Category: Random

Consider yourselves warned – the UK weblogging contingent are taking to the streets this coming Tuesday in what is being affectionately referred to at the moment as The Return of Vodka Jelly. All are welcome to attend.

Found unopened in Inbox (sent August 2000):

So I’ve been reading this book called 72 dpi which contains some of the most startling pieces of web design work that I’ve ever seen plus a considerable amount of commentary which is slamming the conventions of user interface design (most notably the left-navigation or tab-based models that many sites operate with).

I’m not going to comment on the apparent sterility of corporate user interface design because I think there is a substantial case to be made for systems to be usability tested and to follow a few conventions of the medium as is rather than as it will be. But there is always a case for work that inspires you to challenge convention. So here are some of my picks from the book.

bionic systems, grayscale.net, kabeljau.ch, futurefarmers.com, designershock.com/de [via 72dpi: buy the book | 72-dpi.org | portable]

Everyone is going to be linking to this in a couple of hours, so I might as well get in early. Meg finally presents her mini StorTrooperDance page.

I can’t tell from the picture whether or not this is real, but it is very amusing. Now if they did a Mac version, with some of that Apple design genius – well I might just have to buy one: The self-sustaining geek machine.

Since I am going to have to be drearily positive for the next seven weeks as I scrabble around for a new job, I thought I may as well take this opportunity to moan about how appalling my life is at the moment in laborious and tedious detail.

1) Shortly to be unemployed. 2) No love life worth talking about since Max who, let us remind ourselves, is busy exploring the limits of desire with a series of teenagers. 3) I have to move out of my flat at the beginning of May and don’t know where I’m going to move to. 4) It is all cold and wintery outside. 5) I have bad hair and skin failure. [Summary: job/love/flat/hair/weather disasterous.]

Why Blogger Empowers Mindless Nits:
“Ah, but see, that’s the rub – it’s not about creating good content, its about creating ENOUGH content so that people will look at it, thinking you have something important to say. And with blog wars, blog voting, and “via trails”, it’s no longer about WHAT you have to say, but rather HOW MANY people are listening.”

I saw my first picture that may or may not be from the Tobey Maguire-starring Spiderman film today. I can’t actually tell whether or not it is a photograph, which probably bodes ill for the production, but if this is Mr Maguire in the outfit, he’s certainly been doing some exercise recently.

I added my StorTrooper to Threadnaught’s ever growing page of StorTrooper webloggers, which I would heartily recommend that everyone participates in. Perhaps we could have badges made for any upcoming London web-meets so that people can recognise us more easily. Alternatively, I suppose I could put a photograph on my site. Revolutionary thought. That’s what I’m known for.

After-dinner discussion (• • •) last night has led me to believe that an Andersen Consulting-style rebranding exercise might be in order for the weblogging community. Merely take two words that you feel ‘represent’ your site in some way, and then combine them to produce your newly rebranded site-name. If in the process you can spend $600 million, then all the better. With this spirit of adventure in mind, I hereby declare plasticbag.org to be called ‘fascillåte’. Bow down in ironic awe.