November 2010 Archives

This is the season for creating gingerbread houses and contests for the best creations out of gingerbread. I enjoyed the contest entries from website "This Old House", which features several houses and castles. Photos and an article about this contest can be found here: http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/photos/0,,20243026,00.html.

To avoid the crowds, which seem to get worse every year, I decided to visit Bath's Christmas market on a Friday this year. This year, there seemed to be more vendors, and the Christmas market is running extra days for the build-up to Christmas. Crafts, cheeses, jewellery, glassware, foods, drink, clothing, and trinkets were being sold from the many stalls in the abbey square. I had cream tea at one of the tea rooms in the centre of Bath, and the rest of the day was spent walking around the market and visiting a few shops. The Christmas lights and light snow made the trip even more Christmasy. Bath's Christmas Market website: http://www.bathchristmasmarket.co.uk/

My comment today is related to the use of photographs on websites. A good photograph can greatly improve the aesthetics of a website. As the old saying goes, 'a picture is worth a thousand words'. I have seen thousands of websites with poor photographs; this includes grainy photos, amateur or outdated-looking photos, and just simply bad photographs. (Heck, in one company I worked at, two popular client-facing websites were littered with group photos of employees stood against a white wall, and judging by the hair and clothing styles, it looked as though they were photographed in the 1980s!) As a side-note, I have also seen websites use popular stock photography, but this is forgivable albeit often a cliche. 

'Internet Week Europe' is a festival celebrating the Internet industry with a series of events. (Web site: http://www.internetweekeurope.com/) Somehow, I missed out on this event; I've been quite busy with a lot on my mind, so I'll attribute it down to that. However, I have noted as part of the event, the 'Can you draw the Internet' competition. The competition encourages industry professionals and 10-year-olds to draw their perceptions of the Internet. A website with the drawings and the ability to vote on the drawings is here: http://www.canyoudrawtheinternet.com/. Which is your favourite?

(1) Irvine, Martha. Watched lose ground to cell phones. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17189064/ [February 16, 2007].

With six weeks to go until Christmas, London's shopping areas (Oxford Street and Regent Street) are now aglow with Christmas lights. The shops are full of the usual gift items seen in the run-up to Christmas. It gives me a warm feeling inside.

The smoothie-maker company, 'Innocent', have launched a campaign ('The Big Knit') to help keep older people warmer for winter. In selected stores, each bottle of 'Innocent' smoothie comes with its own little wooly hat, which fits over the lid of the drink. (There's quite a successful marketing campaign that has brought together a community of people who can knit for this good cause.) The designs are artistic, and the little hats are cute. 'Innocent' has published a blog of some of the designs. This can be viewed here: http://innocentdrinks.typepad.com/innocent_drinks/hat-of-the-week/

Facebook have recently updated the formatting of the news feed on their website. One of the changes is the reduction in the size of the font. In my opinion, this is too small for me to comfortably read. I cannot imagine how those with reduced vision are able to read the text without straining their eyes. From a usability standpoint, I don't think that this was a wise move. I am assuming that the reason for the change was to fit more elements onto the page, but this could be done without changing the font size or without reducing it as much as they have.

I have been using a MacBook for the past several months in my job, and although there is a slight 'learning-curve' from using a Windows-based computer for the past several years, I have gotten used to the MacBook and its speed. The MacBook boots up and is very quick. There are still a few features that I prefer on the Windows-based computer, but the speed of the MacBook had prompted me to use this laptop as my primary one.

I still have a Windows-based computer at home, and one of the major differences is the placement of the buttons used for shortcuts, such as copying and pasting. Sometimes I need to think for a split second before completing the action. It's not as annoying now, but this took a little while to get used to. Also, the structure of the Mac can be a little bit daunting until you understand their UI for the folder/directory structure. You can change the views for the display, but areas can be a little confusing when directories on different areas are named the same thing (such as 'Library'). I also prefer the Windows way to view photographs in directories, and the Mac way does take a little getting used to, but it is not as strong in my opinion. Despite these differences, I like the Mac.

As I am due to be changing jobs and realising that leaving the MacBook behind would put a hole in my life, I made a choice to purchase the MacBook Pro. I will be playing with this new toy and setting up my development environment onto it in the next few weeks.