Archive for 2006

My del.icio.us bookmarks this week

Tuesday, May 23rd, 2006
  • Probably the best unobtrusive javascript image rollover script I’ve seen – very backwards compatible.
    (tagged: design graphics javascript navigation programming web webdesign webdev)
  • Apparently a good book for absolute beginners to HTML — avoid learning tag soup!
    (tagged: accessibility book books css design html reference standards webdesign work xhtml)
  • “We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action.” – Frank Tibolt
    (tagged: creativity philosophy quotes thought)
  • The solution to all of this is painfully simple. Treat your markup as art. It’s a craft, mold it and tweak it until it’s just right.
    (tagged: css design development html layout markup programming semantics standards usability web webdesign webdev webdevelopment webstandards xhtml)
  • Jonathan Coulton strikes again with an official podcast for PopSci! And a theme song!
    (tagged: jonathancoulton mp3 music podcast popsci science)

Late night conversation-friendly cafés in Wellington

Thursday, May 18th, 2006

Tim Haines is looking for quiet cafés/meeting spaces:

I’m looking for a quiet cafe/meeting place where we can find a bit of space, hang out for the whole afternoon, buy good coffee (to enjoy AND compensate the cafe), and use Cafenet. Of particular interest is being a few meters away from anyone else – so it’s not noisy, and you won’t be easily overheard.

He mentions Olive Café, and while I haven’t been there, walking past it, it doesn’t feel gritty enough for me ;)

A great meeting place I enjoy regularly is Katipo Café, which is upstairs from the 1-2-3 Dollar shop on Willis St, near New World Metro. It has good food, decent coffee, and my style of music — but not so loud you can’t hear the person next to you, unlike Espressoholic

Espressoholic has CaféNet, but it’s WAY too loud there at times, especially when it’s packed. It’s good for working by yourself though.

Unfortunately, they don’t have CaféNet at Katipo, but if you can get a seat near the window, you can get enough of a signal from somewhere near by.

From my point of view, quiet cafés in Wellington, especially those that are open late night, are far and few between.

A thought that has crossed my mind is there is definetely a niche for a quiet designer/geek café in Wellington. It might focus on CaféNet and good coffee and food, but also be a venue for public geek meetups and seminars: have a projector and sound setup, recording speeches and putting them up on the café’s podcast…?

Google Notebook Firefox Extension Easter Egg

Thursday, May 18th, 2006

I just got myself a Google Notebook and I think I like it! Taking snippets of text from webpages and archiving it online privately or publicly is pretty cool.

I especially like the simple Firefox Extension. It adds a little ‘open notebook’ to the browser’s status bar, which when clicked pops up a little in-page pop-up where you can type text or capture selected text from the current page. Very nice!

I did find one pretty neat feature that the Google Notebook help pages doesn’t mention. Right click the button in the status bar, and you’ll find an Enable ‘Note This’ button option. Enabling this doesn’t seem to do much straight away, and in fact, it took me a while to figure it out. But when it’s enabled, try selecting some text, and a little [+] button will appear at the end of your selection — click it to add your selection to your currently selected notebook! Neato :D

So uses for Google Notebook? I could find it useful for keeping a list of things I want to post about, a shopping list, inspirational quotes, or maybe even for some GTD loving. What will you be doing with your Google Notebook?

My del.icio.us bookmarks this week

Tuesday, May 16th, 2006
  • A note that pixels are still a relative measurement — DPI makes all the difference. Some proposed changes from Webkit on how to create sites that look great when ‘zoomed’ on a large monitor!
    (tagged: accessibility apple article code css design dev fonts future html image images info inspiration interesting internet layout mac macosx monitor photography photos read reading reference research standards svg tips webdesign webdev webmaster webstandards xhtml)
  • Nope, it didn’t cost NASA US$1mil. All a myth.
    (tagged: funny history lol myths nasa productivity space)

My del.icio.us bookmarks this week

Tuesday, May 9th, 2006
  • Acronyms to use in email subject lines to improve the efficiency of replies. My favorite would be NRN – no reply needed
    (tagged: design development email mail netiquette productivity)
  • 10 steps to better copywriting
    (tagged: article blogging blogs business communication content copywriting english howto internet language marketing presentation reading reference resources seo text tips tools tutorial tutorials usability useful web words work writing)
  • Design is Communication! Craigslist (ugly site that is successful) is an anomaly.
    (tagged: bestpractices communication design layout pretty thought web webdesign webdev webdevelopment)
  • Another author releases their book under a creative commons licence. Nanowhere is for the young adult fiction market. During the first chapter, the book mentions 31337 – and that’s okay by me ;)
    (tagged: book books creativecommons ebooks fiction free opensource science scifi writing)