Lazy Like Sunday Morning

Occassionally I get a bit jaded with how I'm earning a living. Web design has been becoming increasingly more predictable over the past few years, which whilst it has made for a steadier workflow, can be a bit unchallenging at times.

But somehow when this happens I stumble across something on the web which just lights a fire. And Eric Jordan (and his company www.2advanced.com ) is one of those people who always seem to come up with new ideas at the right time.

Of course, there are lots of very nice 'flash' websites, (like almost everything on www.fwa.com) but with their latest release they have added something new. Flash sites have been held back by 'useability' issues in the past, but it finally seems that 2Advanced have cracked it. The site is integrated with XML like no other site before. which means it is truly dynamic and best of all, search engines can read the content.

So the best of both worlds it seems.

And now I'm dusting off my XML books and beginning to get inspired again.

And as a nice by-product I read Eric Jordan's tutorials on Digital Matte imaging, which has led to me indulging in all sorts of creative moments with my desert photos from Utah and Arizona.

Time for a change

Having indulged myself for the past 5 or 6 years in vast, heady space operas. I decided over the festive period to take a break and get back to some 'real' literature (I parenthesise that with great irony). And I took a chance on someone I'd personally never heard of before.

Always a risky thing to do with books, it wasn't the cover this time that drew me in. Jeez it had a cat on it, which is one of the first things to send me in the opposite direction of a book. I guess it was because it was a Japanese author, and it seemed intriguing. And maybe, pretentiously, it was because it had Kafka in the title, who knows.

But as an antidote to the things I love about epic sci-fi (vast timescales, abyssal plots and lots of gadgets), it worked a treat.

Simple isn't the right word, just well explained, well thought out storyline. An archetypal Japanese ghost story in many ways. And best of all, it left me wondering about large chunks of it. No Hollywood style voiceover to fill in the blanks. I like the blanks, that's where you can personalise it. Moments of quiet interspersed with some quite shocking episodes, but not off-putting.

And a great quote which I use to myself quite often now: "Pointless thinking is worse than no thinking at all!" . Maybe that'll form my New Year's resolution.

So I guess a small thank you should go to Harukai Murakami and 'Kafka on the Shore'.