Over the last few weeks I’ve noticed that my Mac has been slowly grinding to a halt, overheating and basically not bringing me as much maccy joy as she used to.
After a little investigation, I discovered that (for some unknown reason) Dashboard was chewing up memory and processor power by the fistful. In fact, it was claiming a mighty 80% chunk of my 2.3 Ghz core 2 duo.
80% !?! Something had to be done.
After a little investigation I discovered that there was a way to completely disable my little used Dashboard. The Dashboard app is run as a process of the Dock, so it’s a two stage task to disable the pesky thing.
Paul Lloyd and I went to school together. We laughed and cried together. We shared chips from the same paper bag. But alas, he is not keen on the new design. I don’t know if we can weather this rift in our friendship. As an attempt to repair broken prides and clear the air I would like to publicly discuss the issues my friend Mr. Lloyd has with my design.
But first, a brief history.
As already mentioned, myself and Paul went to the same fine secondary education establishment. After a teary goodbye, we both left for our respective Universities - Paul choosing a course in Graphic Design and myself a stint in Multimedia Design. After completing our eduction (both with an Atilla) we moved into jobs, greasing our way up the ranks to reach the lofty heights of Lead Design at Ning and Interaction Designer at Glaxstar.
It should be mentioned at this point that whereas I have always had slightly more technical skill than Paul, he far outstrips me on the design front. That said, lets now move onto what he thought of the new design.
F*****G Stars!
Were the first words out of Paul’s mouth. Too many stars apparently. I gathered from this that Paul was less than impressed with the new design.
He then sent me an email, a design critique if you will, kindly enclosing a re-hashed version of the design that ‘he did on the train’. This gave me a basic overview of each area of my sins:
Typography
Colour
Use of space
Use of images
Those stars
Ok, time to get serious. I must admit to having my pride a little battered by Paul’s redesign, but he’s an awesome designer and a great friend. I just thought this would be funny - And a chance to put both designs out there. I’ve uploaded Paul’s Homepage and About Page to Flickr. Please feel free to take a look and rip either or both versions. Again, it’s over to you!
Not since January 4th 2006 has there been any update, new look or (if you will) face lift to my own little corner of the web. So it was about bloody time I put mouse to slightly grubby desktop and upgraded things a little.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been spending quiet moments with Fireworks and then Dreamweaver slaving away to bring you a pimped-up roobottom. I’ve chopped out the things that were rubbish or no-body used (most notably the subscribe via email thing) and added in some cool new ways to navigate around.
The Archives have received a complete re-code and now offer (I think) a great alternative to the standard Wordpress list by date feature. In-fact all of the code is sleeker, faster and more importantly ALL stored in it’s theme directory - where as before it was scattered all over the place.
I will endeavor to post some more technical details of what’s going on behind the scenes in the near future - and I may even release some of the Archive code as a plug in (if I get enough spare time).
Oh, and the flickr photo streams now work! Thanks to the brilliant work of Eightface.
Avast! The fine fellows at Talk Like a Pirate have put together a video on how to speak like a scurvy dog pirate to get you started.
Most notably tho, Flickr has gone all out in support by adding a new language option for the occasion, so go and check it out quick before yarrrr miss it!
The iTunes store is great, I love it! And that’s the problem. They have my credit card details and it’s way too easy for me to click the all to available ‘buy now’ button. And, to make matters worse, we now have TV shows in the UK store.
Oh crap, Ugly Betty is quite good, and I don’t watch TV so this seems like the perfect solution. Click, watch.. and then cower under the table when my Visa bill is delivered each month. They add more stuff all the time, why wont they let me rest?
And then, the final straw. They go and launch the iPod touch. How do Apple do that? Make you want their things? And with WiFi access to the store I’d be as dangerous as a granny with a chainsaw.
Somebody help. Surly there must be a support group for this kind of thing?
Last week I received a random e-mail from a lady calling herself “Yummy Mummy” that simply said…
I have written about you, I hope you like it. x.
So with trepidation, I clicked on the link. At this point, it’s worth pointing out that I don’t know this person, or had never had any contact with her before in my life. And yes, I’m aware how much you guys are going to take the p**s.
It took me a while to work out what the hell was going on here. Apparently this woman, writing under the pseudonym of Yummy Mummy writes about “Amelia” her 18 year old daughter and how she needs to basically be more wise in the way of men. It’s pretty weird stuff and morally questionable to say the least, but after a few emails to “Yummy” (staring with me asking ‘are you for real?’) I was assured that this wasn’t real, and was just to provoke interest in her blog. So needless to say, I don’t agree with what this woman is doing, but she has a much right to write what she thinks as the next guy.. um, gal. I saw absolutely no point in sending her a message judging her for her actions.
She was trying to get me to force “Yummy” to take my photo off her blog. She seems to have quite a lot of anger about Pimp My Daughter, which I guess I can understand. However she did rather go off on one about how she thought that all MEN (yes, capitals) just saw a joke in this.
But I did rather feel caught in the middle, forced to take sides on an issue that I’d never really considered before. And I suspect that far from farming her daughter out “Yummy” is actually just massively taking the p**s.
After dropping my beloved K800i down a flight of steps, ripping off the back and damaging the camera in the process, I finally have a shiny new K810i from the insurance company.
But I couldn’t stand the crappy theme that came with it. But, wait a punk-ass minute - I thought, Aren’t I supposed to be some kind of interface designer? Some sort yeah, but never the less I still managed to come up with my own little roobottom theme when I had a spare hour last night.
So, I’m sharing it with you (un)lucky people, it works well on my K810, and I imagine also on the K800 too! It’ll do me until I get my grubby mits on an iPhone anyway! Enjoy!
I was always skeptical about earning money through affliate links and online advertising, but for the past year I’ve been using a service called Text Link Ads and been very Impressed with the results.
Last month I earned a total of $112 from selling adverts from this site and others - I never imagined that I could make that much! TLA is cool, and if you’re looking to advertise, they even do a $100 free start up promotion. Get In!
I’ve got a cool new icon on my dock, that of Joost - an on demand Web TV service. First impressions are pretty good, for a ‘friends only’ beta it works well and the programs load and buffer pretty well (although that could have something to do with my shiny new ADSL connection).
Joost is a stand alone application that links to their service. It starts up in full screen mode, and works pretty much like any other digital on demand service. You can pick your channel and show from an easy to use menu. There’s also a ‘My Joost’ menu with things like an on screen clock, but I didn’t really see the point in all this.
It’s an ad paid for system, but that’s cool, and you only get one 30 second advert for each 15 min of TV.. Which is a lot better than ITV.
One thing I did miss was an indication of how much of the program was buffered. I really missed the ability to pause and let the stream catch up with itself, this would have saved a little jerkiness I noticed later on. Maybe when some of the US users were logging on and slowing the servers?
It performed pretty well in window and full screen modes, although don’t expect HD quality. The compression is pretty obvious on a 15″ screen, although it looks mint in window mode.
I’ll be looking forward to this system getting noticed and attracting some (much) better programing, as to be honest the shows they have at the moment are a little pants. Anyway, if you want to check it out, drop me a line and I’ll invite you..
So Rob tells us all about Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount, specifically the part where Jesus is talking about the law ‘and eye for an eye’ and he says
But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. (Matt 5:39)
Which is arguably one of Jesus’ most quotable moments. It’s fundamental to some people’s understanding of who Jesus was. If someone hits you, stand there and take it, don’t hit back, don’t do anything. The message bible even translates what Jesus said as this. But last night, Rob explained it in a way I’d never heard before.
In Jewish culture at the time of Jesus people had a ‘clean’ hand (right) and a ‘dirty’ hand (left). The right hand would be used for greeting people, eating, working and all manor of task you couldn’t really use your left for as your ‘dirty’ hand was often engaged in matters of personal hygiene and it was considered unthinkable to use it for anything but it’s intended, very specific, job.
So when you hit someone, you’d obviously only ever use your right hand.
There’s something else about the culture at the time that you need to know. It was a highly class driven - Everyone knew their place, and everyone had their place. So the way you hit someone depended on who you were to them. A master hitting a servant for example would only ever slap them, they would never ever use a fist as this would validate that servant as an equal. And if all the other servants are watching, well, you’ve got yourself anarchy on your hands.
So if someone strikes you on the right cheek, with their right hand… They’re not making a fist.
No, they’re slapping you. They’re saying ‘you are not worthy of a fist’. In other words, they’re better than you. And in Jesus’ time, the most likely people to think they’re better than you are the conquering Romans.
So turning the other cheek is an act of defiance, it’s saying ‘you cannot take my dignity’. It’s saying ‘take your best shot, but this time as an equal‘. Jesus doesn’t go for the hit back or do nothing approaches, no, he goes for the third option. The option which takes infinitively more courage and imagination than the first two.
And this is how Rob Bell started his hour or so talk, I’ve no where near done it justice here. There’s what I think I knew about Jesus, and there’s what I find out when I actually look at the scriptures and what they’re saying in the context of the society of the time. Jesus wasn’t a passive, weak individual. He was a subversive, who stood up for the oppressed, weak and poor. I for one want to find out more.
Rob Bell continues his tour in Glasgow on 30th June. If you can, go check him out.
