Blogwise Piccies

Finally figured out a cheap shot solution to getting screengrabs of all 750-odd blogs on Blogwise. It involves MS Word (I don’t have VB), a load of SendKeys commands, Paint Shop Pro, and a build of Mozilla 1.2 running fullscreen. Very very tacky, but only because it was 4am and I couldn’t figure out a nicer way.

I’m sure Alexa use something similar (but a bit tidier) like Mozilla in Linux and some clever script to grab their pictures but I don’t have Linux with a GUI installed anywhere (don’t get me wrong, I like Linux a lot – I have it on three of my five computers, I just can’t stand the GUI).

Join the Dark Side, and get a free Alarm Clock

This probably means a lot more to Americans, but recently Apple have been making a load of switch to Macs because Microsoft smells of wee* adverts on their website, on TV, etc. Well, here‘s a lovely commercial – although it’s for a slightly more sinister organisation (no, it’s not a return to Microsoft ad).

* caption may not reflect Apple’s actual campaign, although I bet it’s what they’re thinking.

Domo Kun

I keep seeing pictures of this wierd little brown furry thing and finally discovered what it was.

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It’s called Domo Kun, a little character created in Japan (…wierd character….made in Japan….naaaah…). I’m downloading some clips from domo-kun.de, and it’s all very dodgy. Very surreal. Have a look at a few if you’re bored and have broadband.

Update: Just found a Japanese translation of what ‘Domo’ is (this is a direct quote!):

“DOMO is a strange creature born from an egg. One day he fell into Usajii’s house,the old rabbit likes TV. After that he began to love watching TV. He is gentle and strong. When he is in a bad mood,he breaks wind.”

Also I think this program also features an alcoholic bat called Shinobu. How about that.

The Big Font

A useful reference for font sizing inconsistencies shows that there are still a few bugs with the ways browsers render fonts as set by different properties (pixel, em, keyword, etc.). I use all three in different places on different sites I run, and am still not happy with the best one to use. At the moment I’m sticking with pixels because keywords are horribly inconsistent across browsers and ems have some wierd bugs in IE. I am also vaguely interested by those scripts popping up that let you resize a page by clicking +/- buttons – I may install one of those.

Also of note, the Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture has just been launched (well, a few weeks ago) with some interesting and influencial heading the team. I may consider becoming a member when their website grows a bit. Although the president, who doubles as Interaction! Designer! at! Yahoo! Inc! has a very daunting homepage.

Dear Santa

I know what I want for Christmas…
Pocket DV2 CamcorderOne of these babies sells for just under £100, has 320×240 30fps video recording (enough for a lot of things), and takes stills at 1280×1024. Amazing value for money.

Also, Thinking Putty is supposed to be quite cool. It’s a special kind of material that can be moulded, act as a liquid, tear apart, and even shatter. I don’t quite understand the chemistry involved but it looks like bloody good fun.

Firebox is such a great site 🙂

An Update

I decided tonight that I didn’t particularly like the look of the yetanotherblog site – so i did a slight tidy up, redesigned it a bit and here we go. I didn’t spend a lot of time on it but for what it’s worth i think it’s OK.

Of course the real news is that I added comments 😉 now don’t go jumped over yourselves eager to create replies, but don’t hold back either.

Rusty Goddesses

Here we go again, it’s that time folks for the second Fire Strike. This time it’s 8 days long. I saw a Green Goddess driving in Southampton last night. Bloody hell the vehicles are aged. The driver was crunching the gears and it looked in a right state.

Also, it was more black than green.

University Top-Up Fees Proposal

Universities possibly charging £10,000 a year for tuition: the government is proposing removing the current cap on tuition fees. Amazing how this is all panning out. BBC News ran a feedback forum, and the results are pretty much all against this idea. Quite a few individuals also suggested that universities are becoming ‘the norm’, with the government’s pledge to get 50% through uni in the near future.

Margaret Hodge, the Higher Education Secretary explained to Universities UK, that university graduates have a better chance at higher paid employment from leaving uni. This is correct, however lets not forget that as salaries rise, the taxes do to, so the government gets a higher return from higher paid employees anyway!

It’s a scary amount of money. Fortunately by the time this might be passed through I’ll be out of uni.