Now not being an expert on ornithology I wasn’t definately sure what I was looking at this morning when my girlfriend woke me up to enquire what kind of an animal was happily buzzing round our carnations.
However, I was pretty sure this was a humming bird (although other suggestions on a postcard please), I was also pretty sure they don’t tend to visit Stoke Newington, North London too often.
Anyway, make your own mind up:
Am loving the lomo technique for photos. Makes things look aged and a little spooky.
Kind of intesting that, as we canter headlong into the digital age, with increasing ability to produce perfect imagery, so we see the rise of techniques such as this to reproduce imperfect finishes. Although on the flip side, is it the increasing ability of programs such as photoshop to produce any effect imaginable that fuels this rise? Either way, I like it. It’s similar to TV and film now where directors are using interferance and snow as mechanisms to convey certain feelings.
Is that post-modernist? I truely have no idea any more. The term is starting to mean everything and nothing to me.
[flash http://www.youtube.com/?v=PB-LlmLG4sQ]
We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have these because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do.
Aristotle
Just finished reading the rather excellent Getting Real – The smarter, faster, easier way to
build a successful web application by 37 Signals
This has to be the best $19 I have ever spent. A truly excellent and calming read that reaffirms ones belief in all that is good. If you have ever felt that many processes in IT (and any other complex system for that matter) are bloated, over-complex, over-rationalised, self-defeatist, ya-da and ta-da, then this is the (e)Book for you.
From my own perspective simplicity is something that we should start from not strive to achieve. Why should things be so complex all the time, decide what goal the product needs to achieve and measure all details against that main goal. I accept the author’s declaration that for certain systems (e.g. banking) simplicity is not always possible. Overall this book calms my fears about complex systems and as much the way as in nature, we should look for the patterns inherent in the system as well as the fine details. Or more simply, don’t sweat the small stuff.
Some fresh air snippits:
Getting Real is about skipping all the stuff that
represents real (charts, graphs, boxes, arrows, schematics,
wireframes, etc.) and actually building the real thing.Getting real is less. Less mass, less software, less features,
less paperwork, less of everything that’s not essential (and
most of what you think is essential actually isn’t).Getting Real is staying small and being agile.
Get Getting Real