Just in case you need convincing of our upcoming doom...

Looking for web design services? Then contact Paul directly or visit Headscape

Excellent collection of vintage Citreonness, via the really very good Grain Edit.

That time of year is approaching: stuffed full of turkey, you retire to the drawing room to smoke fat cigars, while the ladies remain to discuss, well, ehum...ladies things.

And out comes Monopoly. With ruthless verve you conspire to build a mighty property empire...if only this money was real, etc. Much booze and argumenting later, down to your last few pounds, you throw the board asunder and shake a fist at your 6 year old opponent who's been merrily whipping your ass while sneaking sips from your fruit liqueur when you're back's turned.

Well, not in our house this year. This year we're fast tracking the kids and instilling a serious work ethic with the aid of the largely letterpressed 1955 board game Careers. But it's no game; we're not playing around here; practice that hand shaking, it's a career in politics for you me'boy.

And a merry christmas to you all!

One of the design styles I like the most is that with vintage images collages, mixed with handwritten texts, stains, spots, and tons of dirty things. It's fantastic the crazy things they come up with, like a person with a bird's head and stuff like that.

Advertisement:

read more

Last night when I was heading towards London Bridge Station, I came across these beautiful stencilled tombstones, which have been painted onto pages from the Financial Times Newspaper. I not sure what the meaning is behind these. But if anyone knows, please let me know.

Okay, I lied. One more for 2007, but only because this is an early Christmas present from Microsoft, and when was the last time you got one of those?

Internet Explorer 8 passes Acid2.

For as much crap as I've given the IE team over the years, I have to say I'm really happy with the path they're on after reading this today. Rendering the Acid2 test correctly is a huge leap forward ("IE8 Standards Mode" or not).

Last year, IE7 wasn't nearly the big expansive update I'd have hoped, but the improvements they made hit all the right notes for me at the time. They seemed genuinely concerned about the problems that made our lives harder, and took steps to correct them. And testing against IE7 has been more good than bad; it's rare to get something working in Firefox and Safari that blows up in IE7. At most a few glitches here and there have required a bit of fixing, but nothing that has sucked away an entire afternoon like certain other past versions. (Now if they could just make IE6 go away once and for all, then we'd really be on to something...)

Using the past updates as a starting point and extrapolating, I've been cautiously optimistic that IE8 would deliver much more of the same. The lack of news hadn't really been bugging me until I realized a few months ago that, oh yeah, they have been pretty silent lately haven't they? No doubt last week's legal proceedings have something to do with the timing, but today I think we're seeing the first signs of what I'd been hoping, and the associated video suggests there's more to be revealed.

Obviously Acid2 is just one test, and there are other technologies that will become more and more relevant in the coming years. HTML5, CSS3, and SVG come to mind. But for the first reveal of what we can expect from the new browser, this is a welcome start.

Here’s a rather nice site.

Anyone that's used the creamy-smooth OSX-based OmniOuliner can appreciate the value of a good outlining application. If you're a Windows user, that appreciated gives way to envy. Listas is a cool, dead simple web-based outliner that does the job pretty admirably.

IE8 Passes Acid2 Test. While IE8 is still in development, the IEBlog reports that the browser now correctly renders the Acid2 smiley face.

Mine arrived today, and I hope its companion arrived to a child in a developing country just as quickly. Below are a few pics I snapped as my boys and I unpacked it. Learn more at laptop.org (give one get one ends Dec. 31).

Larger pics available at Flickr.

First impressions:

• It's a lot smaller than I thought it would be.
• The keyboard is definitely made for small children. I had a difficult time typing letters. Isaac (pictured) seems to do okay.
• The OS is a bit slow compared to systems we're used to, but given the extremely low manufacturing cost and the fact that most children in developing countries will have no reference point to our systems, this isn't an issue at all.
• Lots of buttons around the fold-up portion of the screen, not sure what they do.
• There seem to be three mouse keypads, not sure why. Perhaps if three kids are playing a game at the same time or something?
• Can't figure out how to connect to wi-fi. Seems to be configured for "mesh" networks. (The Google page is cached, btw.)
• The OS, keyboard, and mouse combination will be the make-or-break for this thing. I was a bit surprised to see that the three map to metaphors we (experienced computer users) are used to. There's something to be said about the years of research that have gone into those three elements, but at the same time I'm quite concerned the learning curve for someone who's never used a computer will be rather steep. For example, the power button looks like all the other buttons flanking the left and right sides of the screen. I would have made this one big and fat, centered, etc.
• Update: Failed to say I enthusiastically applaud the efforts of Nicholas Negroponte and many others to bring this to market. To have one in my hands and see his dream become a reality is incredible.

Update: Finally got the web connection working...