Exactly one year later, I visited @media conference in London where some of the best web developers had gathered. Number of sessions mentioning responsive design: zero.

New ideas spread fast and a few months later even some clients were starting to mention it. At the end of the year it felt more like a natural ingredient in all web projects. That’s how fast things happen in the web industry.

Responsive design is the concept of developing a design so it may adapt nicely to the user’s screen resolution. This is very important since mobile visitors have skyrocketed during the last years, thanks to smart-phones and pads. Mobile browsing was up to 8 % during December 2011 and it will of course continue to increase.

However, it’s not just flipping a switch to make a design “responsive”. First the designers must be able to see beyond fixed-width design, which often is a significant psychological obstacle. It also requires careful consideration of scaling images for best results. Remember that mobile web users have much less patience than desktop users, and mobile internet connections are often considerably slower. This makes loading time an even more major contributing factor to page abandonment, so every second counts.

Using CSS media queries to handle images is often a great idea, but remember that even images with display:none will be downloaded to a mobile device unless you use a clever workaround. Media queries are good at hiding things but not as good at removing them. Some mobile devices are also bad at handling media queries, so try to test your design on several devices.

If the concept seems overwhelming, a step on the way could be to start with what some call “adaptive design”, where you have a set of fixed resolutions. It adheres to a responsive feeling but without the scaling.

Related posts

• Media queries and JavaScript
• Report from @media conference
• Embracing HTML5 and CSS3

In 2004 the actors went on a four-month trip from London to New York. But to make things interesting they decided to go eastward. On motorbikes. At first things went pretty smooth and they reached the borders of Eastern Europe as planned.

Then things started to get a bit more complicated with bureaucracy and corruption, where they often got saved by Ewan pulling the “Obi-Wan” card. Another obstacle was the publicity, since they were often met by welcoming committees and interviewed for television. The duo would rather just be two guys on bikes, enjoying their vacation, but sometimes they had to play along.

The roads got worse in Mongolia and their mood quickly evaporated, but the worst roads were yet to come. Some parts of Siberia were inaccessible so they had to sneak aboard a freight train, and on the infamous Road of Bones they had to hitch a ride with large trucks to cross deep rivers.

It’s a entertaining story about friendship and enduring hard times together. One might be tempted to think that the trip was a walk in the park with their hi-tech gear and expensive BMW bikes, but it looked like a lot of hard work to get through it all.

I’ve been to several of the places they describe, and it’s always interesting to read other people’s impressions about things, or even more so their descriptions of the things I missed. The first thing Ewan noticed in Ulaanbaatar was the same as me – the ugly power station close to the center, drowning the town in dark smoke.

The whole thing is also available on DVD. It’s nothing out of the ordinary, but it’s nice as a reading companion to see the people and environments that are mentioned in the book. There is also a sequel, Long Way Down, where they travel from Scotland to South Africa, but this one is much better in my opinion.

It was bloody cold, so I understand why Alphaville wrote a song about “summer in Berlin” instead of this season. We met old friends, visited strange bars and fought the bitter cold with Glühwein.

As usual we had to go on bunker safari! Took two guided tours down to the Berlin underworld which gave some perspective on the bombings during the later part of WW2. The air-raid bunkers were once packed with people and some rooms had luminous phosphorus paint on the walls, original since 1940 and slightly toxic. We also visited underground shelters which were constructed during the Cold War as protection from nuclear attacks.

The nearby Flak tower in Humboldthain Park was one of several anti aircraft towers constructed in 1941. There is a tour available descending down into the partially-collapsed structure, but unfortunately it is only open during the summer season since the tower is inhabited by bats who hibernate during the winter months.

Der Bloch at Monsterkabinett. Sleepy fellow.

• More photos from Berlin

Related posts

• Fall of the Berlin Wall
• Bunker safari

Bruce’s article is a fine counterweight to the article Our Pointless Pursuit Of Semantic Value by Divya Manian which raised some eyebrows a few weeks back. I think it was somewhat tongue in cheek (which she also admitted in one of the comments), but all opinions are welcome. Be sure to read the response by Jeremy Keith.

In fact, grab a big cup of coffee, read all three articles and make up your own mind.

I wrote quite pessimistic about semantics five years ago in Why Web 3.0 will fail and the demi-god Andy Budd was even more negative in Semantic coding seven years ago. I believe that semantics still have a very long way to go, but at least things are moving forward.

Related posts

• Embracing HTML5 and CSS3
• The new face of HTML5
• Report from @media conference in London

If you think Halley’s comet is rare with its appearance once every 76th year, this day is something extra. Adolphson & Falk wrote the song 10010 in 1984, which is close but no cigar.

On the other hand, dates are theoretical constructs by humans. It’s not like every tree on the planet turns pink today. But still, I think it’s cool. I wonder how many babies will have this epic birth date? And just look at that beautiful URL up there!

Apart from these easy and obvious manipulations, there’s also the trick of a green screen, allowing “on location”-scenes without the actors even leaving the studio. It used to be an obvious trick, but these days it is extremely hard to discover any traces of it. For example, have a look at the movie in my earlier entry The magic of green screen.

But sometimes the prejudices are handled with humor. One of my favorite deliberate misconceptions is the depiction of Bratislava from Eurotrip. Four friends accidentally arrive in Bratislava instead of Berlin, which is portrayed as a war zone and comically feeds on all possible kinds of prejudices against Eastern Europe.

Sometimes the prejudice come quite close to reality, as in Snatch where Avi arrives at US customs after a trip to London:
“Anything to declare?”
“Yeah. Don’t go to England.”
Later followed up by “Yes, London. You know: fish, chips, cup ‘o tea, bad food, worse weather, Mary fucking Poppins…” which caused chuckles from the three Swedes at a cinema in London, and embarrassed silence from the rest of the audience.

But sometimes reality exceeds fiction. Have a look at this tourism shot for Cleveland. It’s probably the worst travel inspiration I’ve ever seen since the Bratislava pun. They shot it in midtown during a dull and gray day and even though it’s meant as a joke, I will never ever go to Cleveland now. :)

Another classic scene from is from Rules of Attraction where Victor plunges through entire Europe. It’s like a collection of the best and worst of Europe put on fast forward.

That scene is of course pure fiction, but if you like the concept, check out these videos where it’s made in real world: Denver to Singapore (and back) in 5 minutes by David DAngelo and Melbourne To London with a Wideangle Lens by Tom Blachford, or why not the solemn Voyage by Marco Aslan.

My advice is to use your own senses on location. Improvise, have fun and don’t be discouraged if it’s raining!

Related posts

• The magic of green screen

• Megan McCormick and Ian Wright are my favorite presenters at Globe Trekker, a show I discovered while being ill in an Australian hotel room. Ian is sometimes a bit loud and obtrusive, but still very entertaining. And Megan is Megan.
• The ex-python Michael Palin may be a bit corny at times, but his curiousity and enthusiasm often gives his shows a bit of charm. There are several series available. Sahara is my favorite, but New Europe and Full Circle are also worthy of a view.
• I mentioned An idiot abroad about a year ago, but it’s still not my cup of tea.

But even though they are charismatic and entertaining, these are all normal people.

Enter Anthony Bourdain. He’s a former chef and author of several books such as the very entertaining Nasty Bits, but maybe most known from the series No Reservations. For seven seasons he’s been traveling all over the globe while trying out strange food. One of my favorite episodes is when he goes to Rome. He’s even more drunk then usual and the entire episode is all shot in black and white Fellini style.

And he’s got attitude. Just watch his take on Gordon Ramsey, burning tons of cocaine and when he meets Bill Murray (who talks about his police trouble in Sweden).

On November 21 Anthony Bourdain returns with a new series called Layover. Stay tuned.

Related posts

• An idiot abroad
• Full Circle
• Nasty Bits

I often enjoy this kind of short movies. If you put your heart into the making, it can make the whole difference. For instance, the old Everest IMAX movie had a big budget and by chance happened to be present at the tragic accident in 1996, but it was still boring and uninspiring. On the other hand, I saw Touching the void on the Gothenburg Film Festival in 2004, a re-enactment of a disastrous climb in the Peruvian Andes. I guess their budget was a tenth of the IMAX film, but the result was far greater.

Here are the films I saw:

• “The Ultimate Ride” features Steve Fisher and his crazy pals who set out to go kayaking in mighty Zambezi River south of the Victoria Falls. Felt like a mix between Ty Pennington and Jackass.
• “A Life Ascending” followed ski guide Ruedi Beglinger, who has chosen a life outside the ordinary. He lives isolated in his self built cottage on a remote glacier in the Selkirk Mountains, reachable only by helicopter. Quite touching.
• “Into Darkness” by John Waller follows three men who explores an underworld cave in the middle of nowhere. I was reminded of my cave descent in New Zealand, but these guys are the real deal. Not recommended if you suffer from claustrophobia.
• “Last Paradise” was a shortened cut of a documentary following the emerge of extreme sports. We see old footage where a bunch of mavericks invent the snowboard, enhance the design of regular surfboards, explore remote glaciers in New Zealand and so on.
• “The Swiss Machine” is about Ueli Steck, a crazy alpinist who speed-climb steep faces. I mentioned him earlier in Adrenaline inspiration as parts of the documentary is available in YouTube.
• The evening ended with one of my favorite short films regarding traveling: “The Longest Way” by Christoph Rehage, who walked across China from Beijing to Urumqi, while growing an insane beard. I mentioned it last year in The bearded journey and the film is available on YouTube.

If you get a chance to see them, they are well worth a view.

Related posts

• 29th Film Festival
• Adrenaline inspiration
• The bearded journey

Then I heard a sullen voice from a tourist, “that’s a nice house”.

A nice house.

Related posts

• Having a nice time in Nice

This is of course only the tip of the iceberg. There are tons of resolutions and variations to consider (for instance have a look at Andy Clarke’s Hardboiled CSS3 Media Queries), media queries are not supported by IE8 or older (live with it) and so on. But when used correctly, media queries can be a powerful tool.

However, media queries are indeed a nice asset when it comes to CSS, but unfortunately they will not prevent the browser from downloading many other things which may be superfluous on mobile devices.

Since many external scripts are large, this could be a problem. For instance, the minified and Gzipped version of JQuery is about ten times smaller in filesize than the regular version. It could also download a lot of images which may be unused on certain devices.

It would be nice to have a media query equivalent for JavaScript and other resources. There are some work-arounds, such as the one described by Peter-Paul Koch in Combining media queries and JavaScript, but I hope this area will improve in the future.

Related posts

• Embracing HTML5 and CSS3