Adam's Blog Thing

A great poster - but not for those offended by bad language!

via store.goodfuckingdesignadvice.com

The website that accompanies this has limited attraction, but I think that this is great. Good fucking stuff.

My New Watch... Loving it!

So after about 2 years of my watch sitting in my draw waiting for a new battery and losing a couple of cheapo ones... I decided to buy one that never needs a new battery again (supposedly) and happens to look pretty cool to boot! I've had my new watch for a week or so now and I'm loving it. Solar powered, auto time-zone change and a few other gadgety things I'm also reminded of the classic Casio's I had as a kid. Now I just have to make sure I don't lose it...

Today Google Will Mostly Be... Pacman

If you haven't seen it already - go to Google and check out their 30th
Anniversary of Pacman game they have as their doodle.

AMAZING!

http://www.google.com - incase you didn't know :)

Ban Landmines - A Message from Avaaz

Avaaz is an amazing site that I'm always blown away with in how they
use real online coming together in a way that actually works. Your
signature doesn't just dissapear into a database somewhere like many
other, but they actually back it up with lobbying and action that
creates change. Please consider reading the item below, and sign up to
their mailing list. They're not so intrusive and just create great
opportunities for you to help change with the simple action of showing
your support.

Message below:

---------------------------

Dear friends,

Mao Sopheap was orphaned by a landmine. Then, when she was 16, she
stepped on one herself -- her left leg was blown apart and had to be
amputated. During an interview she cried:



"That mine has given me a future of tears until the end of my life."

Outrageously the U.S. has not signed the decade-old global treaty to
ban landmines. But last week, 68 U.S. Senators wrote to the President
to support the ban, giving Obama the two-thirds majority he needs to
ratify.

The Mine Ban Treaty was driven through by a global citizens movement
-- now if enough of us support the Senate's move, we could get the
Obama administration to sign it! Click below to take action now and
forward this widely, the petition will be delivered to the White House
when we reach 200,000 signers:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/obama_ban_mines/97.php?cl_tta_sign=de20ac3ae54c41a838...



Some military advisers are resisting the ban, but their argument
that a ban would reduce security is tenuous -- the United States has
not used landmines since 1991, has had an export ban in place since
1992, and has not produced any since 1997.



Since 1999, 156 countries have signed the global treaty banning
their use and production and the reduction in the number of lives lost
from mines has been tremendous. But significantly the U.S., China and
Russia have not, and without the U.S. there's little chance of a
comprehensive global ban, crucial to eliminate these indiscriminate
killers.



Last week's letter from the Senate brings the U.S. one step closer
to signing. But to counter military hesitation, a massive global wave
of support is needed for the President to ratify the global ban. Sign
the petition below, then forward this email to friends and family.

http://www.avaaz.org/en/obama_ban_mines/97.php?cl_tta_sign=de20ac3ae54c41a838...

Mao Sopheap's life and hundreds of lives per month have been destroyed
by these malicious and obsolete bombs. Let's raise our voices together
for those victims and send President Obama a clear message that the
world will no longer accept U.S. delays and excuses. Sign the
petition:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/obama_ban_mines/97.php?cl_tta_sign=de20ac3ae54c41a838...


With hope,

Alice, Iain, Pascal, Raluca, Mia, Ricken, Luis, Paul and the entire Avaaz team

DIBI Conference - My thoughts...

Having had the bank holiday weekend swamped with travel and a looming
deadline, I've finally got a chance to make a short write up of my
experience at DIBI (Design it, Build it) a two track conference for
web developers and designers that I attended last week at the Sage
Gateshead.

Venues and Hospitality

The pre-conference party was great. While I am no fan of the Pitcher
and Piano, its high prices, often pretentious visitors and a thorn I
have from an episode years ago, it is understandable why the
organisers chose it. Great views of a beautiful part of our city, good
company, free drinks and the whole of upstairs reserved for the
designers and geeks arriving from all over the country really made it
an interesting and worthwhile night. I was shocked to discover that
over half of the people arriving for the conference were coming from
outside of the region - a testament to the promotion done by the
organisers and a great advert for the North East as the hive of
creativity it is.

For the conference itself, there isn't really many better venues in
Newcastle (or Gateshead of course!) than the Sage. While traditionally
a music venue, Hall 2 and the Northern Rock Hall lent themselves very
well to the 350 delegates. I can't comment on the food as a last
minute dash home for my laptop prevented me getting any, although I
heard the burgers went down well! Plenty of coffee, Haribo, Muffins
and the wonderful touch of Red Bull in the afternoon break were highly
appreciated and instead of the bag full of sponsorship crap you're
usually landed with at these things, we simply got our badge,
programme and a Field Notes book - nice, simple and useful.

Speakers

Not really being specifically a designer or a developer, and somewhat
out of the loop, I wasn't massively familiar with any of the speakers,
however now I will be. All of the presentations were relatively short,
followed by Q&A from Twitter and the audience - a format I enjoyed as
it prevented anything feeling boring or drawn out.

After introductions, Jon Mcloone from Wolfram Alpha spoke to everyone
about this amazing web-based tool that has been built on decades of
computing experience. While appearing like a search system, the
Wolfram site, (and iPhone App which I swiftly downloaded during the
presentation) doesn't so much give you links to content on the web,
but pulls web content, and expert content to supply you with answers
to your questions. I was amazed at some of the things that Wolfram
could do and will certainly be playing with this more.

For the first of the two-track sessions I was with Elliot Kember,
getting a rampant tour through some of the gems available in jQuery -
Elliot had a very energetic way of presenting and gave us a load of
useful tips - esspecially for the jQuery novice like myself.

Next up was Sarah Parmenter of You Know Who - Sarah gave a really
concise look at iPhone development and really managed to capture the
essentials in 20 minutes. Checking out her site(s) I'm highly
impressed by her work and am expecting more great things from her in
the future.

Tim Van Damme went so quickly through his presentation that infact
most of his time was Q&A, but actually I think it worked out for the
best as he gave some "Ass kicking" to us all and I couldn't help but
be inspired by his mentality.

Dan Rubin's account of usability was useful and made me think about
the usability we'd done in the past and how maybe there were much
better ways of doing things!

Simon Collison really made me think with his insight into more design
theory, stepping out of the website thematic and stripping things down
to the bare essentials. Since I never studied design I found this
stuff facinating, if not a little overwhelming at times.

The final speaker of the day was Andy Clarke. A bit of a legend.
Author, pioneer and damn talented designer, Andy gave a presentation
like few others I have seen on the web, or infact technology in
general terms. He made it interesting, informative and inspiring as
well as making me laugh out loud on many occasions.

Overall, all the speakers created a melting pot of information,
inspiration and enjoyment that well exceeded the relatively moderate
entry price. Thoroughly well chosen by the organising team.

Overall

This was one of the smoothly and professionally organised conferences
I'd been to. All of the staff had time to chat, without coming across
stressed or over-worked, the speakers were approachable and most of
them stuck around for the after party. The attendees were a real mixed
bag, which I liked immensly and the best thing? Well... in honesty, I
have to say value for money. While conferences with this kind of
line-up in london cost £250 - £300 per day, DIBI was a mere £150,
making it ultimately worthwhile and a bargain at that. No expense
appeared to be spared so it wasn't like there was cost-cutting going
on, simply a fair price on a fantastic day. Whats more, those
attending the conference got a discount off next years event, meaning
the following day I bought my ticket for DIBI 2011 for just £75.
Amazing.

To the organisers I have to give a massive congratulations for doing
something fantastic for the web community both in our region but also
across the country. I'm already looking forward to next year.

Volcano Mayhem Thanks...

As many of you will know due to my relentless updates on Twitter and Facebook, I’ve been trying to get to San Francisco for DrupalCon, an event I’ve been waiting for 4 months to attend and was particularly excited to get out of Europe and see a city I’d always been interested in. As we all know a certain volcano had different ideas and while I still may not make it there, I have to say the last few days I’ve been amazed by the helpfulness, initiative and dedication of a number of people. I wanted to pay thanks and respect to a number of them...

Travel Bureau Gosforth

http://www.travelbureaugosforth.com   http://www.twitter.com/travelb

I booked my tickets with the Travel Bureau originally, they’ve always been invaluable in my travel arrangements and always make sure I get the best value and manage to find just the services I require. On this occassion I noticed it more than ever as Michael was constantly in touch to try and arrange me the best alternative arrangements for flights as news of the volcano hit. Imagine my surprise when he contacted me at 8pm on Friday to tell me there was an opening in the ash cloud that could allow me to get on a flight at Durham Tees Valley at 6am that morning. In the end it didn’t work out as nothing left that morning, but Michael had arranged everything until the last minute cancelling of the flight. Superb service.

KLM

http://www.klm.com

I’ve always enjoyed flying with KLM, but when I called them on Friday night following my cancellation, they did the business. There were no seats available on Saturday, Sunday or Monday, and so they actually booked me on a competitors flight going via London and Calgary on Monday morning. Not only that, they put me on the waitlist for a flight on Sunday and today when that was cancelled, automatically put me on the waitlist for Monday, just incase I can fly with KLM instead! While I’m by no means going to get to San Francisco yet I’m still very impressed.

To top it all off, they actually had the bottle tonight to send up a plane to test the air and see if there actually is a problem with the air. So far seems not so who knows, maybe KLM will start flying again tomorrow!

London Drupal Community

http://drupal.org

Within 24 hours, the London Drupal Community, most of whom now have no chance to make it to DrupalCon, managed to arrange a live broadcast of the keynote speeches and a meet up or MiniCon in London starting on Monday for those who can’t make it to San Francisco. This is an amazing achievement and must be a good sign for the Drupal Association to put them in the position to host the next European DrupalCon which is still available in 18 months time. If I don’t get my flight on Monday/Tuesday then I’m pretty sure I’ll be there.

Jon and Mandy

http://houseofgin.blogspot.com/2010/04/marathon-walking.html

OK so they haven’t in any way affected my trip to SF, but I have to give a lot of respect to my brother Jon and his wife Mandy as since I’m stuck at home tonight I’m enjoying tracking their progress and feel very inspired by their Marathon walk that they’re doing through Manchester tonight. Wishing them luck and hoping they’ll continue to get sponsorship - which you can do too! :) http://www.sponsormetoshine.org/thehills

Off to San Francisco!

Lately I booked my tickets to go to San Francisco in April... I'm starting to get very excited about it. OK so its not entirely a holiday but I will get some time off to explore what is probably the main city in the USA I've ever wanted to go to. In September when I was at Drupalcon in Paris, it was announced that the next event would be in San Francisco, but actually I never imagined that I could go. The conference lasts mainly for 3 days, and then there is another conference for one more day so it means I have 2-3 days to explore the city (jet lag dependant!).

"Draw me a right!" Poster Competition

Mr Jacques Barrot, Vice-President of the European Commission and
European Commissioner responsible for justice, freedom and security,
has launched the 4th edition of its poster competition for young
people to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the Convention on the
Rights of the Child.

European children and teenagers wishing to take part in the
competition will have to design a poster illustrating one of the
rights presented in the Convention. Participants will be divided into
two age categories (10-14 and 15-18) and will have to work in groups
of four members at least (supervised by an adult). The entries will be
judged first at the national level and prizes will be awarded to the
three best teams in each age category during ceremonies to be held in
their home country at the beginning of April 2010.

The winners of the first prize in the national competitions will
compete in a second round at European level. The three top teams in
each age group will be invited to visit Brussels from 8 to 10 May
2010, for a weekend and a tour of the European institutions, as well
as to attend the European award ceremony.

The best posters will be posted on the websites of the Commission’s
representations in the Member States and on the Europa getaway. They
may also be used for future European campaigns.

Deadline:19 March 2010

To read more about the poster competition go to the Europa Youth
website: http://www.europayouth.eu

My Top 5 Movies for 2010

OK so before I get into this, I want to make it clear that these are
Hollywood films. I'm quite sure there will be many much better
independent movies released that I don't know about yet, but these are
just some of the blockbusters which for me look like they should be a
lot of fun!

Inception
The Blockbuster
Trailer - http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/inception/
Release: Summer 2010

From the brilliant Christopher Nolan (Dark Knight, Memento, Insomnia)
this one stars Leonardo Di Caprio who I never gave a fair chance after
Titanic but has produced a growing list of very good acting roles
since the amazing Arnie Grape. Still not completely sure what this one
is all about but the trailer looks imense and with Nolan I don't
really ask questions as in my mind he is simply the best new(ish)
director in Hollywood.

Alice in Wonderland
The Burton/Depp Film (generally seems to be an annual occassion these days!)
Trailer - http://www.apple.com/trailers/disney/aliceinwonderland/
Release: March 5th 2010

Johnny Depp and Tim Burton again... this time with a massive ensemble
cast and from the trailer it looks amazing. Helena Bonham Carter, Ann
Hathaway, Stephen Fry, Christopher Lee, Alan Rickman, Matt Lucas,
Timothy Spall, Michael Sheen and Paul Whitehouse to name but a few,
I'm quite sure that this is going to be great, especially for
Depp/Burton fans like myself.

Daybreakers
The Action Film (with Vampires of course...)
Trailer - http://www.apple.com/trailers/lions_gate/daybreakers/
Release: January 8th 2010

OK so another vampire movie may not be everyone's cup of tea, and
despite being a big fan, there has been quite a saturation in recent
years of the theme. However this one looks different and flips the
idea on its head, with vampires now the dominant species and humans
that are dying out. It opens next week and has been described as the
"Matrix of the Vampire Genre" which gets me very interested.

Iron Man 2
The Comic Book Sequel
Trailer - http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/ironman/
Release: May 7th 2010

Iron Man was probably my favourite Marvel film adaptation so far with
exactly the right amount of action and humour. I saw a teaser for Iron
Man 2 a few months ago but the full trailer is now out and I'm even
more excited. It looks so damn good. Could this be another of those
rare cases where a sequel is actually as good as, if not better than
the original?

Toy Story 3
The Disney Film
Trailer - http://www.apple.com/trailers/disney/toystory3/
Release: June 18th 2010

Speaking of films as good as the original, I thought Toy Story 2 was
on a par with the first film, so I'm really looking forward to the
completion of the trilogy. With all the usual characters, the film is
set a few years later when Andy is much older, so his toys are donated
to a day-care centre for kids. Since the original movies were so
heavily character driven I'm pretty sure this will continue to be a
great story.

Others include: Hot Tub Time Machine, A-Team, Youth in Revolt and a
number of very interesting documentaries about war and religion... all
in all looks like it could be a good year of films ahead!

Am I missing something? What are you look forward to in 2010? Leave
your comments below!

EU 2020 Strategy Consultation - Deadline 15th January

There is currently a public consultation going on by the European
Union about a strategy for 2020 - a rare chance to input into this
strategy is available online at the following address. However be
quick - Deadline is 15th January so there is only one week left. I've
included an introduction from the website.

http://ec.europa.eu/eu2020/

"In presenting his programme for the new Commission, President Barroso
set out his vision for where the European Union should be in 2020. He
believes that the exit from the current crisis should be the point of
entry into a new sustainable social market economy, a smarter, greener
economy where our prosperity will result from innovation and from
using resources better, and where knowledge will be the key input. To
make this transformation happen, Europe needs a common agenda: the EU
2020 strategy.

This strategy should enable the EU to make a full recovery from the
crisis, while speeding up the move towards a smart and green economy.
EU 2020 will build on the successes obtained by the Lisbon strategy
since its 2005 relaunch, which focused on growth and jobs, but will
also address some of the Lisbon strategy's shortcomings."

http://ec.europa.eu/eu2020/