Given I’ve just redesigned the site, I thought it would be nice to keep a visual comparison of the old 2007 look and feel versus the new 2008 blog interface and design.
Sadly image rendering in IE and Firefox lags behind that of Opera and Safari (the four browsers I review the site with), so these images may be a little ‘out of focus’. If that’s the case for you please get back to me and I’ll see if I can do anymore to improve the issue, prior to the two ‘largest by volume of users’ browsers catching up of course.
All the very best to Alain Andreoli in his new role as he joins Sun as Senior Vice President, Global Sales and Services (GSS) for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) . …..
Thanks to Alex Cox I’ve radically redesigned my ‘blog inspired by the product branding used in his seminal 1984 film ‘Repo Man’.
Written and directed by Alex, with the ex-Monkee Michael Nesmith as Executive Producer, Repo Man stars Emilio Estevez and Harry Dean Stanton as repossession agents on the trail of missing car with a little extra in the boot (a stolen ‘nuke). It’s a satirical and surreal comedy, widely seen as one of the first truly independent movies (along with it’s stable mate, the excellent ‘Rumble Fish’). It has a great, mainly Punk, soundtrack, including Black Flag’s ‘TV Party’, and songs performed by Iggy Pop, Suicidal Tendencies, The Circle Jerks, The Plugz, Burning Sensations, Fear and Juicy Bananas.
I was really struck by the product branding used in Repo Man – it’s pure and simple function over the aesthetic (with a good dollop of humorous irony thrown in for good measure).
After writing to Alex to ask his permission to use the branding as the basis of the look and feel of the site I was very happy to receive a reply (in quick order too).
Here’s Alex’s response:
You’re welcome to use that look.
It was originally the brainchild of Ralphs Supermarket in Los Angeles, who gave us all their generic stuff. The only labels we had to make said Drink and Food.
John Lydon also used it for his PIL album, ALBUM aka CASSETTE.
I was really pleased about getting a reply as I’m a big fan of Alex, and of his work, and not just because he does the best Jimmy Carl Black impression I’ve ever seen.
Whilst recently reading Dave’s blog I had an idea that the colour scheme and basic layout he used would be a near perfect springboard for the ideas I had around using the product branding used in Repo Man as the basis for my sites look and feel redesign.
Thanks to Dave, or rather his blog I’ve rebuilt the basic layout of this site, incorporating the Repo Man inspired look and feel. To properly credit Dave I added “Derived: Dave Johnson’s Rollerblogger blog CSS” to the header of my CSS file.
Additionally theres a few more people to thank including www.khmerang.com, who’s post on ‘Real World Bar Graphs (with some CSS)’ helped my develop the Tag Pareto / Bar Graph, which I’m using as a page leader rather than the ubiquitous Tag Cloud (although there is an obligatory Tag Cloud on my archives page).
That then led my to develop two other new pieces of functionality using Roller’s in built template scripting language ‘velocity’.
Firstly a new menu which incorporates both the page menu functionality and the category menu functionality – it’s included in the banner at the top of the page.
Secondly a new recent posts menu which both adapts to the currently chosen category and instead of linking to the individual page for an entry it instead links to an anchor on the page of the main blog (also current category dependent). The advantage here is that the reader still has the choice of reading posts around the target post – if they attract the eye
I also have to thank the friends and colleagues who read reviewed my blog. A constant theme that came out in the comments made by them that the nature of the site was too diverse. Amusingly Walter Milner had this to say, which I thought was the most succinct (and most humorous):
So relating to blogging – we have multiple aspects of our personalities, and I suspect that if you mix them on the same ‘channel’ you construct a confused message. One aspect is working at Sun/programming in C/PRINCE, another is a bizarre experience of a walk-on role in ‘The Birds’. I think you should separate them.
And why have you got some 5 channel paper tape as your banner?
However many of the reviewers wanted different things from my blog. Family (and some friends) generally wanted light fluffy stuff, like what’s going on at home, and what music am I listening to. Work friends generally wanted Sun Microsystems specific content. Whilst friends I had made in the IT Industry generally wanted generic technology information and opinion. Personally I also wanted to be able to blog about contemporary issues and news, in fact to use my blog as a diary of the significant events occurring around me.
In an attempt to reach a compromise I ratiionalised my blog categories, ‘boiling’ them down to only four categories (not including root, or ‘All’, which makes five). The four are: (1) Home – personal stuff, what record I’m listening too, etc., (2) Life – contemporary news, etc., (3) Tech – from micro IT to macro IT, technology and the technology industry, and (4) Work – stuff about Sun Microsystems, etc.
I’m hoping that by simplifying the categories down to four core areas, and by providing category specific functionality (now and more in the future), it will be easier for readers of this blog to navigate and find the stories and information pertinent to them.
And for those of you who haven’t seen Repo Man, obviously I recommend seeing it, and here’s a link to the theatrical trailer (hosted over at YouTube) for you to either get a ‘taster’ of the film, or remind yourself of it. In one scene in the trailer you can briefly see Emilio Estevez, as ‘Otto’, eating out of a can simply labeled ‘food’ – wonderful.
http://www.reelfilm.com/repoman.htm
A negative review (which I don’t agree with – but I like to be impartial) of Repo Man from David Nusair of Reel Film Reviews
http://www.repomanfilm.com/howto.htm
Very funny ‘How to be a Repo Man’ from the Repo Man fansite (a collection of quotes from the film, mainly advice given to Emilio Estevez, as Otto, by his fellow repossession agents).
Key to improving it was removing the roll over based banner I had implemented (the Google translation service, which I piggy-back off of, only translates circa 3k characters, so the banner header, full of links was using up the majority of the translation).
Obviously this points out a few of the flaws of the implementation, namely reliance on Google to provide the service (and of course a dependency on the call syntax not changing), and all of the weaknesses that follow on from relying on the Google service, not least the translatable character limit.
This time round I’m much happier with the implementation – and I’ve done a fair bit of testing to ensure it’s fit for purpose.
Unlike the other implementations out on the web I’ve added Roller specific functionality, implemented in JavaScript, creating a ‘main’ (or rather ‘weblog’) page for each language.
I did this because I wanted to tailor the service to be language specific, and because the major search engines outside of the English speaking, Google dominated, Internet, often verify that there is actual language specific content (and I want these search engines to be able to index my site, even if that’s only a couple of pages).
The code uses Roller Weblogger specific URL notations to provide the matching ‘weblog_xx’ (where xx stands for the two character country code – five characters when looking at Traditional and Simplified Chinese) to the target language to be translated to.
Currently it works for the generic weblog URL, all ‘entry’ variants, all ‘date’ variants, and all ‘page’ variants. It doesn’t work for ‘tags’ or ‘category’ variants (mainly because I haven’t had time to research the URL notation), but I hope to get this done soon. I’ll research and code up the other, alternative Roller URL formations when I next revisit the code. I find this acceptable, as it still provides a translation, however without accessing the language specific ‘weblog’ page.
The JavaScript is available via the page source – and you’re welcome to have a look and re-use if you wish (it’s nowhere near the nicest bit of JavaScript available – if you’d like to tidy it up at all you’re more than welcome).
I’ve also added Dutch and Greek to the list of languages that can be translated to, as these have been recently added to Google’s translation service (still no Hindi or Bengali though). That makes a total of fourteen languages, including the already implemented Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese (Taiwanese), English, Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, German, Korean, French and Italian. Plus I’ve replaced the language text with flag icons – which improves the look and feel too.
The icons are “available for free use for any purpose with no requirement for attribution” (although I thought it would be nice to credit the originating site) from FamFamFam, by fellow ‘Brummie‘ Mark James, available at http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/flags/
Previously, after the initial implementation in beta, I found a variety of resources in a similar vein, none of which are Roller specific though, here’s a few examples for you to have a look at if you’re interested:
Have to admit I’m really glad I’ve tidied this up as I was starting to feel as though it was in danger of genuinely being in ‘permanent beta’, and however fashionable that is, in the apocryphal words of Steve Jobbs: “real artists ship”.
The Mighty Boosh have returned for a third series – and all I can say is thank you Aunty Beeb for bringing it back ready to blow away the Winter blues. …..
So Remembrance Day, 2007, it always seems to roll around so quickly – and how quickly we all seem to forget the debt we owe those who have fought and died for us to live comfortable and peaceful lives at home in the UK. …..
Wayne Horkan, Chief Technology Officer, United Kingdom and Ireland, Sun Microsystems
Wayne works at the most strategic and senior levels with Sun’s customers and provides technology leadership across Sun’s Global Sales & Services Organisation. He has significant delivery experience in Enterprise SOA and integration implementations, Datacentre build-outs, major Internet, B2B and G2G systems, and national and international Identity Management systems.
Passionate about technology and innovation, Wayne champions a number of major initiatives in the field of large-scale and complex computing at Sun; including cloud computing, enterprise architecture, data centre economics and web science. He holds positions on the CBI’s Innovation, Science and Technology (IST) working group, as well as with PITCOM and EURIM, and is a Chartered Fellow of the BCS, a Fellow of the IoD and a Senior Member of the IEEE.
Really glad to see Peter Alsop join the blogging community at Sun. It’s great to see a new blog appear from the UK and Ireland technical team – especially when it’s someone I admire as much as Peter. His ‘blog is over at http://blogs.sun.com/psa/.
Peter’s a very talented fellow and a great orator – he’s immensely passionate about technology and it’s application in the real world and is one of the most enthusiastic speakers I know.
I first met Peter five or so years ago, when he was the team leader of the System Engineers in what we at Sun call the ‘Commercial’ industry. But I really remember him for his excitement over Java and the possibilities it brought to the UK development community.
Here’s a photo from a couple of years ago, when Peter had roped me into an event at his local university, Hertfordshire – the event was a J2EE (Sun) versus .Net (Microsoft) discussion – and was a friendly and convivial affair, despite the strongly worded title (not just because we had just signed our first interoperability agreement). A PDF formatted ‘flyer’ for the event is available: University hosts key web services debate.
From left to right – for Microsoft – Gavin King, Anthony Saxby and Mike Quirk; for Hertfordshire University – Jill Hewitt, Head of Computer Science, Dr Roger Oliver, Associate
Head of Computer Science and Vice-Chancellor, Professor Tim Wilson; and
for Sun Microsystems, Peter Alsop, Simon Cook and Wayne Horkan.
As I recall Peter did an overview both of Java and of the Java runtime environment model. Simon did details of the programming language (including syntax), available integrated development environment (IDE), J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) capabilities and the Web and Bean containers it offered. I was dragged along to discuss J2EE implementation models, application ‘stripping’, and real-world case studies – mainly of the J2EE runtime environments (and supporting infrastructure) I had had a part in building.
I’m pleased to say that Peter has acted as a mentor and as a friend to me at Sun, especially over the last couple of years – lately he’s helped me to understand my sphere of influence, it’s limitations, and how it needs to grow to be as effective as I need it to be.
If you get the opportunity to see Peter present and speak at an event then do so – I recommend it wholeheartedly.
As to Peter’s ‘blog – well “Congratulations Peter !” – here’s to a long and fruitful ‘blogging career !
Just two weeks until Sun’s major Field Technologist get together – the Customer Engineering Conference (CEC) 2007.
This is a yearly event – being held in Las Vagas this year – and virtually in Second Life.
Over 3,600 Sun Customer Engineers and around 300 Sun Partners from around the world will meet in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The event always feature keynotes from Sun executives but this year will also include Industry leaders too.
There will be a ton of things going on during the event – all around field focused, customer engineering.
Apparently it will “deliver critical training with focused technical tracks and breakout sessions”, plus there will be “a demo pavilion, and abundant networking opportunities for all participants”.
The real highlight for me will be seeing Andy Bechtolsheim:
The Value of Design: Sun’s Systems Launch
Join John Fowler and Andy Bechtolsheim on Tuesday, October 9th, at the launch of the next-generation CoolThreads servers and blade designed for virtualization. You will also hear about the latest Sun systems based on the Intel and AMD quad-core processors, and innovations in storage and software that more easily enable virtualization and web-scale computing.
And to all my friends going to the conference – see you there !
I appear to have read, and own, an unhealthy amount of the material on Wikipedia’s list of dystopian literature – strangely my favourite author of ‘unsettling’ dystopian fiction, J. G. Ballard, doesn’t make the list at all – perhaps because Ballard focuses on the dysfunctional present and our dystopian modernity rather than a far flung fiction.
So is Wikipedia the symbol and reminder of our current dystopian situation or a of the good that can be derived from the “Hive Mind” and it’s approach to collectively working together to break down social, intelectual and technical problems ?
Of course the real truth is that for all the good that Wikipedia does it is still the great ‘Lowest Common Denominator‘ in many cases – and perhaps this isn’t such as bad thing as long as people are aware of it’s limitations, using it accordingly – long may it (and it descendants) reign.
I’d like to introduce you to just one of the organisations fighting financial exclusion in the West Midlands – the Fair Finance Consortium.
The Fair Finance Consortium is a collaboration of 10 independent Not for Profit financial services providers who operate throughout the West Midlands, members include:
In my mind the most important work that the FFC does is in fighting financial exclusion – helping small businesses, entrepreneurs, and sole traders as well as individuals who would otherwise be excluded from credit – this in turn helps to reduce the number of ‘door step lenders’. They also help to build financial literacy – especially Street UK which is soon implementing the UK’s first “Not for Profit” Bill Payments service and will be offering it’s customers banking facilities – this is a big step forward in providing a holistic and ‘one stop shop’ approach to the financially excluded in the West Midlands (more about this in a later post soon).
I asked George Keenan of the Fair Finance Consortium if he could give me a short introduction to the Fair Finance Consortium. Over to George:
“During the summer of 2004 eleven independent Community Development Finance Institutions (CDFIs) establish the Fair Finance Consortium (FFC) part funded by the RDA, and the CDFI sectors National Association, the CDFA. Their collaborative objective is to improve the access to and the ability for people to locate and select CDFIs as the realistic alternative provider of business finance (Offering loans from £1,000 up to £50,000). Their products are designed to help startups and SMEs including social enterprises, situated within the conurbations of the West Midlands, who are unable to secure investment via traditional sources such as banks.
By 2005 (FFC) had shaped the interim brand strategy, Implementing a diverse mix of awareness techniques, that commenced with the launch of www.fair-finance.net in March 2006. This regionally customer focused online web portal set out to simplify the online search experience.
April 2007 marked the first anniversary of their web portal, which received over £2.5 million in loan applications, the membership continue to build a growing reputation for tackling market failure by investing in innovation and funding growth, building a stronger economic region via an accessible client focused sector.”
George has a blog, where he talks mainly about all things CDFI related – he’s recently relaunched it with better functionality around comments and inclusivity of opinion – George Keenan’s Fair Finance Blog – it would be great if you could have a look.
