I never knew

Today was a gorgeous day, bare shoulders, bare legs, restaurants, cafes and bars have all windows opened and are doing great business, everyone you cross on the street after supper is eating an icecream cone, everyone’s smiling. Oh and let’s not forget the tight little tops and bare midriffs. Ahhhh, Montréal after the snow!

It’s the first fake day of summer. “Fake” because we all know we’ll be getting some cold days again before the real bona fide summer settles in. Until then, I’m off, the blog is closed all May long, see ya June 1st with, hopefully, a new design to match the “backendy” changes I’ve been meaning to make.

Couple of months ago: Guy walks around, getting to work, half the people he sees on the way and at work are wearing a neck brace. Flash back to all of them whipping their head up and down at a concert, explaining the neck braces. Ad for Molson Rock Show series or something.

A few weeks ago: Dumb looking chick with eye patch, dumb looking guy with eye patch, chick with eye patch, chick with eye patch, chick again, guy again. Switch to party scene, hot dumb looking chick leans towards her bloody Mary and pokes her eye out, explaining the eye patch. Ad for V8 or something.

First time tonight (for me anyway): Guy at the office has huge bump on his forehead, women close buy has huge bump on her head, other guy, othe woman, other guy, other guy. Switch to parking basement scene, guy’s attention is drawn to a “luxurious” car. Leans towards it, admires it for a while backs away slowly, looks quickly at his watch, realizes he’s late, whips around and knocks his head on a low hanging pipe, explaining the bumps. Ad for Hyundai I think.

See a pattern here? Except for the fact I often forget which product ads are for?

It’s pretty common that I find web designers who do great work and make me look and wonder why I’m even doing this but when she’s also 23 and builds this and writes great insightful stuff like this well then I just want to go back to sleep.

More seriously though, great series from Eris, a few choice pieces:

Despite common belief, Web Designers are not Super Heros. It is important to understand that your new Designer is going to do a lot more than simply put an image on a page and add some color. A quality website doesn’t happen overnight. It is a process than can take weeks or months depending on the website’s size.

At first glance, it may seem that your new Designer has a ton of scattered info in their head. This is not the case. Your new Designer has its very own internal organization system that masterfully organizes all of this data and calls relevant data forth when the initial program, Web Designer 10.5, needs it.

These are a few things that your new Designer appreciates … The small phrase, “thank you” ... Their very own private island with wifi where nobody else is invited and the pina coladas are on tap … Shiny electronics … Money.

I agree with pretty much everything she says because it fits in very well with my own experience but not everybody does and there are some good comments being posted on Boris’ site (where I found the link btw).

Gotta love Aaron Mcgruder and his Boondocks, he really pulls no punches. It’s so funny because it’s true.

This is a potentially interesting product; Sony is coming out with an ebook reader that sports a new type of screen which supposedly gives out a resolution and brightness that is as easy to read as actual paper.

The result is a 6in screen with a resolution of 600×800 dots at 170dpi, considerably sharper than the 70-90dpi of a regular computer display. This allows for increasing the text size up to 200% with no degradation. One much-repeated fallacy about the Librie is that power is used only for turning pages. While it is true that the “ink” particles stay in position without consuming power, the electronic innards do drain the juice, hence the inclusion of a standby mode. Nevertheless, the three AAA batteries used to power the Librie should stretch to an impressive 10,000 pages, enough for about 40 novels.

The whole package seems decent and we’ll see how it catches on in Japan, a couple of things I don’t like though, they are using their Memory stick format, bleh. The only way I think it could really catch on is with something more of an industry standard, not their barely licensed format. And secondly, they’ve put in a DRM and are selling the books through their own service, looks like it’s very similar to iTunes and the iStore but even though I like Sony product design for some reason I’m not expecting much from that service. Also not sure how open it will be to people putting on their own content in some unprotected format.

A group of Tarantino fans have put together what looks like a pretty comprehensive list of movies Quentin references in his Kill Bill movies.

A very very well made fx demo where a prototype robot patrols a dangerous zone. Almost all of it looks real. Extremely well put together.

Ten years ago this weekend—actually, May 1st but this is the “anniversary” race—the greatest driver ever, Ayrton Senna died tragically during the Imola race. F1 racing hasn’t been the same since. His epic battles with Le professeur and razor’s edge laps under the rain will forever be part of F1 legend. Saudade.

Torchés, lessivés

Akira meets Phileas Fogg meets LXG. Looks like fun, from the master who brought us Akira.