Watch in awed astonishment as Tom decides to ‘think big’.
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Author: Tom Coates
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On designing a better online bank…
Now this is the kind of challenge that I think people in the design / weblog crossover community should seriously consider undertaking more often. 37signals decide to design a usable online banking experience. Seems to me that there’s an interesting project – develop a site where people can develop their own, and comment on other people’s, interfaces for many of the sites that we see around the net all the time – e-mail / calendar / banking / e-commerce etc. The feedback that people could develop between each other could actually lead to more intelligent intuitive interfaces – and if they were developed as open source or concept, then the whole net might benefit. Interested?
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Karma Ghost and the hotel on my head…
Flash cartoon of the moment is Karma Ghost in which every time you do something bad, a little tiny ghost sits on your head and looks for an opportunity to fuck up your life. All I can think is that my head my have a hotel of the damn things set up on it – and the worst thing is that I can’t quite figure out why they would have decided to pick on me.
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Nice things when you’re not looking…
One of those really nice things to happen to a guy when he’s not paying attention: Haddock’s hiatus page is all, you know, nice.
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I want to win…
I’ve changed my mind. Now I want to win.
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What happens if my flatmate moves out?
My flatmate is looking for a house. I should be happy for her, but I’m not. The reason? My current work state is so sporadic and occasional that I just can’t be sure that should she move out, and if I was then forced to move, that would be able to afford a flat or guarantee that I would get it. Every time she mentions it, I get a shiver of fear. What happens then? What would I do?
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On staying home and moving forward…
Working from home, short of cash, recovering from houseguests, thinking about my future. There’s a fair amount of stuff in my head at the moment. I go out so infrequently at the moment (compounded by working from home) that I’ve almost forgotten what it is to enjoy other people’s company. It all seems like a tremendous hassle. And I wonder if it’s making me antisocial. Every so often I forget how comforting I find my own company. And then on other occasions it occurs to you that it’s a way of avoiding taking your place in the world. I think about what job I might get – whether the BBC will be interested in my application or not. And I think, if they are, what will it be like? Will it feel like I’m moving forward? Or am I killing time? And I think about love and sex and romance. And how I’ve decided against all of them. Or how they’ve decided against me. And how I’m happy with that. And I wonder, deep down, am I really?
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On sharing a love of Graceland…
Looks like I’m not the only person with a love of Graceland.
Paul Simon: Graceland It’s 1986. I’m fourteen years old. I’ve had a few albums bought for me before, but I’m basically illiterate when it comes to popular music. I’m living in a village of eighty people, ten miles away from my nearest friend. My brother is one year old. I spend most of my time in my room – reading and listening to the radio. The outside world seems a hundred thousand miles away.
One day I buy Graceland. Essentially it’s the first album I ever really bought myself. And I got it because I’d heard ‘You Can Call Me Al’ on the radio. And I’d liked it. In many ways it set the tone for the rest of my teenage years – thoughtful before my time, disconnected from deep disturbing bodily urges, unsettled and slightly jaded.
There are a hundred times I can remember involving the album. I played it until the tape died. Then I waited a couple of years and bought the CD. It was an album that my mother listened to with me in her Vauxhall Astra on the way into school on frosty winter mornings, my legs only recently out of grey short-trousers. It was the album that played when Glyn, Simon and I wandered around the south of England in my rusty yellow Polo, when I was eighteen. As I get older I get less up-tight, less nervous. And Graceland grows with me.
“Over the mountain, down in the valley, lives a former talk show host. Everybody knows his name. He says there’s no doubt about it, It was the myth of fingerprints. I’ve seen them all and man, they’re all the same.”
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A toast to early Blogger…
So, Blogger is two years old. Which means that this weblog can only be three months off from it’s second birthday as well. Originally known as barbelith, this weblog and I have had much fun with Blogger over the last couple of years. I’ve met a lot of people, written a hell of a lot of words and scratched together some fairly amiable designs along the way. I’m raising a glass and I’m saying cheers to everyone who remembers when Blogger looked like this (and this). Particularly to Megnut, Ev, Derek and Jason.
