redwelly.co.uk

Image from my Flickr photostream.

Louise and I were down in central London yesterday and afterwards walked past to see what was going on at the planned protest against slashing the higher education budget.It was poignant as we saw a TV showing Prime Minister’s Questions with Nick Clegg standing in and being asked what he would say to students outside the building who were angry with him for reneging on his pledge to oppose higher tuition fees.

Then, after ten minutes walk, we were outside that very building seeing the mass of noisy plaquard-wavers.What we saw was all entirely peaceful and standard.  Chants ranged from “no ifs, no buts, no education cuts” through to “David Cameron, F**k of back to Eton”, but there was no hint of the violent spat at Millbank Tower later on in the day.

Even with 52000 protesters outside, the walls of the Palace of Westminster feel very high and very thick.  It doesn’t feel like they can hear inside, and there is little reason to think that any policy changes will come of the day.

So attending a protest march is always a bit of an act of wilful irrelevance.  A sadly clear example is that in 2003 a million people marched against invading Iraq, and yet the UK still did so.

Does it have any more effect than writing letters to MPs?  I don’t know.  Probably not.  But it is a galvanising and fun day out for the people who go, at least.I don’t believe that this was the ‘tip of the iceberg’ of social unrest over the government’s plans, as students are surely the most likely to organise and get impassioned.  No other group will go bigger, without a very clear goal.

Margaret Thatcher’s Poll Tax was a clear target.  This government’s plans are so wide-ranging, and the opposition so sadly muddled (come on Labour! Get yourselves together), that I can’t see a massive movement rising to change their minds just yet.

I’m starting a series of posts to catalogue random pieces of design which cause problems in usability.  Things that are more complicated than they need to be, and which make you go ‘uh… what should I press here?’ or simply ‘what is that meant to mean?’.

First to be called out: Aberystwyth Student Union online shop.

As with many online shopping systems, they want to offer for sale items which they don’t have a picture of (or haven’t bothered taking one yet).  That’s not such a crime.  It is better to have the ability to buy it at all.

They have made a place-holder to indicate that there is no image of this product.  Again, no problem here. If kept simple then it does no harm.

But this is what they have done:

Non-british visitors may not recognise this, but the grey part is not just any old camera. It is a road traffic symbol for a speed camera.  So, it is used on roads to warn drivers not to exceed the speed limit, or they may get a fine.

In their wisdom, Aberystyth Guild then combined it with a red, crossed-through circle. That’s a pretty universal way of saying ‘not permitted’.  It doesn’t mean ‘not available’.  Rather, it means ‘you might want to do this, but you are not allowed to’.  You get it on age-restricted products like films, or to prohibit smoking.  It doesn’t mean ’sorry, there are no cigarettes available here’.  It means ’smoke a cigarette here and you may be in trouble’.

Combine the red crossed circle with another symbol (in this case the cigarette) and you show that the other symbol is prohibited.

So this image in an online shop symbolises the strange situation of banning speed-cameras.  You may not test the velocity of an ‘I love Aber’ mug on this web page.  They must have had problems with this.

Solution: Use a place holder image with the words ‘no image available’.  Like Amazon do:

More optimistically you could claim that the image will be ‘coming soon’ as Play.com does.

But that is probably a lie, as that placeholder will most likely be there for as long as the product is.  After all, if the shop cared much about the sales of that product, they would get a picture of it when they first offer it for sale.  Amazon’s simple statement, rather than a promise, is more honest and accurate.

Or you could just have a pale grey picture-frame symbol.  I can’t find a good example of that as I write, but if you see one, let me know and I’ll add it here.

I just got back from John o’Groats after a little unicycle ride:858 miles of unicycling in 6 days, 8 hours and 43 minutes. (see daily reports and pictures of the ride at the blog)I rode with Roger from Unicycle.com, and we were supported by Paul Royle.  Charity donations are gratefully received for Wake Up! Ministries in Uganda - the organisation of Martin Nangoli, providing support for schooling, health and community action in the rural village of Kikobero, near Mbale.  I worked with Martin in my gap year in 2004 and he is a top man.

This should be the last episode in my Chronicles of the Clavicle.  I first broke mine in April by falling from my unicycle at speed.  I then let it heal, started riding the unicycle again, and then re-broke it with a minor fall in June.

Today I had the best visit to the Fracture Clinic ever.

In to the hospital, down to X-ray, back to the Fracture Clinic waiting area, in to the doctor and out of the hospital in ten minutes.  For any americans reading this in the midst of flying propoganda about ‘Socialised Healthcare’: this was all National Health Service provided; I don’t get left with a bill for any of it and don’t have or need any medical insurance.

As a bonus, the doctor was happy to let me photograph my x-ray image on his screen (previous times I’ve been told that it is “illegal” due to patient confidentiality, and the earlier image I obtained below was reluctantly and covertly given).

My aim now is now not to have to go to a Fracture Clinic again.  I am not going to ride any fast unicycle with a chance of falling off until September, by which time I don’t plan on falling off, but I should be more robust in the event that I do.  Until then I am using two wheels, and finding lots of joy in the speeds they can go down hills - something a unicycle can’t quite match.

I’ve been getting into the Twitter lark recently.  Like many, I kept it a good wingspan away for a long time.  It’s just Facebook statuses, after all!  The original reason that made me sign up has flown right out of my head, but for whatever reason I have been tweeting (a post on Twitter is a ‘tweet’) away merrily for a couple of weeks now.

Here I am.  If I come across a mind-bendingly easy way of putting a stream into the side of this blog, then I will consider it.

One thing which makes Twitter distinctive from Facebook statuses is that you don’t need to know someone to sign up to  their updates (unless they have made them private).  So lots of famous people are tweeting, and you can - in an ever-so-slightly stalkerish way - tap into the minutae of their lifes.  If they ruffle their feathers accordingly.  So far I have Followed Chesney Hawkes, John Sentamu, Lizo Mzimba, Bill Bailey and Dave Walker among others.  I did have Lance Armstrong, but he tweeted too much and I got bored of him.

I like it.  It feels quite democratic, and can encourage a more realistic perspective on how famous people are still people. They have daily lives involving gas meters and ice-creams and watching TV.

It also feels suitable for putting more trivial updates on than a Facebook status does.  Only people who have consciously signed up to your tweets will be fed them, so they can’t complain if you do too many.  Whereas, there are many other reasons to have people as contacts on Facebook than just to hear about their coffee breaks, so there you have to limit the triviality a little.

Tweet tweet.

Some quick answers:

• This was me, in see-through mode, on Saturday 4 April.
• I fell off my unicycle.
• It didn’t hurt any more than normally falling off unicycle does.
• It was my fancy, new KH Schlumpf 36″, but that wasn’t the cause (wasn’t going any faster than I would have done otherwise, around 30kph on the flat).
• I met the following nice people: Rhian and her mother busy lambing at their farm, who called the ambulance for me; two paramedics who took me from near Talybont back to Aberystwyth hostpital; various nurses and doctors in Bronglais who had plenty to joke about when I arrived with my unicycle.
• It will take several weeks in a shoulder brace before it is sorted.
• How I got hold of this image of the x-ray will remain a secret, as if I told you I would have to come around and break your clavicle.

The long awaited movie of my World Record unicycle ride. Thanks Jonny!

wordsarepictures.co.uk

Some great ‘typography-led graphic design’ by Craig Ward.

Warning: some day I am going to sit down and write some lenthy blog posts about fonts.  But for now, just sit back and enjoy.

A recent print I made in my black-and-white evening class.

It was taken in front of the Old College in Aberystwyth, using the Prom rail as a tripod, on which I held my mini-tripod as steady as I could.  With a manual exposure time of about 5 seconds I’m pleased that I got this so stable (this is the better of two attempts)!

I was looking for information about Kikobero village, near Mbale in eastern Uganda. There is not much on the internet about it.

But I found this site about education in Uganda more generally. With a picture that I took and put on Flickr years ago! The world of the internet is a funny and small place. They are not quite right to say that it is ‘public domain’ - it says All Rights Reserved on Flickr. No problem though.