All the ducks are swimming in the water

Fri Jun 29

If you think that statement is strange, just wait until you see the video that accompanies it: YouTube - lemon jelly - nice weather for the ducks.

Thanks to Dalaq for the link.

Flickrising the world

Thu Jun 28

I’ve succumbed and created an account with Flickr, the amazingly popular image management website. While I have a gallery of images here on this very site, it’s not that easy to add pictures to. No batch tagging, no handy uploader tool to drag and drop photos in. Whereas FLickr makes uploading, tagging, renaming, commenting and organising photos a breeze. I’ll still keep the gallery here, but it will be for just a few select photos I think.

So take a look at my photos. My favourite so far is this fantastic sunset.

Finding great colour schemes in nature

Fri Jun 8

Despite occasional successes when it comes to design work, I’d say my graphic ability is rather average. I’m definitely more a developer than a designer. But even I know that even if amazing graphics aren’t your cup of tea, you can get a long with simple designs based on great colour schemes.

But where do you get great colour schemes? They are all around us, and there is loads of help finding them on the web. But one source of inspiration particularly appeals to me, partly because I like natural, organic things, and partly because it’s very rarely wrong. That source, of course, is nature.

But just in case you are starting to worry that you’ll have to dig out those walking boots and go trekking, stop right there. There’s a fantastic collection of colour schemes based on butterflies over at ColourLovers.com. And if that’s not enough, just find a photo of some nature to get the creative juices flowing.

As you may know, I like providing multiple “skins” for the systems I write, and with great resources like that there’ll never be a shortage of inspiration.

N-Studio - glimpse of the otherworld

Thu Mar 1

Just occasionally I see a website that makes me stop and catch my breath. So it is with N.Design Studio, which is retro and modern, funky and smooth all at once. Like an Ozric tentacles track it envelopes you and makes you drift into a land far, far away.

Of course we can’t all do designs like that, partly due to the fact that clients wouldn’t like )or indeed get) it, but mainly because us lesser mortals just can’t do illustration of that magnitude. Well done to the n-studio guys.

New picture albums - Whitby and Guernsey

Thu Feb 15

I’ve spent a couple of minutes adding some new picture albums to my gallery. They are specifically for people that love the sea, as they are both of places deeply involved with maritime living.

Firstly I have a few pictures of beautiful Guernsey, the lesser-known Channel Island. We wnt there for a holiday in late August 2005 and had a wonderful time. I’d really like to go back and explore some more, as I’m sure we only saw a fraction of it - despite it being pretty small.

There are also some pictures of Whitby, North Yorkshire. Whitby is one of my wife’s favourite places, so we’ve been quite a lot. It’s famous for being the birthplace of Captain Cook who sailed round the world a lot, and for featuring in the original Dracula novel. In fact when these pictures were taken it was the yearly Dracula festival weekend and so there were plenty of people walking round in Goth outfits. In fact one particularly morbid bunch were driving round town in a hearse. I’ve stuck with pictures of the town and harbour, though.

I have a couple more collections to put up in the next few days, and as I’m a tidy sort of bloke they’ll all be grouped together in my new graphics category.