chrisduran.eu

It’s been pretty hectic with the PhD and Cognicology.com this month: I’m trying to wrangle a trip over to the states in January for a conference related to my PhD, which has taken a fair amount of my time. It is amazing the loops you need to jump through to organise this sort of thing. Between trying to secure a talking position, apply for travel funding and contacting other institutes to visit and talk sciencey things with, I’ve been kept pretty busy. Adding to that, Alborz and I have also been pretty busy with organising and preparing videos for the Cognicology.com site which has been a blast. As exciting as my day-to-day life is (assuming exciting is a relative measure, and you consider paint drying to be an extreme sport) it isn’t really the reason for this post.

The new Cognicology.com design has been up for about a month now, and whilst the design is a definite improvement over the last design, it still isn’t our ideal layout. I actually had a meeting with Al today about the design of the site and we’ve both come to the conclusion that we want something that is a little more ‘full and exciting’ and a lot less minimalist. At around the same time as we’ve been thinking and discussing this, I’ve been following the blog of Smashing Magazine which has some great in-depth articles revolving around online design. I first found Smashing Magazine when I stumbled upon their great collection of monthly desktop wallpaper calendars during one of my procrastinatory searches for an inspirational (and anti-procrastinatory) desktop image. I mention these guys because by chance they have published a great article on the wireframing stage of web design projects.

I’ve knocked up a quick wireframe outline for a possible new Cognicology.com web layout. We will pass it on to the peeps we know in the business and get comments/ideas from them on what they think of the arrangement of elements.

The other cool thing related to Smashing Magazine is that I’ve pre-ordered a copy of their upcoming book, The Smashing Book. To quote them directly:

The Smashing Book is a printed book about best practices in modern Web design. The book shares technical tips and best practices on coding, usability and optimization and explores how to create successful user interfaces and apply marketing principles to increase conversion rates. It also shows how to get the most out of typography, color and branding so that you end up with intuitive and effective Web designs. And lastly, you will also get a peek behind the curtains of Smashing Magazine.

The book is due out late September, and they are giving a pre-order discount of 20% off the price of the book. Check it out here.

Filed under: Projects by Chris

I was meant to be in Tasmania for a wedding this weekend. Instead the dreaded lurgy has reared its ugly head, and I am instead stuck at home with tonsillitis. Not all bad news though, it has bought on a stream of self-development, blogging and learning (a notable being learning to spell tonsillitis). A lot has been going on over the last month and a bit, so  this is a bit of a bubble-n-squeak post.

Firstly, I got back from snowboarding in Japan for three weeks about a fortnight ago. We were in Niseko on the north island, Hokkaido. It was an amazing trip, and an amazing experience. We met some really cool people over there, and experienced the best snow that I have ever seen – hands down. We had a good week of solid and consistent snow… and I was all over it like a fat kid on a cupcake. As you can see… the snow was pretty deep!

There was a sad aspect of the trip however. Whilst we were over there, a skier called Scott McKay went missing after leaving a bar called Wild Bills late on a Friday night (story here). Unfortunately, people don’t last very long in -8/-10 degree temperatures. A couple of community searches were hosted for Scott’s body. I participated in the second search but with the levels of snow that Niseko was having at the time, it was a needle in a haystack situation. I still remember seeing his father addressing the search team before the search commenced. It was a little disconcerting: this was the sort of thing that you see on TV all the time, it felt very strange to actually be there in real life. He was so distraught that he could hardly hold the megaphone he was addressing the crowd through. I think I speak for most people who were present when I say that I felt true empathy for Scott’s Dad that day.

In other news, WiFi in Australia has been growing like magic beans! There are now maps contributed by the community for Perth (thanks Jimmy) and for the Northern River’s region of NSW (thanks Pippa). I’ve also heard through the twit-vine that Neil is currently revamping the WiFi in UK site, so I am looking forward to seeing what comes from that development also.

I’ve been reading a few books too (which will probably make the likes of Jane very proud of me). Firstly, I finished The Graveyard Book a week or so before I hit Japan. It was a typical Neil Gaiman book – brilliant, and not nearly enough of it! I seriously recommend ANYBODY to read ANYTHING he has written – the man is a genius. I’ve almost got through Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. This is an amazing book – published in 1937 after the Great Depression, and is the precursor (and ideological basis) of the explosion of success books published today. I’m also reading Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman. It is an interesting account of how the way we describe the events that unfold around us has an effect on our actions and our mental state, specifically  focusing on the human condition of depression. It then shows practical steps people can take to change the way they perceive the events in our lives for the better of our mental health (hence, learned optimism).

Oh, I found this video of David Tennant and Catherine Tate from last years Comic Relief on YouTube – classic!

Also on YouTube, this amazing short film was sent to me by a friend… a work of art and the best YouTube video I have seen so far!

There are probably more things to write about, but I am going to leave it here, so that I can pretend that those other things are in fact new things, giving me a higher post count!

Filed under: general, snowboarding by Chris