Month: March 2005

Sassafrassin Rassafrasser!

Reading time: < 1 min

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…).

Information Design and the Web 1

Reading time: 4 mins

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

Who?

Reading time: < 1 min

Non-plussed.

Funny bits weren’t that funny.

Dramatic bits weren’t that dramatic.

The rest was a bit bland. Considering the competition, largely American I have to admit and largely post-watershed, this felt a little light and almost too fast-paced for it’s own good. Not sure what Christopher Eccleston was aiming for, but if it was “slightly weird in a slightly scary kinda way” then he nailed it but at the expense of looking like he was hamming it up, which is a shame because I think he is an excellent actor. Billie Piper was OK.

I’ll give it another couple of weeks but not a great return for Dr.Who.

Oh yes, I should mention that I rarely watched any of the originals, the odd episode here and there, hence the lack of fanboy excitement and gushing praise for something which was, at worst, mediocre TV.

100 Movies

Reading time: 3 mins

As I’m all “wrote” out, I thought I’d tackle this meme I’ve seen in several places over the last couple of weeks. Lazy blogging of the nth degree but infinitely less time consuming than writing a post although, as ever, I find myself procrastinating about how quick and dirty these things are only to spend more time writing about how quick and dirty they are than actually taking the quick and dirty option of just posting the damn thing with little explanation.

So I’ll shut up and say that the films in bold are ones I’ve not seen. I’m pretty sure on other sites the bold films are the ones the person has already seen but as I’m using this as a basis of compiling a “movies to watch” list for myself, the opposite approach makes more sense. To me that is, I’m surprised you are still reading this waffle to be honest, so, with that in mind I’ll stop and just list the damn movies and be done with it.

Continue reading 100 Movies

RANT

Reading time: < 1 min

So what’s today? Today is Friday. That’s it, nothing else. Just another working day at the end of another working week.

Except it isn’t. It’s a bank holiday, which has some connection to a religious event, apparently. Obviously upon hearing that jesus had rolled away the giant chocolate egg from in front of his tomb, the bankers of the day took it upon themselves to have a holiday. Hey, why not take the Monday after it as well, they no doubt thought. We could make a long weekend of it, get in some golf maybe, although I hear that new course at Eden is almost completely exclusive…

Today is also the last Friday of the month. The day I get paid. You can see where this is going, can’t you.

I didn’t get paid today. Our finance guys sent off the pay BACS thingydoo-dah at the usual time but for some reason it hasn’t appeared in my bank account, or anyone else using the Bank of Scotland (about 15 of us).

And the bankers are on holiday. Until Tuesday.

Upshot is that I now have to trail into Glasgow to the office to pick up a cash advance to get us through the weekend. Twunting badgeknackers.

Bad Monkey

Reading time: < 1 min

It’s only when you have a small, slightly tender wound in the middle of your back that your realise how often you lie on your back whilst trying to get to sleep. I always thought I slept mostly on my side but after wakening every 30 minutes or so last night I find that I lie on my back more often than I thought.

In other exciting news, for some reason (well some reason I can’t get to the bottom of), Firefox has stopped opening Javascript linked windows, like the comments on this site. Most annoying.

Not sure if it was the update, the removal of a couple of extensions (though neither were anything to do with windows), or the installation of an extension. Frankly I’m too knackered and too busy to care. I’ll sort it later.

And then, of course, blogrolling.com decides to stop playing and runs off with the ball. I’m definitely NOT going to be renewing that service but it does leave a hole. Not only did I use it on this site, but I had all of my blogrolls (four of ’em) on my internet browser start page, how the hell am I going to replace them?

More later. Coffee now.