I want one. I wonder how hard they are to break to ride? Zebras are considered unbreakable, though a few have been. Zedonks, Zebra mule crosses take reasonably well to pack saddles, though they don’t care for lead-ropes I understand. Interesting markings on this example. Like a paint pattern, with stripes only on the spots.
This animal with distinctive markings is a zorse - the off-spring of a female zebra and a male horse.
Thanks to Sage for sending em the link.
I’ve described design as painfully bad before, but I think this actually is.
London 2012 Olympics branding film causes epileptic seizures | 456 Berea Street
Recently a movie clip that was published on the official London 2012 Olympic Games website (Warning! Contains colour combinations that are painful to look at. Yes, really.) contained an animation that caused seizures in at least thirty people. And those are just the people who contacted the charity Epilepsy Action about it.
I knew about the seizure inducing effects of pulsing or strobing lights, but I thought TV networks were careful about what they aired. Apparently not, because the TV version of this online video induced seizures as well.
Now this Sony commercial has an interesting use of color, or colour as they are spelling it. Very clever, and very messy.
h/t Reaction!
Slow week for blogging. Wrapping up a project that’s taking all of my time. It will be done today, so hopefully I can get some writing done soon.
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I’m shocked, but the dry cleaner won the missing pants case. Don’t get me wrong, the dry cleaner, should have won, but I’m surprised they did. These stupid sort of cases always seem to be won by the people who shouldn’t win. Apparently this wasn’t the case here.
“A reasonable consumer would not interpret ‘Satisfaction Guaranteed’ to mean that a merchant is required to satisfy a customer’s unreasonable demands” or to agree to demands that the merchant would have reasonable grounds for disputing, the judge wrote.
Monday again. It’s amazing how quickly the weekend can slip by.
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Stranger in a Strange Land has posted a video clip of a computer recreation done by Purdue University of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center.
The full story of the computer modeling project is at CNET News.com
Blogging Tips: First Impressions Count
There are several “first impressions” your blog makes as it struggles to attract and hold on to readers. Few of those first impressions come directly from your blog’s design and layout. - (a guest post by Lorelle VanFossen of Lorelle on WordPress and an excerpt from her popular book, Blogging Tips, Tips Bloggers Won’t Tell You About Blogging.)
Mitt Romney’s campaign web site is up and running. It probably has been for a while, but I only recently noticed it. Here’s a few of my thoughts on the site.
Before I start with my usual review, I thought I’d mention the Five Brothers Blog. Mr. Romney has his sons blogging for him on a subdomain of his political site. A nice touch I thought. It’s dynamic nature should help drive traffic. Five people writing about Mitt Romney should definitely get good placement in the search engines. It seems to be well written too. They’re all following the campaign’s direction I suppose, but they all sound sincere. I think this aspect of the site will turn out to be big benefit as the campaign goes on.
Style
A fairly simple color palette, red, white, blue with a couple grays. Simple, but well done. The palette gives it a very clean and neat look, and the layout takes advantage of that.
The home page plays a sequence of campaign photos with links to press releases. They had the decency to run the photos fairly slowly, which is nice. A lot of sites seem to try to rush images by you at a rapid rate, but this isn’t unpleasant. It’s also, with one exception, the only moving part of the site, which is nice too. Too many sites find a technology like this scrolling images, and use it repeatedly. One moving image is interesting, two is annoying, and three will get you convicted of cruel and unusual punishment by any jury. The one exception I mentioned is a flash piece the plays when you hit the site for the first time. It’s a clever little bit of flash that shows Mr. Romney appear to walk out into your browser and welcome you to the site. My screen capture above shows him in the lower right corner. While it is clever, and is well done, I’m still undecided on whether it’s a benefit to the site or not. I’d think it would be found annoying by most people, but I could be wrong. It didn’t annoy me, but I’m a geek, and I’m fascinated by this sort of technological geekery.
The layout is mostly a three column affair. Nice and neat, everything in it’s place. They’ve so far stayed away from the clutter that can infest this sort of site. Hopefully they’ll continue that trend.
White space is used well. A fairly tight layout, but not too much so. Everything flows nicely, with no crowding.
It’s a fixed width page, which is a negative for me. I almost always think a fluid layout would be better. That said, this layout does work well. I wouldn’t hold it against the designer too much that this is fixed width. It probably wasn’t their choice anyway.
Structure
The site structure is decent. Almost entirely CSS with a table thrown in a couple of times. All tables appear to be used appropriately for tabular data of one kind or another.
While the site does view well in a variety of browsers, it could use some help. It has an unusually high number of validation errors and warnings. They appear to be mostly from the use of outdated or inappropriate coding. No individual problem is severe, but I’d be concerned that out of date browsers might have problems here. More than anything it looks like the Doctype doesn’t match the coding. Someone has upgraded the Doctype to something newer than the code can support. Again, not a big thing, but it should be fixed.
There are also some accessibility issues. A lot of images don’t have alt coding for instance. While this might be insignificant on a blog like mine, a campaign site needs to be really active on this. If you don’t give your viewers the information they came for, they’ll get it at another candidate’s site.
Content
The kind of political jabbering you’d expect from a campaign site. Nothing you wouldn’t expect with the possible exception of what could turn into a decent blog.
What would I change
I’d really only change the structure. Get the Doctype matching the code, and clean up the accessibility issues. Leave the style alone, and execute the style a little better with some cleaner code.
Summary
I’m a little surprised actually. It’s better than I thought it would be. Candidates seem to be taking the web much more seriously this campaign cycle, which is a good thing. A lot of people are using the web to do political research, and not taking it seriously can really hamstring a campaign. I think Mr. Romney will be well served by this site if it’s maintained properly.
Trackposted to Perri Nelson’s Website, Right Celebrity, DeMediacratic Nation, The World According to Carl, Blue Star Chronicles, The Amboy Times, Leaning Straight Up, Conservative Cat, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
I’m fascinated by the photography of Martin Klimas. He’s taking photos of movement that are just unreal. A lot of them show the subject in the process of being destroyed. There are a series of of photos of flowers in a vase that he captured as the vase was destroyed, but before the flowers were affected. While those are spectacular, I’m even more curious about the porcelain figures. How does he catch them in the midst of their own destruction? I wonder how many he breaks for each good photo? Fascinating work, go take a look, and tell me what you think.
h/t Tropist Weblog
From the comments: Strobe lights, baby!! - Jan
Strobe lights didn’t occur to me. I always forget you can use them in situations like this. I’m decent at photographic composition, but I don’t have the technical skills to back it up. I was curious about the synch too.
The vases in his pictures seem to be hit with some sort of projectile. It’s more obvious in some pictures than others though, so maybe he uses more than one method. A couple of the cell phone/electronics photos show a round projectile passing out of frame to the right. Ball bearing from some sort of sling shot? - HDW
I’ve been busy this week with technical problems, not my own thankfully. What’s everyone else up to? Leave a trackback or a comment, and let me know.
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Michelle Malkin’s blog has been redesigned by the nice people at The Blog Studio.
This month marks my third year in the blogosphere. To celebrate, I’m launching MM.com version 2.0. Thanks to the wizardry of Mark Jaquith and the design gurus at The Blog Studio, you’re looking at a radically re-tooled blog format with some cool new user features -Michelle Malkin
Well done! It’s a three column design, with a double sidebar on the right. While this is a style which I’m generally not fond of, this works. The two columns of content, primary and one sidebar, visually separate nicely from the traditional sidebar.
Whitespace is used well, as it was in their HotAir design. Also reflective of the HotAir design is their subtle use of color. The very simple color palette on both sites works well with the the large number of images they tend to use.
The coding looks good as I’d expect from The Blog Studio, though I’m seeing an odd use of Font tags here and there. I suspect the final design is being tweaked as I write this and those will likely go away soon. Time will tell.
Congratulations to Michelle Malkin on her new design.
Trackposted to Perri Nelson’s Website, Blue Collar Muse, Committees of Correspondence, third world county, Right Truth, The World According to Carl, The Amboy Times, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
I saw a political website that I liked for Fred Thompson. I even like the URL, I’m With Fred dot com. Most politicians take themselves way too seriously, and I thought this was a nice change. This will be a simple review, I just had a few comment I’d like to make.
The key to this design in my view is the simplicity.
I was shocked. A nice clean layout without all of that @#$% that this sort of site usually has. Political sites are usually design by committee nightmares at best. Maybe this will turn into one of those, but the initial site is refreshing.
A blog with open comments was another nice touch. I was particularly impressed by the fact that Mr. Thompson actually appeared to be doing some of the blogging. We’ll see how that turns out. I’ve been less than impressed with celebrity blogging as a whole, but his first few posts were not bad. No long diatribes. Just short notes about current events for the most part.
I’m not sure what I think of this campaign politically, but I’m impressed with the way they’ve put together this site and using it to their advantage. It appears to be well thought out, and well executed. While this alone won’t get my vote, it will keep me watching to see what he has to say. When it comes down to it, keeping people watching what Fred Thompson has to say should be the primary purpose behind this site, and in my opinion, it’s fulfilling this duty well.
Trackposted to Perri Nelson’s Website, Blue Collar Muse, Committees of Correspondence, third world county, Right Truth, The World According to Carl, The Amboy Times, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
Monday again. Father’s Day went well. Took a little hike in the woods with the family. I took a few pictures which I may post eventually, but I haven’t had time to look at them yet.
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I’ve been making some changes around the office. Part of the change is just general updating, while part is caused by a change in emphasis. The work I’m doing this year is different than the work I did last year, and next year will be different again. The graphic design field, like a lot of others I assume, is changing at a rapid rate. With a few minor changes to my equipment, I’ve realigned my equipment to better meet the tasks I’ve using them for.
I try not to jump on the latest technology to hit the market, it goes with my overall theory that it’s better to learn from the mistakes of others than make the mistakes yourself. It is important however, not to fall too far behind the curve in terms of technology.
Monitors are one thing that’s changed a lot in recent years. The quality is up, and the costs are down. Contrary to what you might think though, I don’t find a huge monitor an asset in graphic and web design field. I’d always like bigger monitors, but I find that the biggest bang for the buck is using two good monitors of decent size. I’m currently using two 19 inch monitors. I keep my design software running on one, with the tool bars on the other. Gives my a very uncluttered view of my work, while allowing me lots of space for all of the palettes and tool bars that seem to be necessary for my work. If you are a designer, give some serious thought to investing in a second monitor, you’d be amazed at the improvement it will make in your productivity. It doesn’t even have to match your current one. Keep your nice high quality monitor as the primary, and get a smaller one for the secondary. It may seem counterintuitive, but matching monitors is really not necessary.
Keyboards and mice are the other features I see most often overlooked in a good workspace. Personally I like ergonomic keyboards, but to each his own. The key is to get one that fits you, that you can use without thinking. Don’t stick yourself with something that came with a computer ten years ago just because you have it. Find what you like, and go for it. It’s a tool you use all day, don’t shortchange yourself on something so basic to your productivity. A good mouse is the other half of this equation. Can you think of a tool in your office that’s used more than your mouse? Let me guess, you still use the one that came with the computer? Maybe thats OK, but is it working for you? There are much better mice on the market. I had a decent optical mouse, but I recently upgraded to a Logitech MX Revolution. Very nice. It works much better with the longer documents I’ve been working on lately than my previous mouse. The extra function buttons and the high speed scrolling features are excellent. I’m still getting used to it, but it’s going to save me a lot of time.
While it’s extremely important that as a designer you know your software, it also important that you know your hardware. Take a look at your workspace, could it be better? By better I mean appropriate, not more expensive. Are your tools a match for the tasks you use the for? Do they allow you to focus on the design, rather than on using them? A few changes to your workspace might allow for some serious improvements in you productivity. With a little thought, and a little investment, you too might be doing the Full Geek Boogie.
Trackposted to Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Maggie’s Notebook, The Pet Haven Blog, Stuck On Stupid, The Bullwinkle Blog, Cao’s Blog, Pursuing Holiness, Rightlinx, Woman Honor Thyself, stikNstein… has no mercy, The World According to Carl, Nuke’s news and views, Blue Star Chronicles, Pirate’s Cove, Dumb Ox Daily News, and Church and State, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
A lot of irons in the fire today, but I’ll try to post a few things as I have time.
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A humorous and clever explanation of how not to display art on the web.
I learn through trial and error… Sometimes heavy on the error. I’ve read manuals, I’ve done tutorials, I’ve taken classes. The best way for me to learn though, appears to be hands on. I need to try, to do, to see how something works. I often fail, but in failing I learn, and I move on. For a long time I thought it was just me that worked that way, but I was reassured to find out that others have had similar experiences.
I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. - Thomas A. Edison
Obviously Mr. Edison was much more successful at this method than most.
It’s nice to see your own thoughts mirrored by someone else. When they say it much better than you ever could, it’s even better.
One of the real tragedies of the situation at Virginia Tech is that misguided administrators created a gun free zone where someone like this crazed individual could prey on other students, staff and faculty who were powerless to defend themselves.
That said, availability of guns or lack of concealed weapons isn’t the primary cause of the events at Virginia Tech. - By Sheriff Jim Alderden - Bull’s Eye Briefing
Should You Design Your Own Blog? « Lorelle on WordPress
A blog’s design is only as good as the blog designer.
That’s the truth. Like it or not.
Web design, especially blog design, is not about moving a sidebar to the left or right or changing your header art. It’s not about making the background blue instead of green and adding pictures to the overall design.
Web design is about matching the design with the content, the design with the blogger, the design with the blog’s purpose, the design with the audience, and about making the connections between all these pieces come together.
That last paragraph is the best. The idea of matching design with the content, the blogger, the purpose and the audience is wonderful. Very well said. I wish I’d said it in fact. This concept is one of the reasons I would suggest that bloggers should consider using a well designed but somewhat generic template when they get started. Better to be somewhat design neutral until you can get a feel for your audience and for yourself as a blogger. It’s also, in my opinion, better to have a well thought out neutral them, than a poorly designed them made just for you. A blog design says something about you, and about the site. It’s better that your blog’s design says little, than to have it say something poorly.
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