A while back I helped a friend Eveline sort out her portfolio site, she does fantastic, amazing artwork – check it out – http://lovexevol.com
Ed is Far Too Smart
December 14, 2010 ±
» Jesse Cain on Macbeth
Via The Age. Also check out Her Majesty’s Theatre where he works.
InDesign Data Merge
January 24, 2010 ±
Perhaps you don’t know, perhaps you have always just used Microsoft Word for it – but you no longer have an excuse. Adobe InDesign does data merge (or ‘mail merge’ for all you Word users out there) and it seemed like a task and half to find a decent, straightforward, no-bull tutorial on the web for how to just use it – so here’s a basic step-by-step.
Layout your design
It’s pretty easy – just design your item (let’s say a name tag) like you would any other design. Put in some dummy text for now, no problems.
Create your data
You’ll need the information you’re going to use in a tab separated .txt file – you can do this by exporting it from Excel or Numbers. Put in column headings – InDesign needs them. Something tricky to note here, InDesign can Data Merge image files if you like – but their column heading needs to start with an @ symbol, and their content needs to be a relative path to the image file you’re going to merge. eg- “/images/variable-named-image-.jpg”.
Hook up your data
Pick your data file through the Automation -> Data Merge Panel -> Select Data Source link in InDesign. Then the panel will list out the values you can data merge – just drag these out into the appropriate text/image boxes in your file. And that’s it – you can preview values using the preview function on the Data Merge Panel, or just hit the Create Merged Document link and you’re done. Now that wasn’t so hard – and didn’t need a 10 page tutorial + video to explain.
Spelling Errors
December 14, 2009 ±
In the future, I predict we’ll end up with the majority of the population fitting into one of two categories:
1. People who can’t spell, but take the time to spell check and correct errors.
2. People who can’t spell and don’t care.
» Top and Tail
Functioning Form entry in regards to designing the big picture, and the small picture – not just one or the other. This is a great way of figure out UI design problems – start with what we’re trying to fix, sweat out some details and then worry about the rest later.
» Firefox 3.5 – Fan-bloody-tastic
Finally some more support for box-shadow and some HTML5 is coming along for the ride. Always love a new browser that doesn’t suck.
Free WiFi in Cafés… please.
June 21, 2009 ±
Really? I thought I was good – we had a deal, I came to your café, bought my coffee and even splashed out by getting something to eat too. So why oh why then dear café owner do you think I want to pay to use the internet too? I’m pretty sure you’re connected here anyway — you’ve got that old computer back there that you use to tweet while you’re waiting for customers. Just let me use your internet, seriously.
Archive this!
June 5, 2009 ±
Pro tip for all you web designers bloggers out there. If you’re going to start a blog, don’t show an Archives button until you know you’re going to have enough content to fill it. I’m not saying don’t allow for it in your design – but don’t think yourself so fantastic at blogging that you’ll have that homepage filled in a week. The only way your site could look more stale would be to put a Last updated message in the footer and an Under Construction sign in the Contact Us page.
Simple
December 9, 2008 ±
Yes, I really need that on the homepage.
The all to familiar conversation that tends to come up with every client at some point. The odd desire to take the lazy route of putting everything as a menu item, or simply (and I use that word sarcastically) deciding to use drop down menus instead of thinking the problem through and doing a bit of information architecture to come up with a solution that is not only better visually, but also means more users will find more of what they want, more of the time.
This problem is always compounded in a business scenario where the in-house web guy gets “told” that certain things need to go on the homepage. The problem of course is that in this setting, everyone is certain that what they are working on is definitely worthy of homepage status, or worse still, the ever-desired mantle of top-level navigation status.
Can’t you just add Staff Casual Day next to Products and Services?
It’s at this point that unless someone is willing to put themselves through an arguement, they usually lose to a less knowledgeable higher power who just wants their way. I say it’s worth the argument. Persist, and your site will be better for it. Structure your content in a clear way, not in the way that the client or the boss describes it. Think of the users, make it easy for them which 99% of the time means keeping it simple.
» Theme Music from Australian News Programs
Note the original Channel 7 theme scored by John Williams – and oh so Star Wars-esque it sounds.
Dear Banks,
October 27, 2008 ±
When we ask you whether you’re working on an iPhone interface for your web banking, we mean something like what ANZ have going for them. It’s made just for us, so we feel special.
What we don’t mean is “can I access internet banking on my iPhone” – because we’re not stupid, we know that we can we just want to know if you’re going to give us a better option, which the ANZ one is.
The Apple mobile web browser, Safari, displays web pages on iPhones with the same clarity and detail as can been seen through desktop computer web browsers.
[Our] work in this area aims to give customers the ability to do everything they already do on their desktop while they’re on the go.
Unfortunately I can’t do everything I want on the go – I can’t quickly get to my account balances, I can’t read the balance without first zooming into their archaic interface, I also can’t use all the functions that are only available to Internet Explorer users on a PC.
So I’ll have to say that if a certain bank doesn’t get into gear, perhaps they’re going to lose a customer or 7 million.
On weddings + childrens’ toys
September 1, 2008 ±
I think that possibly when considering the suitability of childrens’ toys for a trip to a wedding perhaps parents should lock themselves in their bathroom with the offending toy plus child and be sure they can last thirty minutes without topping themselves off. As a one off suggestion let’s just assume a bucket of anything that can be tipped out as someone is saying their vows is a no.
First iPhone Post
August 20, 2008 ±
Just a short note from the wordpress iPhone app.
This is going to be good.
Monday to Thursday?
August 20, 2008 ±
So you’ve gone to call us here at plusminus and it’s a friday, you swoosh on over to the contact us page, you read the number, then directly underneath there’s a weird thing
Office hours: 9am-5pm Monday to Thursday
So what’s up with the no working on Fridays? Is it because I’m slack, is it because I’m are only doing this this part time, why why why? Well, to tell you the truth, it’s to balance out my life. Work has a habit of taking over more of lives than it should, and a large part of the work I do is outside of plusminus for the Uniting Church. The problem, of course, in starting my own business is that free work which used to be relegated to the out-of-hours and snuck in the actual-hours at work, can now stop me getting actual work done. So the cunning plan is this: Monday through Thursday I work work work and ignore everyone who’s not paying me money with the useful answer of “let’s talk on Friday”. Outside of work hours I live my life with my family – good idea. Fridays, I ignore everyone who pays me money, and do everything I wish to volunteer my time for.
So far, so good, I’ve only had to work one Friday and it was mainly due to some Friday work seeping into a Tuesday. Let’s hope it works out – I can say I’m probably getting just as much work done Monday – Thursday than I would Monday – Friday, and my after-work time is far less stressed.
AppleTV + Movie Rentals = Good
August 19, 2008 ±
So not long ago for my birthday I was fortunate enough to receive an AppleTV or TV for those of you on a mac. This was an odd device to own in Australia due to Apple’s lack of iTunes video content in our continent, but nonetheless, I wanted one and quite happily got it. Then, the realisation that video podcasts were all I was ever going to watch dawned upon me.
Now I’m all for Good News Week and Diggnation, but there’s really only so much short form content you can watch and I found myself really wanting more. I looked into hacking the little thing, but all seemed too complex especially considering that I wanted a clean box for updates etc. when they come from Apple.
Then – then – the miracle happened, Australian TV shows on iTunes – this would be great, this would be marvellous, I could subscribe to season passes to all my favourite shows that we watch all the time (which admittedly isn’t many), so I crank open iTunes and look. But hang on, I’m not a 5 year old – why is 99% of this content Disney cartoon crap? Where’s the good shows? Where’s the good AMERICAN shows even? So TV shows = let down.
Fast forward a few months, this last week Apple decided to allow us poor Australians to have Movie purchase/rentals. Sceptically I looked at the list of movies – and quite frankly, they’re not that half bad. There’s nothing I’d purchase, but sure, I’d rent a bunch of them and surely this is easier than going to Blockbuster. And right I was, last night for the first time the Wife and I sat down, fired up the AppleTV and clicked our way to movie watching.
This AppleTV thing is going to catch on – and it’s going to be awesome. And even if it doesn’t catch on, stuff the rest of you, I love it.
» So what do you do?
You’d better believe this is true.
Who would have thought
August 13, 2008 ±
Alas, my hands – even for a young chap like me – are certainly not what they used to be. All this computerin’ has sent them to hell and back and thus, some days I can barely type. Which is a problem, typing being what I do.
Of course, I try to pay attention all day as to when my hands get better or worse, and it would seem that the keyboard I was using, the lovely (semi-retired) Apple Bluetooth Keyboard has being partly at fault. It has the classic heavy ‘kuthenka’ keys happening and that is where the problem seems to be. You see, my hands have become accustomed to the new little ‘chiclet’ keys of the new Apple keyboards and now they’re weak.
So I stole my wife’s keyboard today, and wham, two websites and a blog post later – hands still working.
» Deafness and the User Experience
A great article from A List apart in regards to deaf people, Deaf people, and the internet with an especially useful tidbit that most of us forget sometimes:
- Captioning is the transcription of speech and important sound effects.
- Subtitling is a written translation of dialogue
Time Machine + Time Capsule, thank God
June 20, 2008 ±
Last Friday I had the unfortunate experience of my hard-drive frying itself. Now, this isn’t exactly something I haven’t experienced before, but it is the first time I’ve been threatened with downtime and data loss since going solo in the land of employment. Needless to say it’s a jarring experience that I will, choice being involved of course, choose to never have again. The only shining light in the entire process was the Time Capsule sitting in the corner of my office.1
Since getting the Time Capsule (a wonderful birthday present from my wife) I have been understandably sceptical about its core function of continuously backing up, wirelessly, from my laptop, all the time – with the easy ability to restore things when I stuff up. Only having to test its abilities once with an accidental email account deletion, when my hard-drive flopped on Friday I wasn’t exactly ecstatic about the possibilities of getting my data back from it fully.
But, as I write this, my machine is essentially back to normal. All I had to do was, grab a new hard-drive, have a friend help me get it in my MacBook Pro, whack in the Leopard installer disk, pick the “restore from backup” menu item and then go to bed. Woke up the next day and my machine was looking at me as if to say “What? How long was I asleep?” – everything back to normal.
Also to note, anyone who’s having an issue with their Time Capsule backups becoming “Read only” which mine did a few weeks ago (and thankfully I fixed this before my ‘event’ happened) – the solutions can be found here: Time Capsule errors | Luckyspin.org.
1. The uselessness of the location of my backup being sitting essentially next to the machine that it’s backing up can be a topic of discussion at another point in time.