Odd how writing for someone else sparks my creative side yet I struggle to write for my own blog…
Anyhoo, Lori asked, I said yes and the resulting blog post is now available on her blog – Rarely Wears Lipstick: But, honestly.
But don’t just read my guest post, check out the other guest posts as well.
Go.
Now.
GO!
Why didn’t someone say! (ohh someone did).
It’s Friday the 13th, people. Avoid ladders, salt, mirrors, cats of dark hues and cracks in the pavement. If you are reading this from your house GO BACK TO BED. If you are reading this in bed don’t rub it in, ya lazy bugger…
Anyway, if you want me I’ll be hiding under my desk (I may venture out for a cake though, it IS Friday after all…).
Is there a term for today’s date (05/05/05)? Or is it just the wordsmiths who spent hours and hours creating words about words?
Two things to mention today:
1. GO VOTE!
2. Happy Birthday to my favourite sister – I have to fight the urge to type “little” as she’s 24 now so I think it might be time to let that qualifier drop. I wonder what this year will hold for you, hopefully a new job and after that who knows. Whatever it brings just know that Louise and I want you to be happy and we both love you.
Anyway, best crack on. I’m in work early for a reason after all, although I would recommend that, next time, you get up and hit the polling booths early. We voted at 7.15 this morning, straight in, straight out, no queues, and only one idiot handing out leaflets at the door.
I know WHY they do that, but it still irks me. If you don’t know who you are going to vote for as you walk through the door to the polling station then I sincerely hope you don’t just put a cross next to the name on the leaflet you’ve just received some minutes earlier. I know it drags on, and that fighting off the apathy surrounding elections can be hard but you can sift through all the waffle quite easily these days and make a decision based on the policies being touted, rather than the “don’t vote for them because…” tactics which seems to be the focus in the weeks before an election.
Well, it’s done now. Just have to wait and see how the results pan out.
Last thought before I go, whilst I’ve mentioned spoiling your vote here, and whilst I agree with Lyle that there are advantages to making voting mandatory I do wonder if having the option of “None of the above” is valid given the current lazy attitude many seem to have when it comes to politics. Surely that chekcbox should read “Can’t be arsed thinking about it, but have to vote”?
I know I don’t blog about politics often (at all?) but I do know what policies the main parties are offering. I’ll stop there before this becomes another rant about the lack of education in society and the general ennui for “social awareness” displayed by far too many people.
Hmmm I really must use that word more often, ennui, ennui, ennui.
I’m at pains to even post this but I will because it’ll serve a purpose.
I don’t blog about work often (other than the usual “my aren’t I busy today, I really shouldn’t be blogging” type of post) but I’m making an exception.
It’s a blip, I know that, it’s the early panic before the impending hurricane. I’m boarding up windows frantically but still think I’ve missed one. It happens on every project, and I’m used to it happening on every project, it’s part of life within a software development cycle.
Except that I’m in that stage for 5 concurrent projects at the moment.
So, in short, I’m alternating between complete rage/fury and a lovely apathetically reached stupor.
Why am I telling you? Well if I leave a comment on your site that is either a tad too cryptic or a tad too offensive then please let me know (it IS also entirely possible that I will leave comments and have no recollection of the fact). Similarly this site will be alternating between no posts and oodles and oodles of posts each day, depending on my state of manic-ness at the time – either manically GO GO GO or manically CAN I PLEASE CRAWL UNDER MY DESK AND SLEEP.
But then that doesn’t really change anything. Other than achieving one of the true aims of a blog which is to “put it out there”.
So, I have. Put it out there. Ignore this at your pleasure. Or, depending on MY mood, your peril. Hey, I’m just trying to keep you on your toes.
Dammit, I’ve just remembered that I was going to ask Pete Ashton if I could use his hard work to offer downloads of John Peel’s Festive Fifty in an advent style event. Oh well, he’s away at the moment it seems so it wouldn’t have worked. Ohh that and being a week late to start.
Let me just crawl back under this desk.
Disclaimer: Yes I AM being a tad over-dramatic (it’s called artistic license, darlings), yes I AM fine, yes I WILL get through this and YES I probably have had too much caffeine today.
This post was brought to you with the aid of the Noisy Keyboard program (over there on the left). What fun. Clickity clickity click SSSSHICK-TING.
GO BLOG!! Ohh sorry… too much American Presidental Election coverage has addled my brain…
That should really be “Blog Rules” as in “these are the rules by which I blog”.
This post may have been prompted by comments left by others on other sites. The final rule of blogging is that I don’t have to explain myself if I don’t want to…
Hanni linked to a post which discusses whether weblogs and standards are ruining the internet, with the entire thing prompted by Heather Champ, the woman’s influence is considerable. I’ve commented about this on the former linked sites but thought I’d expand (clarify) my position here. If you are so inclined I suggest you go and read the above links including my comments, in reverse order.
If you’re not so inclined, stop reading. This is about how people ‘use’ the internet. It also contains many generalisations. I know both topics bore some people.
In response to the original article then:
“I’ve long since given up worrying too much about this kind of thing. The cycle at the moment is leaning towards 2/3 columns. It’ll veer back to single column or multi column again at some point. Hell, if someone comes up with a workable alternative to frames expect that to be the next big thing (you heard it here first! LOL).
As for standards – I wish people would refer to them as guidelines or references. A standard isn’t “standard” until it’s adopted by everyone, and I’m afraid the browser creators have a way to go yet. When THEY get their collective acts together maybe I’LL start worrying a little more about it. For now, a ‘close enough’ attitude is suiting me fine thankyouverymuch.
Question – if I redesign my blog to be ‘different’ will people know how to navigate? where to find the info? No they’ll have to learn MY way. What kind of designer does that?”
Hanni then asked me to expand on the navigation aspect, don’t worry, she’ll learn not to ask in future (honestly, I never realised how much I can GO ON, you should have told me!).
Well, it’s quite simple. I think it’s called commonality or something but it’s the reason why certain UI features prevail even if ‘in theory’ they are ‘wrong’.
For example, if you see a dialog box with OK and Cancel buttons, you expect that OK will confirm an action and make the dialg box disappear. The Cancel button will NOT confirm an action and make the dialog box disappear.
Now consider if, for some reason, Microsoft changed that so that you had to click Cancel to have an action confirmed (easily done by changing the wording on the dialog to negative terms). It would throw everyone and there would be outrage.
Same goes for website navigation. The lowest denominator tells us that blue underlined words are links to another webpage. We’ve since learnt that the link can change colour, be underlined or even be an image. Most designers ensure the navigation is obvious, and place site navigation in one place on all/most pages. That way people learn that “when I visit site A, the text down the left hand side links to other parts of the site”.
Taking that further, I think it’s safe to assume that most sites have their main/core navigation (to the main areas of their site) in either the left or right side, or under a banner/header.
Now, what would happen if we all switch to 4 column layouts and placed the navigation in the 3rd column, and made it look like plain text? Confusion.
Some people would figure it out, others wouldn’t even try as it wouldn’t be obvious and if there is one thing the web tells us it’s that if it ain’t easy to use, people won’t.
And there you have it. The core reason that, whilst I do read many of them, I don’t comment often on any of the sites that focus on web design is because they too often concentrate on code, standards, and the like, forgetting one thing. The user, the audience.
What say you?
