Valhalla Island

Leopard includes previously shitty, now great support for computers connected to your local network. It also features a lovely, new, large icon format to keep cover flow in the finder looking great. The PC icon depicts a large, old, beige CRT screen with Windows famous crash message — the blue screen of death. Anil Dash finds this unacceptable, I find it funny. Continue reading →

Taskpaper has been getting a lot of press recently. I agree that it’s a smart app but I see it 100 times better than other desktop to do apps because of one feature — the ability to cross out completed tasks. That said, I will never use it, there’s a much better method for writing and managing to do lists — pen and paper. Continue reading →

Three days ago I got news from home that my 7-year-old dog, India, was sick. She had a lump on her belly. They knew what she had and they could treat it but they couldn’t promise anything. I’m an optimist, I knew she’d be OK. Today I got a call, she’d gotten worse and there was nothing they could do, my Mum went going to say goodbye before putting her to sleep.

I already missed her a lot. She was a great friend and I loved her to bits. I’m so upset, I don’t know how to act or what to do. I can’t believe she’s gone, it’s the worst time to be on the other side of the world. Continue reading →

It feels like it was years ago when Leopard was first announced. The Macworld keynote didn’t do an amazing job of raising my anticipation. There was a promise of 300+ new features, now that list of 300 new features has been published and there’s so much to look forward to I’ve pre-ordered my copy. These are my favourites. Continue reading →

Firstly I want to say that I have absolutely no trouble reading jimwhimpey.com, I don’t strain, I don’t move my face closer to the screen, I don’t bump up the text size. I find the body no more difficult to read than the titles and headings. I’m sure the large majority of people are just like me. That said, my website and web browsers are made to be easily altered by individuals to more closely suit their needs. Continue reading →

Randy Walker requested I write up my observations on the USA and Canada from an Australian perspective. Similar to the Swiss Stephanie Booth’s notes on American culture. Continue reading →

I noticed this insane phenomenon and blogged about it around a year ago. Now there’s a blog dedicated to finding and pointing out the use of unnecessary quotation marks. The “Blog” Of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks is comforting reading. Via Daring Fireball via John August.

We’ve now had two rounds of the reborn Layer Tennis. A competition between two creative people replying to each other’s alterations of the same base file. Week one was played out between Kevin Cornell, one of my favourite designer/illustrators and Shaun Inman who for a long time I haven’t liked but have gained respect for after his layer tennis match. Week two’s players were unknown to me. Both games were extremely different. Continue reading →

I have the same problem choosing a watch that I had finding the perfect pair of sunglasses. They all suck, there’s too much bullshit. I don’t wear a watch and haven’t for a long time. I’d like to but I’m afraid the ideal watch, the glorious picture of perfection I have in my head, doesn’t exist. Just look at these: Continue reading →

For a while now I’ve been using an em dash (—) for everything that’s not a hyphen situation. I know it’s wrong but it looks good and I didn’t know what was right. I’ve been meaning to find out about correct dash usage, this post is primarily a summary of the Wikipedia article on dashes. Continue reading →

Coke photo source http://www.flickr.com/photos/mastermaq/487626420/

While Coke simplifies, Pepsi complicates. They even ran a design our can competition.

The standard measure for presentations is time. “You have 15 minutes to talk about Internet Explorer 7’s CSS3 support“. I have a theory for better defining a presentation’s requirement. Instead of specifying a length, specify the scope — in detail. Continue reading →

Two years of stored jimwhimpey.com archives. I’ve been blogging much longer than that but in the early days I’d throw away whatever I’d previously written with each new design without a second thought. The old stuff wasn’t worth keeping anyway. I’m celebrating two years with a redesign, a huge trend back towards simplicity. Continue reading →

When companies start competing and subsequently advertising on who is the least worst there’s something wrong. I saw billboards with AT&T’s “fewest dropped calls” campaign all over New York. They’re effectively saying “We will screw up less than other phone companies”. Stupid.

I’m not the kind of person to stick with software just because it’s “what I’m used to”. I’m the opposite, I actively look for more efficient software, better interfaces, something that suits my needs more closely, I’m always editing preferences. There are so many possibilities when it comes to the dock that I’ve spent a year and a half trying to get it right. These are my observations. Continue reading →