Me, Far left.

Well it finally happened, i have shorn my hair. Well to be more precise, mike did it for me. It’s shorter than it’s been since i was about 5, but i could feel it was time for a change, and time for something more practical and low maintenance, i have enough on my plate without having to wash my ‘fro every day. Plus i’m sick of sweating profusely after cycling to Uni every morning! So there it is below, unfortunately having less hair means you see more of my ugly mug!

“You should never try/do things because you don’t feel part of the crowd, i think. And i’m not talking about being an individual in the cliche sense. But if we truly do only have one life you should feel no need to fit in. If you don’t then…you’re different and that is not a bad thing.”

- The wisdom of my friend Ross.

I’ve got a nice stockpile of interesting links built up in my “read later” list, i thought i’d have a trawl through them and share the ones i saw some serious value in.

Before i delve into my reading list, you should check out “Please start from the beginning” by Ryan Taylor. Loads of great interviews with some inspiring web designers. Hearing them talk about their past experiences in the world of web design really gives you a sense of what’s to come if you’re an aspiring web design or developer.

Getting things done for students is a pretty solid read through of what the GTD system is and how to implement it for the hectic student/assignment based lifestyle. I won’t be trying it (because i know i’ll fail) but i may adopt certain parts and bend them to my own needs.

404 best practices is a post from Chris Coyier over at CSS-tricks (add it to your RSS reader!) which is a really awesome site for things web related, not just CSS. Chris’ site is where i first learned jQuery, and a lot of CSS techniques that i now use daily.

Lessn is a freaking awesome and super-simple URL shortener from Shaun Inman that you can implement on your own site, or use on a shorter domain. When the debate about URL shortening services was raging on, i bought dan-m.com, and have now set it up to work with Lessn for my own personal link shortener. Super simple and free.

And while we’re on that subject, here’s a tutorial from Nettuts on how you can do it yourself using some pretty nifty .htaccess stuff. Definitely worth a look.

Also, i’ve been thinking a lot about getting my new combination blog/portfolio site up and designed really well, and this article about the Erskine design redesign really kicked my creative gears into…well, gear.

Ok, so there’s a few links for you to peruse over your last cup of tea of the night, let me know if you find anything useful here or build anything cool with the tutorials.

Whether the task is writing, design, or hanging a picture straight, it is obvious that we do our best work when healthy, rested, refreshed, alert, and eager to do the job for its own sake.

I’ve found myself stepping away from work that needs done because my mind just can’t focus on it, and feeling guilty for sleeping at times. But when i come back to it, refreshed and thinking clearly, the results are always more within my grasp.

Go to the article at zeldman.com →

I’ve been suffering from the consequences of a terrible decision for the past few months, and the only thing that has brought any consolation is in the form of my friends, they make me smile, keep me motivated, and don’t judge me on my mistakes.

My First Wallpaper

I was playing around in photoshop a little today and became inspired by the line from shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. This is the finished result. Nothing special, but very nice and decorative i feel, and motivational

Cry Havoc, and let Slip The Dogs Of War.

You can download the full size image here and one sized for your laptop here.

If you like it, please tweet this link to your friends, the short URL to this page is in the top right hand corner.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert.

Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear:

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Eventually, all men, and their empires, no matter how great. Will fall.

A few moments later, i tweeted about said headphones mentioning that “i was in the market for some new ones, and that these looked interesting”

BAM! i was hit with a tweet from @siege telling me they could hook me up. Did i mention i love twitter?

So i bought some, i got a launch discount on them, but i paid for shipping to the UK, so i paid just as much as anyone who bought them in the US, maybe even more.

The general consensus? they are amazing.

I wanted to give it a few weeks before i reviewed them so that i could let the initial novelty wear off so i could give them a proper review, so here it is:

Build Quality

These headphone’s are friggin’ built for the army, the sheathed cabling is just the best thing in the world, they never tangle! and even when they do it’s so loose that one pull has you back to linear form, The only parts that i don’t like are the actual connection where the cord enters the headphone, it looks a little bit short, giving a lot of possible room for failure. There’s also a right angled “clip” thing near the base of the cord, which you can swoop round the little hole in your mp3 player or phone to hold it, and it prevents the jack coming flying out too if your phone or mp3 player gets dropped groundwards or you tug on the ‘phones upwards, handy feature, but neither my phone or iPod have these loop-holes, so it just kind of gets in the way for me.

Sound

Ah, the sound, is fantastic, there’s maybe a little too much bass, but this could be something that’s an issue with all “really far in your ears” headphones? i’m not sure. Sometimes i think that some of the more bright parts of some songs barely come through, but that could be an issue with the actual song’s mixing. Comparisons seem to put it on the side of being the song’s fault. These have spectacular sound for the price, particularly at loud volumes.

Funnily enough, just as i was thinking about writing about the “noise cancelling” part of this review, my dad tapped me on the shoulder and scared the living shit out of me, proof that they do, in fact, block out most sound from the region around me, more energetic bass sounds however do come across ever so slightly, but it’s to be expected. Speech is inaudible at half volume.

The Fit

The most notable thing i wanted to mention in this review was that, while the earphones are great, and sound amazing when they’re in your ear, actually getting them in there, and getting them to stay there, and be comfortable, is actually quite a pain.

The headphones ship with a bunch different rubber caps for the headphones, to allow you to get best fit, but there are NO instructions on how to choose the best one other than just trying them all. These are the first pair of inner-ear headphones that i’ve owned i didn’t know what i was doing, i’ve settled on the mid-sized white caps for now, but they sometimes fall out, particularly if i’m talking or laughing.

Apart from that though, while they’re in, they’re actually quite comfortable.

Notable Mentions

I’d like to thank the great people behind the Siege twitter account (@siege) for hooking me up and helping me out with getting a pair sent across the atlantic.

All in all, these are an amazing pair of headphones for less than you would pay for a pair of sennheisers, and shipping to the uk is only about £7/8 so go grab a pair now.