Probably Random

Indie Publishing

Indie Publishing: How to Design and Produce Your Own Book  Ellen Lupton

Well again another well titled book, it really does tell you how to design and produce your own book!  Not only that but it does it in an inspiring and motivating way, by the time you’ve finished reading it you’ll be wanting to create a book, whether it’s a couple of pages which you bind yourself or a full on novel.

What I really liked was how the book explained how to do things in an enthusiastic ‘go try it’ way without sounding pushy, whilst still explaining how difficult some steps may be.  It was nice that they gave other people examples and their own examples showed that they really have done it themselves and you feel like you’re really learning from their experience.

This is a great read for, whether you’re an artist wanting to make a portfolio or a wanna be author (or just interested, or maybe because one day you might want to!).

Graphic Design for Non-Designers

Graphic Design for Non-Designers: The Ultimate Primer for the Design Rookie, Tony Seddon, Jane Waterhouse

Does exactly what it says in the title.  It is a great primer and will get you started on the right path, but you will have to look elsewhere to fill in the detail.  It is a useful book to get you started and it does help bring together ideas which you may have thought about in isolation (if you’ve ever done any art or design before).

The Goal

The Goal, E.M. Goldratt and J. Cox

This book has actually been on my to read list since…. erm well the 1990′s! I finally got around to reading it after picking it up in a second hand book store (it must have been fate)!  What I want to know is why did I wait! I think partly because I don’t work in ‘heavy’ manufacturing and whilst I wanted to read it out of interest i didn’t think it would provide any valuable lessons….Well, it did and was a good read too, the story (whilst a little cheesy) helps take you through the processes and think along rather than the standard read and regurgitate kind of learning.

As I said I’m not in manufacturing, I’m in IT but there were still many relevant lessons about planning and looking at systems not just individual components of a process.  If you are in any kind of manufacturing why haven’t you read it already! don’t wait like I did, if your in production (i use this in an even broader way than manufacturing… making a website is production…) then it will still be of use to you (just see the plant as a metaphor for what ever it is you’re doing.

Racking the wine

Today I racked 3 batches of wine; Dandelion, Marrow (rum) and Elderflower.

The Elderflower tasted like it might be quite good, The Marrow Rum has got a long way to go (okay so far it’s pretty awful) but is starting to clear now and the dandelion…. well, it’s not going well.  What I don’t understand is that I made two batches of the dandelion wine at the same time this one (Batch A) just won’t clear (Batch B got bottled a while back and is still looking good, I’m waiting at least another month before I try it though.), I even resorted to using some finings in it which so far doesn’t seem to have done very much (yet, we’ll see in a week or so!).

No Gold Medal for the London 2012 website

I am a web developer and I have written some bad sites in my time, I know the difficulties and constraints involved but if you’re creating the site for London 2012, the pinnacle of sporting excellence, to be browser global and to encourage people to participate (volunteer, come and watch, write about it etc…) then you want a good website!

http://www.london2012.com/

When we tried this out the other day (OK about 5 minutes ago, it annoyed me so much I had to write about it straight away) there were so many usability issues with it I just couldn’t believe it, especially after the Sydney Olympics site got taken to court over their site! Now is this the fault of the designer/implementers or those that contracted them?   Well who knows?
Who decided that you had to have a ‘screen name’ for your blog posts when you register? Am I ever going to post on their site? I don’t dare even try now after the experience so far!  and who decided that good feedback to the user would be ‘that name is taken try another’ (without any prompt towards what isn’t yet taken?) give it a few more months and people will be there for days trying to come up with a new unique (yet totally unnecessary) screen name.
Is my ethnic origin really needed? my gender doesn’t appear to be, I certainly hope that all this is being properly protected under the Data Protection Act!
We gave up after a page with a map of the UK which said ‘click anywhere to start’, where there was only a bit of southern England and northern Scotland poking out from behind the ‘click to start message’ which was actually click-able.

Perhaps whoever was responsible for this (the entire chain of responsability!) should have gone to DevDays! It seems they might have learnt a lot!

So no Gold Medal for the London Olympic website, lets hope this site is, well training for the main event, hopefully they’ll go away and do more practice and by the time people really need to use it for the main event but if the developers (and those responsible for them) don’t show the same dedication as the athletes who’ll be taking part then we could look like a bunch of amateurs.