Only in Australia: A man uses Pig Latin as a code language (‘odecay anguagelay’), is convicted when the police decipher it. How dim do you have to be to use pig latin?
Recapturing the Vibe
A lazy weekend morning; walking around aimlessly and yet intently; a warm summer afternoon, the cricket on the radio; sumptuous brunches, dinners on par with what your mamma made for ya; ignoring the responsibilities and chillin’ with friends; a birthday barbecue stretching well into the night with new & newer friends, the chatter (and drinks) flowing freely.
Truly, this is what weekends ought to be made of on a regular basis.
Monopoly Tour!
I remember playing Monopoly as a kid and thinking, “I’ve so got to visit all these places one day…” (what, no-one else?)
And now I’m here in London. And those streets on the Monopoly board? They’re real!
I know, I couldn’t believe it either. So I got my faithful Google Maps out and mapped it. And I’m going to tick it off one by one while I’m here =)
I’m not going to go all out and do it all in one day – that would be a pointless waste of time, right? But I am going to connive situations which land me near one of those spots, and whip the camera out to take evidence. Oh and look around too so next time I play, I know what I’m playing for.
The tour has begun! Check out my flickr monopoly tag =)
Amazing vid
I’m posting most of my “cool vid” stuff on the tumblr blog these days, but I had to post these here because my jaw literally dropped: A lion named Christian by the people who brought him up is reunited with them after a year in the wild, and his reaction is totally amazing. I had to watch it twice to believe it. (via)
The Prototypes
Just thought I’d show three of the designs that (nearly) made it.
This first one went through three revisions itself – pushing the sky on the left? horizontal? on the right? – before I found the genius idea of putting it between the content and the sidebar. And then I looked at it and thought, “wow, that’s so…. white….” and I really couldn’t figure out where to put the colours into it. Interesting design exercise, though.
For some reason, I called the design above “ubermorgen” (“very morning” in German). I have no idea why.
This one was a lot more straightforward naming – “b+w”, and was one of those ideas that sounds really quite good in my head, but just doesn’t translate to paper (or screen, as it were). Again, my issue here became that if I introduced any colour, it would throw things off. I liked the little stripes I had going there though, as well as the translucent sidebar. Maybe in another life.
This, I think, was just about the shortest-lived design I had, as evidenced by the lack of any lorem ipsum in the content. I called it “Vert”, as the whole thing just seemed to want to scroll (maybe I should’ve called it “scroll”?). Again, an idea that worked really well in my head, but just didn’t quite pan out when I played around with it. It was all well and good to have the Really Big Textâ„¢ on the home page, but when you got to the content, it was a distraction, big and bold – so the title would have to translate to a smaller, horizontal one, and then you lost the branding impact.
And finally…
 
Out of the ashes of “Vert” was “Stripe” born. I played with the design a little, giving the giant header a black background like you see on the side of this design. And then, to make the colours mesh, I had to play around a little… and then the blue stripe emerged out of somewhere, and suddenly we were cruising, or at least on a path I liked. I dropped the orange in the title in favour of simplifying to a 3 colour primary palette, letting the brand define itself. Et voila, pushing the sky, version 4.
Version 4
It’s rough around the edges, and it’s nothing fancy, but dammit, it’s mine. I’ve learnt WordPress during the building of this theme, and that should make me proud.
(except for the part where it doesn’t matter that much in the long run)
I’ve still yet to figure out where to put the sidebar stuff, or if I’m going to stay with the asides in their current format, to the style that I did once upon a time. Or if I should introduce colours, effects and all those fancy things that generally are completely useless to the blog. What this does for me though is refocus: it gets the blog back to its basic purpose, which is to carry a message.
Inspired a little by Subtraction, assisted a little by innumerable WordPress themes, indebted to the brilliance of XRAY, the result of about 4 discarded designs which were way too busy, I hope this makes me a little more involved because it was my own product.
Completely untested outside the Mac. I’ll have to look at it in IE at work tomorrow.
Lemme know what you think! Remember, this is raw 0.1 stuff, so it’s open to assault and rework.
Photographic evidence
Hey, added photos to Pasta a la Juneja.
Not a gold medal we want to be taking
All Men Are Liars uses Google Trends to point out that Australians are the most bored in the world (or at least turn to the net when bored) Sydney’s top by a long margin, with Melbourne 6th.
Go outside!
The signs aren’t good, nurse
Dear Internet,
I fear I must make a small confession.
I left the house on Sunday afternoon, fully intending to take advantage of the sunny day by going to some tourist spot or another – perhaps Lord’s, perhaps Regent’s Park where they were holding a “village fair”. Oh and fake beach volleyball. But that was never a factor.
On the way out, however, I thought up the bright idea of doing a quick bit of shopping while I was at it. I needed to buy:
- Jeans
- Casual shoes
My jeans were getting a bit tatty, and not to mention my shoes really do need replacement after 2 years of hardy service (these shoes have criss-crossed the globe. They rate mentions.) I knew my idea of shopping: targeted, quick, in-and-out, and I knew I could do all that in time for tea a nice juice smoothie.
I checked my map of the fine old city: Oxford St was on my way to Regent’s Park and Lord’s. Oxford St, London. Doesn’t sound like a bad place to look, eh.
I got off at Bond St station (I wonder if I shouldn’t have commenced a Monopoly tour right there; Bond St, Oxford St, Regent St, Marylebone Station, and Mayfair all within a reasonable walk.) and was pleased to find the street packed with much talent. It appears I was far from the only one to have the idea.
And that’s where things went pear-shaped. I wandered down the street, a veritable country rube gawking at the palaces to consumerism that line the street. I hadn’t been down here while the shops were open.
Three and a half hours later I found myself in Hyde Park, shopping bags in hand. I had:
- Polo-esque Shirt from GAP: £18
- Black suit jacket worth £120 from FCUK: £35
- Jeans from Primark: £6
Which makes for a total of £59, or $150. Worth of clothes. Of which I only wanted the $15 jeans. I had also seriously considered:
- Jeans from GAP: £68
- Ultra-thin tie from FCUK: £25
… only putting them down at the last minute. Which would have put me way out.
I fear, dear internet, that I may be becoming, dare I say it, consumerist. Help me!
(Oh, and I never made it to Lord’s or Regent’s Park)
Holiday booked
Back in Oz from 26th August to 10th September. My birthday, Dad’s birthday, stuffness… wondering if I should pop down to Melbourne, too.
ed: gah! I twittered! nooooooooooooo!