Transformation: making a ruckus
Over at the NYTimes is a great piece “A New Perspective on Crime Scenes” about crime scenes that make use of a panoramic camera (Panoscan) to capture the scene.
What really caught my attention was the audio descriptions for each scene that really bring the scenes to life. The images are used in court and also to preserve a crime scene for years to come.
Found via Kottke of course.
For the first time in a looong time I have picked up my Canon 350D. I got the camera a few years back after a freelance gig but I was always hung up on the features and we never took to each other.
Maybe this time will be different.
Made by Hand / No 2 The Knife Maker from Made by Hand on Vimeo.
Maybe you get good at it, maybe you don’t.
You (almost) can’t read the linear notes of a Jay-Z album and not fail to notice the name of Young Guru crop up. Engineer and ad-lib reference for Mr Carter spends just over 2hrs talking about his career and work to date. I have listened to every Jay-Z song and yet much of the work is done by folk like Young Guru who we know almost nothing about. I love the internet for gems like these.
One of my favourite moments is when one of the audience asks:
If you love underground hiphop why doesn’t Jay-Z rhyme to underground beats? peep the video to discover the answer!
Follow Young Guru.
Lecture: Young Guru (Madrid 2011) from Red Bull Music Academy on Vimeo.
A few weeks ago I was complaining about my avatar picture and Nigel Goldsmith, photographer and colleague offered to shoot me.
I wanted some shots that I could use for all my public accounts and conference talks that showed me in a professionally nerdy way and Nigel did a great job. The background is the stairway of the Wills Memorial Building here in lovely Bristol. Several people are shocked I stickered my laptop but it won’t get easily confused at a conference now will it?
Black Leakage is a new product from one of my favourite studios Design Chapel.
I haven’t seen this kind of wall art on sale before and it reminds me of my painting days and when I used to ‘F5’ the Design Chapel site before I discovered RSS!
Weelearning held the first event on Wednesday and I was in attendance in bristol. Dan and Sam are hoping to build a regular following for us e-learning types in the commercial and public sector. I really enjoyed the night and not just because I won a prize of e-learning books from packt.
What made this really enjoyable in addition to the two talks was that we had plenty of time to kick it with fellow folks. I attend plenty of formal rigid event so it was cool to almost have the other end of the spectrum.
We talked about the differences between commercial/public sector approaches, terminology and value of e-learning to traditional workshop models.
If weelearning can attract a regular following and keep the essence of a relaxed and diverse crowd then I look forward to meeting you at a future event.
One of my web heroes Jonathan Snook recently released a website about organising CSS:
I’ve long lost count of how many web sites I’ve built. You’d think after having built a few hundred of them I’d have discovered the “one true way” of doing it. I don’t think there is one true way. What I have discovered are techniques that can keep CSS more organized and more structured, leading to code that is easier to build and easier to maintain.
I have long tried to grapple with the same problem and after a week or so really think this idea and website has legs. Below is a cut down version for quick reference, read and then head over to Scalable and Modular Architecture for CSS.
The four types of categories are:
1. Base styles are the defaults that we set. They’re almost exclusively single element selectors but it could include attribute selectors, pseudo-class selectors, child selectors or sibling selectors. Essentially, a base style says that where ever this element is on the page, it should look like this.
Examples of Base Styles
html, body, form { margin: 0; padding: 0; }
input[type=text] { border: 1px solid #999; }
a { color: #039; }
a:hover { color: #03C; }
2. Layout styles divide the page into sections. Layouts hold all your modules together
Examples of Layout Styles#header, #article, #footer { width: 960px; margin: auto;} .l-header { float: left; }3. Modules are the reusable, modular parts of our design. They are the navigation, callouts, the sidebar sections, and the product list and so on.
This is the meat of the page. Modules sit inside Layout components. Modules can sometimes sit within other Modules, too. Each Module should be designed to exist as a standalone component.
4. State styles are ways to describe how our modules or layouts will look when in a particular state. Is it hidden or expanded? Is it active or inactive?
.s-error { color: #F00; background-color: #FEE; }
display, float, position, left, top, height, width and so on.border-image, and border-radius.font-family, font-size, text-transform, letter-spacing etc
It is a constant struggle to identify good hotels/hostels – this time we were lucky that a colleague suggested ‘The Havelock‘ on the Isle of Wight, a place which has exceeded our expectations and we couldn’t have been happier.
On the front desk the owners have a guestbook which reflects the happy stay of many guests . What’s wrong with that? Nothing except we are already here and so the comments don’t really add value much to anybody – although my better half suggests it can be good for local recommendations.
Those comments would be very helpful to anybody who is considering the hotel via the website. I propose that all hotels transfer those comments to their own websites on a regular basis. This would help interested potential guests AND surely help keep fresh material on the site – who loves this more than a search engine and a bunch of hotels with static sites vying for a higher search ranking that’s who.
It is good that The Havelock is on tripadviser as at least those comments can help you decide.