Month: March 2005

bookmark_borderMiscellany

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I’ve seen it used several times in the past week or so. It DOESN’T make you look or sound cool, smart, or ‘better’ in any way shape or form. To what do I refer?

grok – tr.v.: To understand profoundly through intuition or empathy.

Please, PLEASE, stop using it. You know who you are.

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I got paid today. Thankfully no charges from the bank and as it turns out my company accounting monkeys DID process the pay run on Thursday, we even had the Director of… er.. summat or other… come round to apologise.

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I want a laptop. A small, thin, cheap laptop on which I can write up blog posts and stuff. Needs only be capable of text editing, holding some MP3s, and viewing photos. Ohh and I’m skint so if it’s free so much the better. Anyone??

Maybe I just need a keyboard for my phone? (This MAY be a hint).

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My Mum has printed off your best wishes and will be taking them to my Gran this evening in hospital. So thanks again to you all. My Mum has spoken to social services about my Gran’s situation so we’ll see what comes of that (and yes my thoughts on the matter are currently sitting in a draft post).

bookmark_borderSassafrassin Rassafrasser!

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This is driving me nuts.

It may be an issue with my WordPress installation, or my CSS, an example of the problem can, currently, be seen two posts down.

If I add a blockquote in WordPress, it adds [blockquote] around the area of text. All well and good. But if the quote has more than one paragraph, it adds a [p] tag within the blockquote, but only for the SECOND paragraph causing the blockquote to get all huffy (technical term).

Currently the CSS for the blockquote looks like this:
#content-float blockquote { color: #663399; padding: 8px; background: #F6FBF7 border: 1px dotted #CC99FF; font-style: italic; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; }

The [p] tag within the blockquote won’t inherit from it as [blockquote] is below [p] in the CSS hierarchy (I think) but I can’t seem to get my head around how to structure the CSS to cope with this, or should I be looking to the format of the HTML rather than the CSS??

Suggestions, corrections, amendments or even disbelieving comments about my stupidity all welcomed (well all apart from the latter, obviously, that’s just nasty…).

bookmark_borderLife update

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Gran spent the night in hospital and should be well enough to go home today. The entire event (not the first of it’s kind) will again raise the question of whether she should really be in a sheltered housing complex, but it depends entirely on how stubborn the old dear is going to be.

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The easter weekend has passed and, as usual, I worked Friday and Monday. People often ask me why I do that, and other than the fact that I don’t get them by default (which is good, I’d rather choose my own holidays thank you) I simply don’t enjoy them. Why? Ask diamond geezer.

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Watched a couple of movies over the weekend, Miss Smilla’s Sense of Snow and part of Girl with a Pearl Earring. More on them later.

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bookmark_borderInformation Design and the Web 1

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Inspired by John Zeratsky although I seem to have headed off with my own train of thought.

Part 1 of 2

INFORMATION DESIGN – Sounds ominous, right? But it’s not. In fact it’s so everyday you probably don’t realise it’s affecting you every single minute of every single day.

First things first though. What is “information design”?

One of the best explanations I’ve come across is by Nathan Shedroff who states:

The processes involved in solving problems, responding to audiences, and communicating to others are similar enough [across differing communication tools] to consider them identical …

These issues apply across all types of media and experiences, because they directly address the phenomena of information overload, information anxiety, media literacy, media immersion, and technological overload — all which need better solutions. The intersection of these issues can be addressed by the process of Information Interaction Design.

Sounds simple enough, to me. He goes on to say that:

“In other circles, it is called simply Information Design, Information Architecture, or Interaction Design, Instructional Design, or just plain Common Sense.”

From this we can make the simple statement that the core aim of Information Design is to make information as effective as possible. So in order to understand Information Design, we need to understand the types of information with which it is concerned.

Continue reading “Information Design and the Web 1”

bookmark_borderDreich

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Bank Holiday, still no sign of my pay. Feckers. Still other events are bringing context and focus.

My Gran fell last night, had to kick in the front door to get to her and she is now in hospital. Everything else is hidden behind a barrier of grey, smudged and blurry like the sky outside.

UPDATE: They are keeping her in overnight, she has twelve stitches across her forehead but seems OK apart from that (in other words she’s complaining that she’s not had a decent cup of tea). Thanks for your thoughts, VERY much appreciated.

bookmark_borderYawn

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Losing an hour’s sleep is not what you want when you aren’t sleeping too well, but on the plus side it does mean that summer is approaching.

You DID change your clocks this morning, right?

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