Home?
OBSESSION

YO YO YO!! [note to self: insert more "yo" here] Sup? Greetings from typophile, the absolute last[?] resort for font-y general technological awesomeness on the 'net, and one of the many playgrounds of Benjamin Alldridge, a self-confessed cross-dresser "type slut", and "occasional design bitch". Go on, pull up a chair; perhaps sample one of our Hors d'æuvres, or have a glass of the recently-chilled Bollinger RD '63.

It's likely that it goes by a lot of names, but for now we'll call it "home".

Show Your Colours For 2008

2 months, 1 week ago | No thoughts yet

Show Your Colours For 2008 is an initiative in non-intuitive design, requiring people to step outside of their safety zone to create something new and totally unique to the purpose. Go check it out!

And remember, the only limits to what is possible are the infinite, and your imagination. ;)

And so with 2008, the rebuild ends?

4 months, 2 weeks ago | No thoughts yet

After months… and months… and more months, finally, I rebuilt my main blog and made it actually kinda okay to look at, and not a giant eyesore that it was previously. Sure, it had its cool bits, but overall it was just a really crappy, rushed layout. Not ideal when wanting to use it to keep your innermost thoughts and musings, and most importantly, not ideal when trying to share those musings with the world at large. While I was in Chicago I stumbled upon a centre of myself I’d lost a long time ago, which was essentially focusing more on the content than anything else. Who cares if it looks pretty if it doesn’t say much? Conversely, who the hell is gonna read it if it doesn’t at least pass the base rules of aesthetics? Catch 22, but I did work out a way to overcome that.

This new layout, entitled “Chicago”, fundamentally allows me to do that. I’ve tried to keep it as subtle as possible as to not be confounding, while still being appealing and unique enough to be my certain brand of style. I wanted it to be comfortable for the audience to read, and for it to be able to be easily navigated and accessed. Also, I wanted it to be able to be easily customised through dynamic CSS. I’ve not yet coded that, however, the ground work is already there. If someone wants a black background, they can have that. If someone wants 36pt Comic Sans text, they can have that too. It’s all ready to go, I just need to code it and tie it all together. Overall, I’ve set it up so that every element can be changed at will. That, I think, helps make it more comfortable to read for anyone who wants to. With this, all I have to worry about is making what I write interesting and engaging.

Also, I’ve opted to complete forego blogrolling and whatnot this time around, instead optioning to have a office furniture in BulgariaLinks page. That’s allowed me to keep a single column layout which I’ve found to be ideal for this kinda blog. After all, the idea of a site is to have it keep people there, not send them away. Perhaps I’ll take that even further and make it able to be fixed width, or a certain width of the page, with certain positioning.. it’s all able to be done! We have the technology!

Either way, I’m in love with my creation. It’s simple, it’s lightweight, and best of all, it allows me to say what I want without need to dread how it’s going to look on the printed page.

Wordpress???????? ????? ????????, driving people to create. Code is truly poetry.

And so with 2008, the rebuild begins…

7 months ago | No thoughts yet

One thing I’ve noticed over the last twelve months or so since late 2006 is that my blogging has become vastly more sporadic and detached, almost as if it was a chore I absolutely had to do otherwise I’d be letting everyone’s expectations down. After a little while I forced myself to sit down and think about exactly why that was… was my life really that uninteresting to write about? The results I yielded from a couple of weeks of soul-searching were an ever-present realisation that it wasn’t my life at all – it was the layout I was presenting my thoughts via. newklear.org (the home of my main blog)’s design is something I was really very happy with immediately at the time – I felt like I’d accomplished making something relatively unique and suiting to me, though due to numerous failings never quite got around to doing with it what I wanted – finishing the fine details off and transforming it from something that kinda represents me, to something which undeniably defines me and carries my persona through to my web presence. Don’t get me wrong, there’s elements of it I like and most likely will reuse and build on – but it is simply no longer relevant to me.

So, what to do? Brainstorm, of course! Come up with ideas and do some soul searching for what I really want that’ll drive me to use it… and force me to want contact. Last time it was a rush job because I wanted to impress a perspective employer – and when I say “rush” I’m talking about having the concept to site completed in less than two days. Not only – it was at a time when I was somewhat awash and really didn’t know anything. That’s not something I’m about to do this time. This time, I’m angling for something more refined and perhaps closer to the more conservative person I’ve become – but, it’s gonna be a little bit off the wall.. and it’s REALLY gonna draw heavily on the visual elements I’ve gotten from my years of graffiti. Who knows, maybe it’ll even include my Flash experience in some manner… we’ll see.

Expect updates as they come. ;)

Design in the zoological world

9 months ago | No thoughts yet

Perhaps quite an unconventional tangent of design that not a lot of people consider – zoological design – design in the world of animals and their keeping/handling. This is obviously a topic which impacts a lot of people around the world, the incidence of people owning pets is pretty high. What most of those people don’t take into account, however, is the heavy effect of design on the field.

Now as someone who keeps several aquariums as a hobby, my education in design is one that has heavily impacted on how I keep my tanks – what I put in them, what colours I use, what arrangement they get – right down to even what breeds I put in the tanks. Put simply, if it doesn’t look good it does not go in. Why spend ridiculous amounts of money for something which doesn’t at least appease the senses it was meant to as justification for its purchase? Not the most sensible of things.

That being said, one aspect of it is the actual enclosure. Sure, it has to play second fiddle to the animals realistically (lest you’d be looking at an empty cage all day, wouldn’t you?), but that’s not to say that what houses them can’t look remarkable or pretty. I’ve gone to absolute pains to try and appease this aspect… I’ve looked at more places than I care to think simply so I can get that “one perfect setup” that makes everyone’s jaw drop and their eyes light up with excitement. Really, it’s like any design – if it has the basic function it intends to serve down, there must be room for making it easy on the senses to convey its message.

Not only will this make the inhabitants happy to be housed in something that is decent, but it’ll make everyone else happy because it looks hella cool. It’s nice to be able to wow everyone with your skills. That’s why I’m planning on going the fully customised route for the marine fishtank I mentioned – so I can set it up to do its job and look really cool at the same time.

When you get down to it, design can be applied to literally every aspect of life. The basic principles follow into everyday life, and really help to overcome the majority of problems anyone can face. It’s just a matter of trying it out.

On The Subject of Windows Vista

11 months, 1 week ago | No thoughts yet

Okay… so this is something that I knew was absolutely inevitable, and something I’ve felt has been ridiculous and pathetic for a hell of a long time. And, more importantly, something which is simply not aligned with any reality beyond what has been fabricated by zealots and haters globally. Basically… it’s something people have decided to bandwagon against which has no real flaws beyond what we already have. So what am I talking about? You guessed it, Windows Vista.

For the love of God, shut up about it already people. Seriously, none of your points are at any scale valid. I know I’ve had my misgivings with Microsoft in the past, and I know that I’ve had problems with their software the vast majority of users would never encounter. However, and I emphasise the however, those incidents are isolated. The majority of them are doing things you wouldn’t even remotely encounter until you’re a power user who is doing things like running mixed-OS environments with clustered DNS servers taking care of multiple subnet pools and multi-daemon httpd stacks (if you don’t understand that, you’re pretty-well assured to not fit into this classification).

Now I’ve heard a lot of bullshit being flung at it unduly. For instance, I’ve been told that building the entire OS from the ground up instead of recycling an older codebase (for instance, Windows XP) is moronic because it wastes time and resources. Okay, I can see that. But what that doesn’t take into account is that a) Windows XP is a recycled kernel itself (borrowing from the Windows NT core), and b) that it had a huge amount of holes and bugs in the core, hence Service Pack 2 was such a massive undertaking. Not only, but it completely ignores the idea of software development’s cyclic flow, only maintaining and reusing certain elements a number of times before it becomes impractical and there is a need for completely renewing it. Being that XP was NT core, it would’ve been through a number of generations (NT Workstation, 2000, XP) which on its own spans 5-odd years, right in the middle of our major advances in technology in computing. Between 1996 and 2001, the speed of computers jumped massively, allowing for vast advances in software requirements and capabilities. Tack another 6 years onto that, and imagine just how far we’ve come. That in itself is a major need for a complete rewrite; the software needs something to allow it to work to its full potential.

Another thing I’ve heard is that the hardware requirements are giant compared to XP. Yeah, and? XP is 6 years old. It was designed to run on mid-range computers then, Vista being designed to run on mid-range computers now. Personally, I notice no slowdown between the two, in fact, I’ve actually gained speed with Vista because it can properly page all my RAM and use my dual-core CPU properly. Sure, XP Professional can multi-thread kinda okay, but Vista absolutely mauls it, no questions asked. All of this is without even mentioning the networking stack Vista has… personally I’ve noticed between 3 and 4 times the speed for network throughput between Vista Ultimate and XP Professional, running identical hardware, interfacing to the exact same computer. It just doesn’t compare, and nor should it; I know what I’d prefer.

Some things, I will admit, are counter-intuitive. The start menu for instance. The search function at the bottom is cool, but the lack of a fly-out menu for the start button really irks me a bit. The menu size is far too small in my opinion, and makes the UI difficult to use in certain situations. Another major thing with the UI is the newly-formatted Control Panel. Sure, it’s understandable what was the intention… but it hasn’t quite been done right. The biggest culprit of which is the networking centre. Um okay Microsoft, what the fuck? It’s cluttered, it’s hard to use, and it’s essentially bombarding us with a bunch of useless information. I want simplicity in my networking analysis so I can worry about more important things. But… it can be worked with. It’s not impossible to use.

Now, the issue of drivers. Oh dear god people, grow up will you? If you’ve got hardware capable of running it, chances are you’ll have drivers for it. And if not… then how can you feasibly blame the people who created the software while letting the people who made the hardware get off without even a moment of disdain? It’s hypocritical. Hell, I’ve not had a single issue with hardware, even if no drivers were immediately available either directly from the manufacturer or the OS itself. Hell, even some legacy XP drivers will work if you perceiver with them. Stop complaining and try things, you slack bastards.

Simply put, if you’re whining it’s too slow, get faster hardware. If you don’t like that it’s a new codebase, stick to XP which is by far outdated. If you’re worried about drivers, search around for a solution. With the simplest tweaks and fixes, Vista absolutely blows XP away in every corner of the ballpark. There is no competition, and there shouldn’t have ever been a ridiculous comparison between the two to begin with. End of.

« Previous Entries

Recently

Delicious!

 
 
© Benjamin Alldridge, 1987 - whenever it is now.