Ramblings, rantings and skewed observations of the team at ComputerArts.co.uk
Weeds and flowers
“We love nature. We do!” says the latest release from Kapitza, whom we profiled in issue 125. “We have been out taking pictures of weeds, trees and leaves. We popped in to the florist to get beautiful cut flowers, we took pictures of our patio plants and we pressed flowers.”
You get the idea, they’re nature-inspired. Check out their new stuff at…
Computer Arts reader Natalia Rifai is conducting a survey gathering information about those working in the design industry. It doesn’t take long to fill in, and the results could be interesting. Have a look…
There’s a very interesting discussion kicking off on our forum about Pepsi’s latest packaging design. Apparently it’s in response to the new ‘look’ brought with Coke Zero. A fascinating competition, or just a lot of fizz…
The FWA’s back with a new site celebrating the people behind its favourite websites. Click the link below to discover the identity of the very first inductee.
http://www.thefwa.org/ Free vectors
A heads up to all vector fans (we know there�s some of you left out there�). Those nice chaps at Go Media are giving away some lovely EPS morsels from the huge vector arsenal on their site. There�s a sale on too, where you can get your hands on the full Go Media packs at knock-down prices. Hurry, mind. Sale ends today!
It’s Friday and we’re running a poll on our forum asking whether or not you have a tattoo, and what you’ve got. With tattoo art coming on in leaps and bounds, more and more designers are getting them and part of the fun is designing them yourself. Have you got a tat? Click the link below, log on, and vote.
After the kicking Adobe’s taken on its pricing structure it seems a bit unfair to point out any further CS3 failings. After all, the design and web apps are superb to use. Having said that, the dock icons Adobe seemingly employed a blind goat to hoof together aren’t quite so attractive. So, various designers have been having a crack at their own. Brett Archibald’s are my particular favourites, though a quick Google should point you to various others.
The movers and shakers of the creative and advertising world will be holding their breath and twiddling their sculpted facial hair tonight as the D&AD Awards are announced. Dep Ed Joe’s on his way there representing Arts, who along with Projects are nominated in the magazine design category. As ever, we’ll bring you all the news of the winners and losers in issue 137, on sale June 7… it’s an absolute belter too.
Say goodbye to dog-eared Teletubbies posters and banish alphabet friezes for good. These clever French chaps have come up with a load of beautifully designed sticker sets to transform your kids’ bedrooms into something rather aesthetically pleasing - including a set of free-improvising farmyard animals called The Chicky Jazz Band. Faaaar out!
Matt Hanson’s excellent open source movie project, A Swarm Of Angels, needs your help. Palla has created a cityscape image for one of the Swarm’s pitches, The Unfold, and it needs turning into a teaser poster. Head on over for the full brief; entries close on 1 June.
Continuing HP’s line of ‘headless people talking and doing stuff with their hands” comes Michel Gondry’s entry combining 3D, stop-motion and some clever optical tricks. Makes me want to watch ‘Eternal Sunshine’ again
Sometimes there are great perks to being an editor. For instance the team at Nike iD sent me a voucher to get a free pair of trainers via their new site. You choose the shoe, and then can pick the colours and materials of all the bits that go on it. Mine are gonna be black with a white stripe and flourishes in ice blue. Even if you don’t buy any shoes, it’s a fun site to play with. Try it out…
Congratulations are in order to London-based design duo Qian Tian and Yibi Hu who’ve been awarded the joint first place prize in iStockphoto’s inagural video competition. Their entry, the oddly named Palingenesia, was chosen by the 1.8million iStock community members and whittled down by an expert judging panel. Follow the link to watch their short film
Hoshi Saga
Joe’s going to be pleased; from the same brain that brought him the work-avoiding delights of Plupon, comes Hoshi Saga, a monochromatic distraction where all you have to do find the star in every stage. The fun lies in working out what you have to do in order to find it.
Despite the rather dull title, this is really quite a beautiful thing. Enter a URL and the site generates a node graph that resembles a blooming flower. Try it with some really big sites and sit back watch it bloom (and cause your computer to grind to a halt!)
What’s the worst design cliche? Is it rainbows and butterflies or stoney-faced russian propaganda. Punk or Grunge?
Let us know what your think in our forum debate
The London Film Academy has announced a new course on visual effects starting on 2 July for 12 weeks. It focusses on achieving high-end effects without spending a Hollywood budget. Tutors include Alan Marques who has worked on FX in Golden Eye, Vertical Limit and Lost in Space.
Still not decided on the whole CS3 thing? Here’s a little something to give you an extra helping hand; I’ll be putting up reviews of other members of the CS3 gang over the next couple of weeks, too.
With the issue we’re currently working on offering a big feature on how to step from the world of illustration into animation, this website caught my eye. It’s like YouTube for animators and animation fans. See what you think.
With 2.2 released, we’ve been busy with 2.3. The last two weeks have seen a barrage of activity. Much of the work has gone into the new taxonomy design. This is almost fully implemented and shaping up nicely. The tagging feature that was pulled from 2.2 is back in 2.3 using this much better design. Also, those who dislike how link and post categories are combined can take heart. They are separated in 2.3.
Housekeeping has been another focus. The files in wp-admin were reorganized to make things easier to find. Code formatting and style is also being cleaned up as we sweep through the files.
Post and page management received some love from Michael Adams. Managing your draft and private posts and pages is now much easier thanks to some handy filters. This is available on wordpress.com if you want to check it out.
As always, you can watch the timeline to see whats going on with development.
Web Worker Daily asks us to share pics of our workspaces. Okay, I’m game. Some time ago I simplified my work style. I got rid of the servers, the big desktop machines, the 5.1 stereo components, and the multiple display setups. I got rid of the big eight foot long desk. I now have two laptops and two small workspaces. The first is in a corner of my bedroom. This is my compact home office. I’m a bit of an organization freak, so I have storage boxes for everything. A magnetic bulletin board keeps track of the last few bits of paper correspondence that haven’t gone electronic (bills from the guvment, mostly).
My second workspace is a small satellite setup on my dining room table. I actually use this one quite a bit. It has a view of the reef aquarium, and Almaden Valley stretches out below the windows. It is also close to the kitchen, which is where the most essential piece of office equipment resides — the super-automatic espresso machine.
Found this a few days ago and have been meaning to post it. I was looking around the web for some interesting architecture - you know - something to jog the cobwebs out of the head and light a creative fire too long dormant - for some concept drawings for an online game in development. One of the sites I visit often for this is FineHomeBuilding.com. Believe it or not, the other thing I do is drive or walk around town, which is overflowing with Comstocks - similar-style cottages made famous by their creator, Hugh Comstock.
Asked to design a fitting repository for a client’s valuable collection of J.R.R. Tolkien manuscripts and artifacts, architect Peter Archer went to the source—the fantasy novels that describe the abodes of the diminutive Hobbits.
“I came back my client and said, ‘I’m not going to make this look like Hollywood,’” Archer recalled, choosing to focus instead on a finely-crafted structure embodying a sense of history and tradition.
The site was critical too—and Archer found the perfect one a short walk away from his client’s main house, where an 18th-century dry-laid wall ran through the property. “I thought, wouldn’t it be wonderful to build the structure into the wall?”
We’ve been terribly lax around here - leaving you bored and wondering what the hell is going on with this place. A thousand Mea Culpas. Truly. So…here’s s’more VideoGame goodness for you to watch while we get back to work on this site, as well as our client sites. (Yes - we know this is sadly not uncommon - spending all our time working away on client sides while our own looks like hell or incomplete. But what can we say - the client always comes first!)
Ok - despite the fact the Rachet & Clank video screenshot is the same, I swear these really are two different clips.
Next up is the E3 (last year) Trailer for Halo 3
Then there’s this from Rockstar Games. L.A. Noire. Looks pretty cool, with a good jazz soundtrack to boot!
And last for today - but hardly least…Pirates of the Carribean: At World’s End! Yes…the game.
There have been some more bugfixes applied, and there is now a second RC available. Details are in Ryan Boren's announcement.
WordPress 2.2 RC2 -- You're soaking in it! (In other words, I'm running it here )
By the way, one other change in this version that I don't think has been mentioned in the previous announcements: In the "Write Post" screen, the post preview is no longer displayed directly in the page. Instead, you'll find a "Preview" link near the title area which will pop up the post preview in a separate window. This speeds up page loads and reduces bandwidth consumption during post editing.
Nick Lewis, Larry Garfield, and Dries Buytaert are discussing the slow rate of PHP 5 adoption and how projects such as Drupal and WordPress should help encourage PHP 5 uptake by phasing out support for PHP 4. WordPress currently supports PHP 4.2 or greater. We don’t even use functionality that was introduced in PHP 4.3. Whenever we accidentally use a PHP function present only in 4.3 or greater during our development cycles, we get a fair number of complaints from testers who don’t have 4.3. PHP 4 is thoroughly entrenched. If we were to change WordPress to require PHP 5 right now, we would abandon the majority of our users. Given the current state of affairs, requiring PHP 5 in the near future would seriously marginalize WordPress.
PHP 4 is so entrenched because it does the job. The bugs afflicting PHP 5 haven’t helped convince hosts to move over either. Almost every time a host does a PHP 5.x.x update, WordPress and other apps are broken in some way. Convincing hosts to upgrade to PHP 5 when doing so results in a lot of unhappy users is a hard sell. Sticking with PHP 4 means less support headaches for them.
That said, I agree that we do need to get people moving to PHP 5. Convincing developers to move is easy. I sure would like to have some of the PHP 5 features to make my life easier. A lot of WordPress developers are chomping at the bit to use the goodies in PHP 5. Developer convenience is secondary to the convenience of users, however. Chasing the latest tools and stranding users in the process is not cool.
So, how do we bring PHP 4 to the end of its days without showing our users the door? I don’t think application developers should be spearheading an end-of-life on PHP 4. PHP needs to bite that bullet by setting an EOL date for PHP 4. An EOL on PHP 4 will be the biggest motivator for hosts to move to PHP 5. A lack of PHP 4 security fixes surely would make for some movement. Application developers would help by ensuring their stuff runs on the latest PHP 5 releases. Barring the occasional bugs, that is already the case with most well-known PHP apps. With a PHP 4 EOL in place, applications can EOL their PHP 4 support sometime thereafter. We at WordPress are in a similar situation with MySQL. We just recently bumped up our MySQL requirements. Part of what made that possible is the EOL announcements on older MySQL versions. If PHP is the chicken and applications are the eggs, I say the chicken gets to go first.
As Matt mentioned, we decided to delay the 2.2 release from its original date of April 23. We weren’t completely happy with the underlying design of the new tagging feature. Instead of shipping with something we weren’t entirely pleased with, we decided to remove tagging from 2.2. This is a big bummer since tagging was the biggest user-visible feature in 2.2. I think removing it was for the best, however, because the debate over the removal resulted in a new generic taxonomy design that is flexible and powerful and addresses all of the concerns with the old design. Plugins will be able to do some cool things with this new framework.
With the loss of a major feature, 2.2 won’t be as snazzy as we had hoped, but it will contain many bug fixes, lots of polish, and lots of hard work. Download the release candidate and check it out. If you need support for the release candidate, the Testers List is the best place to go.
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