Catherine Jenkins

Not surprised http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=168606

The irony exercise does help, despite the mental barrior… http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/fea/healthyliving2/stories/DN-nh_arthritis_0513liv.ART.State.Edition1.463c871.html

I’ve never been a fan for believing everything I read.

Am I the only one who thinks this is insane? http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/Bee-stingnew-treatment-regimen-for-arthritis-multiple-sclerosis/309118/

Having arthritis myself I’m thinking the pain of a bee sting would be way more annoying. Although it probably works by distracting the mind from the main source of pain. Either way your body still produces that stuff when you are in pain. I forget what its called though.

I feel I owe my life to this article http://blog.reindel.com/2007/08/13/howto-spruce-up-your-search-box-with-css-and-a-background-image/

If you accidentally write a page instead of a post you can’t change that!

All you can do is unpublish the page and then copy the code into a post.

Doesn’t take long though…

• Going postal by Terry Pratchett
• “Slave” by ‘Mende Nazer’
• magician, silverthorn, rise of a merchant prince, a darkness at sethanon by Raymond E.Feist

I have to say Going postal is way more interesting.

Although my friend prefers slave…

Slave is the life story of a Sudanese girl, whose village was raided by the Muja Hadien (spelling??) anyway, they killed loads in her village, and raped women and all that… then stole her and a bunch of other younger types, to be either sold into slavery (in her case) and some forced into the militia, etc.
And how she eventually was given “as a present” to the sister of the family who bought her as a slave, in england
And then how she eventually escapoed, etc.
Its really good… and Totally amazing…
this all happened in the 90’s from memory
so not like this is all 50 years ago, or 100 years ago or whatever

Facebook doesn’t have everything just yet. So lets take a guess on what the next few plugins will be. I’m predicting:

- based on relationships, what you’re children will look like
- based on your photo, how you would look as an old person
- based on your photo, how you will die
- how long you have left to live
- what you would look like in a coffin. Popular amongst the emos i think?

This is me in a coffin… I sure did age

Ok that photo was just too freaky for public viewing. People will have to email me instead

I never thought I’d blog about shapes in my entire life. You know, circles, triangles etc.

Unfortunately shapes represent the nature of most web sites. I’ll be straight to the point people keep redesigning and going from one layout to the next. Often the concept is the same or similiar.

So I say avoid shapes and go for the line. A straight line. A line that never ends. You start off your web site based on business requirements, let it grow over time, enhance the usability and accessability. Always focus on the concept. Get that right and you’ll be doing yourself a huge favour.

Unfortunately people are very narrow minded when it comes to concepts. Managers will always want pages to be structured based on what they own or look after. What about the actual users though?

I say provide a few concepts and let the user pick and provide the criticism. Listen and watch but don’t neccesarily provide the solution how they suggest it.

If you’d like to decrease:

• employee productivity
• profit / revenue

Whilst increasing:

• staff turnover
• time spent at work
• amount you can claim back on tax
• revenue of your competitors (with view of one day joining said company)

Then I’d suggest you waste time on:

• the cosmetics of web sites that a user probably couldn’t care less (seriously, the attention span of a user is low, unless its facebook and its all about THEM!) 
• designing emails

On the other hand, if you want profit and statistics to go up:

• provide the ‘useful’ elements that allow people to complete a task (eg. donate money)
• avoid boring news, announcements etc (Gerry says it all at http://giraffeforum.com/wordpress/2008/04/19/press-releases-spin-and-propaganda/)

It’s that easy but so many people get it wrong. It is rarely the fault of the designer too. Unfortunately the decision making often happens higher up from the ‘important people’ who value the internet and happen to have an opinion. When I say ‘important people’ I mean the people who employed you. I can only think of 4 things to do in such a situation:

1. do nothing and give them what they want (paying customer)
2. protest excessively (which will probably impact on your health)
3. educate
4. quit

I feel educate is the winner…

I remember the days of school where you’d need to access a web site to discover access was blocked. If only then, I had known about bypassing websense!
http://www.bypass-websense.com/
I am wondering what their profit would be. They are obviously using google adsense…
Plus the 10 proxy affiliate partners in their footer.
It would appear they are getting the required traffic. Currently they have a message saying that the service isn’t available due to heavy traffic. Yeah right, get better hosting!

Tash has asked me to forward these details on to you.

The Sunday Soccer Competition is a 24 team social comp. that plays every Sunday afternoon between the times of 12pm and (during Summer) 7pm. Games go for an hour with 25 minute halves and teams are 7 a-side.

We play at Ainsle Ovals (Wakefield Ave off Northbourne), teams are mixed and at any one time there must be minimum of 3 girls on the field. The aim of the game is more about having fun than full on competition.

No prior knowledge or experience of the game is required and members of the team range in their ability. Above all, its a good excuse to get active on a Sunday while not demanding too much time from your precious weekends. There is no training during the week, beyond want you do yourself.

Officially, the team is a DFAT team but our players come from a diverse range of workplaces and the more the merrier. The winter season will start 3rd May but the games are still being finalised.

If you are interested please let me know and I’ll keep you in the loop about the coming season, we’d love to have you come and play a game with us to see if you like it.