Thirty Six Degrees

Karamea Radio

stuart — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 03:58:53 -0700

This is what I’m working on at the minute. A website for Karamea Radio, the radio station run from the site of the place Victoria & I are living and working at on the West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand. The site was knocked up in a day, and will become a living entity this week, with a chyrp powered backend, and a very straightforward and easy to use front-end. It’s good to be back making websites.

Laptop Sleeve

stuart — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:02:13 -0700

My lovely girlfriend crafted for me a sweet laptop sleeve with her own fair hands. Complete with apple logo, waffle stitch and button fastening, it fits perfectly and makes for one wonderfully cute looking little thing. I’m now the proud owner of two of Victoria’s creations, the first being an awesome pair of house socks which I’ve been getting plenty of use out of in the (not really all that) cold New Zealand winter. I feel like I should make something in return now, but my handicraft skills are limited to sandwiches & rude gestures.

Is this thing on?

stuart — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 17:24:01 -0700

So,I guess you’re reading this because you follow me on twitter, or read my old blog, or have been cybothered by me elsewhere, and are here because you are curious to see what I might have been up to.

Well, the short answer is that I’ve decided after the best part of a decade to move away from my cryptically named former website, to a brand new shiny one at my very own name dot com. (apologies to the two other Stuart Frisby’s who I know via facebook to exist, If you email me, maybe we can negotiate on a timeshare, 121.67 days each a year perhaps?)…

Motivation

I suppose that the impetus for the big change is that in the last few months, virtually everything else has changed too. I’m no longer a student, I’m no longer a freelancer & I no longer live in England. This site is supposed to accompany me on my travels in both geographical and professional terms, and is hopefully better suited for that task than my previous one most certainly wasn’t.

Design Choices

I’ll go into more depth in a later post about the design choices here, but will just briefly mention a couple of things in passing. Firstly, if you’re using an inept browser, you’re not seeing the site as it is intended to be seen. It probably works – I haven’t checked – but there are lots of things (CSS2, Javascript stuff, layout etc.) which undoubtedly break in a sub-standard web browser. Secondly, unless you are one of the approximately seven people in the world with ‘Adobe Caslon Pro’ installed and activated on your machine, the font you see here is a compromise enforced by the ongoing stupidity which is the state of online typography. I’m waiting to see what Typekit has to offer before deciding on a long term solution, in the short-term, here is a paragraph set in Georgia, go nuts.

Backend

The site runs now on Chyrp, a sweet little piece of software which makes wordpress look like the bloated, obtuse piece of bloatware it is. Chyrp is lovely, and the theming is very easy, but there are still some bits and pieces I’ve yet to sort out, so forgive the wet paint for a while.

Safari 4 Beta Observations

stuart — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 22:03:26 -0800

Just some quick notes:

1. It took me two installation attempts to get it to launch, the first time round I got a non-launching application and system beachballed for a couple of minutes.

2. With the software updates required to install the Beta, and my two attempts to install the app, I had to do four restarts of the system. A bit like being transported back in time to Windows XP.

3. The tabs on top are an odd choice, there is no visual seperation between the first tab and the window operations (close, maximise, minimise.) You can only rearrange the active tab, and must do so using the extreme right of the tab, whereas before you could rearrange any tab, from any point of origin therein. The rearrangement of tabs seems like much harder work than before. Visually, I’m also unsure as to whether I like them or not – I’m guessing this is something we’ll see more of in Snow Leopard, and which will potentially be available for application developers of multi-tab interfaces, at which point it’ll probably make more sense. For now, it just feels a bit wrong.

4. Still no option to have a multi-line bookmark bar, which is unfortunate.

5. The lack of a refresh/stop button is perhaps going to take the most getting used to. Safari 4 has inherited at iPhone style progress indicator and refresh button which sit within the location field. The lack of a more obvious indication of loading progress is a notable loss.

6. It feels a little quicker, but not greatly so over Safari 3. Javascript performance is definitely improved, but is certainly not as smooth as the copy on apple.com would suggest.

7. Coverflow history, and the top sites mosaic are all very nice, how often I’ll actually use them, I’m unsure.

8. The Google Search with live results are nice, but I prefer the inquisitor style interface which I used in Safari 3.

9. The toolbar is so lacking in whitespace, that it took me 20 seconds of trying to get the context menu in order to customise the button layout before frustratedly retreating to the ‘View’ menu.

An Asian Takeaway (Report)

stuart — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 21:17:41 -0800

My report on the comparative experiences of top flight football fans in England and Japan, written as a final year dissertation for my Japanese & International Business degree at John Moores University in Liverpool. Via Terracist.

Letters From Momochi

stuart — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 06:22:10 -0700

A work in progress, I’m uploading rough recordings of a few new tracks to my opentape.

Sex on Fire

stuart — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 00:51:15 -0700

Fugitive Motel

stuart — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 18:54:03 -0700

a fortnight with the 3G iPhone

stuart — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 16:40:18 -0700

Given the painfully awful process of actually getting an iPhone to call my own, it reaaly needed to be good in order for that process to have seemed worthwhile. Luckily, it doesn’t dissapoint.

Having been in an iPhone-less Japan for the best part of a year, the original iPhone passed me by completley. And so many of my observations would have been pertinent to the iPhone as a product range, not just this latest iteration of the hardware and software within.

The most startling diference the iPhone has made is to my MacBook Pro. I used to have it switched on all the time, ready to check emails, feed read and browse. I now do all of those things on my phone. And the only limitation I’ve really been concerned by, is battery life. I’m using it far more as a PDA than as a phone, and I’m needed to charge it daily to ensure it doesn’t die on me. I’m thinking I’ll need to buy a small, rechargable charging dealie soon.

Overall, the 3G iPhone is undoubtably the best mobile phone I’ve ever used, but it’s also the best MP3 player I’ve ever used, the best portable video player I’ve ever used and the best PDA I’ve ever used. Not bad then.

Warm Beer & STDs

stuart — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 18:24:02 -0700

Warm Beer & STDs – MP3

A song I wrote a few days before leaving Japan to come back to England. The idea was to make it sound quite upbeat and positive, whilst having a message conveying the utter hopelessness of England. I hope you like it.

上を向いて歩こうー坂本九

stuart — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:09:40 -0700

Filter iTunes songs using asterisks

stuart — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 15:36:00 -0700

I just found out that you can filter your iTunes music by rating, just by typing asterisks in the search field. Awesome.

What a Wonderful World

stuart — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 14:55:00 -0700

View at Youtube

Video of me playing ‘What a Wonderful World’ by Sam Cooke. Recorded using iMovie, and Garageband, with added superfluous vocal sillyness

Redemption Song

stuart — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 12:06:00 -0700

Redemption Song – MP3

When the majority of your friends leave the country, you tend to find you have a bit more time to yourself. That being the case, I spent a little of that time-wealth today recording a cover of ‘Redemption Song’ by the peerless Bob Marley. The usual disclaimers about technical and performance quality should be assumed.

Englishman in Meinohama

stuart — Sun, 25 May 2008 11:26:51 -0700

Here is a snippet from my gig at the Allman bar in Meinohama, Fukuoka in March of this year.

Four Four Two Australia

stuart — Sun, 25 May 2008 10:27:37 -0700

Readers of the afore mentioned football magazine down under might be interested to know that a small piece written by yours truly appears on page 42 of the June edition. It’s a brief introduction to the three Australian players who moved to Avispa Fukuoka during the close-season.

Incidentally, the magazine itself is very good. Having only seen the British version before, this one clearly stacks up to the high standard it’s European namesake keeps, and there are some really good articles and great photography through-out the magazine, kudos to the 442 team in Sydney.

The Final Solution

stuart — Thu, 22 May 2008 19:34:06 -0700

Whilst you were sitting in your plush lounge, feet extended, beer in hand watching the biggest club football game in the world, enjoying a beer in the comfort of an English evening, some of us weren’t so at ease in our pursuit of the Champions League Final between Manchester United and Chelsea last night.

The rhetoric is hard to ignore, it’s the biggest game in the world, commanding an audience of however many millions it supposedly commands. But for the fast growing, and football hungry fans in this part of the world, the champions league final kicked off at 3:45am on a Thursday morning, and that – if the European game is to continue it’s assault on the Asian economies – is simply unacceptable.

The game itself was a tense, typically English affair. Both sides created enough changes to have won in ordinary time, but instead, at 6am this morning, I was still perched on the edge of a bar stool in downtown Fukuoka waiting, hoping for Chelsea to slip up. But how many more people across football mad Japan were staying up into the morning to watch the game? Not many, I’d guess.

The solution probably isn’t that complicated. Make it a day-time kick-off, on a weekend. Had yesterday’s showpiece game kicked off at 3pm in mother Russia, it would have been noon in England, and 8pm in Japan. Great, suitable for everyone within the band of football nations from The UK to the most eastern ports of Asia.

Better? Yes, of course it is. Now lets fix it before next years final, because if kids are going to grow up in rural Shizuoka trying to imitate their favourite European footballing luminaries, they need to be able to see the best of the games that Europe has to offer.

Another summer of upheaval

stuart — Sat, 17 May 2008 17:26:00 -0700

I wonder what it must have been like to have a been a fan of a Coventry City side which was on the up. The meteoric rise through the ranks of English football culminated in the Sky Blues joining the First Division for the 1967-68 season, where we stayed for over thirty years. Those heady days are long gone, and now, as Coventry fans, were used to season after season of under-performance, and summer after summer of upheaval in terms of management and playing staff. Still, it could be worse, be could be Leicester City.

The end is nigh, again

stuart — Sat, 10 May 2008 00:54:56 -0700

“Saying goodbye to the football season is very much like giving birth to a ginger child: after nine months of optimism, hope and anguish, you’re left with a genuine feeling of disappointment.”

soccerlens

Fluid Applications

stuart — Tue, 06 May 2008 14:41:00 -0700

Fluid is an SSB (Site Specific Browser) application built by Todd Ditchendorf for OSX. Using the webkit rendering engine, the tool allows you to create dedicated applications for your most frequently used web apps. As the line between desktop and web based software continues to blur, fluid takes the web application a step closer to desktop harmony with it’s OS based cousins.

Fluid is rapidly developing, and is looking as if it will become a valuable and flexible tool for users and organisations. It comes with a handy plugin architecture, and support for adding dock notifications to applications through userscripts.

I’ve been using fluid since it first appeared for various applications. I’ve found that some apps work better in the browser, some better in isolation via fluid, but it’s such an easy process to create a Fluid SSB, that experimenting and seeing how you like it is no great pain. I’ve turned to fluid for my google applications, as well as the web apps you see in the image up top. They are Backpack, Facebook Chat, and muxtape, all of which are almost constantly running. for these small, simple applications, fluid is perfect. And in the case of facebook chat, it means I can keep in touch with my inconsistently available friends without spending hours on the facebook website itself. Muxtape as a fluid application is greatly enhanced by the thumbnail plugin, which changes it from a browser, to a song library, by providing you with individual lists of songs to flick through at your leisure. Lovely.

The simplicity and focus of Backpack from 37Signals is equally well complimented by a fluid SSB, which steps back and allows you to get on with using the application, without the distraction and visual clutter of a standard web browser.

You’ll want some pretty icons to go with your fluid applications. And there are lots – including the ones in this post – available in the fluid icons flickr group.