmm probably not.
So Ubuntu Feisty Fawn came out this week. I downloaded it for my laptop. They still hadn’t sorted out the bugs that I had reported that I had confirmed that had tried to help solve, that worked in 2 previous versions. I’m talking my laptop into the office to get Windows installed on the machine. I want to swear at Canonical, but alas it’s not completely their fault, although it’s really annoying not to have this sorted. Renders my laptop really annoying to use to be honest, so much so that I haven’t been using it for the past couple of months properly.
SMODCAST (love that name as well, especially how Kevin introduces it and everything). Easily one of the best podcast’s I’ve heard in a really long time (thanks for the heads up Michael). I’ve gotten into listening to dvd commentary while working on something as I can actually get through a lot of things, and listen the plethora of commentaries that I generally have no real time to listen to.
I got onto the scales this morning and swear to god I think I heard the scales sigh. When the hell did I gain so much weight? Over the last couple of months I’ve definitely noticed that my trousers have been shrinking in the wash more and more every day but I think yesterday I felt it the most. Summer is in the air and I’m the heaviest I’ve been in YEARS. Part of this I guess can be attributed to the general lack of exercise, another part of this can be attributed to the general amount of rubbish I’ve been eating at work, and even more can be attributed to the snacks I’ve been taking on in between meals, after meals and during meals (I know, how the hell do you snack during meals?).
Needless to say I need to do something about this and bloody soon. I’ve been down this road before, I’m prone to gaining weight, however I know EXACTLY what needs to be done to loose weight and sustain it for a good long time rather than these crash course diets. This isn’t for everyone, this is what has worked in the past for me, so I’m writing this down to make sure I REMEMBER my list every time I try and break it, and I will try and break it over the next week where my mood will no doubt be pretty foul for a little while until I get used to it all.
Item one - Stop eating junk. Seriously it all fucking adds up. That little bit of chocolate at 11 from a colleague to that additional biscuit at around 11:30 to that kit kat at 3pm and the list goes on. Part of the main reason I guess is boredom and just wanting to get something done. So I’m going to have to get myself a whole bunch of fruit every Monday, every time someone has got their birthday cakes I grab an apple or something. I’m allowed one chocolate sweet thing a week and that’s about it.
Item two - This is an important one and probably the one that’s going to be the hardest to maintain. Eat smaller portions. Don’t get second helpings. It’s OK to feel hungry every once in a while. There are loads of ways that will make you achieve this. Some have tried using smaller plates. I’m more of the thought that you should balance it out as best you can and keep it smaller than usual.
Item three - Eat everything I’ve been eating but with care to item two, however include for removal of deep fried things like fried potatoes, etc. Keep the bread consumptions down to a smaller amount, in fact a lot lot less. Don’t eat the loafs, eat wraps exclusively and those Swedish style cracker things (they’re not all that tasty but they give the impression you’re eating bread and for next few months that should be ok, I’ve had my fair share of bread these last 27 years it’s time to take a break).
Item four - Drink more fluids, cut the bloody sugar from the coffee and the tea. Four years ago I used to have 3 sugars in my tea and coffee, now I’m down to 1. I think it’s time to cut it down all the way to 0. This is a small thing but I think one that I’ve been thinking about for a good long time and I think it’s time I actually implemented, seeing as I’m on a roll right now anyway.
Item five - Last item, but definitely not least, I’ve got to get back to exercising more regularly. Currently I’ll run sporadically and then I’ll play basketball once every other week for a couple of hours, get a crap and generally be slow as fuck on the court. It’s time to move it up a notch and have my 30 minutes run in the morning every morning. Combined with the above I’m pretty sure I can get to shape and loose the excess kilos that are hanging off me right now.
Currently my target is 12kg. If I get there it’ll be the least I’ve ever been and the target weight I’ve always wanted to be. Traditionally the first 6kg are moderately easy as my body has store an immense amount of crap so it’ll shed that faster than the last 6kg which will be pretty tough to get rid of. I’ll keep everyone posted with mini posts from now on regarding my progress. Is there any clever little php scripts that I can record all of this down? I’m pretty sure I saw something on someone’s blog a while back that was tracking his weight loss progress as well.
So I’m talking to Fern yesterday on Facebook, and when I say talking I actually mean ‘Wall-ing’ her (yeah it’s not the technical term for it but alas it sounds funnier). Anyway, so she’s dissing 300 and calling it gay porn or some such rubbish, so we started talking movies. I asked her whether or not she was excited for the new Chinese flick that’s getting prepped for release in the UK this weekend, Curse of the Golden Flower. Her response, I’m quoting here:
It’s one of those Chinese films for foreigners. The trailer didn’t even have any words! Even if it features Jay Chow.
See the thing is I’ve heard this kind of response nearly EVERY time I’ve asked someone Chinese about a Chinese movies that makes it into Western theatres. For most people the Chinese outbreak came with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon by Ang Lee a few years ago. I was raised on a staple diet of Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee movies. So much so that my parents have had to watch Drunken Master 1 & 2 several times over with me because I kept renting it from the video store again and again, mainly because I’d seen all the ones in the store and because I loved the interaction with his Master when he was training him. I also loved the food scenes, where you know he’s going to eat the entire house, then get drunk, then not have any money to pay then have a big massive fight. To be fair though I’d not really experienced the full extent of Asian cinema, not by a long shot.
So today I decided to goad Irene into telling me what the deal was with the dislike of Chinese people to exported certain exported Chinese films. So she gave me the standard foreigners line, followed by a curve ball (I’m not actually quoting Irene here but work with me people I’m getting to my point):
It’s nothing we haven’t seen before, since the 1950s. In fact some of the better stuff weren’t movies but TV series.
That’s fucking interesting. Where the hell are they? What are they called? What’s the deal? Name them. Of course they’ve all got Chinese names. C’mon guys it’s not my fault I’m not Chinese, I’ve come to accept that you’ll never hand me the Chinese menu at the restaurant (you know the one with all the authentic good stuff), why are you being stingy with your bloody cinema and tv programmes?
So I’m asking everyone that knows of any good Chinese series (preferably set in the Emperor Chinese era) that are actually ‘good’ and not for foreigners (but with subtitles) for me to get into. After all Battlestar Galactica won’t be back for like at least 6 months, Prison Break won’t be back for a similar amount of time and Lost can only keep my attention for like 45 minutes a week.
Seriously, don’t bother reading this because it’s going to be one long boring diatribes of bollocks with me smack in the middle winging and wining about something. I’ve not really had the chance to formulate the post at all in my mind and I’m doing what I used to do years ago on this blog, which was to just write the first shit that came to my mind. If you’re looking for quality then I can hardly promise you that with this post, so take that as your warning.
I guess my completely FOUL mood can be attributed to several things kicking about the place, so in no particular order.
Is it the shitty music industry? What the hell has happened to the music industry? I mean seriously. Once the cornerstone of my inspiration. I would get a new album it would blow my fucking mind away, I would get inspired and I would draw the early hours of the morning. When was the last time I had this experience? Like in 1845 or something like that. I’ve been listening to the old stuff more and more and there just isn’t any new stuff out there that is making me sit up and take proper notice, which pisses me off even more as this is the longest I’ve gone completely dry without any real creative output. I’ve not been writing and I’ve not been drawing and my designing has been limited to tampering with Broken Kode Version 6 (hey c’mon it’s been nearly a year with the dark blue, it’s about time I lightened things up a bit).
Is it work that’s got me pissed off? Well I’ve been working 150% for the past couple of years. Honestly I don’t remember the last time I actually had a relatively easy week at work where I wasn’t being asked to issue something or upsetting people because I didn’t get things I promised them in time or whatever.
Is it the fact that I seriously need some holiday time off? Well that’s fucking great, I need to go to the Greek embassy again and get myself a Visa. Yeah getting treated like shit for 5 hours seems like a great idea for me, after paying a tenner on a god damn phonecall where they’ll tell me to come and visit them in 6 fekking weeks???!!!!!
Is the woman situation (or lack thereof) starting to piss me off, what with a string of false starts? I mean seriously this is starting to put even an natural born optimist like myself in slight (notice the word slight) doubt.
Is it the website design that I can’t seem to pull off in a way that I’m happy or moderately content with that’s annoying me; is it the fact that I’ve had to switch back to fekking windowz for the love that is holy because Adobe still don’t seem interested and probably never will port Photoshop over to Linux? What about Pixel Beta fucking 7 that doesn’t EVER want to come out?
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God I fucking hate Tuesday evenings. They’re COMPLETE nothing nights. NOTHING happens on Tuesday. You never organise anything good on a Tuesday. It’s still too soon in the beginning of the week for you to do anything interesting to rev you up to the weekend.
Fuck it dude, lets go bowling.
Ok if in case you didn’t read the title of this post, it has the word spoiler in it for a reason, not interested in finding out what has happened on the end of the third season then pretty please with a cherry on top go somewhere else and you don’t ever need to blame me for ruining anything for you. Good everyone else here?
Watched it yesterday and I’ve got to say I was pretty damn excited about this episode. I got back home at a normal time and went straight to downloading the episode. All the while I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. The big massive revelation; who is the Cylon, who is the Cylon. I don’t get one I get 4 of them, definitely didn’t see that one coming, especially Saul as one that’s come out of NOWHERE. I’m sure they’ve thought this one through, but seriously how the hell does that actually work? He’s like over 50 years old and that’s how old the Cylons are right? At least that’s what we were originally led to believe.
So I did a bit of researching. Ron Moore’s podcast isn’t up on the scifi channel yet however if you look around you’ll be able to find a couple of interviews scattered around the place where he talks about things.
The biggest twist of couse was definitely Starbuck’s appearance at the end of the show. I honestly didn’t expect that. I’ve got to say that while listening to Ron’s commentary regarding the reasons to kill off Starbuck never rang true with me. It seemed as though it was all about the AUDACITY of it all, which felt a little bit on the weak side. It’s nice to see how they’ve pulled one of the best cons in recent television history. ‘Kill off a character’, have actress in on it as well so all her interviews point that she’s going to be moving on, don’t insert her name in the credits of the actual episode and then have her come back right at the end. Of course there are a lot of unanswered questions but it’s definitely one of the better endings on the show which always has pretty spectacular cliffhanger season endings.
Also I really loved ‘All along the Watchtower’ cover by Bear McCreary and his brother, definitely will be getting that once it’s available from somewhere.
http://www.brokenkode.com/battlestar-galactica-season-3-finale-spoilers
Frank Miller’s 300 had my money several times over from the moment I heard it was going to be made. Then came the trailer and I nearly came in my pants several times over (I know not a pretty vision but at least I’m being truthful). Then I shared the trailer with Stathi and Christos and while I thought I was excited, these guys were even more excited about this movie than I was. Honestly between the three of us we’ve probably seen the trailer like 3000 times. I can’t count the number of times we’ve quoted the lines:
“Blasphemy? Madness? THIS IS SPAAARTAAA!”
So to say that we were completely hyped for the movie is a slight understatement. So how do we celebrate this momentous occasion of the release of 300? We book the top section of Everyman cinema in Hampstead (much more about this glorious cinema theatre in a moment) and pack it with 40 something Greeks. To say there was a bit of atmosphere in the theatre, is once again a slight understatement. Half of us screamed the above line when Leonidas said it.
The Venue
It’s strange but one of the things that annoys me about cinemas is that the experience seems to have been diluted. I’m talking in a general sense here. It’s no longer something special, it’s no longer something that is truly an experience in every sense of the world. Thank god someone remembered this and made the Everyman Cinema in Hampstead, North London. Basically it’s very small little venue however there are different levels of seating throughout all of which are larger than usual, with little tables to the side of them. The side seats are leather with foot rests and all of them have champagne bottle holders. The ambience in there is amazing. Seriously I kept looking at just how beautiful the place was and how great all the colours worked together seamlessly. The screen isn’t the largest, the sound isn’t this amazing THX (at least I don’t think it is) but it’s definitely one of the best cinema’s I’ve ever been to. This enhanced this movies completely for me even further than if I watched it in your run of the mill movie theatre.
The movie itself
In case you missed my review over at Splash Panel, go and have a read about the actual graphic novel itself first of which this movie is based upon. This isn’t a movie based on a myth, this is a movie based incredibly faithfully on a graphic novel that is based on history. Keep that little fact in mind when watching this movie. It’s not supposed to be historically accurate. It’s meant to be a man movie.
“A new age has begun. An age of freedom, and all will know that 300 Spartans gave their last breathe to defend it.”
The story is a timeless one, depicting one of the greatest if not most important battles in history, completely stylised of course with loads of magicians and huge monsters people and weird freaks, however believe it or not it’s not the story that counts here but how it is delivered. You see this story has been told several times before, however never like this. Some of the fight scenes in here are some of the most brutal you’ve ever seen in a swords and sandals epic. Forget all the rubbish that is Troy and Alexander and open your eyes to 2 minutes of pure Spartan maddness cutting through one guy after the other. Then chilling out and eating an apple over the dead. It’s meant to be over the top. It’s meant to be completely manly in nature. The dialogue just drips of testosterone and I think that’s one of it’s greatest qualities. You don’t get enough movies where the guys are completely hard as nails.
A distinct success of the movie was use of colour filters throughout the movie. From the soft yellows used for Sparta to the blues used for scenes with the Immortals. The darker browns used for the fight scenes made the red capes sand out even more. Make no mistake this movie isn’t for everyone (although I wish it was). For a start it’s an 18, which means this movie is violent, has got scenes of a sexual nature (read: soft porn) but there isn’t any real swearing as Miller didn’t really have any of that in his book.
My gripes
I’ll get this out of the way quickly so that we can move on. There were not that many, in fact there was probably only one gripe of which I didn’t hear it in the trailer but basically they chose to pronounce the name of the single most important character in the movie incorrectly. I am of course talking about Kind Leonidas. It is not LEO-N-EYE-DIS, the proper pronounciation of the name is actually LEO-NEE-DAS. It’s a pretty simple thing that I honestly wish they would have gotten any Greek boy from the nearest restaurant to tell them how to get it right phonetically. Of course this could NEVER ruin the overall experience which was pure magic.
The Casting
I’ve got to say that the casting in most cases (except for Leonidas’s son, who thankfully had nothing to say) was completely inspired. Gerard Butler was an AWESOME. Gerard held your attention completely. His voice was worth EVERY penny they paid him as he truly made you believe in the Spartan way. Never retreat, never surrender.
The choices Vincent Regan for the Captain and David Wenham for Dilios were also chosen very well. I loved Lena Headey as the Queen, that was also pretty damn inspired casting. However for me the surprise casting was for that of Xerxes; I have NO idea how the hell they managed to make Rodrigo Santoro actually look like Xerxes but it’s incredibly impressive stuff.
The Details
The icing on the cake for me however was definitely the ending credits. See that’s the level of love and attention that’s gone into this. Basically for the end credits they’ve taken Frank Miller’s panels and basically given them a bit of a 3D effect treatment of the blood being splattered everywhere. Truly awesome stuff and it was great to see such reverence to the source material itself.
From a comic book point of view it was completely faithful to the style. The additional areas were actually very very well done. The scenes with the Queen showed just how hard she was. It was an welcome addition to the story while I am a purist in these things I think if it’s scenes that don’t take away from the actual original source material then I have no problems with it at all.
Final Word
This is not intended for a girlie night in, or people who enjoy movies light the Princess Bride or some such rubbish. You’re here to see Spartans kicking ass and talking names. You will probably not see as stylish a movie for a very long time. You see it’s a complete an utter epic. Epic in scope and epic in the way that it portrays everything. From the tumbling arrows that blot out the sun, to the amazing scenes with the ships crashing down and the Spartans overlooking the devestation, ripped directly out of the book and shown in motion.
Definitely one of the more interesting takes on ‘supporting’ the troops I’ve read in a while. Fundamentally the question is flawed. I come from a country, and was raised in another one, which both had mandatory conscription. The mantra always was:
leave logic at the door when you enter the army.
The reason was simple, in the army you take orders and you do as you’re told. The thing is though, and this is only starting to take form in my head as I’m writing this, does this mean that by joining the army you believe in the path that your country takes when employing said army?
I’ll be more specific. After University the plan was ALWAYS for me to join the army. Now I’m not a violent man however I felt that the Lebanese army wasn’t going to be taking over the world any time soon. By joining the army I would be part of that group of people that would try and defend the country. It wasn’t an agressive force, but rather a force for protection. Regardless of how effective it is, it seemed like I wouldn’t be expediting my morals. I wouldn’t be asked to take over countries and fight for imposing my country’s opinion for someone else’s, as I have seen what that actually means unlike the plethora of idiots that support war, in ANY form.
Which brings me to the American troops. When you join the American army you really should know what that actually entails. You join on your own free will. It’s not mandatory, but rather a decision you make in your life. When you join the American army you KNOW that there is a REMOTE (read the sarcasm) possibility that you will be sent in to take over countries, in a hostile manner. You will be sent in to ‘fight for the good guys’. You’d have to be pretty ill informed not to know that little fact that you are not a peace keeper. You are not a defender in the traditional sense, you are part of the aggressors. Oh sure you are given to believe that what you are doing it the righteous thing, however I don’t agree with this as the proof is in the results. History keeps repeating itself time and time again and history has definitely not been kind to American foreign policy.
Yes I know that there are some good guys in the army who just want to make sure that their country is defended properly, however going into all other countries and destroying them does not in my book constitute as defending anything. Of course the obvious question is doesn’t America need an army? You cant’ join the army and say you don’t want to be stationed anywhere but in America, that’s not how it works, which I know. As a human being though I make my decisions and I live my life based on those decisions I make.
By joining the army and going to Iraq, you’re not defending your country, you’re defending you’re country and it’s business partner’s financial interests. That puts you in a group of people that I cannot offer any support towards. That might seem harsh, but the truth of the matter is you have MADE the decision to continue to give your LIFE to a group of people (be they the government or the army itself) who is there to exploit another group of people, not to defend.
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.
The more I think about this the more embarrassed of myself I feel. Basically I sat down today to take stock of what I should be doing in my free time (yes I have to have to be doing something in my free time, I bore extremely easily). I decided earlier last month that I was going to finish off my commitments from last year as soon as possible.
These are basically Priya and Stathi’s websites. For the eagle eyed of you, if you go over to the illustration section of the site you will see the very first completed illustration of 2007 (the first of many to come I hope). It’s the basis for Priya’s website which I should go live by the end of the week (make a deadline public therefore making sure I deliver, nice). I’m about 50% into the coding; it’s a simple website that really should not have taken the stupid amount of time that it has taken but alas better late than never. Also by next week I should have the next illustration up there as well (it’ll be the basis for Stathi’s website) which is definitely one of the most detailed sites I’ve worked on in a very long time.
After which I will only delve into the world of websites when I’m fucking about with my own web space. It’s funny but the code that is currently running the site was originally written nearly a year ago and it’s been tweaked slightly over the year. I don’t really intend to screw around too much with the site to be honest but the colours and graphics will be changing in the coming months as I delve deeper into Aitus Moralis; this is the tentative title (and may end up being the actual final title) of my first graphic novel and my next confirmed project.
I knew the basic idea of the story and remembered that I had actually written something for it, but I honestly couldn’t remember what I had written. It’s not until today that I really realised just how much work I’ve completed over the years and just completely forgotten about. I’ve got flash trailers, sketches and pages upon pages of research and script already written. My life on the internet has seriously been one MASSIVE detour for my honest true passion, sequential storytelling.
So today marks the first day of the journey into getting published. I’m not going to hide it, I want to publish my book via Image Comics. I want the ‘I’ on my book. I know it sounds strange but while the older generation was into Marvel and DC comics I have always been a follower of creators. I guess that’s what’s I was raised on in the 90s. The pundits can say what they will about the 90s, it had a lot more creator owned books than what we have now. Oh sure a lot of it was pure garbage but at least it was the creator’s garbage and the stuff that was weak has and will never be seen again, I intend for “Aitus Moralis” to not fall down that stupid path. I want to own my book’s destiny, because honestly I wouldn’t allow for any other monkey to touch it. All monkey business will be under my control.
Lofty goals I’m sure but it’s a dream I’ve had since I was 13, so it’s about time I delivered and reached.
I will be peppering the site with sketches and designs and drawings from this series as the Kode starts to shift slowly but surely into that direction. Coco will be making his exit and I’ll be moving him over to Splash Panel as he will be the official mascot for Splash Panel. The logo might change slightly in the future to be honest to tie better with the new graphical direction which will be decidedly less vector and have a more painted feel to it.
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.
