Planet BNM

Blogs

1. Net Lab

   [Blog] Net Lab: Connexion Bizaree Newsletter

   Thanks to the guys at Connexion Bizarre for their recommendation in their latest newsletter. They have lots of lovely album reviews and events for our great friends in Europe.

   

   Posted 6 January 2009, 12:46 am

2. Psychic Origami

   [Blog] Psychic Origami: A 5K Python Fullscreen Text Editor

   After a 5K Java Twitter client and a 5K Javascript TODO list app, the next example 5K App is a wxPython fullscreen text editor. Much like Writeroom and Duncan’s JDarkroom (both of which are more fully featured) it lets you edit text files in “distraction-free” fullscreen. Ideal for creative writing or similar where you want to just get on with writing without the distraction of the outside world. So at the risk of invoking the apoplectic rage of Mark Pilgrim a fullscreen text editor seemed quite feasible in 5K of Python. In fact after using my self-extracting script code I actually had to add more features as I was way below budget!

   Check out the video below or download 5KEdit for yourself.

   
   
   

   Features:

   • Fullscreen text editing
   • Open/Save files
   • Undo/Redo
   • Retro looks
   • Resizable fonts
   • Configurable colours
   • Word count
   • Goto line number dialog
   • Find text dialog
   • Help page listing commands
   • About box

   It’s actually a bit more feature-full than I’d thought it would be. Part of this was that wxPython’s wx.StyledTextCtrl and wxPython in general provided quite a lot of what I needed (e.g. undo/redo) out of the box. Plus the self-extracting script technique really did a good job of shrinking the code down - allowing me to add more.

   To run 5KEdit your need Python (2.4+) and wxPython (2.8+) installed. If you are running OS X Leopard you already have those installed, so you can simple switch to a terminal and run that 5KEdit script using the command:

   pythonw 5KEdit.pyw
   

   Make sure you run that from the directory 5KEdit.pyw is in. On a Windows system you may find that you can simply double-click on the .pyw file to run it. There’s a small repaint bug under Windows when you change colors, but it’s not a show stopper.

   Here are the vital statistics:

   • 17284 bytes/485 lines of original source-code
   • 13767 bytes/379 lines of stripped source-code
   • 5069 bytes of compressed/packed final version

   As you can see the final version is less than a third the size of the original source code. A large part of this is due to the compression, but to help push it a bit further the source was also “stripped”. Blank-lines and comments were removed and the indentation was changed from my usual 4 spaces to a single space. The stripping doesn’t make a huge contribution, but without it the final version would be 5421 bytes in size. So for 400 bytes or so it’s probably worth it. Plus it means that you don’t have to worry about leaving yourself comments or spacing out your code nicely.

   • Download the source (with build files etc)

   Posted 5 January 2009, 7:43 pm

3. Copywriter, Brighton | Web Copywriter | SEO | Marketing

   [Blog] Copywriter, Brighton | Web Copywriter | SEO | Marketing: Writing for Bloggers - A Quick Guide on Style, Substance and Strategy

   So here it is - my second guide to writing for the web.

   Writing for Bloggers - A Quick Guide on Style, Substance and Strategy

   This guide focuses on blogging, and things bloggers can do to improve their writing. It’s a very short guide, intended to cover the basics and remove obstacles in the paths of new bloggers.

   If you would like the white label version to give your clients, email me and I’ll send you a copy. Please distribute freely - I want to encourage people to blog.

   Thanks to the following for their input: (who responded to my request for readers on Twitter)

   • Emma Nicol of Door 22 Creative (a graphic design agency) who has done an amazing job designing the document
     
   • Donald Strachan
   • Anca Foster
   • Jane Dallaway
   • Catherine Pope
   • Amy Harrison

   Posted 5 January 2009, 4:14 pm

4. Andy Budd::Blogography Articles

   [Blog] Andy Budd::Blogography Articles: Spring Intern

   Clearleft is looking for a keen intern to join our team for 10 weeks this spring. We’re looking for somebody with a real interest in front end development. Somebody who is passionate about the quality of their code and willing to go that extra mile to see it implemented correctly. You’ll be the type of person who reads all the blogs, subscribes to all the Twitter feeds and owns at least a couple of our books :-)

   This is a hands on position so you’ll need to be willing to roll up your sleeves and get stuck in. We’ll be buddying you up with our superstar programmers, so you’ll get chance to pair program with Natalie Downe and argue semantics with Jeremy Keith. It won’t be a cakewalk either, so expect to have everything you know about web standards challenged.

   After 10 weeks of working on real world projects with some of the best front end developers in the industry, you’ll have developed a level of HTML, CSS and Javascript knowledge that would normally take years to accrue. So this is an excellent opportunity for all those web standards enthusiasts and budding front end developers out there.

   If you’re interested in the internship yourself, or know somebody who would be, here’s the official job spec.

   Posted 5 January 2009, 3:38 pm

5. richtextformat.net

   [Blog] richtextformat.net: swindon orbital walk: intro

   this is the shape of 27th of december 2008: this shape demarks the route of a walk i took on that day. inspired by and loosely modeled on iain sinclair’s ‘london orbital‘ - where iain circumnavigates london by following the route of the m25 - i decided to go for a similar walk around my [...]

   Posted 5 January 2009, 12:27 pm

6. The Jezblog

   [Blog] The Jezblog: Flash games: threaded or single execution loop

   Whilst writing a Flash mini-game the discussion came up whether the objects themselves should manage their proximity checking, etc. or whether there should be a single game execution loop that steps through a container of game characters. I'm making a note here because I am going for Inbox Zero and am about to delete the emails about it.

   Me being a Java Dev, I tried an object-based approach first and it all ran really slowly. I'm not sure how good Flash (as in Actionscript 3.0) is at multi-threading, but my guess is nothing like as good as Java, so we tried the single "game loop" approach. This has the added benefit of being simple to pause the game and/or look at the current game state. I guess that the problem then becomes more about efficiently handling stepping through a set of objects giving them their 'turn'. It all takes me back to mainframe days of round-robin and priority scheduling.

   The single game loop seems fairly effective for small-ish numbers of objects, so maybe it is sensible to just accept that and use it. I know that there are other schemes based on splitting the screen into cells and only checking for collisions between close objects (to me, this sounds like a database index). http://lab.polygonal.de/2007/09/09/quadtree-demonstration/

   Another area to investigate later would be more efficient containers e.g. http://code.google.com/p/as3ds/ and plenty of good examples here: http://lab.polygonal.de/category/data-structures/

   Posted 5 January 2009, 12:27 pm

7. Net Lab

   [Blog] Net Lab: Welcoming Zak Norman

   Those who regularly read our Blog will have enjoyed recent posts from our new contributor, Zak Norman. Zak is an experienced events organised and label owner in his own right, with a great knowledge of the current UK electronic music scene. He will be adding to the regular news and updates on our Blog regularly, so keep reading.

   Find out more about Zak on our Staff page.

   Welcome Zak!

   

   Posted 5 January 2009, 11:35 am

8. Copywriter, Brighton | Web Copywriter | SEO | Marketing

   [Blog] Copywriter, Brighton | Web Copywriter | SEO | Marketing: Writing for the Web - a Mini Guide

   As promised, and previously discussed, I’ve been busy working on a couple of writing guides. Here’s the first:

   Writing for the Web - A Quick Guide on What to Write and How to Write it

   Now this guide isn’t for everyone: it’s for new writers, people who aren’t social-media-savvy, people who want or need to write for their own website, but who need a bit of guidance. I really wanted to create this guide because so many people are realising the value of adding content to websites, but not everyone understands how to write for the web.

   Web developers - save your sites!

   So, if you’re a web developer who regularly dreads the arrival of your client’s DIY copy, why not grease the wheels of good fortune by giving clients a little direction? This guide should prevent people making basic mistakes and improve your chances of getting copy that doesn’t detract from the website you’ve lovingly crafted.

   If you’d like to give this guide to your clients, I can even offer you a white-label version that you can brand as your own.

   Credits

   Thanks to Premasagar Rose of Dharmafly, Brighton’s finest ethical web developers and social media instigators, and Emma Nicol of Door 22 Creative (a Graphic Design agency) - who took my Word document and worked some crafty design magic on it. Thanks!

   Upcoming

   Coming soon is Writing for Bloggers - a similarly short guide that aims to remove obstacles from the paths of virgin bloggers.

   Posted 5 January 2009, 11:07 am

9. Net Lab

   [Blog] Net Lab: Halogen ‘Recycled Broadcasts EP’ Free Release

   

   The launch of a new artist and label, Halogen has created a bold statement of intent for both himself and Maternity output. This the first in a series of free releases planned for the growing downtempo label, with each focused around a certain core idea. Over four tracks, Recycled Broadcasts tackles the theme of ‘human communication and weathered transmissions re-used in to alternate musical contexts’. Marshal Mcluhan once wrote that ‘The content of a medium is the previous medium,’ an ideology that is proven throughout this EP, as, in exploring and utilizing content from previous generations and musical movements, Halogen has produced a work as engaging as it is staggeringly original.

   Not the Remix, the story of a failed remix which became a whole piece within itself kicks things off with percussive beats reminiscent of Bluetech, leading into a melodic, exultant climax. Manilla is my personal highlight. Underpinned by a robust, fervent rhythm section, the track is alive with a multitude of squeaks and glitches which, rather like an Escher painting, gives the track a multi-dimensional aspect, with the end result still vigilantly restrained into a tight rhythmic formula. Previous Future is a return to the Native State influenced sound of Not The Remix. Spacious, crystaline synth percolations give way to a rolling bass line and pounding drums. The record closes with Transmission, soaked carefully in reverb, droning pads and tight crunchy percussion, it brings to mind Remote Viewer’s recent output.

   Halogen’s sound selection is one of the key factors which determines his ability and importance within the current IDM scene. Every sound feels like it has been chosen with great care and precision, sitting harmoniously in the mix with all the others, without squabbling with each other to be heard. A great introduction from a producer and label who’s stock will undoubtedly continue to rise throughout 2009.

   Recycled Broadcasts EP is available for free download from the Maternity website.

   

   Posted 4 January 2009, 3:10 pm

10. Adactio

    [Blog] Adactio: The Rise of HTML5

    Registration opened a couple of days ago for the latest Clearleft event. UX London will be taking place from June 15th to 17th. This will be a very different event to dConstruct.

    For a start, the format is based around workshops (although there will also be a day of presentations). Then there’s the timescale: UX London will last for three days. Finally, there’s the intimacy factor. Whereas the attendance for dConstruct is somewhere between 700 and 800 people, UX London will be deliberately limited to around 150.

    Our motivation for putting together this event was partly to bring a kick-ass UX here in the UK for a change. But mostly we wanted to put together the kind of event that we wanted to attend. So we drew up our dream line-up and incredibly, we got everyone we wanted: Dan Saffer, Jared Spool, Jeff Veen …and Don fucking Norman (excuse my French but I find it very hard to say Don Norman will be speaking at UX London without interjecting some indication of my excitement).

    Andy has written more about the event on his blog which has, over the past week, arisen from its deep slumber.

    The site itself launched right before Christmas. Natalie and I did the front-end build and I’m pretty damned pleased with how it turned out. Behold the liquidy goodness!

    We used this as an opportunity to really push what Dan has been calling progressive enrichment: sprinkling in some modern CSS declarations even if not every browser gets all of them—something that Malarkey has been banging on about for quite a while now.

    So if you view the UX London site in IE6 it looks fine. Nothing special though. But if you view the site in a browser like Safari, a lot of little details shine through. The design is pretty much a test-case for the box-shadow property using RGBa. Depending on the browser width, multiple translucently shadowed elements can overlap and it’s interesting to see how browsers handle this (Safari’s additive approach seems correct to me).

    On the markup side of things, we decided to write the site in HTML5. But wait! Isn’t HTML5 going to take another few decades before it’s finished?

    Well, no. That little bit of bollocks was spread ‘round by people who misread the timeline, underestimating the importance of “working draft” and overestimating the importance of “proposed recommendation”. Admittedly, those are pretty confusing and unintuitive labels for it’s ready and it’s been finished for ages and now it’s 100% supported in at least two implementations.

    It turns out that when it comes to the markup, HTML5 isn’t all that different to what has come before. It’s all the DOM gubbins—which should allow a more declarative approach to building web apps—that is the real hard stuff that requires browser support in order to work. If you’re not interested in that side of things, much of the HTML5 spec won’t even be relevant to you. For your convenience, Michael Smith has put together a markup-only version of the spec.

    From a semantic perspective, the most important additions to the markup language are the structural elements such as header, article, section and so on. Bruce Lawson has put together a test case to show that you can use these elements and still style them in most browsers. For pesky Internet Explorer, you can use a neat little JavaScript trick that John Resig discovered a while back. Alas, Camino still doesn’t play nice with styling the new elements. But that isn’t going to stop Bruce realigning his site to use HTML5’s new structural elements.

    For the UX London site, we didn’t go quite that far. We stuck to using divs with class attributes for our structure. But we could still build on the work that has gone into the HTML5 structural elements. Rather than coming up with our own class names, we used the names proposed in the spec: article, section, aside, etc.

    Now our document structure has pre-built documentation. Want to know what class="article" denotes? RTFM.

    Using HTML5 elements as a basis for a naming convention isn’t a new idea. Malarkey has written about developing naming conventions from HTML5. Jon Tan also wrote about preparing for HTML5 with semantic class names. Oli Studholme put both of those articles together to create a handy little structural cheatsheet. Use microformat class names for the small stuff; use HTML5 class names for the bigger stuff.

    Apart from providing easier documentation, there’s another good reason to take this approach: interoperability. Think about how much easier user styling would be if sites shared many of the same class names. Even if you don’t think that they are the best class names—I know, for instance, that Malarkey doesn’t like the presentational smell of footer—the benefits of an aggregate shared vocabulary could be very empowering. So if you do insist on creating a CSS framework that mandates using certain specific names (a concept I despise) please, please, please use those class names.

    On the subject of user styling, there’s a site ID of uxlondon-com on the UX London site. Huffduffer, another HTML5 site, has an ID of huffduffer-com on every page. But rather putting these IDs on the body element, it seems more meaningful to me to add them on the html element itself.

    A couple of weeks after the UX London site launched, another event site went live: the beautifully-redesigned An Event Apart. It’s also written in HTML5. Jeffrey has written about the design and Eric has written about the markup.

    Huffduffer, UX London, An Event Apart and now The Watchmaker Project …there’s quite an exciting air of experimentation around using HTML5 right now. Personally, I’ve found it to be a fun way of breaking out and trying something new. I recommend giving it a whirl. Until recently you would have needed to use validator.nu to test your markup but now that’s been integrated into the W3C validator so all your old bookmarklets and tools will still work.

    Even if you decide against writing in HTML5 itself, at least consider using those HTML5-inspired class names for your structural naming convention where appropriate.

    ---

    Tagged with html5 markup css css3 uxlondon aneventapart html

    Posted 4 January 2009, 3:01 pm

11. iestyn.net

    [Blog] iestyn.net: Wildlife photography

    It’s been a while since I posted any of my photographs here, so here’s a few shots from WWT Arundel and Pulborough Brooks RSPB reserve. Both are excellent places for a day out. 

    More photos are on Flickr.

    Robin

    

     

    Great Tit

    

     

    Chaffinch

    

     

    Jackdaw

    

     

    Pheasant

    

     

    Robin

    

    
    

    

    Posted 4 January 2009, 1:36 pm

12. Callender Creates

    [Blog] Callender Creates: Company Review of 2008

    Where to start! What a year 2008 was (to recap this was 2007’s review). So 2008 was all about collaboration, online, with local colleagues and forging new projects and relationships with clients and friends alike, here’s what happened at Callender Creates: 2008, the year my girlfriend started to use the mobile web Recover from a big theft at [...]

    Posted 2 January 2009, 9:08 pm

13. peteblog

    [Blog] peteblog: Online content tip - show off your expertise

    One of the best things you can do to market yourself online is to demonstrate your expertise. The simplest way to do this is by writing articles for your website (or for your blog) about your industry. Try and keep it relevant to what you want your customers and potential customers to know you for.
    
    Your articles could be hints and tips, your thoughts on best practices, comments on topical news as it relates to your business and so on.

    Posted 2 January 2009, 4:32 pm

14. Andy Budd::Blogography Articles

    [Blog] Andy Budd::Blogography Articles: UX London Registration Launches

    Ticket sales for UX London launched today so I thought I’d take this opportunity to outline what we’re trying to achieve with this event.

    A lot of industry conferences are what I’d describe as “talking heads” events, where well known speakers stand up for an hour and give the audience a big does of inspiration. I love these type of events and this is essentially what we do at dConstruct. I always come away with a head full of ideas and an a renewed interest in my profession.

    The one criticism I hear is that, while these events are inspiring, you don’t usually end up learning new skills. I think a lot of people blame the speakers or conference organisers for this, but I actually think it’s down to the format. With just 45 minutes of productive speaking time and an audience of wildly differing needs and abilities, It’s just not possible to teach anything substantive.

    So with UX London we’re trying to change that. Rather than a straight up conference, UX London is much more about professional development. Sure we’re going to have a conference track with inspiring speakers like Don Norman and Jeff Veen. However we’re then going to break off into two days of intense, half day workshops, where you can really start to focus on those hard skills.

    There will be three workshop tracks at the event: “Core Skills” for people transitioning into a UX role, “Advanced Skills” for those people wanting to hone their knowledge, and a “Strategy and Management” track for people running UX teams and needing to sell the benefits of UX to their clients and managers. So you’ll get to learn practical tips and techniques from the likes of Peter Merholz, Luke Wroblewski, Dan Saffer and Jared Spool.

    We’re putting the finishing touches to the program right now, but workshops so far include:
    * Influencing Strategy Through Design
    * Brainstorming and Concept Generation
    * Design Research
    * Quick Sketching for Interaction Design
    * Information Architecture Essentials
    * Copywriting and the Scent of Information
    * Interactive Wireframing
    * Getting Real with Agile Design
    * Managing a Team of UX Professionals

    As you can see from the program, this event is aimed more towards the corporate end of the spectrum. So people working for organisations like the BBC and design agencies like LBi as well as individual consultants. Of course we hope to have all kinds of people attending, but we realise not everybody will be able to afford the ticket price. That’s why we’re still committed to bringing you great speakers at events like dConstruct.

    On the subject of price, I just wanted to assure people that this isn’t an attempt to “cash in” (those of you who know us know that we’re not particularly profit motivated, much to the disappointment of our families). In fact, this event is costing so much money I doubt we’ll make a profit this year. London hotels, top name speakers and three days of catering don’t come cheap. Instead our goal is to bring over some of the best known speakers in the industry and have them share their knowledge. By doing so we hope to build the European UX community and help raise the level of education in our industry as a whole. That way we all win.

    At a cost of £895 this event may still seem expensive to some. However it’s actually no more than going to the dConstruct conference and both workshop days. We’ve simply decided to do it as one fixed price rather than break it down into it’s constituent parts. That way we can keep that sense of shared experience.

    I know I’m really excited about the event and I hope you are too. We’ve gone to great pains to bring together what we think is the perfect line-up. Sort of a fantasy league UX conference. I’ve already got my eye on the workshop sessions I want to attend, assuming I’m not running round like a mad person organising things. I’m also very excited by the conference sessions we’ve got planned, so look forward to making more announcements in the coming weeks.

    So if you want to stay up-to-date with all the latest UX London happenings, why don’t you subscribe to our events feed or our Twitter account.

    Posted 2 January 2009, 2:28 pm

15. Adactio

    [Blog] Adactio: Antipatterns for sale

    Twply is a straightforward little Twitter app that sends @replies to email. It uses the password anti-pattern. Oh, but don’t worry. It states quite clearly on the site that Your password is safe with us. No worries!

    Twply is up for sale …sold. That means all those passwords are available to the highest bidder ($1200 in this case).

    Sleep tight, Twply users. May you wake to a better day.

    ---

    Tagged with password antipattern twitter oauth twply

    Posted 2 January 2009, 9:46 am

Flickr

These photos are the most recent added to the BNM Flickr Photo pool.

1. [Flickr] EF 50mm Closeup - Light Studio Test

   

   Posted by creativebloke, on 4 Jan 2009, 10:41 pm

2. [Flickr] Toy Car - Light Studio Test

   

   Posted by creativebloke, on 4 Jan 2009, 10:41 pm

3. [Flickr] Pen - Light Studio Test

   

   Posted by creativebloke, on 4 Jan 2009, 10:41 pm

4. [Flickr] iPod Shuffle - Light Studio Test

   

   Posted by creativebloke, on 4 Jan 2009, 10:41 pm

5. [Flickr] Bug - Light Studio Test

   

   Posted by creativebloke, on 4 Jan 2009, 10:41 pm

6. [Flickr] Creativebloke's Macro Studio

   

   Posted by creativebloke, on 4 Jan 2009, 10:41 pm

7. [Flickr] c r e d i t _ c r u n c h ?

   

   Posted by Tim Jameson, on 3 Jan 2009, 6:50 pm

8. [Flickr] Moleskine Retro PDA Part 8 - Reference

   

   Posted by mrmole, on 2 Jan 2009, 4:15 pm

9. [Flickr] Thoughtful Yezzer

   

   Posted by Clive Andrews, on 27 Dec 2008, 11:35 pm

10. [Flickr] Christmas Day Swim in Brighton

    

    Posted by Jim Callender, on 27 Dec 2008, 1:12 am

[Flickr] back to school feeling?

i imagine for a lot of you you might have that back to school feeling? well why not go one step further and get yourself a place on my photo cause the photo was taken by

Photo uploaded by lomokev, on 5 Jan 2009, 11:48 am