supersonic feet

… is finally available to pre-order on DVD!

I saw this film at the cinema by pure chance. My Dad really wanted to see Constant Gardner so we’d gone to watch it, but it was the Harry Potter release day which had sidelined Constant Gardner. Not wanting to see Harry Potter, we decided on a film called Kiss Kiss Bang Bang that we didn’t know much about, but was meant to be decent.

It’s one of those films you have middling/no expectations of and just blows you away by being loads better than you’d expected. The film’s really seriously funny (Val Kilmer as hitman ‘Gay Perry’ anyone?), has some good action scenes and a weird plot.

Just check it out if you haven’t seen it

Spotted via 37signals’ Signal vs. Noise blog, the Bottle Cap Tripod (but really a monopod) looks a very nifty and ingenious item for photographers who get caught needing a steady hand but don’t have a tripod.

It’s basically an adapter that screws onto a standard drinks bottle and into the tripod screw on a camera to give you a makeshift stand. It looks potentially quite handy, though might suffer with a larger SLR camera. It’s at least a nice compromise between having to lug a tripod around and being without anything at all to steady the camera.

I also noticed that in the comments of the svn blog post someone posted a link to a how-to on making your own adapter rather than spending $20. Even more nifty!

I’m not a fan of Flash-based websites in general, partly because Flash tends to be used unnecessarily (just to be flashy), partly because of niggles like problems with bookmarking and partly because of the accessibility issues.

Despite this, I occasionally find a Flash-based site that manages to make me forget all that and just think ‘cool, nice design’.

Browsing CSS Mania, as I often do, I came across InsideDown - the portfolio site of Paul Mealy. Paul’s site itself isn’t Flash-based, just a nice (mostly) valid XHTML website that keeps things simple. His portfolio examples however, include some Flash work that’s just cool.

Outside Source Design’s (seemingly the company he works/worked for) website is pure Flash, and about as accessible as a room with no doors, but it’s smoothly animated, loads fast (granted I’ll have to test it again when not on a fat work internet connection) and has nice graphics. If anything, it’s almost too quick-loading in places as I wasn’t sure at first whether it had loaded a new page or it’d just been part of a set animation for the one I was on.

Further down the portfolio is a site for Marketpro that again isn’t in the least bit accessible for anyone who can’t view Flash, but for those who can it’s stylish (love the menu, which succeeds where similar menus are usually unintuitive and irritating), simple and the transition between pages is super-smooth.

Of course both of these sites have most of the problems that makes me usually hate Flash - no bookmarking as they’re all part of the same page; no status bar help to show where links are going and absolutely no good if you don’t have Flash or you use a screen-reader. Not even a ‘click here for non-Flash version’. But to look at them, they’re a pleasure.

Designs like these show that Flash can be done very well (i.e. not over-the-top), but also that there’s still a way to go before it’s (in my opinion) worth using due to accessibility and usability issues.

Yes, there are work-arounds to make Flash reasonably accessible, but it takes a lot more development (and more importantly planning) time to do and too few people making these sites seem to either know how to do it, or care.

Anyway, I think I’m about to start going round in circles on this, so I’ll end with: I’ve been given new faith that Flash can be done well, but I still wouldn’t use it for a whole site yet as it’s still got too many problems for usability and accessibility…

… and I can’t do Flash

V6 by night

Just taken this tonight as it looked too cool a picture not to take of my nice new car

If I ever remember though, I want to try it another night with the tripod to keep the camera steady as I’m crap at holding it still enough for night shots.

I think it still looks cool in lowish res. though.

As I’ve been playing with the MODx content management system over the past couple of days, I though I’d see what other WYSIWYG editors were available as plug-ins.

First I searched for a Xinha plug-in and found one. Next I decided to look for a TinyMCE plug-in. The search results did find a plug-in for TinyMCE, but what caught my eye (and surprised me quite a bit) was at the top of the results, where it tries to suggest alternative spellings of your search criteria in case you mis-spelled it.

I got:

That’s right, rather than my search of ‘tinymce’, the forum would like to know if I really wanted to search for ‘titmice’.

I have no idea how it comes up with its suggestions, but to suggest the plural form of an insect-eating bird with a very strange name caught me off guard to say the least (as did the discovery that it’s a real word)

I noticed the MODx content management system a while ago, but only recently had the time to test it out properly when setting up a client website at work.

The install is simple enough (not quite WordPress-simple, but still simple): upload the files, change a couple of file permissions and load the installer in the browser.

With the code installed, you can have a basic site up and running in minutes. I had the design for the client site sorted in a template within 10 minutes (admittedly I’d already done a dummy HTML page to work from beforehand) and then it was just a case of tweaking certain bits.

You can have it set up a load of demo site content to get you started and edit to your liking. The admin parts of the app make good use of AJAX for quick edits and updates, but always with non-JavaScript backups available. A floating toolbar appears on all front-end pages if you’re logged in, meaning if you spot a problem you’re only a click away from the screen to fix it.
The developers have also done a good job of keeping all front-end code valid and accessible, which is another major plus-point over other content management systems.

The handling of dynamic content such as blogs or news pages is a little quirky compared to the methods of dedicated blogging/news/forum apps as each item is counted as a page that goes in a folder, with comments being child pages of the article. Not vastly different when you get down to it, just something you have to get used to (and indeed something I haven’t tried using yet).

Overall, MODx looks very handy so far and is certainly the closest I’ve seen to how I’d write a CMS. I think I’ll try it on a few more sites and see how it goes.

Back in August I mentioned the Optimus keyboard design by Art Lebedev that included OLED displays on every key on the keyboard for the ultimate in cool and customisation.

During a regular perusal of Blue’s News, I followed a link to a link to the Optimus Mini Three - a somewhat cut-down version of the Optimus keyboard with only three buttons.

It looks like this may be the test case release before a full keyboard release, with Engadget quoting Lebedev’s site which states “good things come in small packages February 1, 2006″.

The Mini Three does still look extremely cool, though it’s actual usefulness will be a tad limited with only the three keys.  Most modern keyboards already have various extra keys that can be re-mapped to various functions such as email. Having notifications is nifty on remote units (I get email/MSN notifications on my DiNovo’s mediapad) and on the outside of your laptop (as planned with Windows Vista’s Sideshow), but the Mini Three would appear to be a wired unit.

For something that’s attached in close proximity to my computer, I can just look at the computer screen to see that I’m receiving email or that it’s 5pm. It’s the kind of thing that would work well as part of the larger keyboard ‘package’ but as three buttons/screens that are wired I can see it being a bit of a one minute wonder for anyone who buys one.

Negativity aside, maybe it’ll have some super-cool functionality that’s as-yet unannounced, or (more hopefully) the full keyboard will follow suit very shortly after the Mini Three.

All this, of course, assumes that the Mini Three actually is what’s alluded to in the ’small packages’ quote

Spotted a link on StyleGala to a new app that displays the current time using randomly-selected images from flickr.

The app is called Clockr and is rather nifty. Perhaps not something I’d go back to again and again, but definitely worth checking out as a clever idea.

Swoosh

Finally took a few quick pictures of the new car and uploaded them to flickr.

Check ‘em out!

… but I almost didn’t!

We got the train down to London yesterday morning and arrived at London Mazda around 12:30 to check the car out and complete the purchase. Alas, the car was still in the workshop and we couldn’t see it yet, which was a bit worrying considering they’d had 3 days notice of us coming to get it.

We decided to wait the 30 minutes in the showroom as they had a ‘fordcafe’ (or is it fordcafe?) so we could get some lunch. The lunch was cack, but they eventually brought the car round the front for us to look at, though the sales guy was looking a bit nervy.

As we checked round the car, it clearly had a few niggly problems that made it not the ’superb’ example we’d been promised before travelling 300 miles to London. As a result, we spent the rest of the afternoon sitting around waiting and negotiating over what would be done about the faults (worst was the broken/missing boot struts).

Eventually (at 4:40) they agreed to discount the cost of the required parts and labour from the price we paid for the car so we could get it sorted once back up North, leaving 20 minutes for the sales guy to get down the Post Office and tax the car.

By around 5:30 all was sorted out and paid for and we could finally set off for the 300 mile return journey in my nice new V6 Alfa Romeo 156. First job was to fill up with petrol (first time I’ve ever had to spend over £50 on a tank of petrol - it’s a big tank!) as there was the usual lack of petrol in a car bought from a dealer.

After that we set off in London rush hour traffic which was fortunately not that bad. The car cruises the motorway beautifully and the V6 engine has so much more power at all speeds/rpms than my Accord Type-R that overtaking was effortless. The car is also very stable at high speed, even taking crosswinds well.

Overall I’m delighted with the car - the A/C got fixed while we waited at the garage, so that was £100 saved while the distorted boot lining can be lived with or replaced relatively easily. The smoked headlight cleared up a bit after a few hours’ nighttime driving so if that’s OK we’ve saved another £200! The boot struts really do need fixing asap though.

I even arrived home to find the set of 16″ Tele-dial wheels I bought on eBay had arrived, so once I pick up my new CD player from the CityLink depot tonight I’ll be able to spend part of tomorrow fitting the wheels and new CD player to complete my new car (I may just spend a bit of time with my brother for his birthday :P).

Let’s just hope I don’t get driven into again while going to collect a parcel