Author: admin-blog

Eggy wants me to say:

“today i talked to eggy lippmann on AIM. what a nutcase!”

And in related news, you too will soon be able to see the Community building I made through/for/with/as part of Beta Technologies in the Sunbelt sim. In Second Life, of course. My lack of architecture training stops me from pursuing any such career in real life. My lack of time right now stops me from doing anything more for the fine people at Beta Tech., though hopefully I’ll be able to pick that up again soon too.

More than 12 years ago, I explored some of the early(ish) days of the web. Today, I found the magic Google combination to show you where I left my mark, on a guestbook in Austria: Guest Book: Australia, page 1.

This valuable historical record shows that back then, only nerds used the internet. We all liked Star Trek, and we enjoyed saying how much we liked the net. I’m sure that today, we’d be random teenagers saying how much we like the OC. Or something. teh. LOL. omg.

A little while ago I entered the Lonely Planet Less Than Three competition. My entry, I Love Travel, can be seen over at my other site, Twelve Fives, in this post.

The winners have now been announced. I’m not among them, and while I don’t expect to win a global competition every day, some of the videos that did receive recognition are, to put it politely, undeserving. The winner’s pretty good. The December winner is, to me, the best video on the site. The first runner up is the least interesting pile of Funniest Home Video shite to ever be shown outside of the third level of YouTube hell.

To put it another way, I was beaten by two people watching a sheep scratch itself against a fence. For two minutes. With inane commentary. Without editing, without music. By all means, launch a contest with somewhat vague terms (“a great moment in travel” was loosely implied) but please, please don’t reward crap like that.

Sorry if this sounds like sour grapes; it’s not my intention. I’m not about to write to Lonely Planet demanding my prize and crying myself to sleep just wets the pillow. Please watch the videos (sorry, no direct linking possible) and leave your verdict in the comments below.

Love the long-standing masters at eboy, but easily the biggest example of pixel art I’ve ever seen is from Lenser. I’ve love to print it, but I don’t have enough paper, or wall space. Can you find the people playing badminton on the median? The green Police box? The space shuttle? The woman wearing a face mask at the bus stop? The shark? The puppies?

You’ll be needing scrolling power in both dimensions, so fire up your Mighty Mouse, or your two-finger-trackpad gesture, or even just the arrow keys.

Can’t design? Buy The Non-Designer’s Design Book. Fabulous thing, it explains the basic rules, and you can figure out much of the rest from there.

The quick summary: apply Contrast (be brave: make differences obvious lest they appear to be mistakes), Repetition (repeat for consistency where possible, and of course use paragraph styles in Word or InDesign or whatever), Alignment (most things look better lined up with something else on the page, so use those invisible guides) and Proximity (white space is important). Extend these rules through every layout and in combination with one another. More, much more, in the book, with a great many examples of what works and what doesn’t.

(Oh: don’t centre anything! It ruins any chance for alignment along left or right margins and creates ugly white space on either side.)

Anyway, buy the book, or arrange to be given it as a belated birthday present.