Categories
Work

Think Locally Fuck Globally

Or maybe the other way around. Or both/neither.

I think I might’ve cracked what I want to do with my two secondary columns, the slim central column will be to directly support the main content, for example:

  • On the homepage where the primary content space is the news feed this will contain Most Read, Recent Comments and The Boar RSS – other things relating to overall SU/student news
  • On an article page this will contain Most Read, Recent Comments and Recently Added for the article’s owning organisation (also if Related Articles can be done somehow tying into the tags then maybe that too – these could also/alternatively sit at the bottom of the article)
  • On an event page this will contain Popular Events, Recent Comments on Events (can this be done?)

The larger right hand column will be for alternate content types to those of the primary content area and middle column, for example:

  • Events, Food Offers and Polls on pages when the primary area is News
  • News on Events pages etc.

I’m still working out how local/global and now/featured work on this final column, I think on the homepage it should be focused on the right now, stuff I can do now, see now but once you get down to pages owned by an organisation it can be more ‘this is what these guys are doing now but also this important thing is coming up’.

www.warwicksu.com/scratch – for page I’m working on

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbgC3qw_OlM – for the title reference

Categories
Work

Scratch

Sat down to have a cheeky hour of gaming before bed, ended up working. Lame! But as I’m here you may as well get an update.

It’s all still mutable but this is how it’s starting to shape up. Obviously depending when you look at it it may look different to its current state so here’s a screenshot as it stands (click for bigger):

scratch1

Ignore the slightly garish ‘Looking For’ in the middle column (and similarly the bright yellow ‘Offers’ just out of shot if you’re viewing the actual page), these are vestigial elements from a failed experiment in colour.

That said I am looking at section colour coding and how it can be done without making it look like it’s aimed at 5-year olds. It’ll probably be along the lines of this quick sketch up in red:

scratch2

The ‘Good evening Daniel’ space will be a Toolbar of sorts likely containing an Inbox, Calendar, Basket and Profile link and probably containing Admin functionality.

The central (slimmest) column will probably contain area-specific navigation and possibly Most Read and Recent Comments feeds. The Search may disappear from there.

Obviously there’s still a lot to be done (especially as this is a mockup rather than an implementable template) but it’s getting there, just need to work a little more on distinctions between content areas (what’s global, what’s context specific) but it is taking shape!

Categories
Film

The Thing

Sorely tempted to stay up and watch the rest on ITV tonight but bed is calling. Will the prequel be as good? I don’t think any modern effects will be as scary as the stop-motion (and nothing will ever beat one man’s torso biting off another man’s hands).

Categories
Words

Theophory

I always knew the ‘el’ in my name meant God (Daniel meaning ‘God is my Judge’ or ‘Judged by God’) – it turns out that embedding the name of a god in a name is called theophory.

The obvious examples are the Els (Elizabeth, Daniel, Samuel etc.), the Yahs (Jonathan, Joshua, Jeremy) and the Abduls (from abd + Allah) but the most random example has to be Martin, as in Mars the God of War.

It would also be pretty cool if the latter part of Jesus’ name was in reference to Zeus.

Categories
Animals

Bones

trans1

Sitting somewhere between cool and crazy, Japanese scientists have found a way to render flesh transparent and then dye bones, cartilage and organs bright blue, pink, red and green to leave these pretty cool specimens.

trans2

This cat gecko is probably the best example to show that rather than just dyed skeletons they are still encased by their own (see-through) flesh. There’s also a Youtube vid.

tran3

trans4

Surely it’s only a matter of time before Gunther von Hagens gets in on this?

(via various)

Categories
Art

Big Bang Big Boom

The new painted wall animation from BLU – I dread to think how long this took: