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My Birthday!

A post by George

Birthday No.23

Today is my birthday, not overly interesting to most of you but still thought I would share, other things that happened on this day may interest you more. Here’s to another good year!

New house New home.

A post by George

new home flickr thumbnail

Just spent the weekend moving into our new place! I put some photo’s of it over on flickr but thought I might as well share them here to.

It does mean, annoyingly enough, no internet at home for a few weeks. I’m still writing posts on my wamp-wp setup and plan to upload at work, but it’s a bit of a faff so the posts might be a bit more spaced out, more time to think about them though so it should result in better quality posts (touch wood).

Last Round on the Underground

A post by George

Passengers might now be barred from having open containers of alcohol on the Underground, London buses, Docklands Light Railway and trams… but it was a bloody good night!

The alcohol ban on London’s transport system has started, after a night of partying on the Underground during which 17 people were arrested and six stations had to be closed as thousands of people gathered on the network in advance of the ban.

Despite the negative press the event has been getting, my experience was really positive. It’s not often that so many people from so many cultures can come together and enjoy a night out. Easily one of the most interesting and heart warming nights i’ve had since I moved here. Community spirit is still alive in England, you just have to ban something :)

Below are a few pictures & videos that we took as well as the best of what we’ve found on youtube

 

someones on the wrong train!
platform madness... even super mario would struggle

 

May 1st Reboot

A post by George

My new design goes live. May 1st 2008.

After finding a full-time roll in London the purpose of my site has shifted from being a promotional tool to a creative outlet. I want my reboot to reflect that.

I felt my old design was getting a bit tired and after the problems I was having with my old database I had been planning a re-build/design for a while. My old website was built when i was a recent graduate and was orientated around promoting myself, the blog was a by product at the time, while i enjoyed writing (well more ranting but if you can’t rant here, where can you rant?) it wasn’t the focus. After finding a full-time roll in London the purpose of my site had shifted from being a promotional tool to a creative outlet. I want my reboot to reflect that.

I thought I would make my first post May 1st Reboot Centric.

Key Gripes

  • Built in Flash – Poor medium choice (again) for a project such of this. There is little animation and many of the effects could have been produced with CSS and one of the JS frameworks. I had hoped they might change it after last year.
  • Sound Effects & Music – A personal peeve. When i’m at my computer i’m usually listening to iTunes, please don’t inflict your (often poor) musical tastes on me!
  • Difficult Interface (Nav & User Experience) – Total lack of labeling makes navigating around the site an unnecessarily long and drawn out affair.

I love the concept, the idea of bringing the creative community together on one day to celebrate our re-designs in unison, giving & receiving feedback, networking, making new friends. They are all reasons i’m part of this industry, they are the reasons I get up in the morning. It’s all about community spirit.

To conclude, I think it’s a shame and somewhat ironic that a few poor design & construction choices will impede the very notion that event stands for… again. A website with such poor usability seems like such a play-school error in 2008… that said i’m happy to be part of it & looking forward to next years already.