design-and-ideas – Page 60 – Cubicgarden.com…

Inkscape is simply great software

I would just love to say, I upgraded my inkscape the other day because I needed to do something using vectors. In my younger days I would instantly use Adobe Illustrator but I really don't feel the need to any more. Inkscape 4.3 is as stable as a brick house (honestly never crashed ever, like previous versions) and although not quite working quite like illustrator. I'm really getting into the way it works now. I also felt so happy about Inkscape, that I decided to add my core but simple illustration to the openclipart project. You can see the whole thing here, till they move it. I provided the object under a public domain licence, so anyone can do what they like to it. I was tempted to do a whole range for XML, XSD, CSS, etc. But thought I'd leave it for now. But maybe one day soon I'll do it. It feel so good to beable to do this with opensource software.

You can't help but feel the tables are turning and there will be enough openclipart and applications like Inkscape to do everything in a opensource environment. Oh whoops, of course there already is. But these new crop like Inkscape, Firefox, Thunderbird, VLC, Koffice, Scribus, Openoffice, Gimp, etc really are getting the basics right and win market and mindshare. The google code thing has got me thinking that actually its time I started working with SVG a lot more like I use to. I mean there are people who can see it now and its growing as more browsers come out supporting SVG. Expect to see more inline SVG on this blog as time goes on. ~~I dropped a SVG in this page just for testing purposes.~~ Hey and what a great name for software? Inkscape. What more can I say, oh did I say how great the connector tool is? OMNIGrapple? Don't need it, I got Inkscape thank you very much.

The new Connector tool was used for a preliminary design of these flowcharts, when it was critical to keep items connected all the time while looking for the best layout. The flowchart lines were then edited with the Node tool.Diagrammers everywhere will find this tool invaluable. Connectors stay attached and automatically route to avoid marked objects as the drawing is updated. After the layout work is finished, connectors can be adjusted with the node tool.

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The next geekdinner will be with Paul Boag

The next geekdinner will be next month on Thursday 23rd Feb and our guest for the night will be Paul Boag of the popular podcast Boagworld. The Boagworld podcast is aimed at those who are responsible for an organisation's website and would like practial advice on what they should or could be doing to improve the current site. Paul himself is a well established web designer usability/accessibility specialist and is a founder partner of Headscape which practice Webstandards when ever possible.

The venue has changed once again, this time were at the Polar Bear which is just a stone throw away from Leicester Square. The venue is larger than the one in Covent Garden, and a nicer cleaner deco. I'm also expecting the food will not run out like last time and at only 5 pound per head expect a more rounded buffet with food for vegetarians as well as meat eaters. There will also at long last be a PA system with Microphone for the guest and the Question and Answers session which follows. I'm also able to play what ever music I like at what ever level I like. So if anyones interested I can maybe put there ipod on shuffle mode and play it during the night at a low level.

As always expect a post on Geekdinner.co.uk soon and its been listed on Eventful and Upcoming.

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The challenges of validating cubicgarden

Its one of the dirty little secrets of my blog, I’ve never been able to get it to validate to xhtml because of a combination of things. So first up lets have a look at how many errors I currently receive. 127 validation errors to be exact at the moment without this post. But its honestly not that bad, well it is but let me show you the better side first. If I just validate just one post with my current theme/style you will see there is only 4 errors and they all point towards my search box which actually links to Blogdigger.com.

form method=”get” action=”http://groups.blogdigger.com/groups.jsp?search=1″
input type=”text” size=”31″ name=”q”
input type=”hidden” name=”id” value=”1065″
input type=”hidden” name=”sortby” value=”date”
/form

So to solve this problem I need to wrap the input elements in another element first. This is simple as I just added a div with a id around the input elements.

Ok so moving on, lets try another single post entry. The errors are varied, but the first one is Error Line 125, column 167: there is no attribute “border”. Yeah easy to fix, but why would I make some a school boy error? Well I dont its actually my blogging application which automaticly adds it when I make a image element. I just keep forgetting to remove it. So the easy thing to do would be to change blogging client, specially seeing how i’ve been meaning to change to something more powerful for quite some time. I tried to notify the author but had no reply and theres no forum or bug tracking. Worst still I cant actually change the element properties in wbloggar. So I’m going to try Performancing for Firefox and maybe even pay for Ecto. Till then I’m having to edit my posts to remove that border=0. Oh by the way Error Line 125, column 172: required attribute “alt” not specified is also because wbloggar puts the alt attribute as a title attribute instead. Another reason to move away from wbloggar.

My next error is my own fault. I’ve forgotten the fact that the Blockquote element should not contain text content only another block level element like a paragraph. So once again I need to go back through my entries and change that. I’ve also changed my wbloggar custom tag to add a paragraph element inside the blockquote element. When I change to ecto or something else, I hope it does this out of the box.

Ok so were almost there now. But wait here’s the big problem. Lets take my last 5 entries including this one which I was typing at the same time as validating.

3. Warning Line 125, column 438: reference not terminated by REFC delimiter
…ojsom%2Fblog%2Fcubicgarden%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=XHTM
If you meant to include an entity that starts with “&”, then you should terminate it with “;”. Another reason for this error message is that you inadvertently created an entity by failing to escape an “&” character just before this text.

4. Warning Line 125, column 438: reference to external entity in attribute value .
…ojsom%2Fblog%2Fcubicgarden%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=XHTM
This is generally the sign of an ampersand that was not properly escaped for inclusion in an attribute, in a href for example. You will need to escape all instances of ‘&’ into ‘&’.

5. Error Line 125, column 438: reference to entity “charset” for which no system identifier could be generated .
…ojsom%2Fblog%2Fcubicgarden%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=XHTM
This is usually a cascading error caused by a an undefined entity reference or use of an unencoded ampersand (&) in an URL or body text. See the previous message for further details.

So basicly all the URLs need to be converted to include ampersands otherwise I will never be able to get a validating weblog. So I’m looking into my Velocity templates if there is anything which can be done. I thought I’d have a look around at other popular blojsom based blogs, see if the problem is the same. First up David Czarnecki, same problem. Ravensbourne’s Mobile learning blog, same problem. IRIS at VeriSign, yep you guessed it same problem. A quick look across the web and the problem seems to be hit and miss. Ben Metcalfe, Robert Scoble, Jeremy Zawodny, Consuming Experience, etc. Geez, theres got to be a way to solve this without actually recrafting urls when blogging?

Breaking the grid in the city and online

Molly has wrote a really good comparsion between the grid systems of most American cities and the grids of websites in an entry for Alist apart titled Thinking outside the grid. Thanks to Sheila for the heads up.

On the other hand, Tucson’s designers planned for only a certain amount of growth, and this has caused innumerable problems in maintaining the city’s ease of navigation and usability as the city grew beyond its planned limits. Furthermore, the constraints of Tucson’s grid do not encourage the emergence of alternative neighborhoods and communities. Many residents of Tucson will agree that the city lacks a vibrant center—or many unique communities—as a result, and that when those isolated spots do exist, they’re easy to get to, but people aren’t motivated to get out and find them.

London, unlike Tucson, is a maze. I know Londoners who carry around a London A-Z guidebook to help them navigate! The city’s transportation system is so challenging that would-be cab drivers must pass a test demonstrating that they possess The Knowledge in order to drive traditional black cabs. The city’s organic growth hasn’t exactly made it the easiest place to navigate.

Fantastic stuff, specially when you start thinking about the differences between the two cities communities and how blogs look compared to news sites.

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Consistency between browsers? No this simply cant be true

The Microsoft RSS Team has a blog post about the consistency between IE7 and Firefox, at least when it comes to Feeds. The Firefox RSS icon will be used on IE7 when it finally launches next year. Mind blowing would you not agree? Oh and lets not forget the Website indentification stuff too.

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Listening to the next net generation

The teen demographic uses the Web constantly and in very sophisticated ways. They don't want to pay for very much, but if you can find something they will pay for (like ring tones), they tend to spend a lot. Safa Rashtchy, managing director of Piper Jaffray, interviewed five seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds about their relationships with technology.

Oh my goodness you have to hear the end of this podcast enclosure, what Teens want – starts at 15:20 mins and lasts about 8mins. Cant wait to hear the whole thing on IT Conversations really soon.

Generally the thoughts is free is good and there's some thoughts about spyware and advertising. Someone did mention paying artist of the music via iTunes but generally there was no thoughts beyond free download. Although you can listen to it and shake your head in shame, I dont. I use to think exactly the same way. Now at least I'm a little more aware of the issues and the cultural shifts. I'm sure the teenagers on stage will alter there views a little over time. But honestly its refreshing to hear the younger generation talk frankly about there habits.

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Reach and that leap faith which is required

There's quite a few times when I have been suggesting or recommending a way forward, and the other person has looked at me with a blank stare. Its not because words coming out of my mouth are not reconisable but the concept is a step too far. I have a few good examples of this but one which comes to mind which other people may hit home with a lot of people is the net phenomena.

I remember explaining to people that I would buy real stuff online.

See this is the thing, it was back in 1996 when realistically most people had only heard of logging on the super information highway (yeah I remember those words too). The concept of buying online goods which would be delivered to you, was a step too far for quite a few people. Honestly, I dont actually remember when Tesco started delivering grocery'sexplanation online but it seemed quite logical to myself and started using the service as soon as I left my parents home in 1999.

I dont know if the leap of faith is correct, as it seems to have many religious views attached to it. Maybe mini mind shift might be a better explanation?

Another example which is bang up to date and may divide a few people. AV Content online can be delivered cheaply without a advertising or subscription model. Some people will agree and some will disagree. If you disagree, you may be familiar with concepts like P2P, TVRSS, IPTV, etc.. But have not actually fully experienced there effects. Hey a small percentage of you may say the statement was actually hogwash and what actually is cheaply anyway? And I would say, at this stage, it requires a leap of faith or a mini mind shift to see the potential which is only just around the corner.

The biggest leap of faith at the moment which I keep having to explain is Reach. When talking about blog and RSS spaces and always say something about the niche audiences, the longtail and always reach. When you use full RSS syndication and/or P2P distribution, website metrics break down and you have to rely on Reach instead. Theres a issue with Reach, it requires a leap of faith as theres no actual metric for reach (yet).
Its very painful because the arguments away from Website metrics are very clever and make sense when you look at the current landscape of the web 2.0. I mean why would you ever syndicate full text content in RSS unless you believed in (or at least thought about) Reach or cared so less about the content?

I'm just reading Malcolm Gladwell's Blink now and theres something which is somewhat related on page 176.

We like market research because it provides certainty – a score, a prediction;if someone asks us why we made the decision we did, we can point to a number. But the truth is that for the most important decisions, there can be no certainty.

Another leap of faith, The public aspect of Social software can actually beneficial to you and everyone using the software. Its all about communities and I mean a leap of faith beyond Social networking sites and online forums. I'm talking about shared data with benefits yourself and everyone else. Why else do people use Flickr, Del.icio.us, Reader2, etc? Its napsteration effect, which you need to have faith in. By each person serving there own greeds, they also serve the community effect.

Personally like Reach this is so easy to understand, I wonder why it requires any leap of faith at all. But that's the nature of these things. One persons step is another persons marathon

While still thinking about leaps of faith, heres a couple other things which require that same mind shift at the moment. Creative Commons, Free Culture and Open Source. Like reach you need to buy into it somewhat before it starts making sense. Open source is quite lucky because it has quite a vocal voice and has many good examples to prove it actually works. Creative commons is well on the way, while Free Culture as defined by Lessig and others still requires a certain leap of faith.

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What ever happened to Wonderland?

The Dragons, elite business experts standing next to a wall

Update: Although I'm blogging about Wonderland, i dont think much about the content. But I'm not its target audience. I'm writing mainly about the concept and the business of Wonderland not the magazine's content. It would be like me saying Red or Cosmo are not good. I'm entitled to my views but being outside of the target market makes it difficult to judge fairly. aka, do not buy Wonderland just because I blogged it please.

Almost a year ago the BBC series Dragons Den finished its first run. I enjoyed every moment of it and am happy to hear its back on our screens (and online via imp of course). But it makes you wonder what ever happened to those other business ideas which received funding? (Yes the BBC should do a run up on what happened next…maybe even just as a podcast, iptv or something for those people interested) Specially the very much debated Wonderland magazine.

Well after a short dig around, I found a couple of things. A interview after appearing on the Dragons Den. Actually Startups.co.uk has a few interviews with previous Dragon Den entrepreneurs.Then the big news, from this page. Its actually on the right hand side of the site and reads.

By Kate Boulby

Wonderland, the new luxury glossy mag from BBC2 Dragon's Den joint winner Huw Gwyther, went on sale yesterday.

The magazine will initially be priced at £4.95, with a starting print run of 140,000 copies. Publishers eventually hope to sell up to 100,000.

Targeted at both male and female readers, Wonderland will cover everything from fashion, film, music and product design to stage and art. The first issue also features an exclusive interview with The Aviator's film production designer Dante Ferretti.

Dragon Den, which was shown earlier in the year, featured contestants pitching business ideas to the expert “Dragons”.

So I plan to drop into a large WH Smiths and see if I can actually find a copy, get a real feel for it myself. Hopefully I can find a copy and post a few pictures online, till then the flash animation has been updated and restyled so at least its not so ugly, and gives you a rough idea of how the magazine looks.

Finally found it in the local WH Smiths

More photos can be found in my wonderland tag stream.

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The serious side of pledgebank

I've been aware of pledgebank for a while now and its seems like a really good idea. First through this one about setting up a EFF for the UK. But just recently I was asked if I would pledge to the global mentoring pledge.

I will mentor a minimum of two people in the developing world in the area of my skills base and expertise (media, communications, broadcasting , democratic media building, participatory media, community video). I will do this for free for a minimum of six months (in my free time). The mentoring will be in person or via email/skype and the mentoring connections will be established by a website and database that I am willing to take responsibility for creating but only if 250 other people will mentor a minimum of two people in their skills.

My first thoughts was to add my support to the 108 people who have already pledged. But then I stepped back and started really considering what this means in time, effort and self management. And in the end opted to sit it out. Its a huge commitment and I would really hate to let other people down because I could'nt spare the time to do this correctly. See thats the thing too, if I was going to pledge to do this, it would need to be done correctly and faithfully. I certainlly should not enter into a pledge like this lightly, not that I'm saying anyone else is. But good on Lucy for setting this up and props to Tom Steinberg for its inspiration in setting up Pledge bank. Who knows maybe now I'm subscribed to the RSS, maybe I might find something which I will pledge.

I hope Pledgebank links to details of how pledges go once they go live. As I would like to keep an eye on how Lucy's Pledge progresses.

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The perfect working environment?

Following on from the last entry about Paul Graham's talk at OScon 2005. I wanted to talk about the working environment part of his talk.

Not only is Paul so deadly right but it leaves you with a taste of wanting something much better for yourself. I have to share my thoughts about some of these.

Working time. My goodness, the dream of a 24 hour culture is never going to happen, at least this side of the pond and this current generation. Current business makes it impossible to work if you decide to work during the night. And I dont mean one off's, I mean regularly. Don't get me wrong, if your working with other people a compromise should be sought but quite a few times during a development life cycle you could do with just working when you feel the need to finish the task. My most productive time is from late evening to the early hours of the morning (currently 4:30am BST). Although this can have a effect on other aspects of life but its a matter of balance. If I was to go to work right now, I could. But if I didn't show up the next day and said I worked on the project, well I douht that would go down well. Some would say its unrealistic but actually its not as unrealistic as it may seem. For example if me and Sarah were to having kids, maybe working overnight might become a useful option.

Actually working. Paul talks about a state of pretending to work. Although I work hard, sometimes I just want to relax my mind and think about the task at hand in my head without forcing my head into the problem. I find if you step away and put your head somewhere else for a bit, it comes to you a lot easier. Putting my head somewhere else could be watching a film, listening to music or podcasts, etc. From the outside it certainly looks like your just goofing off not really working. I mean how do you prove your working? By how much lines of code you cut today? How many CVS edits and check in's? I believe in my work place at least theres a level of trust which allows us to be slightly flexible with our time but generally if your not in a meeting or away for the day you should be in the office working. Which leads nicely on to tools.

Tools for the job. During summer in Ravensbourne I would take my laptop outside and work on a bench because it was too hot inside and it felt more practical cranking up the aircon. There was wireless and I had a laptop which I could use. Sometimes nights I would work till the moon and stars would come out because I was so engaged in my work. Obvioulsy I'm not suggesting I should just be allowed to sit on a public bench everyday, but sometimes the fresh air and sunshine does wonders for problem solving. Having a desktop, propitery cms's, database connections, no remote email, etc really limits how far you can go. Having a slightly locked down desktop doesn't help either but having my own laptop means I can try stuff out and maybe even mess with code in a safe sandboxed environment. One of the funniest things I see everyday is the designers computers setup. They usually have a PC and a Mac setup which means they end up with two mice and two keyboards. At home I use to have that same problem, but I bought myself a KVM and used Synergy2 when I was using my laptop a lot. I'm sure if they had the same setup at home, they would do something about it.

Working on things you love. This is a very tricky subject for anyone. Yes I know Google have that 20/80 thing which is great but its slightly impractical for a publicly funded company like the BBC. But it doesn't have to be the google model, I've heard of company's which allow for elective time. So you can help out on the forums twice a month for a day, help teach a new skill to others, or help develop something for the team or office. basically its like volunteer your skills to do other things which may give you a break or new love. The BBC has a longer term scheme called attachments which places you in another department for up to 6 months. Its a good scheme and gives you real time to do something else.

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