Ever since our time in Cameroon, I've watched Samuel Eto'o's career with interest (I also wrote a Web Design exercise based around his Wikipedia entry, so I know more about his career than is strictly required...)
There's been persistent rumours about him coming to the Premier League for a few years, and I've loved to have him over here (even if it was Man. City...) but sadly he's finally made a move and it's to Italy.
Humph...
If running a marathon has taught me anything (apart from "don't run marathons"), it's taught me that definite goals with set deadlines are a good way of getting things done. In fact, they seem to be the only way I get anything done (if you don't count stuff that my wife organises for me).
All very obvious you might think. I've always shied away from setting myself deadlines and targets where creative projects are concerned though, because of some misplaced idea that it restricts the creative juices and also that it just wasn't very cool.
This year I have mostly been training for the Paris Marathon.
It was Hev's idea, and I thought it would be a challenge and would help me raise my fitness levels for football. Well, it was a challenge alright (as if that was ever in doubt), but I'm not sure my body's any better prepared for football - it's ruined my knees!
The training has been hell on my knees, and so was the marathon itself, but I finished it (just - I walked/hobbled/staggered the last 6 miles) - it took me just under six hours (5:55 was the chip time)!
There's a common practice in Web design of hiding certain pieces of information on the page that are useful in a non-visual context (for instance in screen readers used by blind users), but is somewhat redundant in a visual context (i.e. having a heading saying main navigation above a nav bar).
The standard(ish) technique for hiding these items is to position such items off-screen using CSS styles like this:
For reasons that I've never quite been able to fathom, a post that I wrote about avoiding chilli burn way back in January 2004 come up as the number one result when you Google 'chilli burn'.
You may remember that in January on this blog I rashly agreed to run the Grim Challenge this year. I'd been training throughout the year for the The Grim, but training had dropped off the last month or so, owing to colds, muscle strains, etc... So I was feeling less than 100% prepared. Also, last year was it was a beautiful mild winter day . This year it was bright and beautiful enough, but mild it was not.
This really appealled to designer and font geek in me: Obama's victory was only the fourth time that the New York Times has used 96 pt type for a headline.. You may be thinking that's a really sad observation (if you're my wife, for instance), but I think it's an interesting expression of what's big news (and how big...) and also of the evolution of print and information design over the twentieth century.
we recently took delivery of a couple of rather nice bits of furniture which Hev had purchased with her inheritance from her Grandpa: a cinnamon fruitwood (it says here...) sideboard and shelves.
We've both placed items in the dining room, which is becoming our room of quality wood.
This has also inspired me to put my our African mask collection up where we've always planned: above the nice new sideboard in the dining room.
Cycling home tonight up Banbury Road, I encountered a man on a motorised skateboard. At first i thought he was being towed by a cyclist, but no; he really did have a skateboard with a little engine under it. I guess it was an electric motor (it made no noise), positioned underneath the deck, between the trucks. He had some sort of controller in has hand that looked like a staple-gun, which he regulated his speed with. He was going at a fair pace, overtaking some cyclists and I had to cycle a little faster than normal to keep up with him.
What can I say?
It's dark...
Essentially it's a serial killer movie with a 12A rating, how did that happen?
Oh, that's right, it's (notionally) a superhero, film, and it'll hurt the box office if it's a 15...
Crazy...
Still, the film's bloody excellent. I liked Batman Begins a lot, but it doesn't follow that the sequel will be any good...