When I moved over to the Mac, around 5 years ago now, I searched for an alternative to my go to text editor of choice, Notepad++. That search had obviously lead me (as it does many newbie mac users) to Bare Bone’s Textwrangler which appeared to be the defacto ‘ultimate free’ text editor of choice on the mac.

At the time, the problem was that I really couldn’t justify paying the full price of $100 for a text editor - no matter how powerful it was. As such I’ve never really used a single text editor that I called upon for all my text needs. In hindsight, maybe I should have invested.

Due to that decision, the amount of time I’d actually spent in a dedicated text editor however has been limited. I’d use the browser for most of my writing needs (this is before the iPhone and Simplenote) and most of my coding was done in Coda (I could justify paying $79 for a piece of software like Coda).

Obviously time moves on, and the Mac App Store has made it easier (and cheaper) to buy software (and keep it up to date). A couple of things happened. I stopped writing with any amount of consistency for my website, but the amount of writing personal notes, emails, reference files went up exponentially.

What brought this about, was my iPhone, Notational Velocity and Simplenote. I’ve written about Notational Velocity in a lot of detail before, but it remains an essential tool in my arsenal. Earlier last week, Simplenote experienced some syncing issues, and honestly it felt like part of me was not working properly. I depend upon the service a great deal and NV is at the centre of that.

So what has changed? NV is a simple application. That isn’t updated very often. In fact, as far as I can tell, it’s usually updated once a year (if that). As such new features are few and far inbetween. Also the type of features that are important to me might not actually be all that important or applicable to an application like Notational Velocity. NV is all about the speed. Without a doubt the single fastest application on my machine. Yes, application.

I thought I could get into the ‘minimalist’ text editors (iA Writer, Byword and the like) but ultimately those apps are limited as well. What’s triggered (and partly renewed) my interest in looking for a solution to all of my writing needs, is discussions that have been going on recently following Textmate’s open sourcing (yeah I looked into this as well, again couldn’t justify the cost and couldn’t see much of a future).

Textmate presents an interesting situation, in that Textmate 2 might grow to be an awesome open source text editor and might take over as the defacto free editor of choice on the mac, and what an incredible free editor that could be. The problem is that there is no timeline in such situations, and there are no guarantees what that future will be.

Which then brings us to BBEdit. BBEdit doesn’t do things in the most glamourous way. It lacks that ‘modern’ way of doing things, but I guess that is down to the fact that the app is over 20 years old - and so obviously has a few intrenched ideas. The thing that you definitely get with BBEdit is the fact that it’s rock solid. It’s got a pedigree that none of the text editors in the mac ecosystem even come close.

Therefore, after 5 years on the mac, I have finally decided to start using BBEdit for most of my writing needs. Notational Velocity remains an integral part of my arsenal and where all of my notes will be saved, but BBEdit will be where most of my writing will occur.

Jean Giraud, one of the greatest masters, has died. I’m still not sure I’ve taken the news in to be honest, because I seriously felt like the man was still untouchable. I remember a few years ago watching a youtube video of him drawing on a Cinteq and getting more depressed at just how incredible this 70 year old was. The man was a genuine master and a term that I reserve and use only ever so sparingly, but a true genius. Any description I come up with won’t be able to do justice to the man’s works, but this post captures some of that magic, while this post captures some of things that I feel.

I’ve actually attempted to redesign this site several times in the past few years, but I always said that I would only do that if it was an improvement over what I had. Finally after 2 and a half years I believe I have that design.

This version has been in the making for the better part of 6 months now. It is without a doubt one of the simplest designs I’ve ever done. So much so that the whole thing only has a single image (the logo image). The design is definitely an evolution rather than a revolution. The general minimal aesthetics remain, the typography has changed only slightly (although the horizontal spacing has been rigidly adheard to).

In an attempt to bring the links that I had hidden behind a ‘shelf’ has been brought forward to highlight other areas of the site as well.

###HTML5 and CSS3 In this design, one of the things that I decided to do was transition to HTML5. This wasn’t as hard as I originally thought it would be, and would highly recommend the following resources as the ones that I kept going back to again and again.

• HTML5 Doctor’s Element index was completely invaluable.
• HTML5 for Designers was an awesome resource and one you should definitely invest in.
• And finally the W3 HTML5 reference page.

I have not used any CSS3, but I think that’s something that I will eventually try as well. I’ve learnt over the years that a personal site is never complete and takes time to mature.

One thing that’s definitely going to be a new constant into my workflow is Joen’s Vanilla. Even if I didn’t do anything, this little bit of CSS gives me all the structure I need to make things look good.

###Responsive Design Another aspect that clearly came up, was that when designing a modern website, you are no longer designing one website anymore, you really should be designing a minimum of two. One for the large screen and one for the smaller screen. Each have different functions in a way, as if you put to much in one side, you end up limiting the other. It’s a balancing act that comes through in the design.

I’m not sure if I’ve achieved that balance correctly at the moment, but it’s something that I found very interesting. I was constantly working with a wider implementation of the site next to a narrow implementation. I found that actually there is a distinct difference between the minimum size that you can take your Safari browser to comparted to that shown on the iPhone. I have a lot of work to be carried out here still, but this is a start.

###Logo The logo has changed as well. It’s been stripped down and completely simplified, and in fact harkens back to the very first logo that I created for the site, back in 2004. I will be using the ‘X’ in a variety of ways over the next few years (as shown in my Cerebral Interviews newsletter, subscribe now if you haven’t).

###Colour Shades of blue have always played an important part in every Broken Kode design. This design brought back one of my favourite colours, turqoise. The dark aspect has been slightly tonned down a bit. While I’ve always loved the richness of the dark navy blue that adorned this site for the previous version, I always felt that you had to have a really nice screen to full appreciate it. This colour palette will seems faded out in comparison, but still provides a serious outlook.

###Typography and Fonts I didn’t change the font or the size from the previous design. I feel that if it isn’t broken which change it? Yes it doesn’t follow the trend of larger text, but to be honest, that’s not a big deal for me. There’s something consice by using an 11pt verdana font. The font that you use for a text heavy (mainly?) site, is profound of course. With the advent of Typekit and others, I could literally have my pick of just about any font that I could want.

Speed for me is important, but I’ve found that verdana serves the purpose very well. I might change if I find something suitable in the future, but it’s one of those things that I’d like to discover by happy accident rather than hunt for in a redesign.

###Future Evolution Hopefully this design will be tweaked slightly over the coming years, but hopefully I’ll keep refining it rather than redesigning it, much in the same way I did with the previous version. However I honestly feel that baring quiting blogging completely, I’ll keep this design for a good long while.

The statistic I have heard was at least once in a person’s professional career, you are made redundant. I’ve been moderately immune to this over my years as an engineer at Arup, even though there were a great many rounds of redundancy over my years there, but yesterday it finally happened and the grim reaper of jobs caught up with me at my latest company.

After several months of things going downhill at the office, I was called in and got the message that things were getting worse and that unfortunately my time at PDP was going to be cut shorter than originally anticipated.

I was honestly feeling a bit held back living and working in Lebanon. Most of these reasons weren’t unexpected, it’s just anticipating a series of events is very different to living the reality and seeing how you feel or react.

There is a sense of optimism at the moment that I’ve not felt in a while. The world is all heading in all various directions and jobs are getting harder and harder to get by, however I am incredibly upbeat about the whole situation, liberated.

Now hunting for job is an incredibly frustrating ordeal that I thought I didn’t have to go through for a little while, however to be honest, I could see this coming a mile away…so much so that I had my CV completed the morning of the day I was told. I came prepared.

So it goes.

Sometimes it takes a good long time for the penny to drop, even if you’ve been doing it for a seriously long time. For me the way in which I take and write notes (both at work and during play) has changed on the basis of getting an iPhone, installing Notational Velocity and having a web interface with Simplenote all linked together.

The effect that I didn’t actually expect was that the above three occurrences effectively changed my general workflow and how I take notes in my moleskin, and what ultimately that moleskin is actually used for, and by doing that it’s solved one of the biggest problems I actually had with taking notes in my moleskin.

###Moleskines My favourite type of notebook to use is my moleskins. I’ve been using these for nearly 7 years by now. Definitely read the wikipedia entry about the history of the Mokeskine, it’s actually pretty interesting. The ones that I have been using exclusively are the A5 notebooks, in black hardback, no lines, with the thinner pages.

I used my moleskine for two things really. Taking notes and sketching ideas out. Most of my projects and designs start like this. Based on the way my mind works, I thought that it would be best to handwrite all of my notes and thoughts down and then later take these notes out and put them onto the computer.

What I noticed was that I would come back to my diagrams, sketches and doodles all the time, but I’d rarely come back to my long form notes, and I’d end up rehashing sometimes these notes and ideas again and again. The problem was I never actually did that, and it was pretty rare that I would go back and actually use these written notes in a meaningful way. Basically I was using the moleskine (at least when it came to notes) as a note dumping ground, with some useful sketches inbetween.

And that was fine. The new way is better.

The way I justified it was that before writing any meaningful words, I was getting them out of my system first. Ultimately the system was flawed, and rather than try and find a way to fix it, I kept using the same method. It’s always good to rethink something that you’ve been doing for a long while and actually assess whether or not that is the best way to do things.

###Whitelines Obviously before I got settled on Moleskine notebooks, I went through a vast number of notebooks, and still try out various ones from time to time. The ones that I am actually contemplating on getting are the Whitelines series of notebooks. I’ve owned one in the past, which was the wirebound A5 version. The paper is lovely to use and honestly the work does in fact pop off the page. However I think it’s definitely not the right size for the kind of work that I would use that for. I think I’ll be getting the A4 size for the sketching I envision in those notebooks and keeping my A5 moleskins for the general smaller ideas/sketches and notes that I like to take throughout the day.

###The New Paradigm I’ve now basically separated the way in which I organise my thoughts (because that’s what I’m doing). The first has most (over 90%) of my notes written within one of the three inputs I mentioned above, while the moleskines are basically used only for sketches and maybe small notes if I don’t have the facility to actually input the data electronically (because it wouldn’t be in the moment).

What this does is it basically allows me to now search all of my notes instantly. It also allows me to organise them and file them in a structured way - which definitely appeals to my filing junkie nature (I will be talking about this elsewhere in the future).

My moleskines are now effectively books filled with sketches, doodles, ideas, quick thoughts. There’s something pure about that setup. There’s something empowering. I must admit that out of habit I do go for my moleskine to start writing my list of things to do at work, and have to stop myself a bit and redirect myself to the computer to type that stuff in, but now when I look at my book, it’s just filled with sketches and diagrams and tiny notes that are so much more useful.

The single best bit of advise I can give about filing your notes is given by (of Mac Power users and macsparky fame). Here’s a couple of posts to get you going:

I basically follow the same convention and went ahead and changed all of my colons to an ‘x’ as well. This didn’t take me too long as I have only 100 notes so the pain barrier was pretty small.

• Notational Velocity Naming Conventions
• Notational Velocity Naming Redux

But here are a couple of tips I have myself to ease things for me as well. The way I come up with the initial letters to use is basically using the first and last letter of that particular word. So wedding would be wg. When it’s two words, then it’s basically the first letter of each word, so Broken Kode would be bk. This way I don’t have to think about whether or not I’ve used this particular word or not.

###Organisation Having finally organised my written notes, it was time to organise my moleskine a bit as well. The thing that I definitely don’t like is how my book after a while becomes messy on the inside. It’s not as clear what project I’m talking about instantly, because I never used a unified header for each and every page.

This is something I’m still working on to be honest, and so don’t have a clear solution, but the convention I’m working on at the moment basically lays things out in the following way. Right at the top of the page I put the following three items:

• Date
• Project Name
• Function

The function is usually on of the following:

• Notes
• Calcs
• Sketches
• Site Visit
• Meeting

This is neatly lined up at the very top of the page. This convention only took me 9 years of engineering to come up with (d’oh). I guess it’s better late than never and it proves that you can always find better ways to doing something, that makes you sit up and think, well that’s much better.

###Alternatives The fact that I’ve settled and fallen in love with this setup, doesn’t mean that it’s the right setup for you. Instantly Notational Velocity and Simplenote have become my favourite productive tools in the world. They organise my thoughts and information in such a way that information relating to me is now at my finger tips (literally).

There are those that want more information. That want to put images and other things within their documents/notes, and for that sort of thing there are soo many alternatives, so I guess it’s a question of trying what works best for you, but hopefully this setup gives you an insight as to what works for me, and maybe you can pull on some of that to make it work for you.

One of the things that I typically don’t do with most of my posts is come back and edit and change. For some reason I always felt that in terms of internet etiquette that was bad form - that will change with these posts. These posts are not intended to be perfect out of the door. I will hopefully have done some meaningful reasearch for them, however they will be modified as time goes by.

The first post in a long and hopefully interesting series of posts on Cognisant Design concentrates on a small part of a much large product, specifically the key to my car. It’s honestly very rare for Google to disappoint me and not give me back some information about something I’m looking for.

One of the things that I touch a feel and fiddle with every single day is my car key and then I saw it mentioned on Objectified as well and it just struck me that this key basically encompassed a lot of what I am talking about with Cognisant Design.

###Functionality When is a key, not just a key? When it’s also the central lock as well, and the car trunk as well. Admittedly I don’t use the trunk feature much. The simple fact is that they buttons

Oh and they’re all equipped with immobiliser technologies - which basically translates to the car doesn’t move if you don’t have the key, which is a nice feature for those thieving bastards (I’m sure those same thieving bastards have found ways around it, but hey you don’t want to make it easy on them).

And then of course you’ve got the metal key itself, tightly tucked away for when you need it with the press of an incredibly inviting metal button, which brings us nicely to the next important point.

###Flip Action This is the action of the key flipping open from it’s hidden position. I guess this has been honed from millions of cards sold, but basically there is an undeniable weight to the key springing open. It clicks into place with a purposeful click. It’s like a samurai being drawn. The thing is it’s totally addictive, so you find yourself clicking it constantly.

The button that releases the key mechanism is curved at the top which again is just exactly the way it should be rather than a flat button. It’s details like this that only serve to enhance what is truly a great piece of industrial design.

###Weight This is one of the most prominent aspects I find. The weight to size ratio of a product is always something that drives home quality in a product. The current iPhone for example is very dense in weight due to the glass front and back. When compared to another smartphone from say Samsung, you get this feel of much more inherent quality due to the weight.

That same concept is in this key. While I’m sure they could have made it lighter, doing so would basically make it feel cheap, and I’m sure that was not what the original designers were aiming for here. Which brings us to part of the reason for making it heavy.

###The Metal Key The person who brought this to my attention was my brother. See he’s got a Mercedes A-Class which is the Mercedes equivalent of the Golf, small hatchback, with a bit of German design thrown in. The key on that car is this plastic thing with a few buttons at the top. Essentially it’s missing the point here, an aspect of which VW have got it so right.

Obviously the sturdiness of the key is also important to complete the overall package, and again the key is a nice metal rectangular block, that again feels weighty due to the metal base which it swivels on.

###Ergonomic Design The final part of this exploration is basically the ‘je ne sais quoi’ factor. The ergonomic design of the key is just so terrible inviting. The groove at the top, just after the buttons invite you to rub your thumb there every single time you hold the key. The curved edges allow you to quickly and addictively flip the key in your hand again and again. Even the little VW logo which is made out of soft silicone is calling you to feel and pinch and poke with your nail.

And because no proper article about something technical is really complete, here is a disassembly of the key in question so you can see what the details are like on the inside.

###Lawsuit Action in searching around for more information about the Smart Key, i stumbled on a bunch of articles, completely unrelated to the topic of the design of these keys, but thought it was interesting as it basically dealt with legal action in relation to these keys. Smart Key Litigation and this FAQ, also there’s this document directly from VW

###Follow up One of the things that I want to make sure these posts have is a certain amount of longevity. I’m not writing these posts for the sake of writing them, but rather because I want to highlight specific things in my life that are designed in the way that I want them designed, and to show some appreciation.

Unfortunately due to how the coorporate world operates, it’s sometimes very difficult to single out the team or persons responsible for a design, unless the achieve cult status in product design, in which case you end up with the question of how much they actually contributed and how much of this was their ideas.

That’s a topic for another issue. Rather than go there, I would rather like to find out more about something if i’ve not covered it here. If there are articles, links or books that describe the topic I’ve written about, I really want to hear about it. If you’re one of the people that actually worked on this and are no longer working at this company and don’t mind talking about the experience, again I would like to hear from you.

I guess in a round about way, I’m trying to put a spotlight on aspects of design that are not typically considered, or really given their due.

The thing that I naturally permeate towards instinctively are are the things that I basically want, admire or are curious about. These are the things that I basically would like to have. These are the things that put a smile on my face, and which ultimately I like to talk about.

Cognisant: adjective [ predic. ] having knowledge or being aware of

This thinking actually can be attributed in many ways to Objectified which honestly completely changed the way I look and appreciate products and design. I guess that was the point of it all, but it seriously touched me in a profound way that no other documentary has ever done. A year and a half after I watched it I still think about things it said or tried to say. Sure there were several douche bags on there, but the message was there.

Crucially, in an in advert way it’s basically opened my eyes as to what this particular site will be about and has been building towards all these years.

While I’ve always wanted a space for my projects to live, and my art, it’s only a small part of me and there may be months before I am able to show what I’m working on a regular basis, even though I honestly am creating things on a relatively regular basis. It’s not just about what I create, it’s not just my therapy. It needed focus.

Which brings us to the here and now. Over the last couple of years I’ve been honing and observing things as I develop a sense of what I like and what I don’t like. Sometimes I used this site to achieve this. Recently I’ve been thinking that ultimately the site needed a direction, something it’s not had since it began. The focus seemed to be on design in general, then it meandered off to blogging software, which was like this loop of eating it’s own tail.

The thing that I hope to concentrate on in the future is the idea Cognisant Design.

It took a bloody long time to finally come up with this collection of words. I kept floating between ‘Considered’ and ‘Cognisant’. They are close to each other in meaning, but it’s more than thinking about something. It’s about knowing the reasons for those decisions. I’m sure I’m not the first to come up with these words together, but I hope to bring to the fore what this actually means and highlight examples of this design sense in action.

It’s not a question of minimal design. It’s not a question of functional design, it’s a question of design that is thought out completely, where things we done in a very calculated fashion, even if those calculations lead to what might be hyper detail or bright bursts of colour.

Although I’ve tried to describe it in this post, I feel that the best way to show what it is that I am talking about is to actually show rather than tell. I don’t think I can post this sort of thing on a regular basis, so the linkblogging will continue, however in addition to these quick things I will be focusing on Cognisant Design and hopefully we’ll all learn something new together.

For all those wondering what the hell is going on the ‘Kode and this larger (than normal) number of posts in such a short time, it’s basically an experiment I’m going through for the month of December. Today was a bit of an off day, on account of me being out of the country so to speak and not having the time.

Ultimately my goal is to post about 3-4 posts a day and try and break my all time record of 51 posts in a single month. Yeah I know, it’s not quantity, it’s quality, well I’m striving for both. I’m striving for something fun and random, where the signal to noise ratio is decent.

I guess the reasons is because I’m actually enjoying blogging again. Not this limited 140 character BULLSHIT. Sorry but twitter has killed off any meaningful communication on the web as I used to once know it. There are some great sites out there, but by and large there is too much short spurts of noise. I was happy to acknowledge twitter killing the blog comments. You can see it all over, but what I am generally opposed to is the lack of creativity in people’s posts. It’s like all their energy has been devoted to something less meaningful.

I don’t care people communicating in the way they way, it’s just such a shame that it’s nearly killed the way that I used to like reading. So this is my attempt to rekindle the act of blogging for the sake of blogging. Putting an idea forward, and DEVELOPING it in more detail. There is limit in these things (at least for me) and I’ve spoken about this before. 4 paragraphs or thereabouts is about the correct size.

So join me on this journey to reclaiming the blogosphere. Cluster Fuck, Twitter Fuck.

Been thinking about this for a while now. When Facebook first came about, I loved everything about it. As time has gone by however I have been moving slowly away from the service. I’ve noticed this trend with other people as well. It’s one of those things where a lot of the shine has gone from the service and now you’re bombarded with utter crap in the news feed, about farmville and other shitty game applications.

The thing is though, that FB still provides these words with a decent viewership, ie all of my closer friends that have made it into my circle of friends on Facebook, as well as the like 40 people that read this blog regularly.

Which in a round about way kind of brings us to that thing that used to be an integral part of every blog, the comments.

The annoying thing? Some of the comments about these posts remain on FB and not on this site. I guess the nice thing is that you have a series of places to share communications with, rather than a single location, but alas I am a nostalgia freak. I like what is old, and normally go back to the old on occasion to drink from that well.

Communication is now scattered. It’s all over the place, because there are a million and one places that are vying for our attention. While that is good in general for people to have options to find the thing that they like the most, it’s also makes things a lot more … spread out.

It’s not that I like living in the past, but I like to relive times that were generally fun. The time where blog comments were common place and people interacted with more than 140 characters is long gone. There are specific havens on the net where this continues, but as a blogging community that has left us I believe.

One of the reasons that I’ve had less time to spend on the net. I spend a few minutes here, and hour there, but ultimately I no longer live on the net like I used to. I tend to spend a lot of free time drawing (which is great) and I end up trying to relax from the day I’ve had.

You choose your battlegrounds, you choose your poison. I am not 100% into Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. Was never really into Delicious or Flickr. Don’t really like Tumblr all that much either.

I know that’s where all the kids are these days, but I feel that I am happy with this unique little part of cyberspace. It’s all mine, I control it’s destiny, it’s in my hands to build it or break it or change it. It’s not a competition, it’s a manner of expression, and after all that’s why we’re all here right?

Earlier on in my sabbatical, my parents decided to sort out the house down in Lebanon, where I was going to be doing my creative drawing and writing. However, I did a couple of side projects as well. A couple of logos and decided to do my first large scale art project, a door of stained glass.

This was to fill a hole the size of a door into the living room in the house in Lebanon. The reason for filling it in is mainly to do with layout, but needless to say we’re not using that door so having something that represents the family is more than a welcome addition.

To understand what this image means you have to know a little bit about my family history. My parents and I were born in Lebanon. We all migrated to Greece shortly after I was born, and five years later my brother was born in Athens.

This history is represented by the cedar tree (Lebanon) at the bottom and the three fish swimming up towards an olive tree (Greece) where a little fish is waiting.

So once the guys got it, they printed out and then began carving it out.

And here is the finally finished stained glass family portrait installed:

And here are some details:

So what do I feel about the final product? I think the carving process was superb, second to none. I think however that the colouring could have been done in a better fashion. There are mistakes and the final colours were not exactly as I had imagined, or chosen. The thing is that no matter these minor quibbles, it’s nothing compared to the sheer joy I get when I look at it changing colours throughout the day, you forget everything else.

Sometime in February, my cousin asked me to sort out the logo for his jewellery business. I was obviously happy to oblige, and actually had some spare capacity to sort it out for him. The thing is, I sqaundarded most of that time, so he rings me on a Saturday to ask me how the logo was going….uh oh spagettio. Rushed to the only coffee place worth a shit in Saida and started sketching furiously. Pretty quickly I had my idea. In fact, the crazy thing is that by the end of the night I had created his logo and sent it out to him.

I played around with the colours (although his only request was to have the colour scheme be burgundy and grey). I thought it couldn’t hurt for them to see what it would look like in different colours.

So after a couple of colour tweaks he asked for I sent it through. The reason he was anxious for the logo to be sorted out quickly was because he had an exhibition in Kuwait and had a stand. A few weeks later he was in Lebanon and he showed me pictures of the stand.

Today I got a fantastic email from someone I’d never met. They downloaded ‘Coffee Beans’ and actually was the first unknown person that actually sent me their thoughts on the story.

One of the biggest lessons that I gained from writing coffee beans was the fact that

If you’re subscribed to the site, then you’ve no doubt been bombarded this last day with 15 or so ‘new’ posts. These are all part of the illustration section which I’ve been putting together. Regulars of the site for a while will recognise a lot of these images, however there are several new ones and others that have never been shown in this way.

I kept thinking about the best way to put this section together, as there is a lot of stuff I’ve got on my harddisc that’s not seen the soft glow of the internet in years. Hopefully because of the general ease with which this section is maintained, I’ll be constantly uploading images to this section, because I’ve always believed that all art needs to be shown, because it gives you perspective on where you where artistically before and how much you’ve improved in the time passed.

Looking forward to 2010 - A good start of graphic novels that are coming out in 2010. The ones that are interesting to me are:

January

1. Hiroaki Samura - Blade of the Immortal: Footsteps (Dark Horse)

2. Hiroaki Samura - Blade of the Immortal: Legend of the Sword Demon (Dark Horse Press)

3. J.Torres - Lola HC (Oni Press)

February

1. Jock - Hellblazer: Pandemonium (Vertigo)

2. Jason - Almost Silent (Fantagraphics)

April

1. Jim Woodring - Weathercraft (Fantagraphics)

2. Joe Quesada - The Art of Joe Quesada HC (Marvel)

3. Cowboy Ninja Viking TPB (Image)

May

1. Diana Thung - Captain Long Ears (SLG)

2. Various - Wednesday Comics (DC Comics)

3. Immonen - Moving Pictures (Fantagraphics)

June

1. Greg Rucka/J.H. Williams III - Batwoman: Elegy (DC)

2. Hiroaki Samura - The Art of Blade of the Immortal (Dark Horse)

3. Adam Hughes - Cover Run: The DC Comics Art of Adam Hughes (DC)

July

1. Matt Kindt - Revolver (Vertigo)

2. Jason - Werewolves of Montpellier (Fantagraphics)

October

1. Alan Moore/Kevin O'Neill - The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century vol. 2 (Top Shelf)

December

1. Pat Mills/Kevin O'Neill - The Marshal Law Omnibus (Top Shelf)

2. Alan Moore/Steve Parkhouse: The Collected Bojeffries Saga (Top Shelf)

Update: I’ll be adding more graphic novels as I see them coming, with links to where I’ve read/heard about them.

So I finally got internet connection today, and this is my first post in Lebanon in over 5 years. So what do I think of the place so far? I’m not going to complain because honestly if I wanted to complain, this list would be absolutely massive. Instead I’m going to focus on somethings that I’ve noticed so far, and over the course of the time I spend here I’ll sniper attack dumbfuck assholes that annoy me (trust me living here for 2 weeks has made me encountered my fair share of supreme idiots).

Weather

Lucifer is washing his wife.

Not sure where this comes from to be honest with you…these Lebanese say some fucked up shit. Hopefully the rainy season is over and I can except dry and sunny weather for a few weeks.

Driving

There are specific rules for roundabouts here as well. He who comes from outside the roundabout has way. You can also use the entrance of the roundabout if you wish to do a quick U-turn. This saves you the time going around the roundabout. Where’s the police? They’re eating falafels. Seriously. The stereotype of the big fat American cop eating donuts can be seen here as the not so fat, idiot cop eating his falafel. I don’t blame him, they taste AMAZING.

Food

So far it’s been interesting, but hopefully tonight I also get to spend some time in the house and start drawing and writing again and from tomorrow we can start seeing other parts of this country and getting an understanding of what it all has to offer. Stay tuned.

I can finally start talking about my sabbatical, as last night was the first time I felt slightly restless, which basically means that I’m calm and my brain isn’t being bombarded with work related thoughts. Until 2 weeks into my ‘sabbatical’ I was still having the most boring work dreams you can imagine. I’d wake up with a bit of a smile on my face since I didn’t need to do anything with that dream and my reality was the opposite, for once.

Now I’m back to not remembering my dreams, which means we can hunker down to get some work done. Maybe that’s why I’ve woken up at 5:30, because my body is telling me:

Get up you fool, we've got work to do. You've been sleeping till 9 for too long you lazy bum.

The sabbatical effectively starts today (at least in my mind). There are a couple of things that I’m hoping to achieve in this short period of time that I have in front of me and 6:30 in the morning is a good time to start as any.

Although not an immense milestone by most blogs estimation (especially the professional blogs which pay you by the post), I think 1300 posts on ‘Kode is a significant achievement to sit back and take stock of. 1300 posts is roughly 216 posts per year, which is a little over 1 post every two days for the past six years. Truth is, there have been some pretty busy days and some very quiet days (nay months) over the years but overall there has been a consistent output of ideas, thoughts, critism and links over the years.

Changes

However the biggest change I’ve made here this year is removed comments. Comments were really sporadic in general, and the only thing I could count on was bloody spam. Getting rid of the spam has been great, but of course it’s also meant that if in fact I wanted to have a discussion with anyone then it’d have to come from an email, or on twitter.

Design

Future

A little over a year ago I wrote this, which basically explained what I wanted to do over the year that passed. What’s funny is that I completely forgot that I wrote that (having a blog for as many years as I do, does make events/posts blend into each other). Anyway 1 year later, I can report that I have definitely been moving in the right direction. The first thing I did was go to an art class at Central St.Martins. While the actual lessons taught me sweet fuck all, I learnt soo much from some of the peeps in the class (ok mainly from Mike) but most importantly I remembered what it was like to feel excited about making comics.

A couple of days ago I finally completed my first full comic book story. It’s a four pager for the Observer competition and it’s basically 2 months of my life. Is two months a lot of time to complete 4 pages? Well I was doing other things inbetween, like working, holidays (where I couldn’t take my art with me) etc. Also bearing in mind that some of the things that I did, I’ve either not done, or not done in a while.

This little experience taught me a lot about how difficult making comics can be, but also how amazing the feeling is when you’ve completed the story that was just a thought in your mind, as you built it, cultivated it, nurtured it, watered it, fed it and then ultimately moulded it.

I did need to take a few shortcuts to achieve the deadline. So I ended up computer colouring and lettering; even though I wanted to do both of these things by hand.

With this project firmly under my belt, it’s time to shift focus to actually start drawing more. However there has to be a deadline. A year deadline is not good enough. It’s too far away. It has to be broken down into smaller chunks. Where I do burn the midnight oil to achieve that goal. Could be 5-10 pages per month? Fully pencilled and inked. That’s a little over a page a week.

The thing is I also want to try my hand at some sci-fi as well. The only way I can think of is, to simply write and draw a panel to this other story every day. 1 small panel. The nice thing about that is that I will end up getting speed and it’ll help me try new styles and new ways of doing something different without it affecting a much larger project. It’s all building towards me having my own distinct voice and style and breaking away from influences.

Either way, it’s all exciting times, especially considering I go on sabbatical for 6 months so I have the chance to pursue all the above.

It’s been nearly 4 1/2 years since comments were officially not part of this site. Back then it was because I couldn’t actually host them on my own site, until of course I moved to WordPress and during the blogging revolution of the early naughties. So what’s changed? Twitter and Facebook. Both of which have brought the internet to the world that hid themselves from it, but they’ve practically killed the blogosphere, or at least how it used to operate.

The funny thing is turning them off was on the cards for a while now. I’ve noticed this downturn for about a year now (probably a few months before I even moved to Habari as my blogging engine of choice).

Does it upset me? I guess it’s a different kind of change. While sometimes I like twitter, there’s too much noise for me on there. Also the fact that everyone only speaks in soundbytes does annoy me. I can’t read people’s thoughts about things because they’re limited and effectively people’s voices on the internet are silenced.

In the meantime I’ll be here writing more than 140 characters and hopefully sharing some good links from around the net. If you want to comment on something, drop me an email or you know…send me reply on twitter (maybe I’ll even integrate that twitter reply thing that Michael is attempting at the moment).

That’s what I want to be surrounded by right now. Creative brains drawing, sculpting, moulding, painting, etching whatever. Over the years I have definitely understood that your enthusiasm and energy is boosted by those around you. You gravitate to people with positive energy because they make you want to actually get on with life as well. Your surroundings play such an incredible part in this.

For years I have been lamenting the fact that I’ve not been able to get creative with my art. I’ve not been able to nurture the graphic novel that I’ve been writing for nigh on 5 years now. The truth the story is all the better for this incubation time because although the idea was sound (the very basic idea) the execution was lacking.

Yesterday I went and saw a collection of student movies (this isn’t a review of the work that was presented, but more of an observation, when you have no budget, the story has to work cleverly within these constraints - which i don’t feel was captured). The one thing i took from the evening however was the collection of minds in the room and how they all fed off each other.

So I’ve decided (and I don’t know why I didn’t think of this earlier) to try and find a studio to share with a bunch of artists. Now if it was up to me I’d round up the crazy Danes, maybe a couple of Americans get a big warehouse in London on the waterfront and have us create awesome stuff, pushing each other creatively…something which clearly cannot happen.

I’ll be sure to post the results of my research in my hunt for a design studio to get creative in.

The problem is that 2008 lacked focus for these areas, so it’s time to provide them with a slight bit of structure. I doubt I’ll be able to meet these deadlines, although I might try and attempt to do something about it, the harsh reality is that life will no doubt get in the way; however it’s better to have some structure than none at all.

Japan Photo Album

Finish the script

Clemency

Character Designs

Broken Kode

My focus in the last couple of months has shifted. This is probably the longest I’ve not been creative in the traditional sense of how I would describe being creative. I’ve not been drawing, not been designing (graphics at least), not been creating. Which to me is something really painful. I’ve stripped by involvement online down to an absolute minimum and all of this in the persuit of one thing. Finishing off my script.

This thing has been brewing for YEARS now and has taken more turns than I can imagine, but thankfully the last couple of months have been very productive. I’ve got the first half of the book mapped out and written. The thing is that creating a whole world is extremely hard. Every single character is new, every single setting needs to be described and every word of dialogue is analysed.

In order to help me get into the whole script writing, I’ve had to really emmerse myself in the comic production side of things. I’ve been reading scripts that are within the comic books that I read, I’ve been hunting online for various resources and the one thing that I’ve found is that the actual method is completely unique to every single person. I’m sure there are creators that have got the same method of working as I do, however I’ve not really read anyone’s account of this yet. Mainly I guess because the people that I’ve been reading that write and draw their own stuff have reached that level of craft where they can cut corners.

I’m still learning the track, so there is no corner cutting for me. The great thing about this experience however is that I can see the fruits of my labour slowly evolve. I started off with one page which was incredibly difficult to write (how do you start off your epic after all) before finishing off the first arc. It’s a slow process but ultimately once I’ve got the script in my hand I can then concentrate on the next task of drawing the thing. The plan and I will do EVERYTHING in my power to achieve, is to have my first graphic novel completed by the time I hit my 30th birthday (I turn 29 next week). It doesn’t have to be published, but it definitely has to be completed as one package which I can then start shopping around to see if anyone is interested (I have only two companies that I would consider publishing to, otherwise I think I’ll go down the self publishing route).

My creative energies for the next year are going to be fully dedicated to the story.

See those last 4 letters at the end? Yeah got my confirmation from the IET that my application was accepted for Chartered Engineering status. Those 4 letters are the culmination of 29 years (shy of 1 month) of both studying and working as an engineer.

It’s difficult to describe exactly what it all means consicely unless you’re part of the industry to understand what is expected of you and what you expect of other people that hold that same title, but needless to say I’m seriously happy about it and was one of my two goals that I had to achieve this year. This is partly one of the reasons why I’ve taken a step back from my various online endeavours to persue other things that have/had been put on hold for sometimes years.

Now it’s time to start working for that other thing (hopefully I will be able to talk about that in November sometime).

Nothing new to add to the general conversation of redesigned website to be honest just that this is what has been going on with my thought process lately (ok from yesterday). I’ve been sitting on a redesign for the ‘Kode for many months now. It’s been going on for so long that it’s kind of embarrassing to talk about. So much so that I kept flitting back and forth between designs last year in an attempt to get my act together.

However what I’ve gone and done now is gone back to the design I’m most proud of, from both a functional point of view but also from a code base. It’s a solid and relatively light code base which I’m pretty happy with. There are somethings that I know I can do better with however I don’t have the energy to start from scratch and don’t want to dive into someone else’s code really, especially as I want to be able to tweak this to suit my own needs completely.

So I’m going to be tweaking and adding something new to this site every day. Some of the tweaks may be pretty drastic to be honest, while others will be less than obvious. I’ll bring the copy in my static pages up to speed. I’ll sort out some links that are dead. I’ll start to sort out my categories properly and generally bring the design in an evolutionary method to where I want it to be.

I’m through with these drastic redesigns, maybe a slow burn approach will present me with something that I find more enjoyable to use, as my enthusiasm for writing is directly linked to the look of my site. So if you’re reading this on your feed reader, you might want to check the site from time to time to try and spot the differences.

It’s not a question of getting everything right the first time out, it’s a question of slowly evolving and adding and tweaking in a methodical and periodic fashion.

It’s been nearly 4 years since the last Radiohead album ‘Hail for the Thief’. While I enjoyed that album as I’ve generally enjoyed most of what they’ve produced, The Bends and Ok Computer being the zenith of their output as far as I’m concerned, their new album ‘In Rainbows’ is a completely different beast altogether.

The major difference here is the way in which they’ve decided to distribute their album. See they’ve decided not to go the traditional route and release the album via a label. Instead what they’ve decided to do is let you download it off their website. Nothing new there, right? Ah but here’s the catch. YOU decide how much you actually want to pay for it. You can either pay something, or download it for free.

This turns everything on it’s head as far as I’m concerned. I’ve always claimed that the price of music is completely and utterly extorionate. A tiny teeny fraction of the cost of what you pay actually goes to the creators themselves, instead the majority goes to everyone else around. £12 for an album is just too much. So download it you say and just keep the music? You obviously don’t know me very well. When it comes to music from my favourite bands I will buy the CD. It’s just the way it goes. For me it’s not just the music, it’s the package. It’s the entire experience. I’m also a collector of sorts. I like to have physical copies of material by certain bands. I own a proper CD player and Amp that I paid through my nose to get a better sound. If you think that you can’t tell the difference, then you’ve obviously not heard a proper system in action.

Sure, this might be something of a dinosaur mentality however it’s one of those thought processes that I honestly cannot get away from. The thing is Radiohead are known for the amount of effort and creativity that they put into their package as well. They obviously feel the same way about this sort of thing, otherwise we wouldn’t have the school library book for Amnesiac or the Map for Hail to the Thief. Case in point, in addition to the actual download option, there’s also the option to pre-order the physical edition of this album, which comes with 2 CDs with artwork, photographs, lyrics and 2 Vinyls of the material as well. All encased in a hardcover book and slipcase.

I’ve only just found out about all this, since I only found out yesterday that they’ve got a new album out. So I quickly downloaded the album (more on that in a little while). Is it any good? The short answer is that ‘In Rainbows’ is BRILLIANT. It’s one of the best things I’ve heard this year, and this is a year where the Smashing Pumpkins released their return to form album. It’s a mixture of ‘The Bends’, ‘Ok Computer’ and maybe even a little bit of ‘Pablo Honey’. It’s not this heavy rock album. It’s a glass of fine wine, where the drums and guitars are back. Yorke’s voice is crisp and clear over the music in this perfect mixture that only they can achieve. God it’s great to hear well produced music again.

So back to the download versus physical object question, what am I going to do? Well I’ve already downloaded the album for free, and have ordered the physical edition of the album as well.

Over 1000 photos , but here is a small slither of what is to come:

Well, I have not been near a computer for about a week but it’s good to see that the internet doesn’t stay quiet. I am specifically referring to the exodus of members from the 9rules network. Now to all those out there scratching their heads and wondering why I am calling this an exodus, you’ll understand soon enough. A little history for those in the dark or who don’t actually care all that much about such things, 9rules is a blogging network that reached it’s zenith (at least in terms of popularity) about a year and a half ago…give or take a several months. It was an incredibly vibrant place, with a great website and really active members. This was back when bloggers were rock stars….erm you know what I am saying, back when blogging was fresh and new as opposed to the norm in the web landscape.

I have not had the time to formulate my reasons (in a proper post that is) for leaving the network and all my miscellaneous thoughts about the process and aftermath (as I am in Japan at the moment and can’t sleep), however what I would like to do is try and compile a list of all the 9rules members that did leave.

My reason for doing this is to address one of my main gripes about the way in which departures from the network have been handled, or as the case may be, not been handled. While a new site is celebrated, a departing site (or even original member departing) does not even warrent a small mention on the offical blog. While I can understand how the powers that be might feel like a failure that people would choose to leave, I personnally see this in another way.?This should really be a time to wish everyone well in all their future endevours and thank them for being a part of the network (as long as those members were not kicked out for shoddy conduct, which I don’t think any of the listed members were). In this particular case a least 16 sites have left the network, one of which was there from round one, I have been there from round two and several others have been extremely active members in the community (I doubt anyone will reach Paul’s forum count, ever).

So with that in mind I would like to start a little list of the 9rulers that have recently left the network, it was an honour being seen in such great company as yourselves (if you have left recently and I haven’t included you, please drop a comment and I will update this post):

1. Broken Kode

2. Binary Bonsai

3. Chris J Davis

4. Warpspire

5. Paul Stamatiou

6. Openswitch

7. Christian Mohn

8. h3h

9. Seopher

10. Dan lockton

11. Standards for life

12. Baires Elsur

13. i-marco

14. a-rain-of-frogs.com

15. Smarandayal

16. Wynia

17. Transformatum

18. Ryan Arrowsmith

So I’m sitting here in Naoto’s house and writing this after experiencing my first week (more or less) in Japan. Seriously i cannot imagine myself staying away from this country. So many things to absorb in such a little time that i could honestly keep writing for a long time. Of course if i did that then i would be at the bloody computer all day and not actually out there exploring things and soaking in everything. Therefore i will try to actually write down as much stuff as possibly can that has made an impression on me and then hopefully elaborate on everything (and include as many pictures as i can) when i get back. These posts i guess will act as placeholders until i get back.

<li><p>The greatest thing for me is being shown around by ?aoto as there are soo many things that you could not possibly know or understand until you actually lived here or someone told you. The little red triangles that are place on the windows so that the firefighters can see which ones can be used in the event of a fire. I honestly thought it was some weird architectural statement.</p></li>


<li><p>Obviously the biggest thing that is easy to notice is just how clean the streets, tube and all public areas actually are. It is completely unreal. No gum stains on the floor, the paint on the roads is as bright as the day they were painted. Not a spec of garbage anywhere, anytime, anyplace.</p></li>


<li><p>We went to the Ghibli museum. Unfortunately you're not allowed to take any photos in the Museum but I have some photos from the roof (which you are allowed to take photos) which is pretty cool. The highlight here for me was the circular strobe light running animation which was beyond incredible. Several rooms where filled with items that where inspired from the movie.</p></li>


<li><p>We went to Kamakura with all the temples (the place has got over 64 temples), however easily the best temple we saw was a hidden one that was far away from everything in the city and that was one of the most serene places on earth.</p></li>


<li><p>My first Japanese style breakfast was a complete experience. For those that don't actually know what this entails, it has miso soup, rise, grilled fish, nato, seaweed and various pickles.</p></li>

<li>

Walked up Mount Fuji. I am completely sun burnt and tired, but by god the views was completely and utterly incredible. It has to be seen to be believed. In fact I'll be sure to share when I get back because it was definitely worth the trip. We didn't make it to the top of the mountain, but we got close and it was a mission going down as much as it was going up.

<li>

Tomorrow we are off to Kyoto and Western Japan which is going to be an experience of epic proportions as it also includes my first trip on the Shinkansen (aka the bullet train).

So this last week I was in Princeton for my ‘little’ project in Egypt. The highlight of the trip without a doubt however was actually meeting Michael Graves. He was very busy looking at all sort of stones and mural paintings and whatnot for this other project that their office is knee deep into, however he spared some time and we had a bit of chat with him (myself, Steven and Reid) and he signed a monograph for each of us. Incredibly nice guy, very softly spoken and has got this great little smile that shows that he’s seriously enjoying himself.

Going through the monograph and buying stuff from their little design store you get a great feeling of all the different things that they’ve had a chance to influence and design. Notably are of course of all the Alessi products.

My price piece however is an Acme Studios pen (designed by MG) which is not only weighty but is a great little writing tool. The closes thing I can give an approximation to is how the front plates of Zippo lighters are used as a design piece, or statement

So I finally got around to doing some work on Habari this weekend, which was awesome. First time I actually used SVN and the guys and gals on the channel gave me a right grilling. Obviously I fucked things up the first time around but alas that’s ok, it’s all part of the experience. Below is the screenshot of what the current dashboard is currently looking like. It’s currently employing Blueprint version 0.5 which honestly has made my life soo easy in that I can actually concentrate on designing rather than setting up grids etc. Still LOADS of work to be done, but steadily this little project is coming along pretty nicely.

One thing that has me kind of stumped however is why the hell the tables appear differently? For some reason the height attribute for td element doesn’t work in Firefox. Anyone got any ideas what can be done about this?

So I’ve started looking at my blog feed reader and it hit me that I don’t really read all of my feeds as much as I skim them to see what new stuff might be happening in the world. The issue is though that I’m finding it harder and harder to find something that I must stop and read. I find that seriously strange. It’s not like I’ve got that much more blogs that I’m reading. I tend to add new blogs to my feed every so selectively.

Sure you have Khoi’s little commentary left and right, you have Paul’s exhaustive hardware reviews of consumer electronics I will never buy nor really care about. Michael’s blog is always an interesting collection of links (mainly movie related ones) from all over the place, Chris’s blog usually throws up some cool videos or interesting youtube snippets that I would never have the energy to look for, Journalista always gives me just about everything I could want in terms of comic book bytes and other assorted goodies (oftentimes more than I can possibly grasp). However one trend I’ve noticed is that the raw bloggers out there have reduced in number.

Oh but Khaled aren’t you part of the 9rules network? I’ve said this before (on another site) but I’ll say it again, 9rules is no longer the place it used to be. I’m not saying this is a bad thing, it’s just decidedly different. When I joined a couple of years ago it had something like 50 blogs in total. That’s 50 people I more or less knew from the forums. Knew and appreciated and liked and worked with and helped out etc. There are hunderds of memebers on there now, and honestly I don’t have the time to go through each one and vet each one.. I guess it was just more manageable in the past, for me at least, as I would add the ENTIRE feed for 9rules. Hell I wouldn’t know where to get it now if I tried. Anyone know where the feed for all the blogs from 9rules can be found? Shouldn’t that be a pretty prominent thing on this site? Shouldn’t you be able to taylor make your own RSS feed of all the various sites that are available to you? Kinda makes sense to me. Don’t know how easy it is to implement but I’m sure the guys are more than capable of doing something like that.

A couple of years ago it was this massive buzzing time, where we as bloggers (all of us, including you) ruled the net. Movies lived and died by our buzz (Snakes on a Plane), TV series got second leases on life (Serenity), well partly because of us.

Somedays I honestly feel like we’re not all that important anymore. Is it because all new fads become old quickly? Have we passed the ‘golden era’ of blogging? Is it that there is far too much noise on the net, and it’s becoming harder and harder to actually seperate the wheat from the chaff? Is blogging relevant nowadays or is it simply part of the general zeitgeist that is accepted and taken for granted?

There is NOTHING I like more during the summer than a cold Greek salad. It’s no wonder I’ll buy all the ingredients on the Monday and make myself one every day at work. However I find it mind boggling that I can’t seem to be able to buy a decent Greek salad in any restaurant that I’ve been to, Greek or otherwise. To spread the love I’m going to give everyone explicit details on how to make the simplest and healthiest dish this side of the Mediterranean.

The ingredients are very simple, for a decent sizes salad (1-2 people) you’ll need the following:

<li><p>2 or 3 large tomatoes. They have to be the LARGE variety. No cherry tomatoes, no small piddly little tomatoes either. They have to be the big and ripe variety. Pay the extra, get the good stuff. This represents the bulk of the salad so don't skimp on this ingredient.</p> </li>


<li>1<p>/2 a cucumber. Generally speaking it's 1 small cucumber, but for some reason I can't seem to be able to get these over here in UK supermarkets so I tend to use half of the ones available.</p></li>

<li>

1/4 or a red onion. Don't get the white ones, go for the red ones. It's all about the correct flavours and this is pretty important. You can have as many or as little as you like, however I find that if you put more it ends up left at the end.

<li><p>1/2 a green pepper. You can try and use a sweet yellow or red pepper, but honestly it won't be the same. The green pepper provides it with that savory taste that you need.</p></li>

<li>

Oregano. You'll need lots of this, the dried variety.

1. Black Kalamata Olives. Yes you could try for another kind of olive. Maybe something in green, or even something stuffed. Rubbish. Get those ideas out of your head. It has to be a black olive. It has to be big and it has to be full of flavour.

<li><p>Feta cheese. Lots of this stuff. </p></li>


<li><p>Olive oil. The more the better. You could make the whole salad swim in the stuff or you could be measured with the amounts. If you're Greek, you go mental with the olive oil. If you're a bit more concerned about your waistline, then be slightly more conservative. At least 5 tablespoons I would imagine, although I'll be honest I never measure, I just pour until I think it's about right.</p></li>
<li>

Fresh bread. Yes you heard me. Go to the bakery, go to the supermarket, go to the Deli down the road and get yourself a fresh loaf. It's got to be a big loaf so you can enjoy soaking in all the olive oil left at the end of the salad. Trust me on this, it's one of the single best parts of eating this.

Ok so now that we’ve got our ingredients, it’s time to understand the other aspect of what makes it a good Greek salad. It’s all about how you cut the ingredients. I know it sounds slightly strange but it’s true.

<li><p>Tomatoes - The way to cut these is very simple. Each tomato has to be cut into 12 pieces. The way to do this is to cut the tomato in half. From their each half will be cut into six pieces. You might want to get rid of the central piece that is where it was attached to the vine. I find this piece to be a bit chewy and stringy in texture. Some people don't seem to mind it, I'm not so keen on this part.</p></li>


<li><p>Cucumber - It's really up to you how you want to eat this, you can either peel the cucumber or you can leave the skin on. I tend to alternate depending on my mood at the time. However the proper way to cut the cucumber is first down the length of the cucumber, so that you've got two long halves. From there you start chopping each half so that you're left with semi-circular wedges about 0.5cm thick.</p></li>


<li><p>Pepper - Really there is two ways to cut this, both are acceptable. The first is to cut them as full rings. These should be again about 0.5cm thick. The other option is to cut the pepper down it's length and then have thin strips of pepper from that half; again cut down their length.</p> </li>


<li><p>Onion - After you've cut the onion in half, cut it in half again. From there you'll cut thin strips (as in the picture above). Make sure that they're split from each other (unlike the picture above). </p></li>


<li><p>Feta - Again there are two schools of thought about how to present this. Either you have it in a big chunk (or a series of big chunks) or alternatively you crumble the feta cheese (with your fingers) so that it's all over the salad. I'm again impartial to either fashion, although if it's a quick job I go for the easier option which is to have big chunks.</p></li>


<li><p>Add the olives, sprinkle the oregano, pour the oil, tear off some bread and dig right in. </p></li></ol>

Summer on a plate.

You know when you’re in the dark about something and then someone wakes you up and you get that realisation that things could have been better, you just didn’t know any better, because nobody bothered to tell you about it?

What am I talking about? I’m making less sense than normal? I’ll tell you what I’m blathering about. I’m talking about how fonts are displayed on the four major web browsers, Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 2, Safari 3 and Opera 9.

If you’ve visited the ‘kode in the last week, you’ll have seen some more changes in my every evolving design process. Currently I’ve given up altogether with putting a design mockups and opting for the completely different approach of throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. Subsequently I’ve decided to do things in glorious black and white and start thinking about colours and design elements once I’ve got the basic structure and functionality working as I actually want it. However what I have done is use fonts as big bold elements in the design, going above 16px font-size to bring things to the forefront.

Fortunately for me (as this is what actually opened my eyes) was that this effectively brings out the font rendering inadequacies in my favourite (and de facto) browser, Firefox.

Firefox

Opera

Internet Explorer

Safari

The fonts are all smoothed (the only part that I felt was a bit off, but that’s only because I’ve been staring at this for a while trying to find faults) is the bottom of rounded characters which become slightly more blurred. I haven’t checked to see what other things this browser has to offer because I’m still a bit gobsmacked by the way it rendered a simple page. I understand that Safari is based on the same framework as Konquerer, is that correct?

Final Thoughts

Geeze that took a long time but I can finally report that I’ve actually sorted out the Kode’s version 6 mockup. Now you might say:

"How the hell is this relevant you lazy fuck? Sort out the full implementation of the site instead of telling us about the damn mockup".

Ah patience young Padawin one, the significance here you see is the fact that this final mockup has only come after 21 FAILED attempts. 21 attempts, and iterations and tweaks and modifications. That’s an insane amount of time spent on designs that are not going to be used….EVER. Some of the ideas where pretty nice but the overall package lacked a je ne sais quoi.

So how is this interesting to you? Easy, I actually realised what I was doing wrong and to be honest it’s a fundamental element that I employ in all of my works that seemed lacking in this instance and I decided to go down a completely different route, one that was more clinical rather than conceptual as I usually do. I’ll try and elaborate. When I design or draw something, I usually think of a concept and run with it. I may be trying to emulate a specific feel or idea. Version 4 for example was influenced by my rereading Akira at the time. I loved the cables and the detail which is where that particular design came from.

For this one, I just wandered aimlessly. Moving from one idea that I thought was killer to the next. Sadly only some ideas were any good. In general I was missing the overall picture that combined the design.

A new Broken Kode will be appearing shortly.

So a couple of weeks back (maybe it’s more, I’ve got far more annoying things in my life at the moment to really remember the time lines for shit like this) Bryan’s girlfriend Jen posted on his website (that was taken offline at the time) that things were not going well with him at the moment and that Avalonstar might continue and it might not, and it was all terribly cryptic and oh so very very O_o.

What many of those outside didn’t see was what went on behind the scenes, on the 9rules member’s message board and obviously in many people’s email boxes. Scrivs is a bit pissed off at Bryan for many reasons and I got to thinking about this very slightly and I think there’s really two sides to this story with some leeway afforded to both parties, all depending on your perspective I guess.

So what’s the deal you ask? In a nutshell, we’ve got Bryan’s girlfriend posted that he (Bryan) was taking the site down for reasons undisclosed. Didn’t really say why or what the actual reasons were but I guess if you always have the worst thing on your mind you might be forgiven to think that there was some SERIOUS shit going down. Subsequently what happened, IMHO was COMPLETELY over the top. When people tried to contact him, they got no response, which perpetuated the worry/curiosity . Presents were discussed, wallpapers, cards, a website was built to make sure he understood that he had support. Does that sound a little overboard to everyone? I thought so too. I’ve got to say though it’s a terribly nice gesture and it shows that a community does exist for those in 9rules and that they are willing to support one another, which is kinda where some of the resentment is coming from I guess. All this support for false pretences of the equivalent of a bad hairday.

The thing is though, Bryan didn’t actually ask for any of this. Bryan didn’t say “Hey guys, see you later, shit has hit the fan, but if you feel the need to ask what’s going on, don’t email me because I’m not going to be discussing it at all, but email Scrivs, Tyme and Mike over at the 9rules network, or Jon Snook while you’re at it, since I’m part of that company, or Matt Mullenweg since I used to work for him.”

He didn’t ask for people to react in the way that they did. He didn’t ask for all of love that was sent his way (some would now argue that he doesn’t deserve that love anymore). I guess he couldn’t really predict what would happen or how things would shape out. Did he mitigate that? He did eventually but I guess based on the original reaction I guess he might have been feeling a bit like people were going to rip him a new asshole for being so melodramatic about the whole thing and therefore thought it best to keep shut and let people try and forget about the whole thing. Yes, he could have been a lot less cryptic in the first place and decided to take the site down and put it on hold and tell everyone that this is what he wanted to do for a little while because the design of the site was giving him some serious issues that he needed to sort out or whatever. He didn’t for whatever reason. It’s his site, he’s free to do whatever he wants. I mean Oxton did something similar a year ago or whatever.

The thing is that if you reacted to the message in any way, you reacted of your own accord. What I mean by that is that you chose to give this your time, effort and energy to whatever this situation. I personally chose to ignore it and I guess that’s why I don’t feel like my emotions have been cheated. I’ve been on the net a while and have read loads of things. Some nice things, some not so nice things. I’ve read about people’s mother dying, their wife having a miscarriage, loosing their jobs, divorcing one another and the list goes on. People sometime write about these things because it helps them get things clearer in their minds. Maybe helps them get over things. That’s part of what blogging is all about. I feel that when people are ready to talk about things on their sites they will do so (or not) in their own time. Once those things are open for discussion by the person that originated them then it’s an incredible boost if there is additional support from strangers on the net.

Having said all that, I can definitely count at least 5 people on the net that I’ve never met, and whom I may never meet (although it would be damn cool if we did in the future) whom I would really go out of my way to help them out if they so much as whispered it in my direction. These people I consider my friends, but I haven’t placed that level of trust with anyone. Like I said I’ve been reading and doing this for a while now that I know it’s a bit of a waste of time and effort to place that emotion for everyone and anyone, it can be misguided at best or make you feel cheated in the worst case.

I really don’t understand why it is that all Google applications are soo bloody fugly. I mean seriously. Joen recently blogged about being a Google boy and I was thinking the same thing, that I do actually use a lot of Google products. I’m using Google Calendar, Gmail, Google Reader, Google Maps, Sketchup (at work), Google Docs (not the spreadsheets part, although I’m not using it all that much recently) and I don’t know how many times I go to the Google home page on a daily basis. The thing that I’m definitely starting to get annoyed with however is the bloody ugly interface that they insist on presenting for all their applications.

Making these things nicer to look at will most definitely make them more enjoyable to use. What’s mind boggling to me is that not enough people are talking about this. Some people have even taken matters into their own hands and actually tweaked the design interface using greasemonkey and Firefox. It does the job for sure, but you’ve got to wonder what is actually holding these guys back from actually employing 15 Jon Hickes for like 6 months and making them work full time on revamping the interfaces so they’re actually properly designed.

You actually want to take on the big boys like all these people are hinting that you are left right and centre, you’ve got to be dressed for the part. What’s even more interesting to me is the fact that Google has got the money, they’ve got the bloody resource, they’ve got the knowledge. I’m not talking complicated code restructuring here (after all they’ve got the functionality down to a bloody art form); I’m talking about the CSS and the little jpgs, you know simple, basic, shit.

So what is it they’re afraid of I wonder? Every once in a while they’ll change something (like the recent Google images) and then change it back again, so it’s not like they’re afraid of rocking the boat. The thing is though I’m talking about rocking the boat significantly.

The more I write the more I start thinking about this, they’re not changing things because they feel they’re doing well with the ugly interface as it is. That can be seen (although I might be jumping the gun here) as a sign of complacency. Something that an IT company should NEVER, EVER do, is sit on their laurels and pat themselves on the back for a job well done, because guess what, someone else is trying to be one step ahead of them.

Case in point, Facebook. Now here’s a website that is designed VERY well. It’s simple and it’s friendly and is updated and new features are constantly added and the interface is tweaked and icons are designed. The site has a distinct look about it, that’s not in your face, much like Google. All of these ideas all definitely contribute to it’s increasing success.

So my request from Google is to listen to their designers, I know you have them, but at the same time I’m sure the ones that are employed have got their nuts neutered and have to design things to a stupid house style, with no clear reason why, which is a real shame for all of us.

I’m going to post a collection of one liners that are rattling in my head, probably going to make it into a regular sunday evening thing:

1. The Offspring Greatest hits album dualdisc is pretty damn good listening. Reminds me back to when I was 13 and was about to take on the world. 30 was a lifetime away.

2. So we're talking with Rosie and Dom about ethnic minorities and how it's actually a lot less than you might expect. I know that statistics are made on the spot in general, but the one quoted seemed a bit low, which lead to us talking about the first wave of the black community into Britain in the 50s and 60s and how people of a certain age who had not seen black people until that stage felt/dealt/reacted with the new world order. Which then triggered the memory of me meeting my first black man, must have been 12 years old or something; I honestly can't remember his name, but he was from Mauritius. I remember he was a very softly spoken guy and very very gentle in nature. The only thing that made an impression on me was his hands and how the palms were slightly coarser than mine. Such a strange thing to take back.

3. Lewis Hamilton is a great little rookie, however I'm really not liking the shitty HYPE that British media seems intent on throwing his way. I mean seriously you see this shit year after year. They build them up just so that they can slap them down when they put a foot wrong. Really shitty as far as I'm concerned, and I don't blame Ron Dennis trying to shield his driver from all that bullshit.

4. Clerks II is how a DVD should be made. It's got about 6hours of extra material and Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier have seriously spent a lot of time to make it a special experience. You're not buying the DVD just to watch the movie a couple of times. It's really about the DVD experience and really using it, with multiple commentaries, bloopers, interviews, behind the scene footage and the list goes on. I put this up as one of the great DVDs of last year, easily.

5. Just watched Christopher Nolan's first movie, Following. Seriously, it's one of the better indie films I've seen in a really long time. Black and white, shot in various locations in and around London, check it out, great little twist at the end.

6. Diet is going well. I must have had a serious fat day last Sunday because I'm about 2kg less this week. Part of that I guess is the running, part is the diet changes, part is the psychology as well I guess. I'll keep the updates on this going.

7. I bought an ipod shuffle last week, first Apple product I've ever bought myself, and I've got to say I'm loving the size. It's like part of my clothing now. It never runs out of juice and it stores enough music to last me my runs, my trips to work and around the place. It would be nice to have a display but when it comes right down to it I don't think it's completely necessary for the function that I am using it in. Does this mean an Apple mac isn't far behind,...hmm probably not.

8. So Ubuntu Feisty Fawn came out this week. I downloaded it for my laptop. They still hadn't sorted out the bugs that I had reported that I had confirmed that had tried to help solve, that worked in 2 previous versions. I'm talking my laptop into the office to get Windows installed on the machine. I want to swear at Canonical, but alas it's not completely their fault, although it's really annoying not to have this sorted. Renders my laptop really annoying to use to be honest, so much so that I haven't been using it for the past couple of months properly.

9. SMODCAST (love that name as well, especially how Kevin introduces it and everything). Easily one of the best podcast's I've heard in a really long time (thanks for the heads up Michael). I've gotten into listening to dvd commentary while working on something as I can actually get through a lot of things, and listen the plethora of commentaries that I generally have no real time to listen to.

I got onto the scales this morning and swear to god I think I heard the scales sigh. When the hell did I gain so much weight? Over the last couple of months I’ve definitely noticed that my trousers have been shrinking in the wash more and more every day but I think yesterday I felt it the most. Summer is in the air and I’m the heaviest I’ve been in YEARS. Part of this I guess can be attributed to the general lack of exercise, another part of this can be attributed to the general amount of rubbish I’ve been eating at work, and even more can be attributed to the snacks I’ve been taking on in between meals, after meals and during meals (I know, how the hell do you snack during meals?).

Needless to say I need to do something about this and bloody soon. I’ve been down this road before, I’m prone to gaining weight, however I know EXACTLY what needs to be done to loose weight and sustain it for a good long time rather than these crash course diets. This isn’t for everyone, this is what has worked in the past for me, so I’m writing this down to make sure I REMEMBER my list every time I try and break it, and I will try and break it over the next week where my mood will no doubt be pretty foul for a little while until I get used to it all.

1. Item one - Stop eating junk. Seriously it all fucking adds up. That little bit of chocolate at 11 from a colleague to that additional biscuit at around 11:30 to that kit kat at 3pm and the list goes on. Part of the main reason I guess is boredom and just wanting to get something done. So I'm going to have to get myself a whole bunch of fruit every Monday, every time someone has got their birthday cakes I grab an apple or something. I'm allowed one chocolate sweet thing a week and that's about it.

<li><p>Item two - This is an important one and probably the one that's going to be the hardest to maintain. Eat smaller portions. Don't get second helpings. It's OK to feel hungry every once in a while. There are loads of ways that will make you achieve this. Some have tried using smaller plates. I'm more of the thought that you should balance it out as best you can and keep it smaller than usual. </p></li>


<li><p>Item three - Eat everything I've been eating but with care to item two, however include for removal of deep fried things like fried potatoes, etc. Keep the bread consumptions down to a smaller amount, in fact a lot lot less. Don't eat the loafs, eat wraps exclusively and those Swedish style cracker things (they're not all that tasty but they give the impression you're eating bread and for next few months that should be ok, I've had my fair share of bread these last 27 years it's time to take a break).</p></li>


<li><p>Item four - Drink more fluids, cut the bloody sugar from the coffee and the tea. Four years ago I used to have 3 sugars in my tea and coffee, now I'm down to 1. I think it's time to cut it down all the way to 0. This is a small thing but I think one that I've been thinking about for a good long time and I think it's time I actually implemented, seeing as I'm on a roll right now anyway.</p></li>


<li><p>Item five - Last item, but definitely not least, I've got to get back to exercising more regularly. Currently I'll run sporadically and then I'll play basketball once every other week for a couple of hours, get a crap and generally be slow as fuck on the court. It's time to move it up a notch and have my 30 minutes run in the morning every morning. Combined with the above I'm pretty sure I can get to shape and loose the excess kilos that are hanging off me right now. </p>

Currently my target is 12kg. If I get there it’ll be the least I’ve ever been and the target weight I’ve always wanted to be. Traditionally the first 6kg are moderately easy as my body has store an immense amount of crap so it’ll shed that faster than the last 6kg which will be pretty tough to get rid of. I’ll keep everyone posted with mini posts from now on regarding my progress. Is there any clever little php scripts that I can record all of this down? I’m pretty sure I saw something on someone’s blog a while back that was tracking his weight loss progress as well.

So I’m talking to Fern yesterday on Facebook, and when I say talking I actually mean ‘Wall-ing’ her (yeah it’s not the technical term for it but alas it sounds funnier). Anyway, so she’s dissing 300 and calling it gay porn or some such rubbish, so we started talking movies. I asked her whether or not she was excited for the new Chinese flick that’s getting prepped for release in the UK this weekend, Curse of the Golden Flower. Her response, I’m quoting here:

It's one of those Chinese films for foreigners. The trailer didn't even have any words! Even if it features Jay Chow.

See the thing is I’ve heard this kind of response nearly EVERY time I’ve asked someone Chinese about a Chinese movies that makes it into Western theatres. For most people the Chinese outbreak came with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon by Ang Lee a few years ago. I was raised on a staple diet of Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee movies. So much so that my parents have had to watch Drunken Master 1 & 2 several times over with me because I kept renting it from the video store again and again, mainly because I’d seen all the ones in the store and because I loved the interaction with his Master when he was training him. I also loved the food scenes, where you know he’s going to eat the entire house, then get drunk, then not have any money to pay then have a big massive fight. To be fair though I’d not really experienced the full extent of Asian cinema, not by a long shot.

So today I decided to goad Irene into telling me what the deal was with the dislike of Chinese people to exported certain exported Chinese films. So she gave me the standard foreigners line, followed by a curve ball (I’m not actually quoting Irene here but work with me people I’m getting to my point):

It's nothing we haven't seen before, since the 1950s. In fact some of the better stuff weren't movies but TV series.

That’s fucking interesting. Where the hell are they? What are they called? What’s the deal? Name them. Of course they’ve all got Chinese names. C’mon guys it’s not my fault I’m not Chinese, I’ve come to accept that you’ll never hand me the Chinese menu at the restaurant (you know the one with all the authentic good stuff), why are you being stingy with your bloody cinema and tv programmes?

So I’m asking everyone that knows of any good Chinese series (preferably set in the Emperor Chinese era) that are actually ‘good’ and not for foreigners (but with subtitles) for me to get into. After all Battlestar Galactica won’t be back for like at least 6 months, Prison Break won’t be back for a similar amount of time and Lost can only keep my attention for like 45 minutes a week.

Seriously, don’t bother reading this because it’s going to be one long boring diatribes of bollocks with me smack in the middle winging and wining about something. I’ve not really had the chance to formulate the post at all in my mind and I’m doing what I used to do years ago on this blog, which was to just write the first shit that came to my mind. If you’re looking for quality then I can hardly promise you that with this post, so take that as your warning.

I guess my completely FOUL mood can be attributed to several things kicking about the place, so in no particular order.

1. Is it the shitty music industry? What the hell has happened to the music industry? I mean seriously. Once the cornerstone of my inspiration. I would get a new album it would blow my fucking mind away, I would get inspired and I would draw the early hours of the morning. When was the last time I had this experience? Like in 1845 or something like that. I've been listening to the old stuff more and more and there just isn't any new stuff out there that is making me sit up and take proper notice, which pisses me off even more as this is the longest I've gone completely dry without any real creative output. I've not been writing and I've not been drawing and my designing has been limited to tampering with Broken Kode Version 6 (hey c'mon it's been nearly a year with the dark blue, it's about time I lightened things up a bit).

<li><p>Is it work that's got me pissed off? Well I've been working 150% for the past couple of years. Honestly I don't remember the last time I actually had a relatively easy week at work where I wasn't being asked to issue something or upsetting people because I didn't get things I promised them in time or whatever.</p> </li>


<li><p>Is it the fact that I seriously need some holiday time off? Well that's fucking great, I need to go to the Greek embassy again and get myself a Visa. Yeah getting treated like shit for 5 hours seems like a great idea for me, after paying a tenner on a god damn phonecall where they'll tell me to come and visit them in 6 fekking weeks???!!!!! </p></li>


<li><p>Is the woman situation (or lack thereof) starting to piss me off, what with a string of false starts? I mean seriously this is starting to put even an natural born optimist like myself in slight (notice the word slight) doubt.</p></li>


<li><p>Is it the website design that I can't seem to pull off in a way that I'm happy or moderately content with that's annoying me; is it the fact that I've had to switch back to fekking windowz for the love that is holy because Adobe still don't seem interested and probably never will port Photoshop over to Linux? What about Pixel Beta fucking 7 that doesn't EVER want to come out?</p> </li>

<li>

God I fucking hate Tuesday evenings. They're COMPLETE nothing nights. NOTHING happens on Tuesday. You never organise anything good on a Tuesday. It's still too soon in the beginning of the week for you to do anything interesting to rev you up to the weekend.

Fuck it dude, lets go bowling.

Ok if in case you didn’t read the title of this post, it has the word spoiler in it for a reason, not interested in finding out what has happened on the end of the third season then pretty please with a cherry on top go somewhere else and you don’t ever need to blame me for ruining anything for you. Good everyone else here?

Watched it yesterday and I’ve got to say I was pretty damn excited about this episode. I got back home at a normal time and went straight to downloading the episode. All the while I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. The big massive revelation; who is the Cylon, who is the Cylon. I don’t get one I get 4 of them, definitely didn’t see that one coming, especially Saul as one that’s come out of NOWHERE. I’m sure they’ve thought this one through, but seriously how the hell does that actually work? He’s like over 50 years old and that’s how old the Cylons are right? At least that’s what we were originally led to believe.

So I did a bit of researching. Ron Moore’s podcast isn’t up on the scifi channel yet however if you look around you’ll be able to find a couple of interviews scattered around the place where he talks about things.

The biggest twist of couse was definitely Starbuck’s appearance at the end of the show. I honestly didn’t expect that. I’ve got to say that while listening to Ron’s commentary regarding the reasons to kill off Starbuck never rang true with me. It seemed as though it was all about the AUDACITY of it all, which felt a little bit on the weak side. It’s nice to see how they’ve pulled one of the best cons in recent television history. ‘Kill off a character’, have actress in on it as well so all her interviews point that she’s going to be moving on, don’t insert her name in the credits of the actual episode and then have her come back right at the end. Of course there are a lot of unanswered questions but it’s definitely one of the better endings on the show which always has pretty spectacular cliffhanger season endings.

Also I really loved ‘All along the Watchtower’ cover by Bear McCreary and his brother, definitely will be getting that once it’s available from somewhere.

Frank Miller’s 300 had my money several times over from the moment I heard it was going to be made. Then came the trailer and I nearly came in my pants several times over (I know not a pretty vision but at least I’m being truthful). Then I shared the trailer with Stathi and Christos and while I thought I was excited, these guys were even more excited about this movie than I was. Honestly between the three of us we’ve probably seen the trailer like 3000 times.

I can’t count the number of times we’ve quoted the lines:

"Blasphemy? Madness? THIS IS SPAAARTAAA!"

So to say that we were completely hyped for the movie is a slight understatement. So how do we celebrate this momentous occasion of the release of 300? We book the top section of Everyman cinema in Hampstead (much more about this glorious cinema theatre in a moment) and pack it with 40 something Greeks. To say there was a bit of atmosphere in the theatre, is once again a slight understatement. Half of us screamed the above line when Leonidas said it.

The Venue

It’s strange but one of the things that annoys me about cinemas is that the experience seems to have been diluted. I’m talking in a general sense here. It’s no longer something special, it’s no longer something that is truly an experience in every sense of the world. Thank god someone remembered this and made the Everyman Cinema in Hampstead, North London. Basically it’s very small little venue however there are different levels of seating throughout all of which are larger than usual, with little tables to the side of them. The side seats are leather with foot rests and all of them have champagne bottle holders. The ambience in there is amazing. Seriously I kept looking at just how beautiful the place was and how great all the colours worked together seamlessly. The screen isn’t the largest, the sound isn’t this amazing THX (at least I don’t think it is) but it’s definitely one of the best cinema’s I’ve ever been to. This enhanced this movies completely for me even further than if I watched it in your run of the mill movie theatre.

The movie itself

"A new age has begun. An age of freedom, and all will know that 300 Spartans gave their last breathe to defend it."

The story is a timeless one, depicting one of the greatest if not most important battles in history, completely stylised of course with loads of magicians and huge monsters people and weird freaks, however believe it or not it’s not the story that counts here but how it is delivered. You see this story has been told several times before, however never like this. Some of the fight scenes in here are some of the most brutal you’ve ever seen in a swords and sandals epic. Forget all the rubbish that is Troy and Alexander and open your eyes to 2 minutes of pure Spartan maddness cutting through one guy after the other. Then chilling out and eating an apple over the dead. It’s meant to be over the top. It’s meant to be completely manly in nature. The dialogue just drips of testosterone and I think that’s one of it’s greatest qualities. You don’t get enough movies where the guys are completely hard as nails.

A distinct success of the movie was use of colour filters throughout the movie. From the soft yellows used for Sparta to the blues used for scenes with the Immortals. The darker browns used for the fight scenes made the red capes sand out even more. Make no mistake this movie isn’t for everyone (although I wish it was). For a start it’s an 18, which means this movie is violent, has got scenes of a sexual nature (read: soft porn) but there isn’t any real swearing as Miller didn’t really have any of that in his book.

My gripes

The Casting

The Details

From a comic book point of view it was completely faithful to the style. The additional areas were actually very very well done. The scenes with the Queen showed just how hard she was. It was an welcome addition to the story while I am a purist in these things I think if it’s scenes that don’t take away from the actual original source material then I have no problems with it at all.

Final Word

Definitely one of the more interesting takes on ‘supporting’ the troops I’ve read in a while. Fundamentally the question is flawed. I come from a country, and was raised in another one, which both had mandatory conscription. The mantra always was:

leave logic at the door when you enter the army.

The reason was simple, in the army you take orders and you do as you’re told. The thing is though, and this is only starting to take form in my head as I’m writing this, does this mean that by joining the army you believe in the path that your country takes when employing said army?

I’ll be more specific. After University the plan was ALWAYS for me to join the army. Now I’m not a violent man however I felt that the Lebanese army wasn’t going to be taking over the world any time soon. By joining the army I would be part of that group of people that would try and defend the country. It wasn’t an agressive force, but rather a force for protection. Regardless of how effective it is, it seemed like I wouldn’t be expediting my morals. I wouldn’t be asked to take over countries and fight for imposing my country’s opinion for someone else’s, as I have seen what that actually means unlike the plethora of idiots that support war, in ANY form.

Which brings me to the American troops. When you join the American army you really should know what that actually entails. You join on your own free will. It’s not mandatory, but rather a decision you make in your life. When you join the American army you KNOW that there is a REMOTE (read the sarcasm) possibility that you will be sent in to take over countries, in a hostile manner. You will be sent in to ‘fight for the good guys’. You’d have to be pretty ill informed not to know that little fact that you are not a peace keeper. You are not a defender in the traditional sense, you are part of the aggressors. Oh sure you are given to believe that what you are doing it the righteous thing, however I don’t agree with this as the proof is in the results. History keeps repeating itself time and time again and history has definitely not been kind to American foreign policy.

Yes I know that there are some good guys in the army who just want to make sure that their country is defended properly, however going into all other countries and destroying them does not in my book constitute as defending anything. Of course the obvious question is doesn’t America need an army? You cant' join the army and say you don’t want to be stationed anywhere but in America, that’s not how it works, which I know. As a human being though I make my decisions and I live my life based on those decisions I make.

By joining the army and going to Iraq, you’re not defending your country, you’re defending you’re country and it’s business partner’s financial interests. That puts you in a group of people that I cannot offer any support towards. That might seem harsh, but the truth of the matter is you have MADE the decision to continue to give your LIFE to a group of people (be they the government or the army itself) who is there to exploit another group of people, not to defend.

Smashing Pumpkins, Zeitgeist will be out on 07/07/07. I remember where I was the last time an official Smashing Pumpkins album came out. Actually this is a funny story, not haha funny but funny. The pumpkins believe it or not where not all that massive over here in the UK, even at their absolute height (you know that Today Today song, or was it Tonight Tonight). Eh, well for those that knew good music sure they were up there but most people over here back then were still into brit pop and the Britney Spears rubbish was starting to take form as well.

So there I was one of the few rangers that had this unhealthy obsession with the pumpkins. Something about their music seriously struck a cord with me (no pun intended). It was like well I could hear the genius in everything they did (except the James Iha stuff, that was always a bit too, soft for me, which is weird since he went on to join A Perfect Circle who are anything but ‘soft’), anyway I digress.

It’s a Sunday and everything shuts at like 10 oclock in Nottingham. I do mean everything. The thing is though the last official ‘new’ album Machina the Machines of God was actually released on the same day as some Oasis album. So HMV had this promotion going on where if you came into the store at midnight you’d get the album a full 8 hours before most sane and normal people would get it, but the real cherry on the cake was the fact that they were handing out these promo cds as well which were limited to the first 100 or something like that. Was I there? You’re damn straight I was.

Thing is there was a bit of a problem with transport. Like I said it was all about Nottingham, 10 oclock on a Sunday everything is shut, even the fekkin buses. Dunno if this has changed or what, but I walked from the house on Cycle Road into town. I’m walking down Market Street (for all those people who are into comic and CDs, you’ve got the BEST comic book store in the UK, Page 45 and one of the best music stores in the UK Selectadisc) at least they were there when I was walking down the road to buy the latest pumpkins CD and it was about this time when I saw the craziest shit I’d seen up until that point in England.

2 guys in a Taxi cab driving up the street, I’m walking down the street. The guy in the back seat of the cab starts pummeling the guy in the front of the seat. I can’t remember completely but the cab driver took his hands off the driving wheel to try and calm the two idiots killing each other in his car. I think the cabbie also took his foot off the pedal so the car started rolling back down the hill. Obviously the guy has no where to go so he takes a few hits to the head and then he opens the door to get out, CAR IS NOW MOVING BACKWARDS. I think he just manages to either get out of the door’s way or to go under the door (and I could be making this part up but it happened so quickly that I think I can be excused if I fuck up my story ever so slightly) but he’s on the floor now and the car accelerates backwards and turns straight into the glass facade of a shopping centre (I think it was Debenhams, not sure). Glass everywhere, cabbie has his head in his hands, but the guy that started the fight hasn’t finished. He gets out of the car and starts looking for bits and pieces off the ground, bits of car, whatever and starts throwing them at the other guy who’s in the middle of the road.

All this is happening with me walking past them which my umbrella (hey it was raining) and a bit of ongoing traffic. For those thinking that this was in some back alleys or something like that, think again, this road is literally off the main square, the police where in the corner having their teas and telling drunken girls to go home rushed over in like 10 seconds. I just walked on, glad to not have been caught up in the foolery and promptly bought my CD.

I miss Nottingham, always had a bit of colour, but most importantly I miss the Pumpkins. It’s good to have you guys back.

The more I think about this the more embarrassed of myself I feel. Basically I sat down today to take stock of what I should be doing in my free time (yes I have to have to be doing something in my free time, I bore extremely easily). I decided earlier last month that I was going to finish off my commitments from last year as soon as possible.

These are basically Priya and Stathi’s websites. For the eagle eyed of you, if you go over to the illustration section of the site you will see the very first completed illustration of 2007 (the first of many to come I hope). It’s the basis for Priya’s website which I should go live by the end of the week (make a deadline public therefore making sure I deliver, nice). I’m about 50% into the coding; it’s a simple website that really should not have taken the stupid amount of time that it has taken but alas better late than never. Also by next week I should have the next illustration up there as well (it’ll be the basis for Stathi’s website) which is definitely one of the most detailed sites I’ve worked on in a very long time.

After which I will only delve into the world of websites when I’m fucking about with my own web space. It’s funny but the code that is currently running the site was originally written nearly a year ago and it’s been tweaked slightly over the year. I don’t really intend to screw around too much with the site to be honest but the colours and graphics will be changing in the coming months as I delve deeper into Aitus Moralis; this is the tentative title (and may end up being the actual final title) of my first graphic novel and my next confirmed project.

I knew the basic idea of the story and remembered that I had actually written something for it, but I honestly couldn’t remember what I had written. It’s not until today that I really realised just how much work I’ve completed over the years and just completely forgotten about. I’ve got flash trailers, sketches and pages upon pages of research and script already written. My life on the internet has seriously been one MASSIVE detour for my honest true passion, sequential storytelling.

So today marks the first day of the journey into getting published. I’m not going to hide it, I want to publish my book via Image Comics. I want the ‘I’ on my book. I know it sounds strange but while the older generation was into Marvel and DC comics I have always been a follower of creators. I guess that’s what’s I was raised on in the 90s. The pundits can say what they will about the 90s, it had a lot more creator owned books than what we have now. Oh sure a lot of it was pure garbage but at least it was the creator’s garbage and the stuff that was weak has and will never be seen again, I intend for “Aitus Moralis” to not fall down that stupid path. I want to own my book’s destiny, because honestly I wouldn’t allow for any other monkey to touch it. All monkey business will be under my control.

Lofty goals I’m sure but it’s a dream I’ve had since I was 13, so it’s about time I delivered and reached.

I will be peppering the site with sketches and designs and drawings from this series as the Kode starts to shift slowly but surely into that direction. Coco will be making his exit and I’ll be moving him over to Splash Panel as he will be the official mascot for Splash Panel. The logo might change slightly in the future to be honest to tie better with the new graphical direction which will be decidedly less vector and have a more painted feel to it.

Let me start off by saying that Inksmith is what I view as my biggest online failure, after a fashion and this is what this particular post is about. Whenever I announce a project or something I usually deliver, notice I said whenever I announce a project. I may be a blabber mouth an I do get excited about things and have the urge to talk about them, however I never announce until I’m 100% certain I’m going to follow through (seriously if I didn’t do that I’d be writing this sort of shit all the time).

I might take some time to bring it forward (usually I take a lot longer that I could possibly want) however the fact of the matter remains that I will see things through. It seems that ever since the ‘announcement’ of Habari a few moons ago, some have brought up Inksmith as a way to bring discredit to Habari (at least the negative connotations that Inksmith is presented in infers this). It’s as though the fact that nothing moving forward on Inksmith is telling of stuff that might not happen on Habari, which honestly is the single most preposterous idea I’ve ever heard. These are two very very different things and I find those that mention them as though they’re linked in the same way done so as an act of ignorance/stupidity/lack of understanding etc. Here’s why.

The first fact brought forward is to understand what the two things actually were. Inksmith simply was an idea to create a community for bloggers. No this wasn’t a rip off on 9rules. I wasn’t creating a blog network but rather an area for bloggers to get around and be themselves. Oh sure there wasn’t really a central theme for us to bandy around, but what I wanted was a nice buzzing community that helped each other out and was open for people to get to know each other re our love for blogging. It wasn’t ground breaking and it wasn’t anything crazy, but it would have been fun and loads of the guys where well up for it. The best part of it all was the pictures on the coming soon site. I really liked the fact that we were all pissed off in those photos. It delivered what Inksmith was all about, angry people on the internet venting :).

So where does the similarities lie you ask? As far as I can tell it’s the fact that some of the names attached to one project are now attached to another. So does this mean I’ve tarnished the credibility of the others on that list (since it was my idea)? Maybe and I guess they are the only ones I owe an apology to, because I didn’t deliver on my part of the bargain, so to everyone that was attached to the Inksmith project I apologise profusely. Let’s get something clear here, if I ask someone to be part of something I take their commitment seriously. I generally don’t like to waste ANYONE’S time as time for me is the most important commodity. So I genuinely feel bad about wasting those people’s time. We had some great discussions and it did prompt a lot of people on the internet to discuss the deal with being anonymous on the internet and using handles.

Why didn’t Inksmith take off? Because I didn’t have the energy to kick it off. 2006 was one of the toughest years on me from many many respects. In fact from May onwards I can definitely consider 2006 as one of the darkest times in my life from many angles. Which is actually reflected in my blog. What, you think that the dark motif was because I was joining in with the trend for darker sites at the time? No, Broken Kode is an extension of me and it reflects my mood in many cases. When my mood changes so to does the colours on my site, and the design itself in many respects.

So why didn’t I get Inksmith started? Honestly it came down to the amount of energy and enthusiasm I had to provide for the project, which after completing FOFR and Shuttle and 2 websites for clients and my on website and a bunch of illustrations I just didn’t have any more to give, until I was in Greece in October/November. At that point I had charged my batteries and I had decided that it was time for me to pull my finger out and build Inksmith all over again. For all the negative assholes that don’t believe me here’s the logo I created on the plane back to the UK:

So why did I stop that momentum? Simply put because the day I got back from the UK Chris had emailed me about Habari. In Habari I basically found another way to solve the problem that I wanted Inksmith to solve in the first place; the difference of course is that we’d have a central idea to gather around and that would be the software.

The community coming together around Habari is one I’m very proud to be a part of in the first instance. Final word to those that decide to put Inksmith in my face one more time, seriously try and do something constructive with your time, I know I am.

Forest was back in town for the weekend and we were catching up as I’ve not seen him since the summer. We’re shooting the shit and he asks me how my artwork and design work is going. Of which I had to answer with the truth, in reality it’s not. Oh yeah sure I’ve recently been playing around with Habari, but to be honest Habari is a hobby which I’m enjoying being a part of, but I wouldn’t say it’s stretching my artistic muscles. It’s definitely making me take a much more pragmatic approach to design and I’ve done this before but I know when my artistic muscles are being flexed and sadly I can’t really claim the last year to have provided me with any level of truly artistic expression and in talking with Forest I kind of inadvertently voiced the reason why.

I’ve heard in the past that there are two sides to the way the brain works (I could obviously be making this shit up so if you’ve got links whatever please do send them over) in that it’s operates and functions with practicality in mind, maths, engineering, science. And then there is the creative side of the brain. These two areas don’t cross over very often but when they do you get freaks of nature like myself who do engineering by day (so it’s all about calculations, making things work/fit) and by night I draw and I create, or at least that’s what I thought I could do easily.

The harsh reality of the situation however is that I’ve obviously FAILED in that respect (chalk another failure on my part, one of many in my life) What I’ve found to be the case however is that if I’m submerged in engineering, my other drawing energy and concentration seems to disappear. I guess much like many people I need to be in a particular frame of mind. The music that I’ll be listening to has to inspire me as well (I draw a lot better when I’ve actually got music I’m really into at that particular moment in time); my mind has to be a blank, and I have to have focus. Cutting my drawing based on pesky stuff like eating and sleeping is the bane of the entire exercise to be honest.

So what’s the solution you ask? Well now that I’ve ACTUALLY identified the problem (which I always knew but I’ve not properly voiced until now) it’s really up to me to MAKE the time for drawing and retrain myself to my current situation. Originally I thought I’d have trouble finding the time to do all these things. See it’s not a question of whether or not you have the time to do something (at least that’s how I see it), the harsh reality of a busy working life is that you’ll never find the time. It’s up to you to seriously make the time and it’s up to you to train your mind and schedule your time in such a way so as to accommodate those things that you want to do. My problem it would see is my psychological status and my willingness to tackle the creative avenue in front of me.

So it’s time to be pragmatic about things one more time and really put in the hours of building and creating once again. Hopefully that’ll manifest itself in several unfinished projects that have been laying around the place in the attempt of making them a reality again.

It’s been a truly exciting time for Habari on the design front (not that it’s not been exciting on the code front, but I can only really properly comment on all things design to be honest). Since the last time we talked, Michael has been a busy boy with absolutely everything under the sun. All these ideas have been filtering through the designs as we build towards a unified look for the administration panel.

Remember these mockups are just that mockups, we’re still meandering trying to sort things out, this is an open design process so things are going to change. Don’t think that what you see here is gospel and how it’s going to be, don’t be quoting me fekking Jakob in my face about usability and whatnot. These are the formation months, trust me we’re going through MANY MANY loops and discussions. So with that in mind let’s begin shall we.

The Installer

Stage One:

Final Stage:

We’re still playing around with loads of things here. The header and footer are still up for discussion but the main ideas are there. We’re definitely going for the easiest installer award with this release.

Create Page

Michael’s been pretty busy and he’s got his ideas regarding the media browser on ‘paper’. Once we’ve ironed out all the kinks and how it’s going to work I think it’ll be the most special media browser on any blogging platform.

We did have a great deal of interation of ideas between us on the logo. Work is still ongoing in this area and probably will be for a little while longer as we try and find ourselves the best fit for what the logo means to the community and how people will view us effectively.

Remember nothing is set, everything’s up for discussion. As always Spread the news!

Anna kept telling me to watch this series again and again. I do actually remember the TV spots for this series, which preceded the actual series being broadcast over here in the UK. I remember really thinking the idea was very intriguing however as you can imagine I completely missed it, since I’m honestly not very good at keeping to a schedule brought about by the TV box. It’s funny but I’ve watched more TV in the past couple of months than in the last few years, mainly because I can download and watch whenever I actually choose to watch them.

Anyway back to Prison Break; without a doubt one of the smartest and most gripping TV series ever made. I know bold statements but this is a very very different kettle of fish to all other great TV series of the past year or so (we’re talking Battlestar Galactica, Lost, Heroes, My Name is Earl etc). What makes this series so damn special? I guess part of the success in my eyes is it’s incredibly tight plotting.

The story centre around Michael Scofield (fantastic name, best one after McGyver) who orchestrates him being admitted into prison so that he can save his brother who’s on death row. Already the story resonates with me because it’s taken the prison story and flipped it in a direction I’m not used to. We’ve seen several ‘prison break’ type movies in the past (led of course by the exceptional Shawshank Redemption) but not exactly like this.

See Michael’s had a while to prepare for this. He’s put contingency after contingency after contingency. The really amazing thing is of course that absolutely EVERYTHING he’s planned gets a spanner in it at the end of every episode. The cliffhanger endings are pretty amazing and the tension is exceptionally well produced. There are several exceptional twists within the story and I think I counted one scheme where the acting was terrible (but that was from a supporting actor rather than the main cast).

Which leads me to the actors themselves. All the cast is exceptionally well chosen for their roles which is weird as I’ve not really seen (or can remember) seeing them in anything prior to this.

I love that the warden is actually a good guy. I think there was only a single moment in the entire first season where I thought he was a building up to being a bastard and I guess that’s another definite asset of this series, not following with specific stereotypes that I’ve become used to. Obviously the fact that the guy’s an engineer resonates with me a little bit (ok a lot) and it’s great to see how he gets himself out of one bad situation after another.

Ultimately however this series is about what one brother will do for the other one. The answer is a lot and those who have brothers understand this pretty well. Growing up you might want to kill each other or were constantly bickering about stuff, but ultimately after everything you knew that you couldn’t stay mad with each other for more than like 10 minutes. What impresses me the most about the story is when you finally are told the WHY. Why would Michael risk EVERYTHING he had, put himself through hell, enter prison to save his brother. Apart from the fact that it’s his brother, what would possess him to take matters in his own hands like this. The answer is basically the core reality of what brotherhood is all about. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone because I really loved the explanation and I think you’ll feel the same way.

This is the first (hopefully) weekly instalment of the comings and goings on in the Habari Design Community. As this was our first week ‘out’ it was obviously a pretty wild and exciting ride with an immense amount of interest from all people around the world. What’s fascinating to me is that the people at the table currently trying to shape the design aspect of Habari. We’ve got Michael and myself working on all things admin at the moment, with comments from the entire community. Bryan Veloso has joined the team and he’s going to be handling all the website related stuff (from main site to wiki design to whatever the hell else we can keep him busy with) and we have the truly talented Yoram who’s kindly offered to do the icons, so as far as I’m concerned we’re in pretty good shape regarding the graphical direction the project is going to have.

Logo

A great deal of work has been done in the logo department. However we're still not really decided on the direction we want to take as the current options on the table haven't been a unanimous 'HELL YES'. There are merits to all of them but I think with respect to the logo it's better to just wait for that one idea that jumps out at us and really makes us all smile rather than settling for a right here and right now solution. Here's a few examples of what are on the table:

Installer

A lot of work has gone into the installer as well. I'm not going to comment on the design of the installers, because that's out in the wild going through the motions.

We’re still hammering through these back and forth, but the idea is there, one click install, degradable JS that makes parts of the install appear as and when the previous section has been completed and verified.

Administration Panel

Very minor tweaks going on here, except of course the colours. The pink is displayed for when you hover over the log out button.

Publish

More work going on this part. We've been having a lot of discussions regarding the number of buttons we should have. The subtle addition to these mockups is the slider for the tags (think increasing/decreasing the tags on display).

Remember nothing is set, everything’s up for discussion. As always Spread the news!

It’s been one hell of a couple of days since we first talked about the Habari project. There’s been a slew of reaction to the news all over the internet (go to the pingback section of that post) and to be honest it’s far exceeded all expectations I could have had because I honestly don’t have any. See I wasn’t completely sure how everyone would react over the news and therefore I was preparing myself for a little bit of a fight, in so much that we would have to prove the meritts of the software before we got people actually wanting to join and help build the community.

This in turn got me thinking to what all this meant and so I’m writing this post for several reasons. A couple of them is to dispell any rumours, a few others is to point everyone in the right direction should they want any more information, while others is to address concerns I’ve heard from people over the last couple of days.

On Community

There's been a lot of speculation as to why we're doing this. I'm not going to speak for the others (because they're doing a pretty good job of it themselves to be honest) but I'll tell you why I'm doing this. I've been talking to (read: boring) many of my offline friends with just how cool this is going to be. The first thing that they ask me is "Why the hell are you doing this to yourself? Why are you working for free again? Why are you spending your free time doing this?" I can only answer by saying that it's incredible fun to be part of an online community of like minded people who are trying to make one of my favourite pastimes (ie blogging and tinkering with my website) a more enjoyable experience. I love being involved in open source projects and this is without a doubt one of the biggest things I've ever been involved with.

When I first started looking for an alternative to Movable Type I had two options. The first was WordPress the other was Textpattern. I chose WordPress for the community. That community however has changed. It’s core has shifted into something different. The thing is though I can’t really say that this is the community’s fault. This shift actually can be attributed to something else. The fact of the matter is that WordPress developement has stagnated as far as the .org user is concerned.

The only explanation I can give is that this is because the WordPress development shifted it’s attention. Shifted from the .org section to the .com section. I’m not going to condem the guys for doing this, in fact in most cases I understand them doing this. However this move and shift hasn’t gone unnoticed and obviously a lot of energy flying about the WordPress community has either gone into the ether, ignored or shrugged aside. All these thousands of people out there that have contributed in the past feel as though they have been forsaken. That could be part of the reason why a great number of people genuinely got excited about the prospect of a new system, written from the ground up that might address questions. It’s all about the community. It’s all about the people that you interact with and that help you along your way.

What you think the latest release of ‘features’ on WordPress.org is a coincidence. It’s obvious (to me at least and this feature could have been in development for months, in which case I apologise) that this is a knee-jerk reaction to a situation that obviously has made them sit up and think about the situation. It’s not every day that several prominent developers (Robert, Owen, Michael), at the very least in the past otherwise they would not be in the credit box on wordpress.org, decide to leave and start something on their own; it’s a sign that something isn’t exactly right in the community. My absolute favourite one however is this one (I only saw this because it was lying in my referrer log), so yeah go and hammer that link and lets get it up there at the top :) lol.

So you're aiming to kill WordPress?

Don't be silly. Nobody is trying to kill WP. We're not aiming to make software that is better than WordPress, we're trying to make software that is better than ALL blogging software out there. Lets be clear about this there are quite a large number of open source projects that allow you to do essentially the same thing. Their degree of complication obviously varies, however the fact remains that there are many alternatives. As it stands it's considered that WordPress is the best alternative that's available on the market. So it's obvious that people would think that we are in fact trying to create something that out does WP. Also many of us have come from a WordPress user base, however that doesn't mean other people from other backgrounds cannot join the fun. But would we really be getting involved and doing something if we didn't feel like there was a void to be filled? Room for one more solution that offered an alternative way of doing things? We're ultimately here because we feel that we can contribute back and put our efforts into something that can aid people and can provide a fun platform to share their thoughts, photos and media.

We don't even have a developer's pre-release. The reason it was announced in any fashion was because one of the core developers moved his site over and was the first person to actively use the code for his site. That's a MAJOR success, one that deserved to be celebrated. In a weird twist of fate, outing slightly earlier than anticipated was actually an incredible great thing. Why? Because people that were on the fringes, thinking that this was just all wishful thinking might actually hold some legs. As such this little buzz has gotten several people wanting to contribute, and here's one reason why:

Habari is a fresh start. We’re all in the unique position that we’ve been blogging for several years now. We’ve all had our share of experiences with open source and we’ve all seen several different packages in our time. We’re at the stage now that if we had a fresh start we’d do things slightly differently and hopefully better. And that’s what we’re aiming to do.

Habari Contribution Model

I guess that might be the greatest draw to the Habari project. We're pretty open for people who want to contribute to the project, in fact the way that this project has been set up, it's ideal for people wanting to contribute as it's got a completely different structure in it's development, in that it's a meritocracy. It's a great way to make sure that the software comes first and that there is no one person who veto's everything or has final say in everything.

So were do we go from here? Well one of the things that I shall be doing as I'm coordinating the designers on this team is to give a recap every Sunday of this week's activities on the design front. What we finished off and what we've got to look forward towards. I'll be including pics and so everyone is always welcome to chime in and add their two cents to the design either here or in the dev mailing list.

Spread the news!

Well Chris broke the news about, Habari, a new open source blogging CMS platform. While he didn’t want feel it correct to mention in the post who was involved, I’m going to step forward and put my hand up as the designated pixel pushing monkey of this motley crew.

What I find amusing is that as this news was released by Chris, I read this post about how any new blogging software would not stand a chance because of WordPress. Man I love a fucking challenge. I mean reading that post you’d think we’d be fools to even consider making a WordPress alternative. I guess all I can say to that is: Colour us DAMN foolish.

History Lesson

Back in November Chris approached a few of us to see who would be up for helping design for the new project he was working on. His timing couldn't have been better to be honest with you. See I had a MASSIVE itch that just needed to be scratched. I had definitely not said everything that needed to be said about blogging administration panels, especially since the last one I was actively involved with didn't exactly go exactly the way it should have.

I felt pretty burnt the last time round to be honest, so much so that I really thought it was best for me to steer well clear of any open source involvement in the future. However like I said in that post the most important thing that I got out of the online experience was the collaboration with the guys. If it was anyone else asking me to do something apart from Michael, Joen and Chris I’d have probably declined there and then. I didn’t join the team because I didn’t have anything better to do (as it will become clear in the coming months), but alas because I really want to create something that I can be proud to have been involved with and that I will find a joy to use. Something that I can contribute towards and that others can contribute towards as well in an open fashion.

So when Chris came forward I was all too happy to say yes. Considering that I had actually contacted another developer (I’m not going to mention him by name but needless to say he was also having a similar itch which says a lot about how things stand in the current open source blogging world) about starting our own blogging CMS, it was interesting that others around me felt the need for an alternative as well.

Shuttle vs Habari

The great thing about the Habari project is the fact that it's a clean slate. Imagine starting on the ground floor. There were no presidencies, no set stringent codebase that couldn't be altered, no existing userbase that might be confused and the list goes on. This is a decidedly different beast than Shuttle.

Those who don’t learn from the past end up repeating the mistakes again and again. So my approach to the graphical development of Habari is slightly different. Simply put, I’m going to be as transparent about the design process as you can imagine. I’ve seen several times in the past couple of months on the project, that through being open about the design I’ve been able to seriously move it forward in ways that I very well might not have considered. Ideas are what will make things move forward. At the same time it’s important that one person takes the bull by the horns and really goes to town on the design. Others should jump in with as many suggestions as possible, all the time because that’s how the innovation will continue and the project will not stagnate.

The Design

I will be going into a lot more detail in future posts regarding all the design decisions and what everything does and how it all fits together, so be patient, it'll all pay off in the long run I promise. As we've only recently kind of decided about colours (although knowing me I will probably tweak them, but I'm trying to be very good about this and sticking with this colour scheme), posting this will give people a feel of the quality of final product we're going for (and I'm not going to even talk about the code, the others are more than capable of that).

The following jpg is but a mockup, however Chris has implemented a fair chunk of this believe it or not (with probably like a 2 week old mock up), I’m telling you the man is a machine that will not be stopped. His dedication has forced me to make sure that I bring my very best to the table. It’s a bit of pressure that I’m actually relishing. Keeps me honest about things.

Final Thoughts

Easily one of the coolest gadgets I got this year was the Blackberry Pearl (or 8100 model). I’ve been playing with it for like a day now and I know it’s going to be something really special to use for a good long while. Although it’s a nice site, the images really don’t do it much justice. It’s honestly a thing of beauty in design if you have it infront of you. It’s only slightly larger than my previous Ericsson and packs a serious punch with respect to the number of features it’s got in it.

The only annoying thing I found was the flap you put the SIM card in doesn’t stay set, but opens until you put the battery in there. Minor annoyance but it’s a real shame as this could have scored some more points of rock solid construction. Another thing that is really starting to PISS me off, is the fact that none of these phone manufacturers have clocked onto the fact that it would be nice to have a normal earphone jack as opposed to some piece of shit they’ve concocted for you to plug in your earphones.

The Future was Orange

What’s interesting is that I was able to get the phone and a whole new package that suits me down to a T while paying less. The issue with a lot of these packages that many operators provide is that they’re honestly not tailored very well for the average user. They either give you an immense amount of time in “off-peak” hours that are not always useful, so you end up not using all of them, or they give you too little minutes during normal times. The good thing however is that after a year and a bit of using my phone regularly I’ve got enough bills to know exactly how much a use and of what. No need to guess these things (as I’ve had to in the past).

Enter the T

hmm got to check how much that costs on the internet to see if it's cheaper.

Well now it’s just a few clicks to check the net there and then.

Opera Mini

Seems that Opera is definitely the little browser that could. Seems that this little browser is a hit on the Nintendo market. I’ve got to say that Opera Mini (opera for mobile devices) is MILES better than the standard BlackBerry browser. For a start they’ve cut away a lot of the clutter that the BB browser has when the menu is pressed. People on that size of screen don’t want to scroll FOREVER. We want something quick and to the point. Sure the browser is being updated pretty regularly as far as I can tell. It’s got RSS integration which is essential for all mobile devices as far as I’m concerned.

The Home page is EXACTLY what you want to see when you first log into the browser. Oh sure I’m as self obsessed as the next guy, but having BK as my home page on my BB seems a bit of a waste of space, although it’s definitely interesting to see how the site renders on a mobile phone (I’ll be sorting out a seperate mobile spreadsheet in the not too distant future).

The Application Opera Mini has attempted to access the network. Would you like to allow this?

If anyone’s got a way of stopping this fekking annoying message coming up everytime Opera is used please, pretty please with a cherry on top drop something in the comments and I’ll update this post accordingly.

For those in the T-mobile camp wondering how to sort this out onto your Pearl, here’s the steps I took:

1. From your Pearl go to http://mini.opera.com and follow the instructions.

<li><p>Chance are after you've tried to connect it'll fail on your ass (it did on mine). Thankfully Opera have already forseen this problem and posted <a href="http://www.operamini.com/help/connect/?provider=T-Mobile&region=UK">this page</a>. Note that this is for the UK market, although as you can see they've sorted everyone out for the rest of the world as well.</p></li>

<li><p>Go to Options > Advanced Options > TCP and then put the information you got from that page.

Turn off, remove battery, turn on and it should all work.

As I continue my review of 2006, go read part 1 if you want to find out my thoughts on The best of the Net 2006, I’m turning my attention to movies. Interestingly I think this year has been one of the worst years for movies in a really long time. That isn’t to say that I haven’t enjoyed a good number of movies this year, it’s just that I found less time for movies this year, which I can probably attribute to the lack of quality flicks being shown this year.

Cinema Movies

1. The Prestige

2. Fearless

3. Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest

4. Cars

5. X-men 3: Last Stand

6. V for Vendetta

7. Superman Returns

8. The Proposition

9. The Da Vinci Code

10. Children of Men

11. Pan's Labyrinth

Aeroplane Movies

1. Clerks II

2. You, Me and Dupree

3. Pink Panther

4. Last Holiday

Best Movie of 2006

Most disappointing movie of 2006 for me personally was X-men 3. Seriously they were on auto-pilot for that movie. Another minor disappointment for me was Superman Returns. Not because it was a bad movie, but rather because it wasn’t as great as I actually really wanted it to be.

To be Continued...

1. Silent Hill

2. Lady in the Water

3. Volver

4. The Departed

5. Babel

6. Casino Royale

7. Mission Impossible III

8. An Inconvenient Truth

9. Nacho Libre

However the PRUNE of all prunes surely has to go to Rocky Balboa (and that’s considering some of the stinkers I’ve seen this year, I mean it’s got Last Holiday for fuck’s sake). I mean seriously what the hell were they thinking when they got round and signed all the contracts for this? It’s one of the most ridiculous concepts I’ve ever heard and it’s really strange that Hollywood is so lame that it has to create another sequel. They should have stopped after 2 and called it a night. Hell I might even stomach 4, but seriously Rocky 6? I haven’t even seen this and sure as hell am not going to bother wasting my time with it. What next Die Hard 4? Oh shit yeah they’re going to be making that.

I started writing a best of 2006 about a week ago, however I’ve had to break that down into several posts because it got far too large and I didn’t feel that I would be doing each topic justice, if I bulked all of them into one post. So for the first topic of conversation I’ll talk about the best of the Net for 2006. This is mainly about design on the net, internet applications, websites that caught my attention on the net for one reason or another. So without further adieu here’s the Squeaky Kode Trophies for the year of 2006.

Addictive Site of the Year

Best Advert of 2006

Best Designed Site of the Year

Best Internet Application

It’s taken me a long while but I finally bit the Flickr bug as well and got myself an pro account as well. I’ve got to say that I don’t use it as much as I should do but that will be changing in the not to distant future.

For my feed reading I’ve jumped on the Newsgator bandwagon. I’ve got a lot to write about with respect to FOFRedux and will hopefully go to using that application in the not too distant future sometime next year, but in the meanwhile I’ve found the Newsgator service to be exactly what I was looking for.

So I guess it’s not so much that I had a specific internet application, but rather the fact that I actually decided to use several of the plethora of applications out there for use in the first place.

Best Internet Related Software

Best Firefox Plugin

Blogging Networks Politics

If you think I’ve missed something pretty fundamental just drop a comment and I’ll be sure to add it into the list or create a whole new category for it.

Over a month ago I was on the hunt for a laptop. In my quest for a small laptop I actually looked at the Fujitsu-Seimens model and the Sony Vaio, and hell I even looked into getting myself an ibook or whatever it is they call themselves nowadays (the cheaper kind not the medal ones). Alas none of them really floated my boat, because they were either too thick, or too heavy. I wanted something far more portable than any of those models could provide me with.

In the end I settled on a Toshiba R100. I got this particular model for a couple of reasons. The first was because I’d actually seen the model in question as all the directors in the company got these things as standard issue earlier this year. The beauty of these particular laptops are that due to the fact that they don’t have a CD player makes them incredible light and super small.

As you can imagine, the standards Windows install lasted a total of like 5 hours on my machine as I quickly found a way to install dapper drake straight away. Once I’d done that I decided that it would be a good idea to try installing beryl on there, bad idea. For all those thinking that you can get all the funky 3D effects on this machine, you can’t. The computer has a Trident graphics card, and as such this extra layer it would seem is not possible. You could try but what happened with me is that it basically screwed up Sudo for me and things were not installing and a whole slew of other rubbish came of it. So word to the wise just avoid it on this machine.

I’m writing my findings down here in the hopes of a couple of things. I can’t be the only person to have Ubuntu installed on this machine, or even the only one that wants to have Ubuntu installed on this machine, so I’ll going to chronicle my findings here and fill it up as a resource for other helpless souls that are tearing their hair out as well, and hopefully I might get some answers to some of the bugs that can be found on this machine.

Installing Dapper Drake

Installing Edgy Eft

The problem is that Vesa doesn’t work, and the trident driver is just not good enough. There’s a bit of a bug involved here that I don’t know what the deal is. When you log in you’ll only see a quarter of the desktop. You’ve got to CTRL-ALT-F1 to restart xorg quickly, log back in and it’s all working nicely. Fekking annoying bug if you ask me. So I reported the bug on Launchpad, and someone got back to me less than 24hours later. Still hoping for a resolution to this, but it’s great to have someone get back to me directly and so quickly to try and solve my issue.

The next problem I had was in the keyboard (in fact I still have this problem, which is a real pain in the ass to be honest. Basically, when I log in, the keyboard letters are recognised, however the rest of the keyboard, and I’m talking about the symbols buttons, come up with some utter giberish. Selecting another generic keyboard solves the problem. If anyone has got a solution to this stupid bug I’d really be grateful (once again I’ve logged a report in as well about this).

So is Edgy worth it. It’s a more polished graphically at least distribution to Dapper. The login screen isn’t as scary as Dapper. The icons have been polished and look a lot more professional to be honest. Things like he new help icon and the new login screen are all great little additions that basically make the package look more professional. The new chocolate background is also pretty cool. I am glad that they didn’t go for the community created screenshots that we previewed. I’m with Mark Shuttleworth on this particular subject. It just wasn’t right.

One thing I have noticed (and maybe that’s because the harddisc is smaller and less complicated than on my desktop machine,) but Nautalis is actually faster on this install. It’s changed ever so slightly with the latest addition of gnome.

Applications

XFCE I thought I’d try another windows manager instead of gnome. XFCE was the obvious one. I’ve got to say that while it does seem lighter, it’s definitely not as polished as gnome. There are certain things in it that really do need some work. Some pretty fundamental things. I’ll definitely have a look at it in a few months/years to come, but for the moment I think it’s got a way before it’s as solid as gnome.

Thunar One of the great additions however is Thunar, which I think is a fantastic little application, very light and gets me to where I want to be straight away. I’m using a completely different icon to be honest, mainly because I love the screen with the stars, after all I am attracted to the stars.

Abiword Another great little find is Abiword. It’s got a pretty rubbish splash screen, but it is supremely lightweight Word replacement. It looks exactly like word, only slightly more slimmed down. For the type of documentation I require however it’s absolutely brilliant. So much so that I’m thinking about making it my default word processing tool of choice on my desktop machine as well. Hopefully the same developers can have a look at making an Excel alternative as well using the same ideologies, it just works really well and has got a very clean user interface.

Wifi

One of the main reasons why I’m completely quiet at the moment is mainly due to the fact that I’m working on this behmouth of a building, Los Faros De Panama. It’s by far the largest project I’ve been involved with as it 3 towers (central tower clocking in at around 84 floors) and a podium level of 6 floors. Architects are Chapman Taylor, while we’re doing everything else (structure, mechanical, electrical, public health, fire, vertical transport and the list goes on) It’s been an interesting challenge getting to grips with the American

Interesting little bit on the Panama Investor Blog as well, regarding the size of this project. It’s going to be a damn long week, I can tell you that much.

In a time when I should really be blogging MUCH more often (as I’m going through some pretty tough and generally strange times right now) is actually the time when I felt the need to stay away from my blog and the online world in general. I’ve not really been able to pinpoint the reason behind this as my website has always been something of a release for me. It’s something that I use to express what’s on my mind and purge my mind.

The harsh reality of the situation is that the weblog is often times not the perfect or ideal solution for venting and for getting things off your chest. The reasons are simple. You end up sounding like some whiny git, or you upset people in your real life that might take offence with what you’ve written. So in effect over the past couple of weeks I’ve just kept silent because of that.

As if that would be enough, it’s not. I can’t really talk about my personal life as much as I’d like to. I’m a very open person, so most (if not all) of my thoughts are written on my face, so my site should really be a reflection of that right? Wrong. I can’t really talk about soo many things that I would like to get off my chest because these words are then let out into the wild. Left into the cyber realm far away from my control. I can’t realistically hide my writing from some people. It’s like some people I’d love for them to be able to read things that I write while others I’d like to filter that sort of thing out. Or does it really matter? That’s what’s been going on in my head these past few weeks and to be honest it’s not until I actually sat down and started writing these things down did I realise what was annoying me, what was keeping me away.

In a way I guess blogging is less (to me at least) about what it was in the beginning. At first it was all about expression. You did your thing and got on with it, because NO ONE was watching us in the beginning. Nobody really cared about what these guys did in the fringes of the internet. We had a certain amount of anonymity.

I’m currently at a crossroads. This is a crossroads that will effect my online presence, as this week I was seriously considering packing in the pipe dreams of graphic novels, artwork, design, graphics and the lot and just concentrating on engineering. I know it’s fucking strange to hear and it seems as though I’ve given up after a fashion.

Then yesterday I remembered something. It’s a feeling only artists can feel. Maybe designers as well, but artists more so, because they’re doing all the lifting. It’s about the feeling of completing the piece of artwork in front of you. You start off with a blank piece of paper, with only a vision, a clear idea of what the final drawing will look like once you’ve completed it. Once you’ve laid the last bit of ink, or completed the paint and it’s dried, that feeling lasts only a little while; the problem is that engineering can NEVER replicate that feeling, no matter how much I decide to give it time and energy and effort.

So am I packing it in? Probably not just yet, but I definitely needed to have this heart to heart to get things off my chest, and I guess that’s what it’s all about.

The Prestige, the new Christopher Nolan movie is like getting Christmas early. I mean how could the following ingredients possibly disappoint. You get Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Scarlett Johansson, Michael Caine, David Bowie all in one movie, set in turn of the century London, revolving around magicians and the ultimate magic trick.

Seeing as how becoming a magician was one of my first dreams of what I wanted to become when I was older, you can imagine how giddy I felt watching this movie. It wasn’t slightly good, it was bloody good. Watching the movie there was this sense of urgency, tricks and double tricks, twists and turns. You always were thinking how is that trick done, how do they do it, what’s the deal with it all.

Bale is awesome as he’s definitely beginning to take over as one of the premier actors you go for when you need a solid performance. Michael Caine is doing a spectacular job as always. In fact with regards to the acting (and casting for that matter), everything was completely spot on.

One of the first things you find out about the movie is why it’s called the Prestige. I’m not going to ruin it (unless you’re really into magicians, then you probably already know, I didn’t), as I wouldn’t be able to it the same justice as Michael Caine does in the first few minutes of the movie. The story centres around two rival magicians who go through life trying to achieve greatness. As you can imagine with a movie coming from the Nolan brothers we’re going to be dealing with a non-linear timeline with many twists and turns (I mean come on, what else would you expect from those that gave you Memento, one of the all-time classics of modern cinema.

Nolan has definitely routed himself as one of my favourite directors as he’s currently three for three in my book. He’s definitely taken over from David Fincher who has disappeared into the ether of late (wasn’t Panic Room the last Fincher movie?).

Abracadabra.

I got back from Greece on Sunday in a pretty mixed way. I’m glad that I didn’t have a repeat of previous experiences in airports however even though the flight was delayed by an hour it was worth it simply for the view coming into London. Sunday was the 5th of November, as ‘V’ from V from Vendetta warns us:

"Remember, remember the 5th of November"

I’ve got to say I’ve never seen London in the same way. It was a completely clear sky, and the entire city was lit up. Down below as far as the eye could see were firework going off in every single location all around the city. It was pretty spectacular as I hadn’t really appreciated just how large this city actually is; I tend not to bother looking out into the distance as I approach. So here’s a word to the wise, if in the future, you get the opporunity to fly into London in the evening on the 5th of November, and you know it on good authority that it’s going to be a clear night sky, definitely book that ticket.

It’s late. What’s definitely becoming endemic of my life in general (being late with projects), Broken Kode | Season One is roughly 8 months late. This book was meant to have been completed and at the printers end of February so that I could put it forward for the Blooker prize. Wasn’t for the prize to be honest, but so that I could at least adhere to a deadline and get the book finished. I remember pressuring Michael to sort out the introduction and then I subsequently missed the deadline (sorry Mike); who knows maybe I’ll put it forward for this year’s Blooker prize (although I seriously doubt it would stand much of a chance).

The first paper copy of the book sat on my desk (next to my mouse) for the past 6 months and hadn’t moved. It just sat there as a constant reminder to me that I had invest hundreds of hours in compiling and putting together that it wasn’t complete. I took it with me to America and completed reading it and annotating it on the plane there but couldn’t find the energy to sit down and correct everything.

If I get nothing else out of this vacation (which I actually have) I’ll know that I completed this book.

I'm happy to report that the copy has been sent to Lulu and is ready to be ordered.

The standard version is in glorious black and white, however I’ve included a colour version of the book as well for myself and to see what the colour printing of Lulu is like, as I intend to compile a design and illustration book in the not too distant future (yeah I know, but thankfully that’ll only be illustrations and a little commentary here and there). For all intents and purposes that’s all the tweaking I’ll be doing. I’ve gone through the original book soo many times, I’ve still got that feeling that I’ve missed something; maybe that’s because I’m soo close to this book that I feel as though I’m never going to really finish the book and that there’s always something to do.

The original book came in at over 285 pages long. After sitting down and thinking about it, I felt that a lot of the posts really didn’t deserve a whole page dedicated to them. So part of the exercise was to cut down the number of pages. The current page count is a more manageable 195 pages.

I’ll be providing a decent page for the book and sorting out my Lulu store front as well, until then the dead tree version provides a little bang for your buck, as it’s got the following goodies:

1. Introduction by Michael Heilemann
2. 12 Illustrations (created during that year) which form the month covers
3. Commentary for most of the posts
4. Sketchbook material
5. Afterword

As this is one big experiment, I’m going to write down some of my reasoning behind the layout and design of the book itself and other things I’ve learnt about the Lulu process. Hopefully these might enlighten those brave souls that are considering jumping into the book based on blog field.

One post equals one page

So here’s a layout of the pages themselves (click on the image for an expanded view). Now I’ve decided to put one blog post on every page. This allows you enough room to actually include a number of things, including the categories, the dates and other good stuff like commentary for the actual posts themselves.

All Posts?

Comments or no comments?

Extras?

Summary

For my latest redesign (and on the other sites and programmes I’m working on) I’ve structured the CSS file somewhat differently. Rather than having what has become CSS convention of having every element of each class, id or whatever on a separate line:

[css]h1{ padding: 0 0 35px 0; margin: 0 0 25px 0; font-size: 2.0em}[/css]

I’ve instead decided to put everything onto one line: [css]h1{ padding: 0; margin: 0 0 25px 0; font-size: 2.0em}[/css]

What does this do you ask? The single most important thing in a CSS file, it makes it manageable. It makes it easy for me to actually edit the damn thing a few months down the line, in a quick and easy way. Rather than scrolling down 500 lines of code, I’m scrolling down 150 lines. The main structure for me is done in programmes like Bluefish or CSSed, however a lot of the editing and tweaking is done within Firefox, so I need to have the easy for scrolling down quickly.

The added bonus of this method is that it reduces the size of my file at the same time. I honestly started thinking why the hell I didn’t do this earlier as it just makes oh so much more sense to condense the file.

I’ve been meaning to talk about the latest season of Battlestar Galactica since it began airing 3 weeks ago now. For all those who don’t know what I’m talking about, go here and read (which reminds me I really should go back to my old posts and format them accordingly, how embarrassing). Without a shadow of a doubt the great TV show that is currently on the air. Groundbreaking in many ways and essentially just a damn good story.

Matt beat me to the punch with his review on the latest Battlestar Galactica episode (season 3, episode 4) Exodus Part 2, but it most definitely was a complete rocket (no pun intended). As of right now I’m going to get into details so PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE with a cherry on top, go somewhere else because I’m going to be throwing SPOILERS. You’ve been warned.

So what did I like about this episode? So many great moments to think about. I absolutely loved the scene with the Galactica jumping into the atmosphere and launching the Raptors; classic scene, the flames the idea itself and a flawless execution.

Gaeta is a great little character. If there was one person that I think would be me on that show it would be Gaeta, except I would have definitely pulled that god damn trigger. In any case I’m still holding that Baltar is a fraking Cylon, based on the completely dodgy way in which he escaped his ‘death’ in the pilot. Everything blows up and he’s hiding behind Number 6’s skinny (and incredibly lovely legs). Bollocks the man is a Cylon.

The scenes with Tigh and Ellen were brilliant. I think Saul is a complete fuck up however he’s been put in a pretty bad position time and time again. Most people would have cracked under the pressure. He kind of has, however at the same time he keeps fighting, even though he probably wishes he would die. Listening to Ellen give her final goodbye was just great. Here you had a woman that obviously would do anything for you, and has had to. This is war and in war you do ugly, terrible things, in order to survive. I don’t think Ellen was evil, more like completely stupid and misguided, but she loved her husband, after a fashion.

The Pegasus coming to the rescue was completely predictable and I was wondering when they were going to get rid of that ship. There can be only one Battlestar, although Bill’s now back to being a Commander rather than an Admiral, which is a shame, I really liked that growth of character.

Speaking of growth in character, that is actually one of the most important aspects of this little jump the writers have put into this particular season. All these character are now even more fucked up and damaged than what they were before the invasion. Now the inter-relationship politics are even more intense, however we have no idea what caused this rift. What happened in that one year. I guess we can expect to find many of these questions answered in the coming weeks. I’m going to try and do this analysis on a regular basis.

Also for some reason, listening to the podcasts, while I do like the fact that the team is actually doing these, some of the magic is actually taken away from the show by them talking about their practical consideration, room and the cost of an episode. I dunno, I guess the show really does suspend my disbelief that I don’t want anything to bring it back.

I’m currently in Greece for a full 2 weeks. I’ve been looking forward to this break for well over a month now, hell I’ve been looking forward to this break for at least 3 months. I didn’t go anywhere during the summer period, which was probably the worst thing to do for my psyche to be honest. The summer was a very dark time for me with very little bright spots which was clearly reflected in my mood and how I dealt with those around me. Being a traditionally pretty patient person, I noticed myself getting more irate with things and situations that I would normally brush off, or at least see the funny side. Hasn’t been the case for at least 3 months now.

I guess I can attribute this to the situation in Lebanon which seriously hit me very hard. I can probably attribute it to work which has been very far from enjoyable these last few months, or I can attribute it to unfinished business from several areas that kept me down (my list of unfinished projects is pretty extensive). Needless to say, I need a break and a break I shall have. However I’m never happy until I’ve got things off my plate and I’ve been very good at not putting anything new on my plate but actually finishing those projects that I had opened/started/committed to first, after all I’m a finisher, not just an instigator.

Since it’s good to have a list I think I’ll make this list to remind myself what I have to look forward to in getting these monkeys off my back:

Finish the Splash Panel Redesign.

Stathi's and Priya's Websites.

Broken Kode Season One

Broken Kode Prints

Chameleon Theme

Also on a completely different note, I really need to get myself a laptop (any recommendations for small dinky laptops, like the Fujitsu Lifebook or a Vaio would be welcome) as I’m currently using my dad’s windowz install using an ADSL connection that might be a little difficult to sort out on Ubuntu and it’s seriously painful to get anything done (which isn’t helped by the fact that it’s a shitty CRT screen that’s got a tinge of purple going through,…nice), the ‘Kode has never looked this bad.

In constructing a building the foundations are the first things that go in. Much in that vein, I’ve decided to approach (and name), every iteration of Broken Kode after the construction of a building. These are then followed on by the superstructure (the stuff that sits above the ground level), and once everything is there, the cladding and services (ventilation, electricity, water) come in.

Back in May when I updated the site, I called it Foundations. I eluded at the time that the reasons behind this name was because I was effectively taking a step back and start taking things in a simple manner. Build the site up at my own pace. No real rush in getting anywhere, just proper steps into crafting a site that I would be happy with. In order to do that I had to make sure that the foundations (see, there was a reason for that name) I lay were rock solid, thus making my life in updating the site less of a chore that it traditionally is.

Inspiration is a funny thing, in that you don’t know when and where it’s going to come down. Arguably the worst period for me in the past year was when this itch decided it had to be scratched. I actually started the mockups on this site before I even switched over to Ubuntu, as I had begun the mockup design in Photoshop. When I moved over to Ubuntu, I started using Inkscape as my first method of tackling layout and design for websites and have found it an utter joy to use.

Structure

The first and most significant change that can be seen in this design is the rigid grid layout that I’ve adopted. Effectively the only page that’s had a proper makeover is the index page. The post page also got a very slight change (but that was implementing ideas that I had for the previous incarnation of the site but was too lazy to get on and implement it all).

One of the many criticisms I get from friends regarding the old incarnations of the site is the fact that there is far too much text on the page. Not enough explanation. I guess the designs really didn’t provide all the information required. I can definitely vouch for the fact that a lot of what I’ve done/have been involved with is hidden under the wayside and I felt it was pretty important to get those elements on the page and shown in a proper light. It’s been very varied, but I will say that a great deal of inspiration was derived from the Guardian newspaper I have been reading this newspaper on and off since it got it’s face lift earlier this year. It’s got a crisp clean design which is what I was intending to get in there as well.

Where to next Mr.Jones?

Seriously IE is a lame animal, and the quicker someone puts it out of it’s misery the better we’ll all be. It’s the only humaine thing to do to be honest. It’s a waste of my time (of which I don’t have all that much at the moment to give to clean it up).

The site looks manageable after a fashion and I’ll be sure to clean it up to pick up the minor elements that are still showing up. I do need to sort out the additional pages (as I only really concentrated on the main pages) but that’ll no doubt get sorted out once the dust settles in the next couple of weeks.

So what’s next you ask? I’ve got another 3 website that I’ll be sorting out over the next month or so, and then I’m taking a complete step AWAY from web designing, for anyone, in any capacity. I will finish off my obligations however once that’s done you won’t even be able to afford my services in that department, because they won’t be for sale. I’m going to be concentrating on my artwork fully and my writing. I think it’s time I buckled down and did what I first set out to do with this site.

Following on from Part 1 of this series of posts on Ubuntu, I’m going to talk about Ubuntu and Linux’s most POWERFUL concept. Installing software through repositories. The way I understand it is that these are databases of all the latest stable software that has been tried and tested to work with Ubuntu. The software goes through several checks and something called REVU, comments are passed back and forth regarding how to make the package better before it’s committed to the repository. This means several things to the end user, however I’m going to concentrate on two:

<li>You get notified of any updates to any software that is running on your machine that is part of these repositories, so you're always up to date with the latest software (that's all software, from graphical applications to files you don't really care about or know what they actually do). It's a cute little orange and white star icon that pops out at you informing you to update your system.</li>

<li>You have a massive database to search for applications that will allow you to get the tasks you want to get done at your finger tips, with the click of a button.</li></ol>

Synaptic Package Manager

In the past when I would want to do something with my computer, I'd search the Internet for some software that would allow me to do something. Traditionally there were the proprietary applications and then there was the less capable but free applications available. Every once in a while you'd stumble on some open source software that would really excel itself. Needless to say I used to spend a lot of time searching the net for applications that might fit the bill of what it was I was looking for. Ubuntu takes care of the searching for me, through the Synaptic Package Manager (pictured below). (For those newbies looking for this, just go to System > administration > Synaptic Package Manager)

You can search for applications either by category, or if you know what it’s called by name. So if you want some software that burns DVDs, or a bit torrent client then search through key words. You’d be surprised just how many applications are out there that can do all sorts of things you’d be finding if not difficult, at the very least expensive and worse frustrating on a windows machine. This little application and thought process IMHO should be the impetus of all Linux discussions. We’re dealing with THOUSANDS of developers all over the world contributing to thousands of programmes to help make YOUR (and my) computing experience easier and more enjoyable to undertake.

The issue of course is that you might need to add more repositories in order to get the very latest software which might not be verified from the Ubuntu team. This is the beauty of open source. It’s not like traditional proprietary software. There really is no need for open source to make massive leaps and bounds in one go (the traditional method employed by software houses to make you buy the upgrade), things are enhanced and augmented with time, step by step. You can even build your own repository list.

Easyubuntu

Easyubuntu should be a link on the Ubuntu desktop once you've installed the full thing. Why? Because it's got all the software that isn't covered by the GPL license that Ubuntu can't ship with or whatever the legalities of the whole thing actually is (they could go down the Novell route and offer it as an option in the install stage, which would save a lot of people a lot of time, agro and hassle). Here's a list of all the software that can be installed from running this little collection of applications. So all your drivers, Flash 7 (Adobe hasn't released 8 for Linux, however they're committed to 9 apparently), Java and the list goes on.

Automatix

I've only used Automatix for a couple of things, however the list of software that it will install is very impressive. It's not as polished an interface as Synaptic to be honest as it does all sorts of ugly things (to someone who's used to the standard Ubuntu dialogue boxes) but that shouldn't stop you from using the application itself. I've heard rumblings within the Ubuntu Community where some people have expressed not liking using this system. I'm not sure why not to be honest (as in I genuinely don't have a clue so any thoughts would be appreciated).

Resources for starting out on Ubuntu and Installing Ubuntu

Generally speaking, due in part to the architecture, and the other being that it is the most used Distro, most software runs on Ubuntu, it's just sometimes a hassle, if in case it's not found in the above methods. In that case then you've got a couple of options. .deb files (since Ubuntu is a Debian fork) has got these packages which act effectively like .exe files. Double click and install away. There are also others who have done autopackagers as well. Again these act like .exe files, so you double click and install. I'm going to admit I've tried to actually install software from the source code, however EVERY time I've tried, I've failed, and I've gone back and tried to find an alternative solution from the above. However if you are thinking about doing this here's a couple of good links to refer to:
1. Install Anything on Ubuntu
2. Ubuntu Wiki
3. Ubuntu Forums

So there you have it, methods of how to install applications on Ubuntu, there’s more one way to skin a cat and in many ways a lot simpler and more open than windows in that there is generally an open source application for everything. Some are more mature than others and that’s what I’ll be talking about in the next posts on the subject. The next topic I tackle will be about applications that provide Sound.

I’ve created a brand you category on the Kode. It’s called ‘Funk You Mr.Architect’. Before I get into what I’ll be posting about in the category I’ll put a small disclaimer that I like architects as people. In fact I live with one, so I’m not a professionalist.

I’m going to talk about the industry I work in, since I look around the blogosphere and there is little going on about this here industry. There are not enough blogs talking about architecture, engineering and everything inbetween. This is the industry that builds the buildings you live in, the transportation you depend on (from roads to train stations to airports), the schools and universities you learn in and the supermarkets and shopping centres you buy your stuff from. Someone has to sit there for YEARS to design these things, then someone else has to come along and build the bloody things while trying hard to keep with the design vision and intent.

Part of the reason for me blogging about this is to actual build awareness. One of the most frustrating things I’ve ever heard is a building described as a so-and-so architects' building. Lets get one thing very clear, a building or construction job is not ‘an architects’. The architect plays a role in a team that can comprise between 100 people and 5000 people. Each one of these people has the RIGHT to claim it as their project as well. However the way that the media and industry has been chiselled people seem to have forgotten this little fact, or don’t care to say it. I’m going to be going on the attack and will no doubt upset people but fuck it someone has to say something.

Hopefully I’m going to tell you what the architect’s role actually entails and what the other 5000 people do as well. If anything it’ll be educational. So for the first post we’ll just set up the major players for you to mull on.

1. Client
2. Project Manager
3. Quantity Surveyor
4. Architect
5. Consultant
6. Contractor
7. Sub-contractor
8. Manufacturer

A project generally speaking needs the following groups of people involved, at different times of the project’s life. The amount of involvement is clearly dependant on the type of construction contract everyone is working towards, but we’ll discuss that much later down the line.

Introducing the first in a series of Broken Kode Originals (I’ve got another 5 to go). What’s a Broken Kode Original? It’s an original website design by me. The first one has gone to Mark Wade of RWebsDesigns.

It all came about a while back when he got some lip over the design of his theme. The ball got rolling from there and I promised him the design in 2 weeks. Yeah, that didn’t happen but the main reason behind that was that I’m an anal retentive bastard. The nice thing about it all is that Mark just waited patiently, which obviously made me want to sort this out a bit sooner rather than later but at the same time I had to make him proud of the trust he put in me.

In the end I really enjoyed doing this site emmensely, even when IE made me want to pull my hair out (which reminds me to thank Jon for being my knight in shining armour, you rock buddy).

My inspiration for the theme as the name implies was the Autumn leaves that until a month ago were a vibrant part of the London landscape. It just seemed like the perfect design since in our conversations, Mark did say that he would like:

Something in nature, seasonal forests,..

One last thing when going over there to have a look, please don’t look underneath the bonnet, I’m still sorting out the code but I had to go live because I’ve kept the man waiting far too long for this.

I’ve finally sorted out the gallery section of Broken Kode. This has been on the backburner for nigh on 2 months now, with the only reason I can give for the delay being that I couldn’t decide on the final format for the gallery. Originally I was actually waiting for Zenphoto so that I could incorporate the functionality in there for my needs (thumbnails, navigation between images etc). Unfortunately, although a very nice package, I’m not proficient enough in php (yet, something I’m hoping to rectify in the near future) to be able to hack the thing to my needs, and with the lack of an extensive online resource (much like WordPress’s Codex), I was effectively fighting a loosing battle.

I thought about going for a Flash solution, however again this would bring about the problem of me not updating the section on a regular basis. I needed to go to a very simple CMS type solution. After bashing my head for 2 weeks now, I decided to use my default WordPress install, and just HACK it to death. The truth of the matter is that I’ve only touched one file from the core WordPress files, so hacking to death is a gross overstatement. I’ve just used plugins and hacks set out by others.

Much in the same was as I’ve done with the main site I’ll be modifying things slowly but surely till I get it the way I want it, so hopefully now I can concentrate on content only rather than spending far too many hours design, coding and then going through the process all over again. This final look was done in one evening, after I’d spent the better part of 1 week going back and forth with what I wanted. Part of the design was remove ANY clutter that would distract from the images themselves, so simplicity is the operative word here. Grab the RSS feed to stay up to date with this section of the site.

As a matter of interest for all those looking for Flash based solution to their gallery needs here’s a pretty extensive list of solutions that came my way on my hunt:

1. Example by Tutorio
2. FIG (Flash Image Gallery) - Very promising solution, I just wish I had access to the FLA. I contacted the author to buy a license off him, I'm still waiting.
3. Eyelash Photo Gallery - Didn't get very far with this solution to be honest. Seemed a bit too convoluted.
4. Swinburne Tutorials - Neat solution, good tutorials.
5. Flash XML roundup from the ParticleTree boys
6. Dynamic Flash Gallery - Very nice, except why the hell does it resize my browser?

I’d first like to thank the 9 people who bought a print off me. You guys rock, and I’m seriously humbled by the fact that my work is appreciated enough for you to buy something off me. You guys have made the Broken Kode priority list and once I’ve got things set up correctly you will be getting promo stuff when the time comes. All the prints have now finally sold out. It took around 6 months to go through them, and I think I made a total of something like £50, so I won’t be relocating to the Bahamas any time soon; then again I didn’t exactly do it for the money. Honestly I’m just glad that 9 gracious souls decided to indulge me, so I’d like to thank you guys greatly.

Those who actually visit the site rather than just rssing me will have missed the little additional graphic that’s sitting right there on the side bar for about a day now. That’s correct I’m teaming up with Streetshirts to provide original BK t-shirts. There’s a couple of reasons behind this, mainly due to the fact that I actually really want to wear nice t-shirts that don’t cost me the earth. Sylvane (one of my housemates) mentioned to me a couple of years ago that I really should start using my designs to create some t-shirts. 2 years later. The tees will hopefully be available later on this week, as I’ve still got to iron out some bits and pieces with Steven (from StreetShirts) who’s been exceptionally patient with me. This is a teaser of what to expect. There will be a total of 3 t-shirts available in the first collection. We’ll see how things pan out and go from there.

One of the reasons I’m actually announcing this now rather than when they officially go on sale is due to the fact that the excellent Treehouse, a PDF web development magazine, came out today, and it’s FREE, so all you boys and girls can go download now from the great folks over at Particletree. The guys were extremely gracious to run an ad for me, however in my classic fashion I’m not 100% ready. I’d like to blame it on the stars and the moon and public transport but truth is I just didn’t actually see October coming so fast.

So thanks guys for running the ad, you’re on my Christmas card list… even though you mispelled my name; it’s Abou Alfa guys, not Alpha :)

Version 4.0 has been a long time coming, as I’ve been sitting on the design for at least 3 month now. The idea popped into my head sometime in May, just something snapped and the idea began to grow. By the time I came back from holiday I knew exactly what I needed to do. Unfortunately due to work and life just getting in my way I was forced to put it on hold.

Reason for Redesign

The one section of the site that is still in active development is the Gallery section. I’ve got an slight idea of what I want however I’m not 100% there yet. Hopefully that should get sorted out in the coming days.

Code

This project also marks the first time I’ve used PHP Designer 2005 and HTMLGATE. Both fantastic applications that deserve your attention. Sure they’re not perfect as there are several bugs that need to be ironed out, but as website development tools go they’re both exceptional tools.

Inspiration

Future modifications

Update: One comment was all it took to make me realise that my post was lacking in something fundamental. Damn you Heilemann! I've added a few bits and pieces since I published this a full hour ago.

When I first started Broken Kode it was originally meant to be the online account of my trials and tribulations to getting published. 1.8 years later I’m slightly closer to that goal, although I’ve not progressed the book in the same way I’ve progressed the graphic design and web site aspects of my life, I’m starting to get itchy fingers.

I printed out my draft script a little while ago. It currently clocks in at around 70 pages, but the book itself will probably clock in the region of 120 pages, or at least that’s what I’m aiming for.

My battle plan was to try and have a finished product when I’d start shopping it around to different publishers. Ideally it would be under a similar publishing model that Image Comics has. I control everything. That however does require you to have money up front to put up the publishing of the book.

Black and white publishing is 5 times cheaper than doing it all in colour. That’s a pretty harsh fact to get under grips with. If my submission wasn’t considered or whatever, my next plan of action was to self publish it.

A couple of months after I started blogging, CafePress decided to start it’s publish to demand option. I effectively was saved. Fair enough I’d have to sell everything via the net, and fair enough I’d have to do everything in black and white, at least I would have the book done and ready to go.

Nearly 2 years after I started this journey in earnest, Lulu decides to hit the scene. What is Lulu you ask? Well in simple terms it’s a new way to publishing. So what distinguishes Lulu from the CafePress model? As far as I can gather several very important aspects:

1. The creator retains the full copyright. I haven't followed up on it but a while back CafePress was getting some bad press due to their shady copyright documentation. Lulu is very clear on this point.
2. The simplest formula for the cost of the book is as follows: Retail Price = Production cost + Royalty + Lulu Commission
3. If you pay a little bit extra (depending on how much it gets put up) the book is eventually put onto the system that all distributors, online stores etc have access to and actually put into the market on offer

For me it’s that last one that really makes me stand up and take note. It gets provided for consumption by anyone, by everyone? You can effectively get it published and into book stores. You loose 20% of the commission but everything is set up for you. That’s elevates the game to a whole new level. It’s print on demand, but without limiting your audience to only those with access to a credit card and the net.

If I really wanted to publish my book in colour, that is also an option. An expensive option, but an option non the less.

So what’s the downside? Well effectively it’s all got to do with control. How much control am I willing to give away? Personally I’m curious about the actual quality of the final printed product. That’s what I care about ultimately. Which is why I’m planning on trying this out with something I actually have the time for doing right now.

I’m going to publish the first year of Broken Kode as a book to try and see what the quality and process of this actual system is. I’ll give an in depth report on my findings once I’ve got the finished product in my hand. Of course this isn’t going to be just the first year, this is going to be me going mental with the design, probably including doodles and commentary on posts I thought were of any significance or importance.

Update: The object of this book isn’t to make money. The first and foremost reason for publishing it is to see what the quality of book I can expect from Lulu. Secondly and this is probably even a bigger reason is I’m a complete and utter book junky. As such I’m keen on keeping copies of things. I pour a lot of effort into Broken Kode, and I’d like to have something I might look back at in 20 years time or whatever and see what mattered to me back in the day. I’ve always said this is my diary, except it’s online. Now I can get a hardcopy of it as well.