riding the crest of a wave in a space that’s about to explode…
Flickr is great. So is Feedburner, which allows you to turbocharge your RSS feeds with all sorts of cool features. It has allowed me to integrate my recent Flickr photos with my RSS feed. Point your RSS reader at http://feeds.feedburner.com/rikabel, or just click on the little xml chiclet in the sidebar.
If you don’t know what an RSS reader is (which is probably the case for a lot of my friends and family - I realise that not everyone out there is a big geek), this introduction might help.
My most recent design project has now gone live at www.phlirtz.com, which is an online dating/flirting website. The client’s brief included the plea “make it orange”. So I did. Front-end design and coding (and logo) by moi, backend clever making-it-work stuff by the guys at igentics. A sizeable chunk of the project was completed while I was in Vancouver, collaborating remotely with the igentics guys in Cambridge, UK, via the magic of email, IM and the wonderful Basecamp.
It doesn’t validate, due to .NET chucking lots of weird .NET stuff in there, and yes, I used tables for layout of form elements (ooh, naughty), when I could possibly have used definition lists for this purpose, but despite these minor (fantastically geeky and uninteresting) niggles I’m pleased with it. Maybe a tad TOO orange, and a few more pictures and a bit less text on the homepage might not go amiss. What do you think?
I’ve been somewhat disappointed (okay, more than somewhat) at the meagre number of comments about my ‘British’ accent, thus far. I was reliably informed by various people that the denizens of Canada would love my accent, but until yesterday I have had a paltry two compliments, despite working in a ‘public-facing role’ (part-time job at the U of T computer shop. Echh.)
However, yesterday a young black female student was staring disconcertingly at me while I was serving another customer; I eventually made eye contact with her and she asked “Do you find people are often mesmerised by your accent?” I WISH. I told her people sometimes say they like my accent, but as yet nobody had admitted to being mesmerised by it. “Do you like my accent”? I enquired, innocently enough. “Well, yeah, but I was hesitant to say so since I am aware that it is a colonial fetish”.
Wow. Kids these days, eh? I’ve never been a colonial fetish object before. I think I like it.
I have resolved to speak in a faux-posh plummy uppercrust accent from now on in the hope of being fetishized again in future. No, not really.
Ooh, ooh! Consider me extremely excited. At long last, superstar German DJ and Kompakt head-honcho Michael Mayer has seen fit to record his first album of original material, Touch, available on pre-order now from the very lovely boomkat.com. Wunderbar.
Getty Images’ Big Idea invited a group of film-makers and ‘motion graphics’ designers to create 1 minute movies using the footage available on the Getty Images website. The results are fairly impressive. I particularly like Koichiro Tsujikawa’s Eyes, which uses just two clips of eye blinking to hypnotic effect. You can also view behind-the-scenes movies explaining the making of each piece. Fascinating stuff. I’m going to go and learn After Effects now…
Hola. I’ve just uploaded some photos from our summer hols in Slovenia and Croatia (see sidebar). Slovenia is the most beautiful country I have ever visited and I can’t recommend it highly enough. Any country where the most popular beer is called “Zlatorog” is all right in my book.
The Zoom Quilt is an amazing piece of collaborative art. I won’t spoil the surprise by describing it. [Flash Required]
By way of test-driving my new Flickr account, here is a photo of myself genuflecting before Apple HQ at 1 Infinite Loop. Like you do. If you are very, very sad.
I just had the opportunity to listen to the new Bose SoundDock ‘digital music system’ for iPods, and I have to say I am hugely impressed! For a small unit it has freakishly powerful, crisp bass response and a great sound all-round. It also goes quite loud without any distortion - not quite up to eleven, but perfectly adequate for a party in a smallish apartment. At $400CAN it isn’t cheap, but I am sure it will sell by the assload. I, for one, welcome our new compact yet stunning iPod amplifying overlord.
Thanks to the splendid and patient folks at Bay Bloor Radio for letting me play with it for 20 minutes and crank up the volume.
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