emchi.co.uk

Well interesting few days.  I spent Friday and Saturday in London attending the Nielsen Norman Group conference on Intranet Usability.  Really interesting, best thing I’ve been to in a very long time. Hopefully I’ll get to apply some of what I learnt to my job.  Still it was exhausting, lack of sleep the night before, and staying up late talking to my best friend, all but did me in. 

Today I’ve done a mad dash to find puppy food (as she’s stopped eating the food for older dogs we were told to feed her), done the food shopping, watched the Grand Prix and baked a cake.  Yes, all in that order, I’ve still got the housework to do yet.

Brilliant Grand Prix today, Lewis deserved to win.  Which leads me onto something interesting I read on auto blog.  Apparently, Richard Hammond is going to be the F1 presenter when it goes to BBC next year.  If it’s true, then rock on!  Now all we need is someone like Suzi Perry to do the pit commentary.  I wonder who will do race commentary, I hope Martin Brundle moves, I like his commentary.  Perhaps Murray will come back?  Who knows. 

Anyway, I’m thinking of some blog posts on usability following the conference.  More soon!

There was a Royal wedding yesterday.  That does not bother me, good for happiness to happen.  No, what bothers me is the news reporting that the wedding dress designer was a London one, when I know this not to be true.  For Sassi Holford is a Taunton designer.  I know, I stood on many occasions staring at the latest dress hanging in her shop window. 

The shop, near the bridge in town, opposite the entrance to Goodlands Gardens, is a small place.  I cannot remember what it was before.  Every week the dress would change and I would steal a glance at the latest design.  Often walking out of my way just to look.  Like a child marvelling at the latest toy in the shop window.  It was of forbidden hopes and dreams.  Imagining myself in the latest design.  I could not see the person who I would be marrying, or maybe I could, but these thoughts were wrong, just whimsical fancy. 

So to hear something that you know to be a lie, it surfaces the forbidden and long forgotten dreams.  Now I know, these things are things that happen to other people, yet it still does not stop me dreaming of the dress.  It’s magical properties making you the only person on the planet that matters, for a few short hours anyway. 

Blogging is an interesting subject matter, and one that is topic du jour.  More to the point, the use of blog content to sell newspapers.  At the moment it seems to be the Daily Snail (Mail) who either steal content or defame people who have blogs.  So, NML, who has been defamed by those idiots over at the Daily Snail, has put out the word, that she wants to set the record straight, and so she should.  Shame on reporters who make things up, just to try and sell papers.  Papers that are worth nothing more than floor covering for puppies.  Anyway, below is the post that Natalie has published.  You can get to Natalie’s site by clicking on the link under the post.

I will admit this does feel a little like the bit in Hackers (yeah I know) where the word goes out to “Hack the Planet!”.  Blogs are a right for all those who have them.  Freedom of speech reigns in countries that permit it.  So we should all stand together united.

“Thursday, May 08, 2008

Well I think I’m in the minority.  I don’t live in London any more, but I wouldn’t have voted for Ken Livingston even if I had been living there.  I don’t care what people say, I think a change is needed, I think Boris may come across as a bumbling buffoon, but he’s really quite intelligent.  Labour had to go, lets just hope the same thing happens in two years time to the rest of them, Brown certainly has to go.

Five seconds after stepping off the puddle jumper, it felt as though I’d never left, that the gap of five months could have been five days.  All in all it was a duration of five, one way or another, count it in seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks or months.  I was back in London for a Expo at Earls Court.

I was walking down the underpass from Paddington Station and all the chilled, lassez faire approach to things went out the window and I wanted to scream at the person who was weaving from side to side with her kid, taking up all the space, “The sign says KEEP FUCKING LEFT” It took every ounce of lip biting to stop myself.  Why does London do this to me?

I don’t know what I was expecting when I got the station, but it wasn’t what appeared to be the Harry Potter film crew filming at the end of the platform I pulled into. 

Still I got lots of ideas for work, which I’ll probably forget no doubt.   It’s also nice to be home, even if it appears to have turned into the Lake District round here.

I’m enjoying a very rare luxury… A proper lie in… I’ve been left on my lonesome while r has gone into London to try and get arrested (long story I won’t bore you all with).  Anyway, I’m currently sitting in bed, enjoying having the whole thing to myself.  I would be enjoying it more but the birds up the chimney are really starting to annoy me.  They’ve been at it for two hours now.  Gah!! They have to go, and soon! bloody annoying things they are.

Right, I’m going in search of food and coffee… no rest for the wicked as they say!

Press Release

Mr & Mrs Smith by Royal Appointment:
Buckingham Palace set to become the ultimate British B&B

In a move that will shock traditionalists, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II today announced that Buckingham Palace, the official residence of the British monarchy since 1837, will open its doors in October this year to paying hotel guests. Mr & Mrs Smith, the London-based boutique-hotel specialists, will handle all bookings.

An entire wing of the iconic 18th-century building, designed by architect John Nash, will be given over to what will, from this summer, be known as The Royal Windsor Palace Suites. A consortium behind this radical new concept is currently talking to renowned hotel designers – including, it is rumoured, Philippe Starck, Tom Bartlett and Terence Conran – about providing the decor for this enviable project.

‘We’re aware that many will be surprised by Her Majesty’s decision to open up a wing of her London residence,’ says Royal Press Secretary Oona Abrillo. ‘But, in the light of recent events, she feels that the time is right to do so.’

‘Princes William and Harry are particularly concerned about the role of royalty in the 21st-century,’ says one source close to St James’ Palace. ‘And, what with Al Fayed’s conspiracy theories, the Labour government using the issue of royal taxation to drum up votes and Prince Harry’s forced withdrawal from Iraq being seen as a PR stunt by a cynical public, they are determined that the Windsors should not be seen as remote and untouchable.’

James Lohan, managing director of Mr & Mrs Smith – which has proudly added the ‘By Royal Appointment’ shield to its logo – is delighted to have won the contract to deal with the bookings for what will be the most upmarket B&B of them all. ‘We’re overjoyed to be working with Her Majesty on this project,’ he says. ‘Our American clients, in particular, are very excited about the prospect of a weekend in the Palace.’

Both Mr & Mrs Smith and Buckingham Palace are keeping exact details of the project under wraps for the moment, but it is believed that activities available will include corgi-walking in the Palace gardens, a day with the horse guard and cosy tea-and-Q&A sessions with the likes of Princess Anne, Freddie Windsor and Camilla Parker Bowles.

For more information, or to make an advance booking at The Royal Windsor Palace Suites, please view here.

>>> This is reproduced from an email I recieved this morning,  I’ll probably end up getting asked to take this down but in the mean time… enjoy. :o)

As some of you may know I work with web technologies.  At the moment specifically I’m looking at a massive intranet re-development.  So part of what I do, is to look at usability and accessibility.  Most of the sites I’ve looked at have had to try and comply with WAI standards.  So one of the biggest websites that I always follow for changes is BBC.  They seem to be one of the few organisations that spends a lot of time and effort (read money) in developing websites that are of a really high standard.  They take the time to combine current trends with accessibility.

So I was reasonably surprised to be presented with a new BBC home page a few weeks ago, being a div, I haven’t really had a chance to look at the site until today.  It would appear at the moment it’s only the home page that has undergone a massive update, but even so you have to look at it for it’s revolutionary approach to delivering content.

When I say revolutionary, I mean look for the navigation.  Breaking with a massive norm, the main navigation is at the bottom of the page, below the fold.  To do something like this, and not have people shouting “you can’t do that” is quite an achievement.  I suspect not many people have noticed though, because what you’re presented with is an eye catching diversion from the norm.

At first glance the page does appear a bit cluttered, but if you stop for a moment and click your way around it’s very well thought out.  Whilst they have taken the time to include bright promo panels, they don’t flash and move around distracting you from the content.  OK so they don’t have to have advertising on the site, but you have to ask why so many companies need to cram in as much junk as possible.  There is no need for it, a well thought out advertising policy, that’s controlled by the site owners and not by the advertising agencies that buy the space is important.  Anyway, I feel that even if BBC had to have advertising content on the site, they would approach the problem with good thought and the users of the site in mind.

The customisation abilities of the page on their own are quite impressive.  You can control you location in individual components or select a page wide change to your location.  So if you want to keep an eye on the weather in one part of the country, but the news in another, it lets you do that.  Quite clever.

As for the seemless changes to the colour when you click on the bottom tabs of the promo box on the right of the screen, completely effortless. Smooth transition without juddering effects.  It’s a really well presented page.  I hear on the grapevine that the news and sports pages are due for release next week, I’m looking forward to seeing what changes they have made here, as it’s always been one of my favourite websites.  Let’s hope they’ve moved into the middle of the page and lost the big chunk of whitespace down the right of the screen.

Now for website nightmares… go check out the Sky Showbiz news website.  What they were thinking? I have no idea, but with lack of decent navigation, page weighting, structure or sense of direction, it’s a wonder anyone uses the site any more.  With all the money they have, and all the design agencies in London, they end up with something that’s akin to Heathrow Terminal 5, i.e. a complete disaster.

So I live in a village, we’ve established that, there’s no M&S at the bottom of the road, there’s no 10 minute drives to Starbucks, the post never arrives and the rubbish / recycling situation is a little bit, shall we say, stupid.  There was a report in the news at the end of last year that the dustbin men wouldn’t collect a recycling bin because one tin hadn’t been washed out properly… These councils want you to recycle but they don’t do a thing to help you.

Anyway, we’ve gone from two bins in the flat and a “just chuck any of the above in one bin and we’ll sort it out” to having to sort out glass, tin and paper for a fortnightly collect, plastic and cardboard you have to take to a skip in the village once a month and everything else goes in the wheelie bin, but if you don’t close the lid they won’t collect it.  Whilst I was shoulder deep in the recycling bin pulling out cardboard and plastic at the weekend, I pondered, is it really worth it? Probably, I feel bad throwing out stuff I know can be recycled, because most items are a finite resource so I should do my bit.

Just so you all know… I am not carbon neutral, I couldn’t give two hoots, it’s all propaganda.  Cows produce more Co2 than the rest of us, what are we going to do, kill all the cows to get our carbon footprint down?  My car is of a higher Co2 class, but hey it’s about 10 times less than cars made two years before mine.  It’s all another way for the governments to indoctrinate us and get us to spend more money, which hey, if you hadn’t noticed, people are running out of.

On other subjects, given the current credit crisis, can I say, we had a lucky escape, and I’m so pleased (or should I say smug and self riteous) that we didn’t end up buying the flat in London.  Best thing that ever happened to us, even if at the time it didn’t seem like it.

Feeling better, whatever is in the yuky stuff the doctor gave me it’s working, and believe me, it’s really yucky, the taste isn’t even made better by the addition of squash.  You have to gulp it down in one go, then take a swig of something nicer.  Bleurgh.

We finally unpacked the living room today, got tired of two TV’s in the living room and the TV being so close to us that it made our eyes hurt when we looked at the TV guide.  So now it’s further away and there is tons of room.  We can even see out of the conservatory to the garden beyond, well not now as it’s rather black out there.  Apparently there’s a storm coming so we’ll see what blows off first, the other week it was the recycle bins at one thirty in the morning.  I’m guessing it’ll be most of next door’s newly built shed, I’m sure we’ll chuckle no end at that one.  Considering, it was them, rather than the birds who woke me up yesterday morning. 

Was lying in bed this morning wondering if the birds were in the loft or in the chimney.  I gave up, the incessant chirping and clipping was getting on my nerves, also the sun had risen enough not to burn my corneas out of my head so I decided to get out of bed.  Still it was nice coming downstairs to a nice clean living room instead of the leaning towers of magazines and empty boxes that surrounded me. 

We spent most of the day, read all of today, looking for somewhere to stay on holiday.  It was a somewhat fruitless exercise as we need to check with our friends where they actually want to go and what their budget is.  Fun fun fun!! My eyes hurt from the exertion.

Read the Observer top 50 blogs today, was gutted to find one of them was a blog I was supposed to be involved in, but by the time it got off the ground (it took a year of planning), I’d lost the will to contribute.  This blog is a lot less successful, nobody reads the damn thing, who could blame them.

Well it’s back to the grind stone tomorrow.  I need to arrange travel and hotel for the course my boss and I are attending at the end of May.  I can’t say I’m looking forward to going back into London for two days, the course looks interesting though.