Tidings of Comfort and Joy

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Seasons Greetings

All I want for Christmas. . .

And it's here! A Kiwi itunes store and a proper Apple Store!

Cool Tees for Xmas

It's day 18 of the Threadless 30day $10(US) t-shirt sale!

New designs added everyday.

You can submit t-shirt designs or slogans too.

Free Stuff 4 Free

The worst thing about working from home is that there is no one else there, well unless you count cats & they DO tend to make their presence felt.



So it was great to get out on Tuesday & attend "Free Stuff for Free". Not only were there interesting presentations, great food & coffee, but best of all — people. They were ex-officemates, people from the printers I use often (Printstop), colleagues and clients. A great and stimulating mix!

Thanks to the event sponsors:

The Week That Time Forgot

Monday: Home office assembled. I need only to install the ‘easy install’ modem package in order to get productive.

Faithfully follow all steps as outlined on the PDF file I had wrested from the PC only installation disc.

Connect to internet. No luck. Bugger. Call Helpdesk. On this occasion they were, in fact, helpful. After a lot of dicking round with the existing patch panel and new modem, finally get online. Excellent. Do some work.

Tuesday: Start working. Get phone call from husband to say cops have been called to evict HIM from family office also! The thin blue line couldn’t have been very stretched that day as they managed to spare 4, count ‘em, 4 of the city’s finest to deal. Had to drop everything, call movers and go to office to help move furniture in order to avoid having to post bail for husband.

Come home shattered to find gale-force wind has blown telephone cable from house, so totally isolated vis-à-vis landline and internet . . .


(Weather pic from Netvibes)

Wednesday: All assurances from Telecom fault people come to naught as connection still not restored.

Thursday: Go for restorative and therapeutic morning golf game, after having lain awake a significant amount of night wondering how I was going to get all work done under circumstances.

Return home looking forward to getting back to work, as had been assured that fault was now marked as critical (live wire on road) and would be fixed between 9 and 1, if not sooner.

All assurances from Telecom fault people come to naught as connection still not restored.

Ring them again (on expensive cellphone) to be told that fault has been escalated to supervisor and he will be in contact soon.

Not.

All assurances from Telecom fault people come to naught as connection still not restored.

Friday: Six of those lovely Telecom fault people come and fix connection. Yay! We have lift-off.

When user experiences go BAD

Having being evicted from the family office (don’t even ask — this story makes ‘Dynasty’ and ‘Dallas’ look like ‘Little House on the Prairie’) I needed to relocate to home to work. (Home being a relative term as it’s in a seemingly permanent state of renovation; so isn’t, at present, a particularly salubrious place to live, let alone work).

Anyway, I needed to get reconnected to Broadband so I called Telecom and signed up for their “Broadband Unleashed”.

So the idea is they connect you at the exchange, and they send you out a modem and an installation CD and you install it all, and Bob’s your uncle!

The modem arrived. The package said “PC ONLY”.

Great! I phoned the Helpdesk and asked what happens if you have a Mac? They said that the modem will work with a mac, but the installation CD wouldn’t! But, not to worry, there was a PDF on the CD that tells you how to set it all up on a Mac.

Excellent! A CD I can’t open has the installation instructions on it. I asked if they could cut to the chase and just email me the PDF file, but no, not possible. “It’s on the CD”, they said.

‘Luckily’ I still had access to a PC at the soon-to-be-ex-office, so after a creaky half hour or so, I managed to extract the file, and print it out to bring home for when I got my computer here. . . more of which, anon.

Two questions for Telecom:
1. Why assume everyone uses Windows?
2. What part of making a CD-Rom cross-platform is too difficult for a multi-million $ monopoly (or anyone, for that matter)?

Cool Thing: 2

The Little Friends of Printmaking.
Groovy silkscreened posters and t-shirts & stuff.

Cool Thing: 1

Steve Keene


Photo from SK site

Let's get him here for the Arts Festival!

Gahh! Am I turning into a Fitness Freak??

Sunday: Run, Monday: Gym, Tuesday: Yoga, Wednesday: Corp Challenge, Thursday: Golf, Friday: Gym, Sat: Chill, Sunday: Girly golf day, Martinborough.

Scary. . .

Cool patterns

Ray Fenwick has cool patterns (vector) on sale here at YouWorkForThem.

I love the smell of hot fat in the morning!

Having been roped into entering the 5km Push Play Corporate Challenge on Friday, I thought I'd better do at least ONE training run of equivalent distance before the event (this Wednesday). So after measuring the distance down our street in the car, I set off early on Sunday morning. (The Eastbourne Carnival started at 10am so I wanted to avoid the crowds).

However, they were setting it up as I passed the village, and the Hot Dog van was hotting up.

After the run and on our way into the city later in the morning we had to test their products, thus undoing all my earlier good work!

CMI

Last night I attended the launch at Parliament of a new training initiative. It is based on and associated with an Australian development and has involved the cooperation of 8 ITOs.

The progamme is called the Competitive Manufacturing Initiative and is aimed at increasing efficiency and productivity In the manufacturing sector. It is a unit standards-based training programme offered at various levels.

I checked out the samples there of the training resources and trainers’ manuals. Very standard layout, but pretty comprehensive looking in terms of content, and featuring heaps of graphics and diagrams in colour.

There is a conference in Auckland next week to further the programme.

The various speakers, including Minister of Labour, Hon. Ruth Dyson, emphasised the importance of manufacturing to the New Zealand economy, and the importance of increasing productivity in that sector, while remaining conscious of resource management and the environment. The CM initiative is seen as a key factor in encouraging and promoting this.

I was there representing an ex colleague of mine from Southland Polytechnic (SIT). He now runs a sawmilling business in the deep South. I was relieved that no-one asked me any questions about the sawmilling industry, as any anwer would have required some invention on my part. But I did meet some erstwhile colleagues there, one of whom had been extensively involved in the programme’s development. All in all, it was a much more interesting event than I had forseen.

The CMI programme appears to have much to recommend it.

Undocumented 'feature'

I've discovered a major bug in this golfing lark. My first game on a sunny-ish day and I've got incipient golfer's tan! It features a tanned left arm and snow-white left hand.

I guess Tiger Woods doesn't have this worry.

The Roadshow

Worth struggling in to Wellington in (yet another) southerly storm for.

CS2 has some great features, but I think I'll still hang out for CS3 before upgrading. Depends how long it takes. . .

It was also good to meet up with some old colleagues & mates.

Cats 22

I wasn't going to write about cats here.

They are in Purrgatory. But what is it with cat-water that makes a cat reject it totally and make a beeline for the people-water in the glass on the bedside table?

Events

Well after a hectic game of golf in gale-force northerly winds (just for a change) yesterday, I'm looking forward to the long weekend.

Then off to the Adobe Creative Suite Roadshow in Wellington on Tuesday to catch up with the latest Photoshop, Dreamweaver, etc news.

Cutie?!

They sell good fruit & veg too. On the main road north of Wellington.

Son of Webstock

The Webstock Conference this year was pretty good.

Kathy Sierra was worth the entry fee alone. (And the t-shirt & website are really cool.)

But wait — there's more. . .

"The Webstock team presents a day of edification and an evening of entertainment for your web-related pleasure and education.

Mark Wednesday 6 December in your diaries for Russ Weakley presenting an all-day CSS workshop and Natasha Hall, Russell Brown and Nat Torkington speaking on a range of wondrous topics."
Link

Eyes wide shut?

Garr Reynolds at Presentation Zen is right. Most people are not aware that design surrounds us all, and is pretty much everywhere. It may not necessarily be good design, but someone, somewhere has decided that that is what that particular thing should look like.

From the TV commercial to the road sign. From the t-shirt you wear to the car you drive. From the MacDonalds menu above their counter to the Tui billboard.

From the shop sign to the window display.

He says "By slowing down a bit we will be able to see all of the graphic design that fills our daily lives." (Might be scary!)

We need to open our eyes and become aware of our surroundings. Or does it matter? If people are unaware, do they, or we, care?

Stephen Downes, cont. . .

On "Stephen's Web" today, he says about his efest presentation:

". . . if you listen to nothing else from me this year, listen to this, because everything I write comes from the heart, and this is as close to it as anyone is ever likely to get."

Stephen Downes

It was great to see & hear Stephen Downes larger than life yesterday.

Prior to the conference he had travelled in South Africa and in New Zealand. (Auckland to Wellington by bus!)

He said after all that he had information overload. Most people get it he says, from getting 1500 emails. He can handle that — but he got it from real life!

eFest

I'm off to efest elearning conference tomorrow to hear Stephen Downes' keynote address. I'm looking forward to it.

Here's a link to a potted bio of Mr Downes on the eFest conference site.

Is anybody out there?

Seth Godin mentions using Google Analytics in his list “The 8 Free Things Every Site Should Do”
He says “Google analytics [is] Useful and addictive and free.”

He's right. Every morning I log in to my Google Analytics account to see who's been to visit. Today I learned that I've had a vistor from Makati. It's in the Phillipines. I had to Google it. And one from Kathmandu (not the shop), plus others from the US & closer to home in Oz & NZ.

Google Analytics is easy to join, informative and, I have to agree with Mr Godin, addictive.

(I've also signed up Purrgatory — but no-one from Makati has visited there yet.)

Pericolo di morte

Hmmm. . . Jessica Helfand's article today on Death'n'stuff (at Design Observer) is thought provoking.

"We're all at risk. We're all affected. We're all mortal. Consider yourself warned." she concludes, in her posting about labelling, warnings and attitudes to mortal danger.

Be Afraid. . .

Don't go there Dominos! They don't need any encouragement.

Don't tell the Sisterhood!

I've taken up golf. Just learning. Today was our first day out without the coach. We played this game of our own invention where you play your own shot if its' reasonable, but you play Tracy's if your shot is cr_p. It worked for us. Plus it's a beautiful, sunny, early spring day out there.

Big Discover

I work alongside a property manager. One of his tenants has just emailed to say there is a big Leek in the 3rd floor men's loos!

Peace, perfect peace

Over at Purrgatory, Angelo has written a post with the same name. Slightly different content, but.

Eveytime I go to Picton I photograph this. The war memorial.

In the name of Godzone

New Zealand?
New Zeeland?
Aotearoa?
Link

Small change

Along with the change in our coinage (50, 20 & 10 cent pieces), there has been another change to something we see everyday that seems to have gone unheralded (and largely unnoticed)?

The font used for our number plates has changed. From the mid Ds. They now look like Australian numbers. Maybe they're being made there now?

Update
Wikipedia says "The lettering used for this system was sans-serif until the start of the three-letter codes beginning "DG" (March-April 2006), since which time a heavier serif font has been used." link

Seen around

Literal logo


Graffiti with flair?

Swanning about

Have just come back from a few days in Rotorua. It is a great place with heaps to see.

The best thing was getting very close to two lion cubs.

The First Post

I've been Blondini gang since March 2006. Pleased to be out on my own and self-employed after many years of cube-ville.

I'm doing all sorts of design work; from packaging to web stuff to business cards & logos to design for learning materials (what I mostly did before).

My web site is here, but only as a holding page at present. Every time I think I'll get on to it, a paying job comes along. But I'll get to it.