http://www.themaninblue.com/writing/perspective/2008/05/13/

Cubescape - Isometric fun. via Simon Willison

Reminds me a bit of the old Sim City (3000?) building editor

Armed with domaintools.com and an overactive imagination I have been searching for a new domain name for the last few days to fit a suite of website assistance tools I’ve been working on.

It’s tough. I have the mentality of a person who needs a dotcom, but they’re taken either by squatters or people who registered the site for 8 years and has done precisely nothing with them.

Seriously - today’s inspiration was kites. I don’t know why. Tried flyakite.com, redkite.com, bigkite.com but they’re gone. Section6.com (I have no idea either…) was taken. Letter6.com was gone (who the hell wants letter6.com?)

I want something vaguely clever (kites and other words aren’t clever, but what the heck is 37signals all about? People seem to remember those guys…) but I lack inspiration and I tire of dictionaries easily.

doihavetime.com is about the best I’ve ever had, and I should’ve kept thebloghouse.com (it was quickly snapped up after I let it lapse, I think).

Anyway, no point to this post other than yet another rant (/goes to check domain exists….ooh, yetanotherrant.com is free :o)

Interesting - the HSBC website www.hsbc.co.uk appears to only deliver content in GZip. Any user agent trying to get to it that does not support GZip (through the Accept-Encoding header) will just get nothing from the server (it holds the connection but delivers nothing).

If, for whatever reason, you’re trying to get to the HSBC website with a simpler (ie. non-mainstream) browser this might be why. I’ve been getting very slow and funky (ie. corrupt) images in Firefox for a while - wonder if it’s related?

“Please ensure you have all personal belongings before leaving the train/ferry/other mode of transport”

Why was this introduced? Has it ever prompted anybody to remember their belongings? It clearly didn’t help this guy.

Anyway, this was just a test post to make sure the site had moved over okay to my new server. That’s twenty quid a month I don’t have to pay any more \o/

http://www.vk.tv/video/528037/blinde-batman-ziet-met-tongklikgeluid.html

This video follows a blind man in the Netherlands who navigates his environment by making clicking noises with his mouth.

In the video, Dan Kish talks about how his parents treated him no differently as a child, demanding him to act as a seeing child would. With these expectations Kish developed his own way of compensating for his lack of vision, using the feedback from a clicking noise of his tongue to identify objects around him.

(BTW, The video is mostly in English)

Earlier this month the BBC News webteam rolled out a new design for their site, which incorporated (amongst other things) some new design elements (red shades on white background for the logo, for instance) which hinted at a rebranding.

Sure enough, Stuart Pinfold notes that after the 10 o’clock news this Wednesday evening, News 24 will become BBC News Channel, with regional and other outlets following on the 21st.

Oh dear. What have they done? Microsoft have put a redirect in for UK users from their usual mapping site maps.live.com to MultiMap.

MultiMap is a new acquisition of Microsoft, and for those unfamiliar it’s an awfully ad-laden website with nowhere near the features of maps.live.com. Users are truely peed off that they’ve been relegated to this lower quality website.

While MultiMap brings across Bird’s Eye view from its Live.com brother, it doesn’t seem to fare very well. I tried the Bird’s Eye view (as linked from their homepage), went slightly South (’up’) and got a really corrupted screen

This looks like a new addition. Google Maps’ Terrain View now has contour lines so you can see with better clarity which hills are steep and what the elevation is likely to be.

View Larger Map

On the Fastcat ferry to the Isle of Wight today (bear in mind this is sat in Portsmouth Harbour, on the south coast of England). Across the other side of the boat are a mother and her two kids.

Kid 1, every few seconds saying “Look, there’s a ….” trying to point out things which clearly don’t belong in the harbour. Eventually…

Kid 1: Look, a great white shark.

Kid 2: It can’t be. Sharks don’t live in salty water, only octopusses do.

Parent: This is salty water. There’s the sea.

Kid 1: See, so it was a shark.

Moments later…

Kid 1: Look, there’s a terrapin with the head of a velociraptor.

(Silence)

A few minutes later, as the boat is turning to head out of port…

Kid 1: It’s too bright to see. My eyes are nearly falling out of my head

Finally, as the boat heads out…

Kid 1: Look. They sunk the hovercrast and now the velociraptors are eating the people inside.

Seriously - where does a child get an overactive imagination like that?

A few weeks ago I was in London for the day. For the first time … ever I was in London for no particular reason: no work, no meetings - I was just there. So, I decided to take my camera and have a wander.

Here’s the problem: despite London’s beautiful historic architecture, its wonderful city streets and its varied colours, characters and scenery, I took precisely two photos that day. One was of Blackfriars Bridge. The other was of the same bridge, taken two feet to the left.

Why? Well, I can be quite a surprisingly bashful person with a camera in hand. While I enjoy taking photos of people and places, I really don’t like being out in public with my camera. It makes me shy and I prefer to hide away in the safety of recesses and corners (which makes me look more like a stalker….). While I’ve become more confident over the years I’m still a little shy and very rarely pluck up the courage to take photos of strangers (or even of scenes where strangers just happen to be in-shot).

Despite being 6′-2″ and, well, large, I was actually quite worried about being mugged, pick-pocketed or otherwise the subject of casual street crime. I don’t know whether I was being daft or not, but I felt genuinely vulnerable with the camera round my neck.

My camera bag is a standard camera ruck-sack from Lowepro. It is not a convenient loader in that you have to take it off and lie it flat to put anything in, but storage-wise it suits me fine. The camera’s a Canon 350D so fairly big - it’s not a pocketable point & shoot by any stretch of the imagination, so it’s either around my neck and useable, or in the back and not.

So here’s my poser to you. If you take photos, how do you deal with this sort of thing? Were you originally shy, and did you find a particular way to overcome your fears? Am I being overly worried about walking around London with a DSLR slung over my neck?