It’s my first time to South Africa, first time in Africa even. Actually, it’s my first time travelling to the Southern Hemisphere. I’ll have to remember to check if the toilet flushes anti-clockwise. I’ll add that to my to-do list. I have a whole itinerary of things to do so it’ll be an action packed two weeks.

Wedding

The main reason I’m going is obviously for my sister Sarah’s wedding. She got engaged earlier this year to a decent chap called Hilton, an SA native. They’d planned to get married around Christmas (the middle of summer) but it worked out better to have it earlier as it brought the overall cost down.

The wedding itself is at a seaside resort called Ballito, about half an hour up the cost from Durban and overall about an hour or so from where Sarah lives in Pietermaritzburg. It should be nice and hot there despite being mid Spring. I’ve been checking the weather and it’s mid-twenties most days with very high humidity so I’ll have to slap on the suncream!

There’s a small group of us going – myself, Valerie, Mum and Dad, my brother and his wife and kids and three women from my church. We have a very long trip to get there, basically:

• Belfast → Gatwick (6 hour wait)
• Gatwick → Dubai (3 hour wait)
• Dubai → Durban
• Durban → Ballito

It’s about a day and a half of a journey, and I’m really not looking forward to it. When I made the trip to San Francisco in 2007 it took 23 hours and I’ve never been more tired in my life so I’m hoping it won’t be just as bad. By the time this post goes out I should be arriving in Gatwick kicking about for a few hours (thanks to excellent planning from my Mum to make sure we definitely won’t miss our Dubai flight…).

Holiday Plan

Since it’s such a long way, it would be a shame to go and not make a holiday of it so Valerie and I will be travelling round a good bit both before and after the wedding.

In the week before, we’ll be heading to the Drakensburg mountains for a day or two of hiking and stuff. Not exactly sure what exactly we’re doing (you can tell who organized the majority of the trip) but I think we’re spending two or three days there. Then we’re heading north for a safari over two days. Really looking forward to that!

Then, of course, there’s the main event as it were and after everyone is heading off home again. Valerie and I will be taking a different flight in the direction of Cape Town for the remaining week. There we’ll visit Robben Island, Table Mountain and a bunch of other stuff slightly further afield. I believe an ostrich farm is on the agenda. I hear Cape Town is a good spot to get biltong too, so I’ll have to give that a bash.

Like I did with the trip to Paris, I’m going to make a little mini-series of the trip and will try to update the a few times over the fortnight. I’m very pleased to have my new camera to take with me too, so I’ll get some photos up on Flickr too if I get the chance – internet connection in SA is predictably poor so I’ll do my best. At worst I’ll type it all up when I’m back home.

That’s all for now. See you all in two weeks!

• Part One: The first three days in Paris

  BBQ, getting ripped off and a giant beer.

• Part Two: Days Four to Six

  Finding the elusive Georges Pompidou, world’s most energetic dog and meeting the French Mr Bean.

• Part Three: Final Days

  Versailles Castle, destroying my hands playing Tarzan around the forest and the nicest house I’ve ever seen. Also, smuggling drugs through Belfast International.

The last few days in France were packed and there’s lots to write about. Today, I’ll be covering the last 5 days of the trip so prepare for a long one!

Friday

On Friday we were back in Paris to meet Valerie’s cousin Didier. He’s a dermatologist from the Loire Valley in France, and we met him at the train station as he had travelled into the city via TGV.

He’s a very charming guy, typically French wearing a pinstripe shirt and a pair of chinos with the jacket. Quite tall and with curly, greying hair. He speaks English as well as I do French, which means limited to bad grammar and lots of awkward pauses in between words.

Mr Bean

Shame I never managed a photo of him, but he’s a quirky guy. Some of his mannerisms are quite funny, which reminded me of Mr Bean’s Holiday, a particularly awful movie I saw a year or two ago.

Boat Trip

We took one of the boat tours down the Seine while the sun baked down for the first hour of the day. The guide on board was a young girl whose accent when she translated into English was so difficult to understand I couldn’t make the difference between the two languages.

Despite this, it was a great tour and the sights were great.

I managed to spoil part of the trip as the guide informed us that we were passing below Paris’ most romantic bridge and that you should close your eyes and kiss the one you love. Unfortunately, I understood that it was Paris’ most haunted bridge and I closed my eyes as advised when we passed under it. Valerie made an attempt at being romantic which I misinterpreted as a joke ghost attack or something and, shamefully, resisted.

Personally, I blame the guide. As we left, she had a tip jar. Didier tipped a spare button he found in his coat.

Notre Dame

Afterwards, we took a walk to Notre Dame and stopped for a photo or two.

We walked on towards our lunch spot.

Jardin des Plantes

I was promised an animal park. This much is true, but you have to pay for it so no animals. Instead we took a tour of the museum inside (if you’re over 26 it’s €9 which isn’t really worth it, otherwise free).

We grabbed a quick bite at the cafe and looked round the museum. It’s basically a small natural history museum.

Afterwards we took a walk back through the city, past a little band playing Prince songs (really well) and then back to the train station so Didier could get home.

When we got home again we took the dog for a walk and just messed around all night.

Saturday

Valerie’s sister picked us up in the morning for a day at an outdoor activity park close to the house.

We arrived and played minigolf and table tennis before heading to the big outdoor pool with the wave machine. We spent a good few hours there before heading to the luge (awesome!!) and then back home. I didn’t take my camera that day, so no photos

Dinner at the neighbours

In the evening we got invited to the neighbours for dinner. They’re a retired couple, very nice and both very into gardening. Gerrard’s favourite plant is the cactus and he has a huge collection. In fact, he collects loads of things. He collects matchboxes, the kind you pick up at bars and hotels. His collection contains over 50,000 matchboxes which he has stored in his basement. He showed us some of the rarer ones.

Dinner was pretty good – tomatoes from the garden, chicken and lots of other treats. There was good banter around the table and Valerie’s parents came to join us, just back from Egypt. Both of them were really, reeeally tanned.

Sunday

We met up with the neighbours again for lunch, this time Valerie’s Dad’s treat. We went to a really posh castle about half an hour from the house for lunch.

The food was interesting, not my favourite and there was a lot of French cuisine that I knew I wouldn’t stomach well but what I did order, I enjoyed. Got these fish and ham roll things. Hard to describe, but good. Main course was beef (phew!) and desert was a sponge cake thing, not bad.

The grounds of the castle were beautiful. We walked off the lunch afterwards, round the lake and through the gardens and forecourt.

Trivial Persuit

We spent the evening playing Trivial Persuit, Disney edition. Took me an hour or two to realise that Picsou is actually Scrooge McDuck. Had I known that, I possibly would have won.

Played with the dog, too. It was his last day with us.

Monday

Up early and off to Versailles to visit the famous Palace of Versailles. It’s closed on Mondays, so we couldn’t actually go inside, but it has beautiful gardens which we walked around.

We even took a little row boat across the lake. Valerie’s dad opted out so it was just me, Valerie and her mum…and me rowing.

Tired and hungry at the end of it we went for lunch at the nearby cafe. Crepe. Mmmm.

Headed back home, had dinner with Valerie’s sister and fiancee and other relatives.

Tuesday

This was great. It was the day I left (no, that part’s not great) so we just had time to do something in the morning until about 3pm. We went to an outdoor activity park with obstacles to climb in the forest. You had to manoeuvre your way around the obstacles in the trees, from pretty high up. Great fun!

It was difficult in places, but worth it. I’m not as fit as I used to be, but I managed one of the more difficult courses, albeit with a lot of effort!

Returned home to grab lunch and off to the airport. €22 charge for my bag that I didn’t declare at time of booking. Ridiculous.

Had a bad experience with customs on arrival in Belfast. They searched my bags (random check) and apparently my bag contained traces of cocaine. After a few other tests, they were “satisfied” that I was no criminal and let me go. Phew!

End of a great 10 days. Started a new job on Monday too, so a good return too! Check all the photos on Flickr here.

• Part One: The first three days in Paris

  BBQ, getting ripped off and a giant beer.

• Part Two: Days Four to Six

  Finding the elusive Georges Pompidou, world’s most energetic dog and meeting the French Mr Bean.

• Part Three: Final Days

  Versailles Castle, destroying my hands playing Tarzan around the forest and the nicest house I’ve ever seen. Also, smuggling drugs through Belfast International.

I’m going to rattle on with this one today as there’s lots to cover.

When we left off last time, I had just returned from a very expensive evening in the city. Our story continues from the next day.

Parc Asterix

Valerie and I stayed at a hotel near the Louvre as we were heading to Parc Asterix the following day and we were catching a bus at 8:30am from the Louvre bus station.

The bus takes nearly an hour, but at €20 return it’s a good option (possibly the only option) if you’ve got no car. It drops you off just before the park open and the last bus is at around 6:30pm so you have plenty of time.

Our seats were near an annoying young kissy couple who couldn’t seem to get enough of each other. Even more annoyingly they seemed to follow us around the park as they ended up in the queue in front of us a few times. Horrible couple.

Arrived at Parc Asterix just in time. Between it and Disneyland, this is the more mature and geared towards an older audience with arguably better and certainly more extreme rides than Disney. It’s also a fair but cheaper than Disneyland and isn’t far from the airport.

It’s a really fun park centred around the cartoons of Asterix and Obelix. The architecture and sets are really well done and there are some cool shows going on during the day.

We watched the dolphin show and the gladiator show, both of which were excellent. The weather was pretty hot, but luckily I was wearing my P20 suncream (great stuff, once a day and no sunburn).

By far the best ride in the park is the wooden rollercoaster. We queued for nearly an hour for it, but it was worth it – it was excellent.

In the evening we grabbed the bus back to the city where we were meeting some friends for dinner.

Dinner

We were running a bit late getting back as the bus was stuck in traffic so we had to go out for dinner in our sweaty clothes.

Paris is obviously a rather trendy city and turning up for dinner in a pair of shorts and tshirt is not really the done thing, so I felt like a proper tourist.

We met Gaelle and Mars for a drink before going for dinner. I met these girls last year in San Francisco as they were my neighbours, both French and currently working in Paris.

After about half an hour I got a bit of a surprise as two other guys I met in America turned up. Zoltan and Michael were studying in SF and are home for the holidays. Michael’s heading back in a few weeks to finish uni and Zoltan is off to Tokyo to study in a month or two. Really cool to see them.

Parisians also seem to eat fairly late. It was about 8pm and I was absolutely ravenous, yet there seemed to be no rush to get to the restaurant. I nearly finished all the nuts at the bar, was sooo hungry. When dinner finally came, it was great. A cheese and hamburger crepe. How authentically French.

Fancy Apartment

Valerie and I missed the last bus home to Arpajon so we crashed at Gaelle’s fancy place just off the Champs-Elysees, the most expensive street in Paris. Met her sister’s boyfriend there, nice guy. Studying to be a lawyer.

Finding Georges Pompidou

Up early the next morning and on a mission to find a building I’d seen in books, but no one in Paris seems to know. I had described it as a museum, glass and with a zig-zag staircase on the outside. ‘Such a building does not exist in Paris’, I was told.

Literally one Google search later and I found out it was the Centre Georges Pompidou. Went to visit it, just beside Le Marais – the gay district of Paris.

Did a few more sights around the city then headed for the swimming pool.

Swimming faux pas

We went swimming in Arpajon. I walked into the pool in my shorts and was promptly told off by the lifeguard that shorts were strictly forbidden. Since I had nothing else with me, I asked what I was supposed to do.

Long story short, I had to borrow a banana hammock from the reception. Gross.

Chien

Was very happy when we got home as Valerie’s sister had left her dog with us for a few days. I used to have a dog up until a few years ago when he had to get him put to sleep due to cancer. Since then I’ve really missed the company of a dog and am trying to persuade the parents into getting another one.

This dog is totally nuts. He’s full of energy, and like that stupid bunny from the battery adverts he just keeps going and going. He actually never, ever stops. You could spend 10 straight hours playing fetch with him and a tennis ball and he simply would not get bored.

His name is Cahouette (ka-wet), which is French for ‘peanut’. He’s a small doberman, super cute and very friendly. He’s got this weird thing, it’s like an ear fetish. If you pick him up he goes straight for the ear and will lick it until it’s dripping with slobber. Same with the knee joints…weird and highly annoying.

I spent a good few hours playing in the garden with him. When he can’t find the ball, he’ll eat pine cones.

It takes him a good hour or so to calm down before bed, and he’s gone through at least 5 beds over the past year already. He’s never tired, I’ve never seen a dog as hyper as him. But he’s great, I will miss him.

Awesome House

We took him for a good long walk around the countryside in the evening. Like most dogs, he loves getting out for a walk. The houses in the neighbourhood are all really nice, but I spotted one in particular that really stood out.

This is the kinda place I could see myself living in in ten years. Maybe not in France, but a house like this is so nice.

Dinner and Wii

To round up the evening, we went over to Valerie’s sister’s place for tea. Was great food and we spent the rest of the night playing board games and the Wii. Good craic.

I’ll leave Mr Bean for tomorrow as I’ve rambled on long enough. See you then!

• Part One: The first three days in Paris

  BBQ, getting ripped off and a giant beer.

• Part Two: Days Four to Six

  Finding the elusive Georges Pompidou, world’s most energetic dog and meeting the French Mr Bean.

• Part Three: Final Days

  Versailles Castle, destroying my hands playing Tarzan around the forest and the nicest house I’ve ever seen. Also, smuggling drugs through Belfast International.

Lots to look forward to, so let’s begin.

First Day

I met Valerie at CDG as she was returning from a three-week trip to New York.

It was a reasonably quiet day, so we just relaxed at Valerie’s house in St Germain les Arpajon on the outskirts of Paris. We had a barbeque in the evening, luckily her dad had been to the butchers so there was plenty to eat. The weather was warm and the food was great!

I bought a new camera a few weeks ago, so this was my first attempt at getting to grips with it. Was very impressed with it throughout the trip.

The day finished by watching a movie and heading to bed.

Second Day

The second day was mostly pottering around the house and making a plan for the rest of the holiday.

The original idea we had was to go camping either in Brittany or the South Coast, so we looked online and booked a really nice campsite in the centre of France.

Unfortunately we had to cancel it as it turned out we had no insurance on the car. So a quick change of plan and we sorted out a few things to do around Paris, accessible by bus.

Third Day

We got up in the morning and headed into Paris for some sightseeing.

I have to say that Paris in summer is certainly a much different place than in the winter when I visited last. Then, the weather had been fairly miserable which meant I couldn’t get a real taste of what Paris is really like.

When the summer rolls in, the sun comes out and the temperature is frequently above the 30℃ mark. I think this is what really brings out the real spirit of Paris. The streets are lined with little bistros, cafes, bars and restaurants which creates a friendly, welcoming atmosphere.

La Defense

We started off our city tour at one of the more modern neighbourhoods of Paris. La Defense is crammed with modern architecture and sculptures. It’s not favoured well with the locals, and it’s iconic feature – the Grande Arche – was not particularly well received when unveiled 20 years ago.

Despite this, La Defense is a bustling business district that gives the whole neighbourhood a somewhat grey and dull hue. I find it quite interesting, despite what others think.

Eiffel Tower

No trip to Paris is complete without seeing the Eiffel Tower. At just over 1,000 feet tall it’s unlikely you would visit Paris and not see it – it’s visible from almost everywhere.

At Christmas, Valerie and I took the trip to the third floor so that wasn’t on the cards this time. It was simply a photo opportunity, but a very good one!

I took loads of photos. It’s impossible to take a bad one, but the new camera really impressed me. I got some awesome shots which are up on Flickr and honestly I haven’t added any post-processing effects. Think I could get into this photography thing.

Probably the best place to get a photo of the Eiffel Tower is the Trocadéro. While we were there taking photos, a Russian couple were getting some wedding photos taken.

After the tower, we checked into a hotel near the Louvre (as we needed to be in Paris again in the morning to catch a bus) and headed out for dinner.

Big Mistake

Dinner was great, we ate at a bistro. Think I ordered spaghetti, but the mistake came when ordering a beer. The sizes on the menu were in centilitres which I’ve no clue about. I asked for a small, but Valerie insisted it was a half pint and re-ordered the large.

So here’s a large:

I think the only thing bigger was the price. €16.80. For future reference, ask for clarification of what a grande biere actually is.

Lido

This is where big mistake number two occurred. Lido is a slightly less pricey cabaret show in the same vein as Moulin Rouge. We’d been promised on the phone that tickets were €45 each, which we’d agreed to pay.

Due to running late after eating dinner, we arrived for the show just on time to be ushered into our seats without paying first. Next, the waiter came round offering up champagne, an offer that after the huge beer wasn’t too appealing. We turned it down until he informed us that it was included in our ticket price, after which we accepted.

The show was pretty good, a little slow at the start but got significantly better with a range of acts from strong men doing impossible acrobatics, ice skaters, a strange two-headed guy (hard to explain) and superb costumes. All very entertaining, but photos are not allowed so nothing to show you.

With about 20 minutes left in the show, a manager or head waiter came round with our bill and a credit card machine. I got my wallet out and expected to pay the €90 charge for two tickets.

€200!!

Gotta be some mistake, we argued. The tickets were €80 each (€160 total) and a €40 charge for the champagne. We argued with the guy for several minutes, insisting that even if the €45 tickets was a mistake, the waiter had told us the champagne was included. As a somewhat insulting gesture, he knocked €20 off the bill for the mixup and was adamant that we pay and argue outside.

Reluctantly, we paid it and at the end of the show went to speak to the management. He was very unhelpful and traced the mistake to a clerical error with his staff. The woman who took our reservation had booked us into the dearer show instead of the cheaper one at €45. Despite his admission of the error, there was no talk of a refund and his final words basically boiled down to “sod off”.

Needless to say a complaint email was sent, and even more needless to say is that a reply was never received.

Regardless of this experience, I must say that this is probably the only rude French person we met during the whole trip. I found French people to be mostly quite polite, if a little proud. But rarely rude. Just wanted to clear up a stereotype.

Louvre

As we walked back to the hotel, there was just time to get a shot of the Louvre by night. At least there was one thing this evening that didn’t cost an arm and a leg!

More to come tomorrow, but for now you can check the photos so far!

Getting there was a long drive. I borrowed my Mum’s sat-nav just to try it out. It was good, as it got us there, but the sat-nav took us through some very strange places.

We took a brief stop in Clones to eat some picnic sandwiches and then straight on to Galway.

Arrival

First impressions of the city were very positive. The weather was great, and we arrived quite late in the evening, 11:30pm or so. While being a very modern city, it has a quaint “old town” feeling to it.

It’s very lively, and has a lot of traditional music bars dotted along it’s central pedestrian zone. Street performers and buskers are plentiful and the general atmosphere is friendly and relaxed.

Accommodation

We checked into Barnacles, which is a nice little hostel right in the city centre. This proved to be both a good move and a bad move. The room itself was fine, a little warm but couldn’t really be helped and the price wasn’t so bad but pubs in Galway stay open quite late so there was lots of buzz and noise outside until very late. The streets finally cleared at about 3:30am, so getting to sleep was difficult.

Galway City

There’s plenty to see and do in the city. We didn’t have a lot of time to check out everything, but we took in a lot of the city centre, enjoyed a beer or two in several of the pubs with live music and generally enjoyed the great weather we were fortunate to have.

I found it surprising how busy this place was. It seems that every night of the week is a night out, unlike Belfast where you’d find most people out on a Thursday or Saturday. Galway is constantly buzzing with young and old packing out the bars onto the streets.

The city itself is beautiful and a pleasure to walk through. It’s main thoroughfares are for pedestrians only so you can while away the day walking through the narrow streets. The city boasts a big cathedral, which is a good place to park as all-day parking is only €5 and it’s just a short distance from the main streets.

There are canals running alongside the river with ducks and swans, and several old bridges which make great photography stops.

Cliffs of Moher

On our first day in the west coast, we drove down to Co. Clare to the Cliffs of Moher. These impressive cliffs rise over 200m vertically from the sea, and are one of Ireland’s most visited sights. It was an awesome view, but the drive to the cliffs is something else. The sat-nav claimed it was a 25-mile drive from Galway, which turned out to be a complete lie. It was more like 50 miles and with some very windy roads which meant a 1.5 hour drive.

The cliffs are spectacular. There’s a safety fence to stop you getting too close to the edge, but a little further round is a privately owned area, which despite the warnings was crowded too. This part has no safety measures whatsoever and walking about a foot away from a 700ft drop made me feel more than a little nervous.

Beach

In the evening, we came back to Galway and spent an hour or two at the beach. Surprisingly, for Ireland, the water wasn’t terribly cold and lots of people were relaxing on the beach and taking in the rays.

Afterwards, we had dinner at a great seafood restaurant. I’m not much of a fish eater but the food was great and wasn’t overly expensive.

Finished up the day in a nearby pub enjoying some band playing Beatles covers with a pint of Kilkenny. Great day.

Day Two: Connemara

Just north of Galway is the beautiful district of Connemara. If ever there’s a cliché of Ireland, this place surely has to be it. As usual, our GPS friend lead us down the smallest roads you can imagine, just about big enough for one car to drive down.

Here you’ll find sheep wandering the roads without a care in the world for passing cars. During the 20 or so miles we did around this part of the country, we must have stopped about 10 times for photographs, and we could have stopped for more if we had the time.

I’ve lost my camera charger, so my camera has been lying at home with a dead battery for the last month or two. I can honestly say that I haven’t really missed it as I appreciated taking in the sights without the need to snap a photo every 5 seconds. The photos I’ve posted here were taken by my friends.

Kylemore Abbey

Kylemore Abbey is just one of the sights in Connemara. It’s in a beautiful spot, but it was a little pricey to go inside for a look, so we just took a walk around the grounds. It’s a fairly modern castle, built in the 19th century and looks like something straight out of a history book.

Killary Harbour

After the castle, we took a disappointing trip to Killary Harbour at the foot of a fjord. The scenery was nice, but the harbour itself was anything but spectacular and coupled with a 40-minute round trip was frankly a waste of time. My advice: don’t bother if you’re visiting this area.

Westport

Our last stop of the day was the small town of Westport. I’d got a tip the day before we left from someone who claimed that Westport was “lovely”. I’m not disputing that – it is very nice, but we struggled to find things to do there and as we weren’t staying until the evening we ended up mainly using it as a place to eat. It’s got a small-town charm but even the tourism office found it difficult to point out interesting things to do other than the holy mountain of Croagh Patrick, where St Patrick famously drove away all the snakes in Ireland.

Home

By dinner time, it was back to Belfast. The sat-nav did a wonderful job of taking us through the back-end of nowhere before eventually winding up in Enniskillen and a fairly straight drive home to Belfast.

All in all, a wonderful little break to see a side of Ireland you rarely see in the North. Having said that, it’s always nice to return home to the spides, millies and casual racism of south Belfast.

Photos are on my Flickr.

Moo were a pleasure to deal with. The online process was simple and a pack of 50 cards cost just a little over £10 when coupled with the discount code I used.

The cards came in a very nice little presentation box with little dividers for sorting my cards from other people’s cards I receive. And the cards themselves are beautifully made with a nice matte finish.

What do you all think, then?

It’s interesting to see which tools these designers use to create their work, and it’s also interesting to see which apps are awarded a coveted space on the dock.

I was inspired by these articles and thought I’d share my own.

My Dock

So here it is:

I’ve kept it as minimal as I can. Like many designers, I use Quicksilver to launch the majority of apps, which is both a huge timesaver and keeps my dock neat and tidy. I have a thing about clutter – I can’t even have more than about 8 tabs open in a web browser without feeling a little overwhelmed and close down all but the essentials.

Quicksilver is indispensable, I’d be lost without it. It’s much faster than Spotlight for launching apps and can even work to find a song in your iTunes, as well as a hundred other uses. Highly recommended.

The Apps

So here’s a rundown of what I’ve got on the dock. These are apps that I mainly use on a daily basis.

• Finder

  Installed as standard.

• Tweetie.

  My Twitter client. It’s a little resource heavy but it’s gorgeous interface and full feature list make it easily the best free Twitter client.

• Mail.

  I’ve changed the icon. I actually change it quite often, just for variety. Handles all my email needs.

• Things.

  I tried out the free trial and loved Things. It’s a Getting Things Done app that allows your to create and manage a to-do list of projects and tasks. Found it very useful, but decided to forego the $49.99 price tag in favour of…

• Tada List.

  This is a fantasticly simple Rich Internet Application from 37 Signals, creators of Basecamp et al. As it’s an online application, I used Fluid to create an SSB, which allows me to use it just like a desktop app. Very handy for keeping on top of work.

• BBC iPlayer.

  I am a proud listener of Radio 2, so this is another SSB for the radio console.

• Google Analytics.

  This is one of the first things I check every morning. It’s another SSB for Google Analytics. I spend roughly 15-20 minutes going through traffic sources, popular content and keywords. It’s interesting as well as good business practice.

• iTunes.

  To be honest, since installing Spotify I’ve reduced my iTunes usage to more obscure tracks that Spotify can’t find and for my podcasts.

• Spotify.

  I’m quite new to Spotify, but it’s simply amazing! A huge music library and no streaming time. The adverts are a little annoying but it’s a small price to pay for a quality service.

• NetNewsWire.

  My RSS reader. I’m sometimes a little afraid to open it due to the number of updates, but it’s good to check out when I need a break from work.

• Photoshop.

  I have Photoshop open almost constantly. It’s the only app of the Adobe Suite that rests in my dock since I don’t use Illustrator or Flash anywhere near as much as trusty old PS.

• Smultron.

  A very good feature-rich open source code editor. It’s good for opening a file quickly and has a great ‘live search’ bar at the top which makes it lite and super fast. Love it.

• iCal.

  Keeps me organised. I like it’s integration with Mail, lets me add events to the calendar without having to type out the details.

• Cyberduck.

  An open source FTP client. Works great for almost anything. When I’m working on a project I tend to use Coda’s FTP since it’s integrated and faster (since it’s based on Transmit), but Cyberduck is very useful for a few drag-and-drop updates.

• Coda.

  My code editor of choice. I’ve been using it since Day 1 and have not looked back since. Has everything I need in one window. I recently bought Espresso which I have yet to fully check out, but Coda is a tough editor to beat.

• Firefox.

  My preferred web browser. Safari had me for about a year but the plugins offered by Firefox make it a cut above.

• Safari.

  Very fast and used regularly, mainly for testing purposes. If it opened up for plugins it might lure me back.

• Parallels Desktop.

  I considered whether it was better to Bootcamp my Mac with XP or go with Parallels. I opted for the latter merely for the convenience of being able to switch between OSs very quickly. Combined with Spaces, it’s very seamless and runs very fast. I even have Ubuntu running on my Macbook now!

• MarsEdit.

  Blog editor. I questioned if I really needed an app to update my blog, but MarsEdit does such a good job of it and for a bargain price I really couldn’t afford to go without it. It’s really handy for writing up draft posts and saving them locally, then simply publishing them when the time comes. Even lets you write in Markdown!

And there you have it. Few surprises, probably, to most of you but maybe there’s something there to help you out. My greatest tip remains to get Quicksilver, I really think Apple should incorporate it into their next OS release. And it’s totally free!

If you’re at all interested in designing for the web, Refresh Belfast is a fantastic event to head along to.

Refresh Belfast

Refresh Belfast is our city’s chapter of the larger Refreshing Cities movement, aiming to promote design, technology and standards as well as serving as a place for local designers to get together and gather ideas on a monthly basis.

Last Monday was my first time at Refresh Belfast. I didn’t know quite what to expect, but I was certainly educated by the evening’s proceedings and drawn to the event mostly for the speakers – Design By Front. Front are a well respected design studio located in Belfast and regularly talk at events such as Refresh, Barcamp and other events throughout the UK and Ireland.

The Web as a Conversation

Paul McKeever of Front was first to speak on the topic of Be Where People Are. One of the more important points he made was the changing nature of the web, and how it has evolved from adopting the linear nature of traditional advertising (i.e. company advertises, promotes product, we listen, we buy) to stimulating the market through conversation.

Today, large corporations are embracing social networks as a means to get to their customer base, and stimulating conversation to spread their message.

Sites such as Amazon and Twitter allow the user to post opinions and generate discussion, and it’s important to be where people are in order to reach them. Businesses would do well to generate buzz through these platforms, as opposed to building their own community.

Talk Like a Person

Another important point I felt Paul covered well was the sense of voice a site delivers. People tend to engage more with a site when they feel a more human experience, so spending time to consider the tone of the content on a site can go a long way to it’s success. Sites such as Flickr, Wufoo and Mailchimp convey a more casual, friendly tone of voice than, say, Myspace. Of course, ‘friendly’ isn’t always going to be the appropriate choice, but it is often overlooked as a possibility for many sites.

Designing with Visual Language

This topic was covered by Jamie Neely of Front. It’s a little harder to describe what he covered, but he raised some interesting points.

One item I took away from his talk was Yahoo’s Design Patterns Library which gives examples of good design (in terms of both visual and usable) for common interaction scenarios. In essence, it provides solutions to common usability problems.

Design Process

Jamie also talked a bit about the design process. A good tip for dealing with a large site design is by beginning with the things you know. Designing separate elements and piecing them altogether can help to break down a large task into something more manageable.

Finally, he covered working within branding guidelines. In interesting point is that branding guidelines should always be under review. Writing the rule book, as it were, and forcing compliance to it is not a progressive way to manage your corporate identity. Sometimes it takes a step outside the guidelines and a little explanation to the client that there is a better way to do this.

Next Month

The next Refresh Belfast will be on 15th June, 2009. I strongly suggest you consider trying it out and remember that it’s 100% free to attend, so it really is worth it.

If you’re interested, Front have written their own summary of Refresh which has video and the presentations available for download.

See you at Refresh Belfast in June!

In an effort to promote web standards, I’m participating in this years CSS Naked Day.

If you’re viewing this site at the moment and it looks weird, don’t run for the ‘refresh’ button. It’s intentional. The idea is the brainchild of web guru Dustin Diaz.

CSS Naked Day is an effort to raise awareness of web standards, which is – in short – the right way to design for the web. It includes structuring content on pages with a meaningful hierarchy, marking it up using valid XHTML and styling it appropriately using valid CSS. Using these standards helps the web move forward and ensures your site is accessible as possible to everyone.

Showing your naked <body>

So why does the site look weird? Well, I’ve simply switched off the CSS styling so you’re seeing the raw marked up content of the site. If it’s still reasonably clear where everything is, then I’ve done my job right. Essentially, you’re seeing what the Googlebot sees when it crawls the web.

I’m going to stick my neck out here and proudly say that this entire site validates as proper XHTML. Check for yourself. Happy CSS Naked Day 2009!

RSS Subscribers: please update your RSS link to the following: http://feeds2.feedburner.com/adamturtle. Thanks!

This past week a coursework assignment of mine was to create a new portfolio site. I saw it as a good thing, as this site was long overdue for a tune-up. I also pounced on the chance to get full Wordpress integration of this site, since previously I only had my blog running using it.

Colour

Firstly, I went for a darker theme for a change, away from my usual white trend. The great thing about dark is that it’s easier on the eyes. It also gives me a change to pull in some bright colours like the blue and the pink, and use white to draw attention.

Blog Structure

New blog page layout

I changed the layout of the blog page to split up posts into just excerpts to make it easier to find whatever you’re interested in reading. Also helps me keep tabs on what’s being read and what’s not.

Logo

Rebranded logo

Also redid the logo. Had a few different ideas, but in the end I stripped it down to a simple Web 2.0 look, which I quite like.

Your comments

Overall, I’m fairly satisfied with how the site has turned out, but I will inevitably tweak it a bit just to polish it up a bit. I’d love to hear your comments, especially if you find any 404’s (error pages) or have trouble finding something. If you have any constructive criticism though, I’d love to hear it.

Thanks!