I believe I may have just set a record by publishing this very post on my blog right now. I think I have just set the record for the longest time between two posts on this blog ever since I started it.
And for good reason. Yer see, many people who know me know I’m almost constantly busy, and almost constantly doing something. However, the past few week’s something has often been not this, or not anything that I usually do to relax such as write The Last or play with some design. I’ve been attempting to finish my college course.
As you will probably presume now that by me writing this, I’m extremely close to the end, and ultimately extremely close to having a lot more spare time than I am used to. That’s a scary thought. I don’t think I’ve been bored for entire two years that I’ve been on the course, and now to suddenly have a lot more spare time will be a strange feeling. Not a bad one – not at all – but it will certainly take some getting used to.
So what has been happening over the past few weeks then? Well, I’ve been designing lots of stuff for various different companies, I finished my final assignment at college and launched a new project in well fell swoop, and I’ve had small bursts on GTA IV during the free moments I’ve made for myself.
More on all those things soon. Now I have to get back to work.
As much as I secretly hoped I might have a far away Russian admirer, today it was confirmed that I didn’t have a real one: by receiving the exact same message again from somebody else claiming to be from Russia.
Ah well. Better luck next time Boris.
Got this in the inbox today. Not sure of the purpose of it exactly or what it is selling, but this has to be the most elaborate spam I’ve ever received.
Unless… I really have a Russian admirer?
Hi,
I have seen yours account and e-mail on a site of acquaintances. I have remembered this site Dating. I have thought and have decided to write a letter to you. I am looking for a good person. Probably it is impossible, but I search love in the Internet.
I ask you to understood me. I think that probably you and I can create great and fair relations. I wanna get acquainted with you better. I want to arrive to the United Kingdom soon.Some words about me. I am a Russian woman. My native land is Russia. My city is Sankt-Petersburg. I hope you do not think about Russian women badly. I know that many bad people create bad impression of Russian women. I want to say at once that I will not ask you for money. I want to find love only. And may be big happiness.
Why do I search for the man in your country? My best girlfriend lives in the UK. She got married English man. They are very happy together. Such happens!
My girlfriend advised me to look for the man in Great Britain United Kingdom. She is assured that I can find a good man. I agree. Everything is possible in our world! I am sure that I can find a good and fair man in the UK.I can arrive to the United Kingdom at any time. As soon as I want. I have a visa and the sanction to entry to the UK. I can arrive to Great Britain at any time. My girlfriend will give me money for my trip in the UK. She will pay my trip and charges. We are friends for a very long time. We always helped each other. And my girlfriend wants to help me to arrive to the UK. I can arrive to the man which will want to create love with me. May be it is you?
My girlfriend has explained to me, that I shouldn’t worry about money. She can provide me with everything. Also in the future she can give me good work with the big salary. If I wish to remain in United Kingdom. And if I find a good man.I wish true and serious relations. I do not understand and I do not wish to play games. I will be happy to learn you as better as it is possible and i am ready to start to build serious relations. We can try only for the beginning. We can try to create love and happiness. I think that there are no distances and barrier for love. Only people make miracles. May be me and you will create a miracle which will be called love. Do you agree with me?
I will be glad to arrive to United Kingdom and create big feelings with you. I believe in love and in good people. I think that you are a good person.I shall wait for your answer. I shall tell you about myself as it is possible more in detail in the following letter. Write to me. Your letter will make me the happiest woman. I will wait for your letter. Promise to answer.
I wrote you this letter from general e-mail in the Internet-cafe. Write me the answer to my personal e-mail.It is my personal e-mail:
[removed]@yahoo.comI wait for your answer. I hope that you understood me. I want the only thing. To be happy!!!
Your Elena.
Up until very recently, my blog was essentially just about me forcing what I like upon the reader. I had white text on a dark background (difficult to read for most people), and generally a poor command of my text layout; you know, that stuff you’re coming to this site to read. Ever since I realised this shouldn’t be the case, I’ve been on a quest to make my blog as readable and as easy to use as possible.
Leaving out the occasional blog post image, my actual blog design has 2 images in it, and the rest is CSS. I’ve reduced the amount of images right down to allow people on slow connections to visit my site easily.
Text scales up and down very comfortably, but my next quest for this will be to make sure the character length stays the same when the text size is changed. This is a work in progress.
I’ve opted for the standard link colours and clicking effects, only changing them to make the links inside my blog posts bold so if somebody has impaired vision they can still recognise the links.
The final thing still on my to-do list is to make the white background less harsh on the eyes when reading. I’ve changed the reading text to slightly off-black to make that a bit easier to read, and I am working on solutions for changing the background.
Anyway, that’s why my website is boring-looking. All for you.
I’ve just finished reading through a forum post on a design forum I visit quite a lot that seems to typify exactly how 90% of young designers understand the term “design” these days. I was even like it about 2 years ago. I believe the root of the problem is straight and simple: an over-reliance on software.
Every new website design I seem to see these days is filled to the brim full of Photoshop filters, gradients, and shiny buttons – at the expense of any design thought whatsoever.
All these new designers that post on design forums like the one I linked to above, and they haven’t got the first clue how to structure a communication. Design is effectively structuring a communication no matter what the medium is – it’s giving somebody’s idea or words a visual presence that attracts Joe Public to the product you’re trying to sell.
What’s worse is that if you were to give these so called “designers” a poster to design or anything that isn’t online, they wouldn’t have the first clue where to start. This is exactly why everybody thinks that they can be a web designer, because people have a misconception that all you need is a copy of Photoshop to create a website and then you’re suddenly a designer because you can make buttons shiny.
Design is not making things shiny and attractive. Design is communicating a certain message within the limitations of the medium.
Turn off Photoshop and go read some bloody books.
From my first ever phone (the Motorola vBox) to 2 weeks ago, I’ve always hated my mobile phone. I’ve tried to love them, and I’ve had some mobile phones in the past that I should have loved. The P900 was pretty special, and it was chocked full of a thousand different applications. This was a PDA masquerading as a mobile phone, but after a while I got sick of its stupid interface and I just wanted a phone again. This experience has characterised my entire mobile phone-using history. Buy fancy phone, get sick of awkward interface, and buy a smaller and less complicated mobile phone.
Fast forward to now, and I’ve just got sick of the P1i (ridiculously complicated interface), and I was on the market for a new mobile phone. Instead of following my usual pattern of buying a simplistic phone after a disappointing phone, I bought the iPhone.
As regular readers will know, I’ve resisted the temptation of an iPhone for a while, instead opting for its little brother; the iPod Touch. I’d had the Touch for about six months, and when I realised that I still loved that gorgeously simple interface six months later, I knew I was onto something unusually special, and I knew I had to buy an iPhone.
So, let’s get the bad bits of the iPhone out of the way first – the texting takes some getting used to, you can’t put it in your pocket with anything else for fear of damaging it, you have to use iPod headphones unless you have an adapter, and the speaker when talking to people sounds a bit crackly when it’s turned up loud. Other than that, every else is perfect.
And I genuinely mean that. Whilst much of the iPhone’s interface won’t wow you, everything is just built to make your life easier. Text messages are organised by recipient instead of message, and messages are show as conversations in little speech bubbles, showing your replies and their replies. If you’re doing something on your phone and a text comes in, the text will appear in full over the top of whatever you are doing, giving you an option to either reply or ignore. Setting an alarm is as easy as turning a wheel, because you literally turn a wheel to set it. Everything on the iPhone is laid out in such a way so that you never have to think about how you need to do what you want to do.
And then there’s the amazing extras it manages to shove in there too. The music player is just the iPod Touch stuck into the iPhone, so that’s nigh-on perfect. Usually when you hear the words mobile phone application you’ll immediately think of a slightly cut down version of the bigger application that doesn’t work as well, but here there is a fully-fledged iPod.
Next on the list is the utterly amazing Safari browser, which is by far the best portable internet browser I have ever used. What makes it so good is the fact that pages are rendered as they would be using the desktop version of Safari, apart from they’re zoomed out to fit the iPhone’s screen. You can then double tap any area to zoom in, or use the fancy pinch feature. The best thing about zooming in is all the text is smoothed, so no matter how close you zoom in the text looks just as good as it would zoomed right out.
But forget all of the iPhone’s fancy features for a second. The only thing that really matters is this: the iPhone is a joy to use no matter what you are doing with it. Sending a text message becomes a screen filled with colourful bubbles. Viewing photos becomes a game of sliding your finger around the screen, and pinching it to zoom in. If you were to buy one right now, I can personally guarantee that you wouldn’t be disappointed. That’s how good the iPhone is.
The iPhone is so much more than just a mobile phone, and it almost feels a crime to call it that. You’ll never look at a mobile the same way again.
Betcha.
A final note
Before you start thinking I’m an Apple fanboy and I’m just praising the product because I love Apple, then let me tell you this: I’m extremely difficult to please when it comes to interfaces on anything, especially mobile phones. This is the first and only mobile phone that I have actually found a pleasure to use.
Yep. I bought one. Yep. Even after all that. More soon.
Last video for today. Promise.
Oh, the humanity. I need another lay down.
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