So, how long has it been? 3 months at least. Just shows how much my life has changed since joining Ellipsis.

It also shows how easy it is to let a blog slip when you get tied up with work to the point that when you do have a free moment you’ve lost the habit of putting it out for the world to see.

Well, here I am, in on a friday while Yash has a well deserved night out with mates. Had a few things on my mind so thought it was about time I put finger to key.

Firstly, I broke the 1000k mark this week on my nike plus. Don’t know about you but that feels like a pretty long way. It has taken me 9 months. I reckon that’s not bad going considering that I hardly have the chance to get out running these days.

I’ve also broken a few PBs too. (seeing as the WordPress plugin doesn’t work anymore. Will look in to that). Last month I broke the 10 minute mark for 3k! Well chuffed about that. Actually that’s about it I think. Oh well.

I’ve signed up for the marathon next year too. Fingers crossed I get in. I’ve also signed up with WaterAid, a client of mine, should I not make the selection process. Hopefully they’ll put their faith in me. Having said that whenI’m out running I do wonder why I would want to run that far. Or if I can. I’ve managed 20km in 1h20 so I’m hoping for a sub 3hr time if I do it.

I’m also planning to do the London Triathlon again. I hope to do the olympic which I missed last time after being hit by a car. The only problem is that I still don’t have a proper road bike to compete with. Hopefully that will be resolved by the race. That is one I really look forward too.

Another thing that has happened is that Bo turned two. She is amazing. With yash out tonight the attention has been one to one which really gives you the chance to absorb the change and developement. Clearly I have no real idea what a normal 2 year old is like but it amazes me to see how much she has developed. In every way. We were looking at a book and she pointed out the Flamingos! She seems to have an amazing memory for words. I guess the same is true of all kids that age as they repeat everything you say.

All I can say is that being a father is the single best thing that has ever happened to me. No matter what is going on in my life I only have to look at Bo and it brings warmth to my heart and gives me reason to believe in good.

Just realised I didn’t wrap up the weekends activities.

Robot sex 

We checked out the sex show - the name had ‘elephant’ in it I think and was recommended by the Lonely Planet. What a load of rubbish. I guess I was intrigued so I’m glad I went so at least I can feel qualified to comment and also as it real is part of the Amsterdam experience.

I don’t know how long we were ther but I think we watched the full selection of shows. The show is based in a small theatre with everyone sitting civilized in their chairs while two guys go up and down serving drinks.

You are then treated to series of shows - couples doing their thing on a revolving stage broken up by shows featuring individual girls doing speciality acts. Have to say I was dissapointed not to see and ping pong balls being involved.

The whole thing was so emotionless. The actors were so automated with their routines it really killed off any sexiness. Safe to say that is the one and only sex show I’ll be going to.

What happened to summer?

For the remainder of the weekend we walked all over the city covering the bits we’d missed on the Saturday. It pretty much rain the whole time. Very miserable. I sensibly went out in flip flops. Idiot. Still we perservered and when the sun did come out it was beautiful. With a day to kill we browsed a lot of shops and stopped at lots of bars. Amsterdam is a great place for sitting outside drinking.

Hopefully next time July will feel like July…

As I said previously, I’m in Amsterdam for a long weekend. Just me and the missus. It’s Saturday evening and so far we’ve had a great time.

Got in to the centraal station friday morning and wandered west down one of the lanes looking for somewhere suitable for breakfast. Came across a coffee shop called Barney’s and stopped there for pancakes, eggs and bacon. Very tasty. We sat opposite some other english people who had just driven straight from Plymouth and parked outside. They seemed pretty boxed already, making their way through a large bag of something! I get the impression Barney’s is a popular spot as it features in the Lonely Planet.

Anyway, we headed to our hotel from there which isn’t far from the Vondelpark. One of the great things about Amsterdam is you can walk everywhere, although the tram is available if you’re lazy.
We’re staying at a b&b called Flynt. It is a small (3 rooms) family run place. The owners are very easy going (well they are dutch). There is a kitchen which is well stocked and we are free to help ourselves. This is good for them too as they don’t have to get up and make our breakfast! Wasn’t sure when we first arrived as they have a couple of dogs which kept barking. From experience you can forget a lie in with dogs in the house but they didn’t make any noise this morning - got up about 11. Now that is one of the real benefits of a trip like this. Since being a parent I can count the number of times I’ve slept to 11 on one hand.

Dutch Influence and Power

Walking around Amsterdam felt so familiar. I know I’ve been here before but it was different. Having just recently been to New York it occured to me that the two cities are incredibly similar. I don’t know if I’ve got this wrong but I seem to remember that NY was originally called New Amsterdam in its founding days. Then the brits got their mits on it and changed the name. The architecture is strikingly similar. Beautiful tall, thin terrace houses. I love the place. The edge it has on New York is the scale and the canals. It is just a beautiful city. Combine that with the dutch attitude and you can’t get much better.

It seems the dutch influence on the world is far greater than we self-centred Brits realise. There are so many shops and banks here that I know realise are actually Dutch owned. Thinking about even LexisNexis is Dutch owned - Reed Elsevier (world’s 3rd largest publishing house) has it’s headquarters round here somewhere.

Another Dutch super power based here in the dam is Heineken. We visited their brewery today. It is a good tour. Value for money too as for11 euro entry you also get three beers through the course of the tour. The whole thing is very modern. Not sure when it opened but it was all based around a lot of audio/visual entertainment including various interactive intranet, websites etc. They showed a very impressive corporate showreel that made you want to sign up exclusively to Heineken for the rest of your drinking live. The presentation was amzingly slick with a soundtrack by Tiesto. It seems they own 80 different brands of beer including Amstel, Murphy’s and Cruz Campo. Just shows, here we are thinking there are all these different breweries providing a diverse drinking choice when actually they’re all owned by a handful of major players. Guess the same could be said of most industries.

The Real Amsterdam

One thing that I have discovered about Amsterdam this time round is that there is so much more to it than the Centrum district with it’s red light sleaze, coffee shops and cheap food. This time we been all round the Jordaan district, checking out the boutiques in the 9 lanes (?) area.

Last night we ate at Brasserie Harkema in lower Centrum. The venue is a vast old warehouse beautifully designed and the food was excellent. We had three courses (including a perfect steak), two glasses of white and a bottle of red and the bill was 80 euros. You can’t knock that. After that we had a few drinks at Bar Bep followed by a couple at the Supper Club. I recommend all of them - we were definitely in the minority as non-dutch.

Today we made our way east from the hotel through the Vondelpark and what I can only describe as the ‘kensington” of Amstrdam. The area is beautiful. Away from the canals true, but it is made up of wide, quiet avenues of imposing townhouses and real villagey/community feel. I loved it. That took us to great street market along the Albert Cuypstraat where we ate frites with mayo. From there we just meandered up the east side of the city and back down towards the hotel. I even picked up a new pair of shoes for 50 euros!

The plan tonight is, seeing as we’re here, we’ll check out a sex show. I skipped all that previously but it’s one of those things that has to be done really!

Sitting here doing some work while Yash is watching CSI and they played some classic Kruder & Dorfmiester! That definitely took me by surprise. Saying that, I do like CSI, the producers really know what they’re doing but more than anything the music producer (or whatever they are called) consistently selects some great dance tunes - especially CSI NY.Hats off to the Yanks for that. Here we are, the Brits, thinking we are the dance masters, but I have to say I think CSI, as a franchise, has the best sound track of any tv series going.

They should definitely bring out a compilation. How about a CSI theme club night? Excellent! Everyone can dress up - Grisham, Sarah, Horatio etc. Just play CSI featured music all night.

Talking of CSI, I actually had my own work featured on Vegas a few years ago! You know you’ve made it when that happens… Well. Maybe not, but it was a buzz. The situation was that Sarah used her computer to look up information about a suspect and ‘did a LexisNexis’. The scene featured her go to the computer and put the guy’s name in to one of my search form interfaces!! Still makes me smile.

Anyway, I know I’ve been slack with my blogging recently. My life seems to be 100% absorbed in to the new job. Off to Amsterdam in a few hours. Maybe I’ll be able to add some entries from there.

So it is 20 past 5 and time to to sleep but I’m sitting here with Leo reviewing our notes. Not much to go through! Leo seems to be repeating to word winging alot… Hmmm. What the fuck did that mean? I don’t want to write for long. Just kinda sucked in to it. I’ll hand over to Leo now and see what he’s got to say…. This is going to be a quality speech. Actually I don’t think we’re going to get anything now.

Do you have any goss on Dan?

Send me your stories!

B

I’ll admit I watched Big Brother again last night - a special extended edition, but only because I’d heard in the day that one of the girls had been kicked out for making a racist comment.

They dragged out the show and made everyone wait until the end of the program to finally show the footage we all wanted to see. It turned out that female ‘Tim Nice But Dim’, Emily, had made a reference to her ‘best house buddy’ Charlie in what seemed to be a act of niave stupidity. The result was that the BB producers removed her from the house.

I really wanted to get online and put this down last night because watching the show, and then the beginning of BBBM had me wanting to put to two cents in too.

Firstly the producers did what they had to in removing her. True. But the whole situation is has been blown in to so much more than it should. I guess the media are sensitive to the subject and it gives them something to write about too.

If you didn’t see the show Emily seemingly innocently (hmmm) called Charlie a word which is commonly used in rap songs and by a certain portion of the black community as term of endearment. The fact that a white girl would use the same expression is where the fuss is being made. The whole situation around the use of this word is something that really gets my goat. Fair enough people can say that they can call themselves what ever they like - it is their choice.

I am from german blood and I’ve often felt I had the right to say what I want about german people as I am one too but I don’t. This is because I would be just as bad as the bigots in perpetuating sterotypes, prejudice and discrimination.

I’m defending her but Emily, it could be said, is a victim of the society she lives in, where these words have been dumbed down and accepted in certain context. Unfortunately she didn’t have the intellegence to realise that this kind of language will never accepted in the mainstream and hopefully never will.

I think the society as whole should bear the responsiblity for yesterday’s incident. However it is Emily who will have to wear the label of racist for a very long time to come.

Last friday I waved good bye to my friends at LexisNexis. After 5 years I have moved on to a new company called Ellipsis Media. They are a web design agency which also sells and supports its own suite of online products. My role is that of art director and I jumped straight in on monday.

Since monday I’ve surprisingly got immediately involved in design work, creating an html email and flash game for Cancer Research UK. There was already a concept produced which I’ve been working on to satisfy the client, and then finalising the look and feel of the game, creating the symbols which I’ve passed on to the developer.

So, that’s all good. I had thought I’d be tied up in meetings for the most part getting to know the workings of the company but that has had to take a back seat. At this moment in time the company has a ton of work on, which is brilliant, and this clearly takes priority.

The guys here are cool too. I’ve not really had much chance to talk to them so far but hopefully we might get a chance to go for a drink one evening and step away from work mode.

It’s been a wierd few days, leaving LexisNexis behind, not going in to Holborn on monday morning. But I’m sure I’ll get used to it. 5 years is a long time in one place, my collegues were like family and the office a second home. I will miss it. Thankfully they’re having a summer party on the 28th at Soho House which I’ve been invited to which should be fun.

Please don’t think I am a Big Brother fan but last night I couldn’t help but get drawn in to the opening night of the new series. The tv happened to be on (I was watching Property Ladder) while I was in the kitchen making dinner. I could here all the screaming etc and was intrigued to see what collection of freaks they were going to wheel out this year.

A whole house of girls! Very clever. Certainly got my attention. Not too bad on the eye apart from the irritating loud mouth woMAN (she had a beard), the scary looking freak in a rainbow crusty jacket who looked like she’d been wearing the same clothes since 1987 and the Germain Greer look a like. God know what they are all like as I didn’t follow it that closely.

I did have the misfortune of seeing the twins enter at the beginning. How awful are they. I’m not one for violence but I could see myself needing to hit something, hard, if I was locked in a room with them. Now there is reason number one why not to watch that crap.

Saying all that, somehow I know I will get sucked in, no doubt due to pressure from my wife, and end up discussing what a bunch of snide bitches they all are when going for a drink on friday after work.

We love to hate it.

I just spent the last week out in the States. I flew out to Dayton, Ohio on the Sunday where I spent the week through to Friday and then jumped on the plane to New York for a couple of days.

The reason for my trip to Dayton was that the LexisNexis UX department had their second annual UX week. This involved bringing together members of the team from across the States and Europe to participate in activities and talks on a range of usability subjects.

I hadn’t expected to go. I have handed in my notice with the company, leaving on the 1st of June, so thought I’d miss out and have to stay in London to focus on finishing off my project commitments. As it turned out I was able to get on top of this and so given the chance to fly over and take part.

As a result, I was suddenly put in the position of having to give a presentation on the Monday, after lunch, on the subject of accessibility. Given the short notice I spent the flight over writing up my notes for the slides in a word document, then when I got to my hotel at 4:30pm local time I set to work putting it all together in a flash presentation. Luckily I was able to use the Monday morning to wrap it up, adding the finishing touches. I’d hoped to cover more, including a review of the global product and perhaps some images to break it up but needless to say I ran out of time.

However, I think the depth of the information made the presentation credible, even if i struggled at times to remember the flow (having not had time to practice and review). I will upload the presentation to my site shortly so that it available for download.

The rest of the week was fun. Lots of things to keep us busy including, on the Thursday, a visual design competition. I had originally come up with the idea as a test across all disciplines. The test covering all aspects of interface design. I thought it would be interesting to see how each discipline coped with having to handle over areas of the process. In my mind I thought it would show that visual designer were the most prepared to handle other roles and could take a project from concept to completion.

The reality was that only visual design took part so it really just became a visual design test. In my mind it was a chance for us to step away from branding convention and try something new. I reality, on review it seemed that the designers couldn’t break away from existing visual styling. To be honest I was disappointed with the results. We only had 2 to 3 hours to come up with something but that is no excuse. It was a great opportunity for everyone to showcase their skills but it never materialized.

The resulting presentation at the end of the day to the whole of UX was fairly predictable too. I think people missed the point of the exercise and couldn’t see past ‘brand’ conventions. My design that had an underlying LexisNexis feel but tackled the brand in a completely different way:

• focused on ‘the grid’ removing the use of red
• tackled the poor navigation of the existing interface
• incorporated some marketing techniques
• introduced new graphical elements for a web 2.0 feel

As Carl pointed out, the other designs were essentially cut and pastes of other interface designs with the appropriate content overlaid.Click here to see my design.

On a social level it was great to see everyone, meet those I’d only spoken to by phone, and then get the chance to say goodbye one last time.

Before returning to London, I did a short stop over in New York, staying with my friend Andy just off 72nd & Broadway.
It didn’t look like we were going to make it at first. I had a car all week, a ford explorer, which I dropped at the airport on Friday afternoon but when we checked in all flights to New York were canceled. I ended up hiring a mini-van and driving everyone to Cincinnati so we could make a flight to JFK! On the way we passed a major crash on the opposite side of the freeway with cars flipped all over the place. Nasty.

Got in to NY at 10 and cabbed it to Broadway. Made it to Andy’s for 11 and went out to his local. Just like Cheers, everyone knew his name. Ha. Despite this we managed to drag ourselves down to a bar and watch the FA cup final the next morning.

That afternoon I went for a run round Central Park. Did a loop of the perimeter and then round the reservoir in the middle, clocking up about 16km. The result of this is that I have broken 500km since I started with Nike +! Pretty good going I reckon. Hopefully I’ll be well clear of 1000km before the end of the year.

Saturday night I met up with the other LexisNexis guys and went out for dinner at an over priced restaurant called Smith & Wollensky. They do steaks, the cheapest which is about £30. They might be big but you don’t really need that much food anyway. Plus, the wine was even more of a skank. I bought a bottle of house red and a white, and the price was roughly £60!! So much for America being cheaper the the UK. That really left a sour taste in the mouth. Especially when there are so many great, cheap places to go.

That aside I had a fun night. We met up with Andy again and went to a few bars in the West Village. The night turned vague toward the end, which I think was about 4am?

The pity of the trip was that I had so much work to do for Caroline Sylge’s website that I spent the whole of Sunday working until I got the plane back to the UK.

Who knows when I’ll next head state side. I hope it’s before my new jeans wear out!

The past few weeks I’ve been working on www.carolinesylge.com basically adding new content and revamping the layout. I originally designed the site at a fixed hieght. It was supposed to fit in 8×6 and used iFrames to present the content. So things have moved on since then and Caroline now wants a site that presents the content in an easier, scrolling format.

At this point I’ve avoided spending time attempting to redesigning the whole site so I’ve adapted the existing design so that it flows down the page. However, I was looking at the new version of the site and realised that the content looks out place if the side naviagation is longer than the main content area. Here is is for you…

The site has a two column layout presenting two boxed areas of information overlaid on a tiled background image, with a 20 pixel space between the two.

If the navigation column has a lot of information and the main content box doesn’t you end up with a long box of links on the left and an empty space on the right.

The solution to balance the page would be to make sure the two column both run down to the same level.

How do you do this?

Answer: Slice a 1px high image the width of the two areas providing the background colour for the two columns, with a transparent backrgound between them to allow the tiled background to show through.

Set this image as a background to a div wrapping the two over divs while they have background set to none. This will ensure that no matter which is the longer both will extend to the same length.