It's been one of those bright! gloomy! bright! days. The view from the office window changes everytime you look up.

at vlix.com

When WAP fell flat on its face in the UK, the idea of using a mobile phone for email and internet access being more popular than PC internet access seemed absurd. They are over two years ahead in Japan and according to this guardian unlimited article email and internet access via mobile phone is becoming more popular than PC internet. When you look at the price of a wireless equipped PC compared to that of a state of the art 3G phone it suddenly makes sense. Sure many people use PCs for more than email and internet, but if you don't, why go to the trouble of purchasing and looking after a large power hungry unreliable, noisy PC when you can do it all from a phone?

I suppose many people were disappointed by the WAP experience, because they had already used the internet on a PC and the monotone/slow/unreliable/non-existent alternative was a flop. Even the 3G experience may seem lame to regular PC internet users, but the difference in Japan is that many people have only ever used the mobile phone versions, because they are more affordable and convenient than PC's.

I'll always have a PC because I need it to make a living, but it still seems absurd that I have at home a noisy, slow old dinosaur of a PC humming and crunching away in the corner which I only really use to check my email and look at the news headlines while I eat my breakfast.

Although I think sticking pictures up with these interviews goes to reinforce the CSS is just for geeks argument, this Eric Meyer interview on netdiver has some compelling arguments for designers to start to understand that CSS is for designers too.

edit the file xstartup in /root/.vnc/ to hide the line:-

#twm &

and replace it with the following line:-

exec startkde &

.vnc is a hidden file so you may need to edit the preferences of any file managers such as nautilus to get there.

you will then need to restart the vnc server

mmm that lovely mid-morning hot caffeine saturated syruppy cocktail of coffee beans and floor sweepings

only temporarily, but worrying all the same. I was alright until I got to P, but then it all went pear shaped.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

in case I forget it again.

If you use one of those air machines where it beeps when you reach the desired pressure, remember to hit the "start" button and bear in mind that the machine turns itself off occasionally. Otherwise you will just let your tyres down innit.

The "Oldest religious icon in America" is clearly a picture of a cat.

The date format might be confusing for people in the US, and they look a bit chunky now, but you will live.

I 've added a new general linux blog which is just going to be used for logging any new notes or commands I use under linux. This was really just intended for personal reference but I noticed that it was automatically appearing on my "recent updates menu" so I thought I would stick a proper template on it and integrate it into the site.

I can assure you that this will not make interesting reading unless you happen to be a "newbie" (hate that word) linux experimentalist like myself.

# ps
# ps ax (shows all processes)
# ps ax | more (paging)

# export http_proxy="http://servername:portnumber"

two basic steps:-

# adduser yournewusername
(wait for command prompt)
# passwd yournewusername
(you will now be prompted to enter and confirm a password)

there's a whole load of other options, but this will do the basic creation of the user including adding their home directory.

update:

Ok firstly according to my book you should be using useradd rather than adduser, also you need to be logged in as root and you must do that by using su - rather than just su e.g:-

#su - root

then

#useradd whatever

see this post for more details

These javascript accessibilty guidelines were posted on a list I subscribe to. Very interesting and relevant to what I am trying to achieve with the design here at hypothecate.

The section which interested me most was the bit about the "noscript" tag not always being a good idea. This tag is something I have always tried to avoid as often it results in data appearing in the page more than once, which I want to avoid. I prefer to take approach where by default features dont depend on Javascript, so there is no need to provide an alternative.

I'm not quite there yet still with making this design degrade the way I would like. The worst case scenario at the moment is if a user has CSS support but javascript turned off, as some of the toggleable areas will be hidden. Turning the style sheet off would let you get at them in non-styled mode, but you would still have some redundant links.

Don't worry, I have a plan......

another reference from Steve Champeon interview on page 3 (must have missed it first read - I always have read things twice) - a quote about web design being more than just visual. I collect these as I believe it is so relevant particulary now and in the next couple years when the inevitable global shift to CSS means that web designers who daren't look under the bonnet come unstuck:-

"design runs all the way through, it's not just visual and it's certainly not something you can hand off to the Photoshop wonk and expect to be able to "integrate" later. Anyone who thinks otherwise really needs to remind themselves of the medium they are working in."

This isn't an attack on graphic designers by the way, but a prediction that the market will improve for designers who are prepared to shift their thinking towards this new "CSS for positioning" paradigm. To design for this medium you need to know it. Just as you may have taken a while to get your head round thinking in tables, you will now need to start thinking in CSS. Those that do will be in demand, those who don't will be left behind as this this new "craze", becomes the industry standard.

It bugs me that there will probably be people out there thinking "well show me a CSS layout which looks good", but the fact is there's not many yet, because they haven't been designed yet, because the majority of the talented designers are stuck in 1999. The comment that annoys me most is that "all CSS sites look the same" and/or just plain "shit". Whilst there may be some truth in this, that's not because of the medium, it's because most of the decent designers haven't caught up yet.

The irony in my eyes is that it is all the table based stuff which looks the same from where i'm standing.

non believing designers take note:-

1. You can do pixel perfect positioning in CSS like in photoshop
2. You can use layers like in photoshop
3. You dont have to base things around table cells (which I know you all hated until you got used to it)
4. But first you have to take your blinkers off and learn how to use it

Been reading this Steve Champeon interview on meet the makers and like the concept of "Progressive Enhancement" as an alternative to graceful degradation. This is one of the objectives of the design of Hypothecate (although there is still work to be done).

The idea is that rather than designing a site purely for a graphical desktop environment and then providing alternative lo-fi versions or gracefull degradation for old web browsers (or new PDA browsers), you design for the lowest denominator then provide non-essential enhancements for the devices which can make use of them.

yep I know Zeldman blogged this too ;-)

I have started writing articles that eventually I will submit to sites and magazines to see if I can get them published. However, i've recently come to the conclusion that I am incapable of original thought as I keep finding articles which summarise exactly what I was thinking, only better written and already out there either on a blog or in a magazine.This also happens in design - I start coming up with a design then spot it somewhere else.

If I had a complex paranoid egotistical, "delusions of grandeur" style mental deficiency I would assume that the design or article has been nicked from me - somehow the author hacked into my PC (or pehaps mind) and took my work. Ok, this does flash through my mind, but is quickly subdued by the other rational, sensible and humble part of my mind.

I also know that I haven't stolen the design or idea directly from them, but what usually has happened is that I have reached the same or similar conclusion as the author in question, possibly because they have been consuming the same designs, articles, sights, culture and conversations that led my unoriginal brain to start producing the material in the first place.

I'm sure I could find an article somewhere which describes exactly the above. Please move along, nothing to see here, nothing you haven't seen before anyway....

Jo said I wonder if it's edible? I said it didn't look very appetising

this is another shot that doesn't look like it could have been taken in my garden in March. It's grey outside now, but what a weekend.

This chain was restraining a load of boats lying around on the pebbles, presumably to stop them blowing away in the wind or being nicked.