Alex Leonard » Journal

A winter visit to Rathlin

Alex Leonard — Sat, 19 May 2012 17:56:16 +0000

Well I’m incredibly far behind on photo processing but have finally been finding a little bit of time to catch up.

Back in February a collection of rogues and vagabonds made their way across the water to Rathlin Island. Officially the plan was to discuss the next Jigs and Rigs festival. Whilst we did hold such a discussion, the other motive was to have a good old get-together, eat some fine food, go for a few good walks, and generally make merry, dance around like eejits, and have a good old laugh.

Below is a little photo-journal from the weekend.

Gallery

Bank of Ireland – Business On-Line

Alex Leonard — Mon, 14 May 2012 14:05:18 +0000

I’ve been a business customer of Bank of Ireland ever since myself and Donn set up PixelApes – so that’s about 7 years now. We’ve been using their horrendous “Business On-Line” feature ever since then and it’s continued to present the same poor experience from then up to the present day.

We pay €15 a month, or €180 a year, to use this antiquated system which is convoluted, not user friendly, and only works correctly in Internet Explorer. They’ve been assuring us that a new system will be “rolling out soon” on and off for the past 4 years.

We’re currently investigating other options that might yield slightly lower yearly charges and a better system to boot.

Woeful.

The hilarious thing is that all of their literature, demos and tutorials never dare to show this antiquated system, they’re clearly too ashamed to actually show customers in advance the UI horror they’re going to deal with. Instead they stick with meaningless PR shots of happy trendy young customers on their computer smiling. Clearly the man pictured in the brochure to the right is actually watching a cute cat video on YouTube, because if he was using Bank of Ireland’s “Business On-Line” system he’d be much more likely to be in tears (or at a minimum, his visage would be beset with a furrowed brow and an ever-darkening grimace).

Beautiful wallpapers

Alex Leonard — Sat, 12 May 2012 14:33:39 +0000

A recent post by Veerle alerted me to the free availability of some beautiful high-resolution wallpapers created by Simon C Page.

They’re titled as being iPad “HD retina display” wallpapers, but don’t let that fool you, you definitely don’t need an iPad to enjoy these. I have one set on my Galaxy S2, and have downloaded the lot and resized them to fit on my rotating desktop wallpapers.

Download them from Simon’s website here, and I include small versions of them below so you can get an idea what they’re like, but I’ll leave the downloading of the full-resolution to Simon’s links, so get on over there if you like these.

HD patterned wallpapers

What’s going down

Alex Leonard — Mon, 07 May 2012 09:20:34 +0000

Yet another “I’ve been very busy and failing to update my blog” post.. I was doing well at the start of the year and then hit a speed-bump..

Busy with work

This is the primary reason – I’ve been run off my feet with work. We’ve had a bunch of sub-contracting work come in which has been great as it tends to be less complicated than a full client job.

I’ve also been doing some consultation work for Cricket Ireland. Whilst I’d love to be doing a full web development job for them I felt it better to not tender for the job as it would have precluded my younger brother, who works there as marketing director, from being involved in the decision process. The job went to Eye Killer who definitely had the strongest overall pitch. The new website should be launching soon and I think it will be very cool.

I’ve also been learning a whole chunk of new things in preparation for a few upcoming jobs – stretching my brain has felt good.

Composing again

I’m thrilled to say that music production is coming along very well and I’ve got the bare bones of an album worked out. I still have a couple of tracks to work out but hopefully I’m not too far off fine-tuning and then getting stuck into a full mixdown and mastering process.

Not taking so many photographs

This isn’t such a high point. I realised that I was a month behind my photo processing and shouldn’t continue to take daily photographs whilst I’m stuck with such a backlog. I’ll try to find some spare time to get through that backlog so I can get out daily again. I’m hoping the next item will help with that.

New screens!

Delighted that, following the death of my old Samsung 24″ screens, I’ve picked up two beautiful 23″ Asus IPS panels. So far the colour is excellent and I’m really looking forward to tackling the previous point on the new sumptuous beauties.

Happy and settled in Ballycastle

Overall very content here in Ballycastle. See a few old Force 10 heads every once in a while and loving the wild north coastline!

Web Designers and Watch Makers

Alex Leonard — Sun, 06 May 2012 11:06:16 +0000

Web designers ply an interesting trade. They are not just required to possess a continually expanding knowledge set, but are also required to educate their clients on the best approach for their website, explain reasons, and, when building a site powered by a content management system, try to ensure that the client carries those approaches through in the long run.

The web designer needs to keep in mind the client’s potential user base, the sort of market they want to capture, the wisest SEO approach, methods to channel users into a call to action and much more. It is a skill set that any good web designer has been honing for a long time, and will continue to improve and alter as long as they work in this area.

The point

The point being, when a client hires a web professional to create their website, the client should have a relatively minor amount of influence on the design process. Why? It is not the client’s skill set.

The analogy

Allow me to make a small analogy.

When you give a watch to be fixed by a watchmaker you don’t stand over his shoulder saying:

Ermmm, I don’t think it’s that cog mate, try the other one.

The proviso

It seems to me that it’s also required of the web designer to find the best way to handle client feedback, to explain in plain English their reasons for complicated choices in the design and function of a website, choices which are being made with a background of years of experience in designing websites, using websites, and researching best practice on ever-evolving technologies.

At the same time it is also necessary for the web designer to listen to the client to glean important information from their experience and skill set – namely how their business works and how to best appeal to their user base. This is something which the client should know intimately.

The exoneration

It might seem that, as I am a web designer, I am venting frustration. I do not see it that way.

I do feel that it is my job to handle client feedback. I must take it on board and, if I feel it will be detrimental to their end product, I must explain my reasons with language that is easy to understand for a non-technical person.

However, I also feel it is worthwhile sharing my little analogy above in the hope that someone might read this and, if they ever require the services of a web designer, might take an extra moment to consider the advice provided during the planning and construction of their new website.

Photo by Sergei Golyshev on Flickr

New Invisible Agent release

Alex Leonard — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 11:33:21 +0000

Invisible Agent Records has just pushed out a new release by “Toaster”. I’m delighted to say that the cover art for the album features a photo of mine.

Todd Elliott a.k.a ‘Toaster’ hails from San Jose, USA. ‘Buy both & feel deceived’, is an amalgamation of “Fuck You, Hippie” & “Vacations” EPs with 2 bonus tracks. Drifting masterfully through ambient, drone and electronica, these are an accomplished collection of tracks.

You can download this electronic release on Bandcamp now, and it will soon be pushed out to all major download stores.

It’s a great deal, only $4.99 for 71 minutes of beautiful tunes, and you can choose to download in whatever format you prefer, high-quality Mp3, FLAC, WAV and so on.

Useful links

Ebauche playing at Alphabet Set 10th Birthday

Alex Leonard — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 20:30:08 +0000

Extremely late notice, but I’m playing my first live gig since getting back to Ireland tomorrow night, 10th March 2012, at U, 13 High Street, Dublin 2. I’m playing downstairs and should be starting at 10pm. You’ll be pleased to hear that admission is free!

I’m really looking forward to it and will be playing some work that is in progress for an upcoming release.

It should be lots of fun as the Alphabet Set celebrate 10 years of musical wonder. Official blurb follows!

Alphabet Set : Decade : 10th March

Live

Automatic Tasty
Ebauche
Sixfootapprentice

DJ

Mynameisjohn
Olan
Rodney
Alphabet Set DJ’s

The Alphabet Set are back at 13 High St to celebrate our 10th anniversary with a SERIES of monthly parties that’ll feature a plethora of the artists and DJs that have released, gotten involved, helped out or just caught our ear over the decade. U is the latest and so far the finest incarnation of Molloys where the Alphabet Set ran our first sessions, with two areas of music over 4 floors. Expect to hear vinyl gems from roughly every style and from every era upstairs and live electronic jams in the basement.

Our goal at the time of starting, and still is, to provide a platform for bedroom producers and DJs to get out, play live, perform and release. These sessions will be no different with a mix of up and coming and established names in the monthly melting pot.

Admission is free and session runs 9 – 1.

Joseph Kony

Alex Leonard — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 12:58:21 +0000

Due to his horrendous war crimes, Joseph Kony is the number one criminal on the International Criminal Court’s wanted list. He continues to evade capture.

Whilst the message feels as though it is aimed at the Americans, it is a compelling tale of how one voice ultimately can make a difference. Take 30 minutes out of your day to watch it.

If you do nothing else, share the clip below with your friends and spread the word – it only takes a moment.

Until Joesph Kony is captured and brought to justice, thousands of children still face crisis, abduction and fear.

Kony 2012 Video

Who is Joeseph Kony

Joseph Kony (born 1961 in Odek, Uganda) is a Ugandan guerrilla group leader, head of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a group engaged in a violent campaign to establish theocratic government based on the Ten Commandments throughout Uganda. The LRA say that God has sent spirits to communicate this mission directly to Kony.
Directed by Kony, the LRA has earned a reputation for its actions against the people of several countries, including northern Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and Sudan. It has abducted and forced an estimated 66,000 children to fight for them, and has also forced the internal displacement of over 2,000,000 people since its rebellion began in 1986. As a result, in 2005 Kony was indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court at the Hague, but has succeeded in evading capture since.
from Wikipedia

More information

What do you think? Is it a cause you would subscribe to? Can you spread awareness about this issue?

Update

I don’t want to be cynical, but there is one thing that irks me about this campaign. The core of it feels right and justified. However some of the approaches make me wary. The main one is that instead of freely sharing the tools with which to make a noise about this, the posters, leaflets, stickers and banners are not shared openly – you can only purchase these tools from the Invisible Children group. The only way I could find an image to embed in this post was to take screen captures of their video.

I think the campaign could avoid such cynicism by allowing free download of printable materials. I am not saying they shouldn’t attempt to raise funds themselves, but surely you could have a wider impact by freely distributing the tools of their message.

A web-developer using broadband

Alex Leonard — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 19:20:07 +0000

After years and years of running away from good internet connections, I’m finally going to have a fairly decent internet connection (I hope).

Apparently it should provide me with a download speed of 7.5Mbps. Probably about four times the speed of any previous net connection I’ve had – barring the occasional speed test I got running Mobitel HSDPA, where I sometimes got 6+Mbps.

A short history of my internet connections

2001 in Toronto: 1Mbps, I was in awe having come from dial-up connections
2001 in Dublin: 56Kbps, back to dial-up
2002 – 2005 in Dublin: various connections possibly up to about 2Mbps at peak.
2006 – 2007 in Leitrim: started with 56k dial up for three months (whilst running a web design company), then had probably 2Mbps broadband.
2008 – 2009 in Longford: started with the worst wireless broadband ever, ended up with 1Mbps which was upgraded to 2Mbps – fairly reliable.
2010 – 2011 in Cambodia: varied on various wireless broadband and mobile tethering. Between 512Kbps and 2Mbps. Might have had a faster connection in Hackerspace but can’t remember what that came in at, possible 3Mbps.
2012 – now in Ballycastle: been hammering the bejaysus out of my tethered Three mobile. It’s held up fairly well, generally giving me around 1-2Mbps

As you can see I keep on moving away from places that might provide me with decent broadband. A strange thing to do considering the internet is my bread and butter. I was, for a while, considering moving to Rathlin Island where I would have either had to put up with 512Kbps broadband, or bought a HSDPA antenna booster and hoped to survive on my tethered Three mobile, assuming there were no storms or anything.

I came to my senses and realised that it was time to get a proper internet connection.

A hard day’s coding

Alex Leonard — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 17:37:40 +0000

You know it’s been a hard day’s coding when your browser looks like this.

Praise be for stackoverflow.com, PHP, WordPress, and jQuery.