Author: Tom Coates

Before I get going, I have a couple of annoucements. Mark has clearly finally lost it – his exposé of the evil Jason Kottke makes that abundantly clear. And while we are at it, is it just me, or are his clothes becoming an increasingly rare sight on the webcam? I give him about four months before he is doing illegal online strip-shows and changing his name to Candy.

I have just downloaded and installed IE5 for Macs, and I am generally quite impressed. The larger default text sizes came as a mild shock to start with, but I seem to be getting used to it quite quickly. The one thing that is clear is that the aids to cross-platform compatibility mean that those sites designed to alter their behaviour for the Mac platform may now have to rethink their style sheets and text sizes once more. Microsoft have a surprisingly good page on sizing text in CSS for standards-compliant browsers called, “Points, Pixels, DPI and You“.

In other news, I finally sorted out the barbelith archives, which are now permanently accessible through the grey strip at the top of the page. I’ve been flicking through old entries, and the one I am proudest off (from last November) reads:

“I went to watch the football. I didn’t understand how anyone could get so excited. Lost on me completely. I tried to explain to the assembled masses that if the players had handlebar moustaches, smoking jackets, armchairs and muskets, the game would be both more civilised and more entertaining. They resolutely refused to see reason.”

Another little micro-design-project for Time Out: Student Clubs Competition. Very tight deadline on this one. I think it worked out quite well.

Brief life summary: DRINKING TOO MUCH BEER AND VODKA. This will be the third night in a row that I have ended up in Point 101 (Tottenham Court Road tube, under Centrepoint). I am going to get a disgusting beer belly and then no one will want me.

Riothero redesigned. Mark’s rolling design project reached a height today, when the background kicked in, dragging a simple orange table structure into the 21st century. And another thing – what other weblogger would post urgently: “Jesus Christ! I’m sexy!”…

Not that I care (I was instructed not to), but I am really glad to see that Barbelith has finally resurfaced on beebo.org’s weblog ratings.

There’s some argument going on around the weblogs about bloat. I haven’t really been following it, but apparently it’s quite interesting.

Barbelith is going to change. Because a few people have sent me money to get the Nexus going again, I don’t feel comfortable having personal content on the domain name. So I have decided that over the next week or so, I will buy a new domain, shift the weblog over to that, and then reorganise Barbelith as a cooperative article based site.

But this leaves me with a problem – finding a new domain name. After the loss of my beloved “reptilebrain.com”, I am at a bit of a loss. So I thought I’d make an appeal to you people, who know the spirit and rhythms of the current site: have you got any ideas?

I’m in love with this story from zeldman:

   Theater of Cruelty: Our friend Mark was freelancing for a client we’ll call Roger. They had just completed their project and were sitting in Roger’s office. After a long, uncomfortable silence, Roger glanced up from his desk and looked Mark meaningfully in the eyes.
   “Mark,” sighed Roger, “you know how sometimes you stare at your address book, looking over all your friends’ names and phone numbers, and you suddenly realize that they’re not really your friends at all? That you have nothing in common with them, you don’t even like them, and you’re pretty sure they don’t like you either?”
   Mark said, “No.”

I went to the doctor about my mad gut and digestive complaints and he told me that it was a combination of a mild infection, lack of sleep, a bad diet and a considerable amount of stress. Great. Can’t see any of THOSE changing until I get a flat… While I was reeling from that news, I received some donations towards the Rebuild-the-Nexus fund. I am amazed and honoured and will do my best to get it up again as soon as possible.

I tell you, just when everything appears to be running smoothly, powazek raises the bar again. His new design is, simply, lovely. Clean colours, a web-friendly open feel with legible text (not using Verdana – a shock for me). It has a certain David Carson print-media 1998 feel to it.

Everyone knows of Ask Jeeves, the search engine that is supposed to be engineered to answer real English queries in an almost conversational style. So what happens when you try to actually have a conversation with it? FNwire interviewed the butler.

Can’t chat – in a hurry, but I just thought I should say that I have started a couple of polls over on the TemporaryNexus about the relaunch of the Nexus and what happens when I move the weblog… You might have to sign up to be able to vote…

Possibly the most futurist gadget I have seen in months is the Ceiva Internet-Enabled Photo Frame. It sounds like a ridiculous idea, but I honestly believe that it might become a must-have purchase not just for web-geeks and their families, but also for small spaces in nightclubs and bars. It’s really the simplest thing – a small, high quality screen which plugs into the phone socket. Every day, at cheap rate, it dials up a server where your friends have e-mailed their latest photos of their children, their holidays or their genitals, the images are downloaded and displayed in a rotating slideshow. You can choose specific images to display through the website if you have favourites, and you can update them more quickly simply by pressing a button on the frame.

The potential for bloggers is endless. Imagine being on an Evhead, megnut or powazek image mailing list, which would update the frame on your desk every day…