Scouse house?

Just when I thought I had the hang of this british culture thing, one of the music sites I use to keep up on new releases added a category: Scouse house / Bouncy house.

I don't know what it means, but listening to it I can only guess -- irritating.

 

Yes my del.icio.ussss...

Delicious is pretty good, but haven't learned to organise the links very well yet.

It's different to think of organising by tags when you are used to organising by hierarchies (or folders).

One drawback of delicious... i never know where to put those damn dots.  is it de.licio.us or del.icio.us

The only part I always get right is the last bit, realising that it is the .us domain....

...i'm going to stop writing now... i'm starting to even bore myself.

 

Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner

This months marks 5 years that I've been in London.

I was reminded of this when I was sitting outside a Cafe reading a newspaper in the rain. (Because it's just a drizzle innit)

I've almost completely lost my American sensibilities.  I remember screeching like a girl and running to find shelter if the sky got cloudy.

---

A related point, in 4 years I won't be able to claim New York as my hometown anymore -- having lived outside of New York longer than I lived in (17 years).

 

A poem

Sleep Asprin Coffee
Coffee Coffee Coffee
Coffee Coffee Beer
Beer Beer Beer
Beer Beer Coffee

Sleep Asprin Coffee
Coffee Coffee Coffee
Coffee Coffee Beer
Beer Beer Beer
Beer Beer Coffee

Sleep Asprin Coffee
Coffee Coffee Coffee
Coffee Coffee Beer
Beer Beer Beer
Beer Beer Coffee

I 've not been doing the Yoga.

 

Why Altavista kicks Google's ass...

As good as Google supposedly is, they never made is as easy to search for mp3 as altavista.

Although some would say that's not a good thing...

 

The DVD is here!!

Saul Bass DVD, originally uploaded by kaioshin.

My DVD is finally out and available at the Design Museum (just) in time for the Saul Bass exhibit.

It's great to be able have a design that I can hold in my hands -- and one that won't be changed in 3 months as well.

 

Y.A.W.N

Yet another WWW novelty.

Not that I'm downplaying this service, Bloglines -- a web-based RSS reader, it's just that I'm tired of having to subscribe to another hosted blog service. So far, I'm subscribed to Blogger, Flickr and Bloglines. Each which offers a blog of its own.

I'm ready for some convergence now. Why doesn't Yahoo! -- who for a while was leading the online tools, in my book, with Mail, Address Book and Calendar -- buy all these guys up and great the SuperBlog - with easy publishing ala Blogger, Photo hosting ala Flickr and RSS reader ala Bloglines.

I'm sure they have it planned, but it goes to show that Yahoo! has gotten too big to be as quick and nimble as the little guys.

 

Big Brother - the making of...

Now that we've got webcams connected to everyone, we're on the way to turning our flat into the Big Brother house.

We've already suffered serious incidents of information overload in the process of setting up The Flat of the Future.

The other day, both me and Nico had at least 3 IMs going, broadcasting bloops and 'open door' noises over a 5.1 stereo system. At the same time we were trying to talk to each other about the various online chats we were having with friends in common.

Then my mobile rang from downstairs, and my head exploded.

But we pioneering a wireless connected environment, and you gotta break some eggs to make an omelette. Maybe not the best metaphor considering all of the electromagnetic waves that are probably microwaving our bollocks.

 

Awwww....

The Rio baby pics

 

Still searchin'

I'm not happy with TextPattern. It's like a heavy-duty blogging tool -- not a CMS. TextPattern should be fine for me to build my mother's site, but to use it regularly for all my web projects I would need to hack it to bits -- so what's the point.

Here are the criteria for my perfect CMS:

- Simple templates, with CSS support
- Intuitive admin system (although i'm willing to sacrifice this for the first point)
- PHP/MySQL based (in case I need to look under the hood).
- Well documented

So far, I've rejected Plone (too hardcore, and in python), Mambo (unintuitive templates), and TextPattern.

Now I'm looking at MySource Matrix. Looks very well supported and documented -- as seen by the flash tutorial. Let's give her a spin.

---

Also, this thread has been very helpful in helping me find new systems to look at.

 

TeakWorld

Teak is too lazy to figure out how to set up a blog, so I am posting some of the links he's got:

Lego spiderman
Loz's homepage

 

Don't hate me

I've encountered something interesting since I broke free of the corporate world determined to follow my inspiration.

Some people are very catty about it. Maybe I'm starting to feel the effects of what some call The British Disease.

I felt this a little when I took my trip around the world. Some people were genuinely happy to hear about my travels, while some others looked at me with daggers in their eyes.

I thought nothing of it at the time, but I've noticed that when I speak of my business, some people react with subtle passive aggression. In the early days, it was lack of confidence in my business model ("Yeah -- I knew some people doing CD-ROMs a few years ago... their company went bust.") Now that I have a product, there is a certain faction of people who sound -- slightly less than genuine when they congratulate me on my efforts.

Needless to say, everyone reading this post doesn't fall into that category, i'm sure -- but I still find it strange.

Perhaps, from the outside, it seems as though everything smells of roses. Maybe that's only because I don't choose to post updates on how stressful it is to watch your savings nosedive towards £0.

And -- things are generally more good than bad. I get up when I want (which is usually earlier than before btw), don't have to watch the clock when i go for coffee, and generally feel more empowered to live life the way that I want to. But don't get mad at me -- join me!

 

There is no turning back...

I've written a TextPattern plugin.

Here it is: kai_customid_img.txt

Well, I can't really say I coded it from scratch -- i took a bunch of plugins and mashed them together, but hey.

Oh, and here is the forum topic that explains what it's all about.

 

You've got Sale!

Thoroughly frustrated with WorldPay/ClickAndBuild -- i've given up and gone with PayPal for now.

Because PayPal is easy. What bothers me, though, is that you get pulled into PayPal-land where they coerce your customers to become PayPal users. They are my customers anyhow -- leave them alone.

I will switch to WorldPay, once I get my act together.

 

Shock! Horror!!

Maybe it was divine retribution for blaspheming against Blogger, and daring to consider that there might be a better way -- but the service went down today -- making me realise how beholden I am to it.

I've gotta have a post man. I want it... I want it...

 

And the Winner is...

Loz dug up this little gem: TextPattern. A really simple and intuitive PHP/MySQL based CMS system.

Small download, I got it up and running in minutes.

A little light on the documentation, but here are a few useful links to get started:

Textpattern 101
Textpattern tag manual for Impatient Users (that's me!)
and Kusor.com in general, has a bunch of helpful links on it.

But I was quickly brought down from the finding of such a beautiful, easily configurable system, when my link to administer my ClickAndBuild account. These shysters have hardly given me what I thought I was getting. Instead you get to choose from a series of horrible templates built out of tables, and it doesn't seem to be CSS based at all.

I'm sure I could spend weeks whacking it into shape... but I'm supposed to be getting out of the internet business. Why do they keep pulling me back in??

 

Flickr is great!

I realise that the last 3 posts have been on this same theme, but I really like Flickr now that I've had a chance to play with it. It's been developed by people that really understand what you want to do on the web. And not by clueless folks like the guy that set up Friendster -- who didn't seem to think that you might want to use the web to do something other than hook up.

Still... no one believes in software anymore. I'd prefer to download and run Flickr from my own machine, so I could publish my images to my own website... ah well.

 

Beyond Blogger...

I'm outgrowing the limitations of Blogger.

I will have to dust off my coding skills and dig into Mambo for a full-CMS.

Until then, I've been playing around with photoBlogging on flickr.

And I'm adding a new module on the right-hand side...

 

Ludicorp

I found these guys, Ludicorp while checking up on my friends' blogs. This comes by way of Jones' end of the blogoverse.

How he has time to keep up on all this RSS, Flickr, etc. etc. internet-technology-of-the-minute is beyond me.

Or maybe my problem is that I'm determined to build everything from scratch. Damn Computer Science background.

 

Whois me?

I noticed I was getting a few referrals from the URL: www.whois.sc. So I went there and looked up DESIGNonDVD.com, to find that they have a helluva lotta information about my site.

I'm not sure if this is cool, or scary.

As I've been trying to start a business, I blacked-out kaigani.com and kaigani.co.uk after a solicitor I had contacted via email took it upon himself to look up my website, find my CV and call me on my mobile.

Hans used to say "digital ink is never dry" -- but given how everything is archived these days, I'm beginning to feel that digital ink is actual indelible.

I can forsee a future where people have to change their names to escape the mistakes of the past.

 

Another badge in the GeekScouts

I earned a new badge today when I went out and got an empty tower PC case and assembled some old parts into a new PC.

Yay me.

So now I'm addicted. I want to try something more ambitious and build some PCs using these mini 12cm boards. I want to make some cheap specialised PCs, like one that is just for downloading stuff. Another that is for playing back media, etc.

 

Flat of Tomorrow - Part Two - The Making of...

So we've got all the equipment installed. And now there are wires everywhere.

But it's coming together nicely.