The latest commercial for iTunes features Coldplay’s new track Viva la Vida. Nice!

Three years ago, Jessica and I went on a cruise through Alaska’s Inside Passage. Now we’re going back. This time we’re going to Prince William Sound to see some glaciers …y’know, before they’re all gone.

I’ll be hastening the glacial melting by flying across the Atlantic to Seattle before heading onto Anchorage to start the four-day excursion out on the water. After that, the plan is to spend a little time in Denali.

I expect to be completely incommunicado the whole time, barring the occasional Twitter update. If you send me any email over the next week or so, don’t expect a response. Then again, that’s true anyway whether I’m traveling or not.

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Tagged with alaska travel

Now that the BBC iPlayer has been sensibly implemented in Flash, rather than as a proprietary Windows-only app, it turns out to be quite useful. Should I ever miss an episode of Doctor Who or, God forbid, University Challenge, I can catch up at my leisure.

But there are two major problems with the iPlayer:

1. It is only available in the UK,a condition imposed by the licence fee system and enforced with IP sniffing.
2. Programmes are available for seven days. Then they’re gone.

Both of these limitations are unwebby but that second bit of self-crippling is particularly galling as the boffins at the BBC, in their attempt to appear more 2.0, have added a “Share” button to every show on the iPlayer, prompting you to bookmark the current episode on sites like Digg, Del.icio.us and Stumbleupon. I’d be very curious to find out if anyone is actually making use of these links. I don’t know who should be considered more idiotic: the BBC webmonkeys for encouraging people to link to a time-limited URI or the people foolish enough to actually bookmark a resource that has just a week to live.

To quote Sir Timbo: Cool URIs don’t change.

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Tagged with bbc iplayer

On my way back to Elephant & Castle train station yesterday I came across the most amazing sculpture of a “Stag”, standing in the centre of a construct site.  The “Stag”, by Ben Long, is 35ft tall and made solely from scaffolding poles.  This the fourth in a series of scaffolding sculptures, and it will be on be on display until July. Check it out while you can!

For the third year in a row, Brighton is attempting its own little version of SXSW called The Great Escape. Over the course of three days every venue in town is packed with bands plying their trade in the hope of being spotted by a passing talent scout.

I purchased a three-day pass online. I made the mistake of selecting the “Buy using PayPal” option from Music Glue, the incompetent muppets who were briefly in charge of the ticket-purchasing process (TicketWeb appear to have taken that crown now). I received a confirmation of purchase from PayPal but nothing from The Great Escape/Music Glue. After 24 hours, I called them up. It turns out that because PayPal purchases take a while to clear, I would receive my confirmation email on May 21st …four days after the end of The Great Escape. I got my tickets sorted out in the end but not before suggesting that perhaps they shouldn’t offer the ability to pay for an event through PayPal if choosing that option means missing the event.

As it turned out, the process of purchasing event passes online mirrored the meatspace experience of trying to exchange the purchased tickets for the wristbands necessary for entry to all the concerts. That was a Kafkaesque ordeal involving no less than three different queues, two of them outside makeshift huts set up on the Brighton seafront. I now realise that queueing for wristbands was actually a clever way to prepare attendees for the inevitable hours of further queueing that would follow over the course of the mini-festival.

Once Jessica and I had been all wristbanded up, our first port of call was to see the always-excellent Okkervil River at The Pavilion Theatre. We didn’t even have to queue. The band played a great set and closed with one of my favourite songs, Westfall.

After that, the queueing began in ernest as we waited and waited to get into the Barfly to see Yeasayer and The Ting Tings. We made it in eventually and were rewarded with songs like Yeasayer’s 2080 and The Ting Tings’ Great DJ.

Friday night brought more queueing, this time to see The Young Knives. I didn’t know their music before but I’m a convert now. They’re a tight no-nonsense three-piece with great songs. They certainly don’t look like your typical indie sensation. They are in the “so uncool, it’s cool” camp of coolness. They are neither young nor indeed particularly knife-like. But when they let loose with songs like Terra Firma it’s clear that they are made of win.

The plan for tonight is to head to The Old Market which is conveniently close to home. Black Mountain will be playing there. Richard will probably be joining us. Maybe we can turn it into a geek/music crossover gathering. Anthony from Hype Machine is in town. David Emery was around. Ben is down from the big smoke to enjoy a few days of music. He’s been staying with us and joining us on our sojourns around the music venues of Brighton.

If you’re a webby muso and you’re in town for The Great Escape, come along and join us tonight.

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Tagged with greatescape brighton music

Landing a new job or client is difficult in this economic climate. Undelivered contractual promises and work environment shortcomings can transform that challenge into a long-term nightmare. Keith LaFerriere shows how to get paid what you're worth; how to fight for control of your projects using management tools corporate cultures respect (even if they don't understand your work); and how to tell when it's time to jump ship.

 

Hide Your Shame: The A List Apart Store and T-Shirt Emporium is back. Hot new designs! Old favorites remixed! S, M, L, XL. Come shop with us!

Clients love to write copy. Well, they love to plan to write it, anyhow. On most web design projects, content is the last thing to be considered (and almost always the last thing to be delivered). We’ll spend hours, weeks, even months, doing user scenarios, site maps, wireframes, designs, schemas, and specifications—but content? It’s a disrespected line item in a schedule: “final content delivered.” Pepi Ronalds proposes a solution to this constant cause of project delays.

 

Hide Your Shame: The A List Apart Store and T-Shirt Emporium is back. Hot new designs! Old favorites remixed! S, M, L, XL. Come shop with us!

I am totally digging the rich, vibrantly deep images from photographer Sean Marc Lee.

Perhaps the most amazing, creative and ambitious stop frame animation I’ve ever seen by artist Blu from Bologna
Soon to be appearing on walls of Tate modern.