Small dog - big ideas...
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April 28, 2008
Bluebells & tequila
TaWRA logo based on feedback...
Well opinion is a little split so I have reworked both based on the feedback. Let me know what you think :)
By the way - use of orange is because it is a "unifying" colour and one that excites and promotes action.
See those of you on the IT group tomorrow at the Well Parc, 7pm.
April 25, 2008
TaWRA Logo opinion poll
Recently a new residents committee was formed in my village, Trevone, called TaWRA (Trevone and Windmill Residents Committee) and in my spare time I knocked up a couple of logos - after all everyone organisation needs an identity. I thought I'd pop the designs on here for the committee to see, and if anyone else sees them their opinions would be very welcome too. :)
For those who don't know Trevone its a quaint little village by the sea in North Cornwall - most of us who live there think it's the most beautiful village in Cornwall, full stop. One of its distinctive features is a round crater like hole in the headland which was created by a massive cave collapse, this landmark together with the Madrips rocks are incorporated into both designs... anyways, replies, opinions, likes and dislikes most gratefully received.
PS Fonts, colours, etc all up for grabs this is just a first stab. We could always print tee-shirts etc to try and raise some money too.
April 24, 2008
The Ancient Nordic Tawahs
In my bid to fight against the rising tide of Chinese imperialism I have decided to resurrect the ancient horoscopes of the Nordic Tawahs as an alternative to the traditional Chinese option...
If you want a reading just email me with a recent photograph, your time of birth, birth date, precise location (longitude and latitude), and whether their was a frost on the morning of your birth
Oh, and if your dad surfed. :)
Laters...
April 21, 2008
Gotta love blogs
Well actually you gotta love dogs, but hey i had to find a way to get this cute shot of Buca into this blog. She's 2 on Wednesday (23rd April) and no more loving, cute, affectionate, thug of a dog has ever walked the sands of Trevone.
As for loving blogs - well the fact that Jake has got this new Easy-blog system up and running for me today and I have already done 2 posts, speaks for itself!
Happy birthday Buca :)
House of farts...
Ok - I'm hacked off today. Not happy with increasing the tax on the people who can least afford it, the government has now seen fit to use those same people's money to bail out the fat cats who got those same people into debt through irresponsible lending.
I don't know ho we can stop these old farts and their cosy little boys clubs, it seems they can get away with anything! Now correct me if I'm wrong but I thought the whole idea of the free market was that "shares can also go up and down, your home may be at risk if you do not keep up repayments on a loan blah blah" UNLESS YOU'RE A BANK!
If you're a bank, then you can make sure all the directors and senior execs get huge bonuses by facilitating people into debts they can't really afford without getting another loan. Then, when the house of farts comes tumbling down, wafting its foul odours across Europe they can run to the arms of the other old farts (who they also went to school with, but in a different house). Being part of the same "club" they say "hey no probs... you know those people you lent too much poorly secured money too, well why don't we get them to buy you out of your problems, hey we can even raise their taxes to cover it. hey why don't we get rid of that pesky 10%"
Ok so none of my ramblings are strictly accurate or directly related, BUT really how stupid are we to let them get away with this ridiculous series of interventions. It seems that banking a
nd the financial markets have forgotten the premise of their own trade, things go down as well as up! If we interfere with the downs and insulate them from these impacts then what is their incentive to act responsibly in the first place. They can't have it both ways, privatised when they are making profits and nationalised when they aren't!
My view - let the economy go into drama and crisis, let the banks suffer, let them learn their lessons so they don't get us in to another mess like this again for a long time (until they have forgotten the lessons - normally 2 or 3 generations!). Yes some people will suffer, but in the long run it will likely result in a correction in the property market, making houses more affordable, and hopefully making consumers more cautious and intelligent about debt.
Here endeth the lesson...
April 18, 2008
Which Blogging Client?
I think one of the factors which has really prevented us taking full advantage of our blog for communicating with the-world-at-large (other than my particular reluctance for being outgoing) is that the web based blogging tools we use - in our case Movable Type - seem to be quite unwieldy.
Yes, Movable Type is pretty solid, easy enough to install and configure and has a million-and-one plugins to let you do sexy things but it's the process of creating and publishing a blog post that I'm talking about. I've lost count of the number of times that Tim has moaned about how difficult he find's the system - logging in used to be a pain, creating a post was a hassle and uploading and inserting images was seemingly impossible. I didn't find the system too difficult to use but I could (grudgingly) see his point. Of course there was no alternative...
That was until recently. Adobe Contribute has, in recent versions, been given the ability to connect to various blogging systems and manage posts. This seems ideal but for the fact that
Contribute is an increasingly pricey bit of software (currently £140 ish direct from Adobe, per copy). That said it's a great tool and gives non-technical users the ability to update most of the content on a website with a user interface of Internet Explorer glued to Microsoft Word.
So the hard choice is whether to use a free/cheap web-based tool, with all the browser foibles, overly complex (and often non-WYSIWYG) interface or to cough up a chunk of cash for the Contribute solution.
Perhaps that choice has just become a bit easier to make... I've just published this entry using the freebie Windows Live Writer. It seems to do the job that Contribute does with blogs: nice intuitive interface, WYSIWYG editing layout, good support for adding and resizing images but unlike Contribute it's all provided free of charge!
Time will tell whether we direct clients down this route for website editing (and of course we'll have to find a way around the fact that Live Writer doesn't let you edit general website content) but it seems like a good start. Good enough to get me to write a sizable blog post for the first time!