Books that I am currently reading: Neal Stephenson: Cryptonomicon, William Powell: The Anarchist Cookbook. Music that I am currently listening to: Beck: Midnite Vultures, Beck: Mutations, Jeff Buckley: Mystery White Boy, PJ Harvey: To Bring You My Love, Bjork: Homogenic, Dust Brothers: Fight Club Score, Moby: Play, Sean Lennon: Into The Sun.
I’m not entirely sure that I feel entirely comfortable with my new random display of images (above). I mean – I love it, but it seems that people are refreshing the page to get a different set, which is completely artificially upping my stats. How is a boy supposed to keep track of what’s going on in the world, I ask you – I mean really?! [This behaviour is particularly frowned upon: naughty Prol!]
How cross would you guys be if I decided to start designing for a baseline of 800×600 screen resolution and above? I mean I know that around 10% of you still view sites at that resolution (Global Statistics), but that means around 90% of you don’t. I think this deserves a poll. Is it OK to design for 800x600px resolutions?
While at work today, I was rung up by an old University friend from Bristol, who was stopping off in London for a minute period of time between his epic jaunts around the world promoting his internet empire. He’s heading off to California in the next few days – San Francisco via Los Angeles – where he is likely to stay for at least a month. And he’ll be going back again around a month after that. He kept tantalising me with stories of the exciting world of internet start-ups and huge salaries – tempting me with the possibility of interesting and varied jobs for a young web coder/editor/producer like myself. And I have to say that I am beginning to think that he might be right.
If you are ever on for a laugh, check out the descriptions of films at the Hollywood Stock Exchange. Ignore for the moment the tremendous fun of investing in stocks based on the performance of films and stars at the box office, and concentrate instead on gems of inspired summary like this:
“Fast Flash to Bang Time is a drama that will star Wesley Snipes and be directed by Gary Fleder (Kiss the Girls). The story is about a drug-addicted FBI agent and his sex addict female partner who fall in love and try to stop a terrorist attack.”
Funny as that is, however (and trust me, I shall be first at the door of the cinema for it) , it cannot compare to a film that I have actually invested in. Called Munchies, this film is currently in development. And it’s plot? While hsx says nothing, I know for a fact that it is about anorexic teenage girls who end up as cannibals. I mean, how cool is that?
In the UK at the moment there is this whole debacle about Rover, a company that makes cars that very few people buy, even though they look rather nice. The company, which has been owned by BMW for a while, has been making savage losses and has finally been sold to another company called Phoenix for the nominal price of £10 (approximately $15) [BBC].
Now normally this news wouldn’t interest me in the slightest – I am afraid that I hold little hope for the future of British manufacturing industries and don’t see the point in investing in heavy machinery which has the sole purpose of pouring even more money into a large hole in the ground.
However on this occasion, the huge amounts of legal and administrative work that has to be done by people close to the whole enterprise is really impacting on my social life. Entertaining and charming dinner companions are being captured and locked in small rooms to check contracts, leaving me without anything to do in the evenings but drink too much and watch the South Park Movie. This state of affairs must come to an end! So I say to thee, oh law firms of London – LET MY PEOPLE GO!
Congratulations are due to Derek Powazek, who has been named Creative Director of Pyra, the young team of web scamps and entrepreneurs who are fighting corporate evil in San Francisco. Katy is completely right though – in about three months there won’t be anyone who isn’t working for them…
Weirdly, a lot of people have commented on my thoughts on why a weblog is popular. More interestingly, exactly what I feared would happen has happened – by actively trying to demonstrate whether or not my theory was true or not (ie. by producing reviews) I have wandered slap bang into the middle of the debate (once again) about whether weblogs are popularity contests and whether or not good design is something that can be quantified.
It’s strange – in most other areas of web site creation it is considered a given that there are certain designs that are better than others. Unreadable content is surely always the sign of a bad website, as is unclear navigation. I consider kottke.org to be incredibly well designed – it’s clear, elegant and easy to find your way around. So I can only half agree with Blog for One when he says: “on a personal site, one should be able to do whatever they want, and not have to worry about being judged, or measured, or ranked” because while no one should feel under pressure to compete, there is no reason to think that the design, content or character of a personal site cannot be improved, nor that the individuals who run those sites are not interested in doing so.
I’ve been meaning to do it for ages and now it is done – the photo bar at the top of the page rotates the images, thus making the site infinitely more interesting than it already was. Will the excitement never end?
Oh the power! Oh the sheer undreamt-of power! Watch in stupified awe this weekend as Katy and I assassinate Mark and take over Riothero. No promises that Katy will take all her clothes off or start a big fight with women (sorry guys), but we will try to emulate our young host in every other way possible. I am so looking forward to this…