Picasa Web Albums

I've started a photo page with Picasa Web Albums. New photo sets from my Canon 400D will go there.

Picasa Web Albums does some serious sharpening stuff. Like, 20 px wide and very heavy. I think it also washes the colours out a bit. Email if you want any originals. Perfectly convenient for having a little look.

Christchurch Lunch

Icons

Here are some icons I was working on last week. They are made for a Mac, so I don't know what happens if you try to use these on Windows.

They are developed from an icon set I made 2 or more years ago. Considered taking all the different characters and systematically creating every permutation of hair, facial hair and clothing, to create a large enough collection that (white) people could find characters that look like themselves or the white people they know. I would leave out most of the women with facial hair permutations. But it would take sometime and I don't think I can use photoshop actions to make it feasible.

Filing Cabinet
One of the reasons the filing cabinet icons are there, is me mulling over why the office/desktop metaphors stop one it gets to hard disk level icons. To most users, a hard disk is not a real world item, or anything that they have any experience or expectations of. Even if a filling cabinet is a dated metaphor to reintroduce, it is a real-world item whose purpose is widely understood, and that is important.

Internet
I was also thinking an earth-at-night icon could be a nice representation of the internet in that it can show electricity use. Needs more work to do that. Though perhaps the abstract representations you usually get would be more clear.

The folder icon is hard one to make attractive, without doing anything too gimmicky.

How to
To change an icon in Mac OS, do File > Get Info on the item you want to change and the icon you want to change it with. Click the icon in the get-info window that appears and copy and paste across.

Download
Tell me what you think, and what changes or additions you would like to see (I already have some of my own), and perhaps they will surface in many months to come.

Download the set here.

Yoga Site

A yoga website update from last week. Still more to be done, mainly to update content. Slightly spruced up look, but trying to resist the evil temptations of frivolous embellishment. I think the gradient I used might have taken me across this line, but I'm gonna let it slide.

I sort of feel that using visual effects (fancy lines, curves, depth etc) would be an admission of defeat in the face of design challenges. It's a fun approach to take even if it is just pretentious mumbo jumbo.

If you see any problems please tell me.

Go and see.

Photos

Here are some photos I took with a fixed lens Pentax SLR manual film camera. Some of my shots came out badly or not at all, because I was doing something wrong with the winding or the loading of the film.

Lots of fun taking the pictures, but there are some things I found limiting when using this camera.
- No white balance.
- Fixed ISO (film sensitivity).
- Minimal exposure feedback.
- No shot feedback.
- More things to go wrong (film mechanism).
- High overheads (film, processing).
- High stakes shooting.
- Low resolution images (splodgy, low detail).
- Low dynamic range (high contrast, no subtle mid-values).
- Stylised results.

But I am still considering getting a camera like this.
+ Fantastic viewfinder.
+ Cheapest way to a fully manual SLR.
+ Good feel.
+ Comparatively small and light, easy to use in public.
+ Lower risk of theft/damage (low-stress ownership).
+ No bullshit. Shoot, wind, repeat.
+ Nice price model: Cheap camera, Pay as you go photography.

Verdict: More fun than a DSLR, worse photos.

Sorry about the loading on these.

Christmas card

Company Christmas card illustration for Train to Gain, http://www.traintogain.gov.uk/.


I prefer this earlier version when all the elves are bald. I wanted them to look a little bit creepy. Was greatly disappointed to have to go with this feminist theme. Poor old santa is no longer needed apparently. No doubt Mrs Claus can do it all herself.

That's right Santa, just sit there, smoke your pipe and carve your name into the desk, and remember the old days when people looked up to you.

Yoga Site v2

New yoga website here, tested on mac safari, firefox, ie6 and windows firefox and ie 7. Want to test on win ie 6 but don't have access to a copy. There are problems I'm aware of in the browsers I have already tested, but am holding out for more testing before addressing them.

Thanks for the comments last time. Please let me know if you come across anything strange or disagreeable.

Sticker Face

Some discarded price stickers look like a face, by chance. Little inset to show what I mean.

Yoga Site v1

This is the first website I have created using Panic's new web authoring software, Coda. It's a yoga pamphlet.

Despite nation-wide controversy, I maintain that green was and is the best colour for this design.

I've checked that it draws consistently in various mac browsers and ie7 on windows. I will include ie6 next time, which is probably not as easy as it sounds.

I'm working on a new page design that is just a tad more upmarket, based around section-header images. I had a lot of fun playing with a nice SLR camera, studio lights and backgrounds to get the images I need (eg pic, pic). I have also managed to avoid some common sticking points with the client: Song.

Anyway, I am a bit of newb at this html/css business but it has been a relatively smooth and enjoyable learning curve so far. Please have a look and leave your impressions, advice or criticism in the comments.

Alien Ruins

I have not done any photoshop stuff in a while. Here is some stuff I did ages ago but never uploaded. The picture started to get confusing, and I couldn't really tell what I was doing.