r|o|o|m| is now a Rhizome art object.

It’s chaos out there.

Despite the falling price of decent digital cameras, analog photography on the web is still going strong. The sharpness and colour accuracy of transparency film is unbeatable [by current consumer digital cameras], especially if you take pictures with a medium format camera like Joshua Dunford [if you’re lucky, you can pick up a second-hand one of these pretty cheaply – my C330 was 75 Pounds Sterling]. This, coupled with the falling price of quality flatbed transparency scanners means that you can make images for the web which blow digital images away.

Innovative product design and great photography at black+blum. Site design by Presence Multimedia.

Thanks to James, Timo and Rik for their comments and advice regarding my dilemma [as mentioned a few entries ago]. That’s appreciated, ta.

Just bought myself a motor to runaround in… who needs these new fangled economical cars anyway?

Could recent breakthroughs in genetic engineering together with advances in other technologies eventually lead to human super senses? 20/10 vision may just be the beginning.

For a bit of extra cash, I have secured another contract to teach web design to a bunch of photography students during a series of evening classes. The first session went well, I taught the basic concepts of Mark-Up, a brief history of the Web, the ‘browser wars’ and the importance of standards [I used the analogy of ISO photographic film speeds such 100 and 200 etc., – clever huh?] . I then got them started with a basic HTML document ready to resume in the second session. So, after 3 hours, they went away having learnt quite a bit about the web and everyone – including me – was happy. Then the second session came along and I hit a dilemma, which was this: Do I teach ‘old-style’ HTML [tables, font tags, style merged with content etc.] or do I teach the emerging technologies of XML, XHTML and CSS [style separate from content], so that they will go away armed with a bit of knowledge about how to develop for today’s multi-platform Internet. The ‘old’ way of designing would be easier for them to grasp because there is much less to take in [remember that these guys have no previous experience of web design, many of them are only just starting to be interested in it], and it would be enough to knock-up a basic online folio of their images. On the other hand, even though the ‘new way’ is a much better way of designing web sites, there is much more to take in. But what is the point in teaching out-dated methods that will not give them a competitive edge if they ever want to become professional web designers? So… I elected to teach them a bit about the ‘new way’, which, although is perhaps the best thing to do in the long run, there are a few reasons why I shouldn’t have done this: a] I’m only just learning about all this myself and I’m certainly no expert; b] It involves concepts that are tricky to grasp if you’re new at all this stuff; and c] they only want a simple folio of images anyway, so teaching these new technologies might be overkill. Anyway… it’s a difficult dilemma, what do you think I should do?

Dammit… I knew I was pushing my luck with IE5/Win and that graphic to the left. For those of you using IE5.0, you’ll notice that this image has gone a bit awry. This is because I decided to put a drop shadow on the image and the only way to blend it in was to incorporate some of the table formatting in the bitmap itself. Of course, if Microsoft bothered to implement png compatibility into IE5.x/Win, I wouldn’t have this problem; I’d just create an image with partial transparency in Fireworks, save it as a 32bit png file and Bob’s your uncle. I might just do it anyway and suggest that people on a PC use Netscape 6 instead. It also looks as though IE5/Win is resizing the table cells on the left even though I have told it not to. Hmmmm. Bare with me while I iron out the flaws… normal service will resume soon.

Proof that all the folk at Apple are on something.

OK. So it’s redesigned and it validates, but I’m not there yet. Now I’ve got a layout done in HTML tables, I’m going to replace them with CSS formatting in the near future. I suppose I’ve been working with tables for so long, it’s tricky to stop using them.

Phew… it’s been a struggle, but here it is: the all new frownland.com. This site is now more standards compliant than ever before [validated to XHTML1.0] and should load like the proverbial ‘muck’ off a shovel now that I have streamlined everything. However, I have absolutely no idea what the page looks like on anything other that IE5 for the Mac… I’ve only got the W3C HTML Validator to trust. In an ideal world, this should be all I need… unfortunately, life isn’t like that is it? Maybe one day.
I’ve still got a bit more work to do though, like get the archives linked up, replace those images on the right [stuff from the old design], and add some more content to the bottom of the page, but that’s about it. Overall, I think it’s an improvement… more ‘chunky’ I reckon. Anyway… enough geek talk, standby for more of the usual – comment and links on stuff that matters: art, design, photography, science, technology, music, everything.

New stuff at altsense.net:
A Eulogy for Design
Preview Goree – an experiment using javascript and photography.

nowebpatents.org may give you second thoughts about shopping at Amazon.

XML in a Nutshell is recommended.

Best Bar (None) – Britain’s [or should that be London’s?] Most Essential Drinking Environments.

Using a version 4.x web browser? Then upgrade to a better Web experience.

I’d just like to gloat that this site has been standards compliant from day 1 [ie., it has never worked in a version 4.x browser and quite frankly, I couldn’t give a monkeys].

Forget ‘Hatt Baby’, check out ‘All Your Base Are Belong To Us’.

Airboard – the world’s first commercial hoverboard scooter.

loud paper :: “dedicated to increasing the volume of architectural discourse”

Maybe the team at Apple who are currently developing Mac OSX and new Apple products should have a good read of ‘Making the Macintosh’ – an exhaustive history of the Macintosh computer. I have a Mac Classic II stored in a cupboard at home and many a time I’ve felt like getting rid of my iMac and use my Classic II instead; it oozes simplicity, it hardly ever crashed, it just felt solid to use. I’m sure Apple have lost these attributes in their current mish-mash of products and that’s presumably something to do with the Internet and its browser and plugin wars.

Recent musical purchase: Chicago Underground Trio, Flamethrower – experimental free-jazz type stuff [amazon.com].

Reasons for the recent lack of posts:

a) I left my job and the nice T1 internet connection there. Hence, I [ahem] can’t surf the web as much.

b) I’m at home clocking up the phonebill on the 56k modem built into my Mac. Hence [see above].

c) I have The Flu… ergh.

Some good news though. One of my projects has been accepted into the Rhizome Artbase.

Thanks to everyone at CFID for the great leaving present: all 17 episodes of The Prisoner on DVD [I knew the wishlist would pay off one day]. And thanks to Paul and Jim for helping me to keep sane whilst working there. Be seeing you.

Dan Gillmore discusses privacy issues surrounding Amazon’s new ‘Honor System’ – Big business and government stretch the boundaries of privacy yet again [via evhead]

There’s now a Netscape 6 update available for Mac, Windows and Linux – lets hope they’ve removed some of the bugs. More comment at splorp.

Today is my last day at The Centre for Design Research.

G7 Stock Puppets

Manchester’s digitalsummer are commissioning collaborative works for inter:face 2001:

“In a world where communication and travel are changing, fiscal systems are mutating, currencies merging, people touch people through virtual channels: what does exchange mean…?”

Guess who already has an Amazon Micropayment button on their page ?

new objects at subsist.org

v-2.org > IA, finite yet unbounded

Would you like to be alone on the International Space Station with this man? Excellent work by the BBC News picture editors.

Bruce ‘Tog’ Tognazzini [One of the designers of the original Mac OS] really does not like the ‘the dock’ on Mac OSX. Not a good sign. [addendum – reading this has made me realise that Apple have completely lost it]

More useability meanderings current job left… too much to do.

There’s an interview with Chan Marshall [aka Cat Power] at spin.com

This is what Pluto looks like… almost.

Recommended music for a Friday evening: Avro Part: Alina followed by Squarepusher: Big Loada [both recently purchased from amazon.co.uk].

An interesting installation/performance project detailed at framefunk.

It seems as though Pyra has fallen foul of the dotcom recession and is in serious financial trouble. What I don’t understand is this: surely there is such a large user-base that as soon as a pay-for ‘pro’ version of Blogger is released, there is the potential to make the company very profitable. There is enough interest out there in keeping the web rich in hyperlinked content; there are enough individuals passionate enough about what they have to say, that I would have thought Pyra would have been able to harness the blogging craze they have helped to build up. So… it seems Blogger is now a one man band. Good luck Ev, that’s what I say.

One of the pleasures of photography is the ability to find beauty in mundane objects. This is demonstrated by an image of a kitchen sink by Heather Champ.

More:
The New Objectivity and Constructivism in Czech Inter-War Photography