The Rissington Podcast

Episode twenty

therissingtonpodcast@gmail.com (Jon Hicks and John Oxton) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 01:02:59 +1100

Stupidly, we recorded this one when we were both knackered, and it shows. It’s the longest we’ve done yet, and we’ve had to edit it to within an inch of it’s life to make it vaguely listenable! Anyway, for better or for worse, here’s episode 20!

Housekeeping!

Mark Boulton’s Designing for the Web, the best book we’ve seen in a long time. It’s a triumph!
We’re moving away from the RAF base at Rissington to the cute Cotswold town of Burford

The lovely folks at Sitepoint have given us 5 copies of Ian Lloyds “How to build your first website the right way using HTML and CSS” to give away. We also endorse this book. Email us by March 28th with suggestions for a new name for the podcast!

Links!

Simon Clayson’s IE6 filtering technique as used on this site.
The Tweed Run mentioned by Mr Dennis
Places to visit near Moreton-in-the-Marsh Batsford Arboretum, Wellington Aviation Museum and Stow on the Wold
Dude a day, which one are you?
Butter Label
The RYDA Bear
Beep! Beep! It’s Chav Pingu
Cheeky Monkey was also mentioned
Jason Santa Maria’s Recommended Books
Mister Nice Hands

Robin Reliant made into raft

Episode Nineteen - Xmas Special

therissingtonpodcast@gmail.com (Jon Hicks and John Oxton) — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 04:12:13 +1100

We wish you a merry festive period and a satisfactorily refreshing New Year.

Can you spot all 3 subtle earworms in this podcast?

Linky-poos

Caine blows the gaff on end of a cult classic

Linky-poos by John Oxton, not Simon Clayson but please email Simon if there is any missing links.

User experience design links

A few regular spots John Oxton visits for UX info:

User Interface Engineering

Finally, the Nielsen Norman Group Report on Agile Usability: Best Practices for User Experience on Agile Development Projects is a whopping $84 for the PDF but if you are a designer inside an Agile Development team and you are struggling with the whole thing, I thoroughly recommend it for you and your colleagues.

Episode Eighteen

therissingtonpodcast@gmail.com (Jon Hicks and John Oxton) — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 02:12:30 +1100

After the 3rd recording attempt, we’ve sorted out our recording problems, and we’re back with a backlog-clearing, hour long marathon!

Loads of links below, first however, we need to post the information from Steve Marshall regarding location of servers:

Search Engines and Geographical Location of Servers

On episode 14, you were asked about search engines and the geographical location of your servers. I asked an SEO about this, and he had the following to say:

Google uses the IP of your server, initially, to determine your target audience. So an IP in the UK will rank more favourably in Google.co.uk than google.com for searches. Further to this, the users use of the ‘pages from cc’ could flush your rank from SERPs if the IP is outside the selected cc. Current suggestion is somewhere between 10% to 18% of searches use country searches.

Using a ccTLD will balance out or over-ride a non-agreeing IP geolocation but the geolocation of the IP and the ccTLD are of similar influence so a ccTLD over a geolocated IP should not be relied on alone.

You can also use Google Webmaster Tools to specify a target market, again improving your ranking in that market and helping inclusion on ‘pages from cc’ searches.

Furthermore, Google’s perception of markets of inbound links can also affect this: if you have lots of inbounds from the UK, you’re perceived to be more apt to the UK market than someone with lots of inbounds from, say, Germany.

Oh, and if you correctly identify your audience—if you use Adsense—that can also make a difference.

Hope that helps!

(Sorry it took so long to post Steve, and thanks for the information!)

Linky-poos

Give up and use tables

Sassoon Primary

Squeezy Condensed Milk

Duxford

Bletchley Park

Hicks Radiohead Stylophone magic

Font of the week, Scala

Dropbox

Growl

Agile development with Jakob Nielsen

Stinky cheese

Orchestrate

Javascript drum machine from Cameron Adams

The Rissington Podcast on the BBC

Episode Seventeen

therissingtonpodcast@gmail.com (Jon Hicks and John Oxton) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 01:09:31 +1000

Recorded on the 7th July, and finally edited and released! Hopefully, we’ll record a new one next week…

Housekeeping Linkage

The Rissington Bear flag made by Ben Ward, now residing in our office
The Monotype Specimen Book sent by Kate Bolin
The Daily Chegwin

DropBox which we absolutely adore!

Questions Linkage

Shorpy, the 100 year photo blog
How to spot the difference between the right and wrong Firefox logos
The TED Talk with a tour of Rome
Information about Swap Shop

Marcus Lillington and Bob Carolgees , you never see them together.

Competition!

We have a license for the excellent Trading Eye the standards compliant ecommerce solution to giveaway!

How to Enter : Get someone to film you doing your best Spitfire impression in a public place, upload it to Flickr, and tag it with ‘iamrissingtonspitfire’. We’ll pick the one we like best, and notify you by carrier pigeon. Competition closes 10th October – good luck!

Episode Sixteen

therissingtonpodcast@gmail.com (Jon Hicks and John Oxton) — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 11:09:40 +1000

“Earworms”

Summer break is over and we’ve finally had a chance to edit a show recorded back in June! We were blessed with plenty of flying aircraft noise in this episode, so it all sounds nice and authentic. Also I forgot to do the levels on this one, but never mind, I’m sure you’ll cope!

Linky-Poos

The History of RAF Rissington by Ray Deacon et al.
The Fort outside the office
The glorious Microformats advert by Stuart Langridge, which was about all we had to say on the subject!
It wasn’t this David Jacobs, at least we don’t think so.
For colour help, we suggested Molly’s Book Color for Websites, Adobe’s Kuler site
Some information about Toast Toppers, for those who have never tried the gloopy wonder.
The Firefox Lady of which Mr Hicks does not approve. A logo shouldn’t need boobies to make you notice it, dammit.

Chris Messina’s collection of interface patterns

Any ideas for a theme? Leave a comment!

Episode Fifteen

therissingtonpodcast@gmail.com (Jon Hicks and John Oxton) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 01:07:55 +1000

The one where we meet “The One They Call Fido Gesiwuj”

Link Poos

Comics we read: Buster, Beano, Cheeky, Look In, 2000AD, Warror, Deadline and Eagle.
Domain registars mentioned: Cheapnames, Easily and 123 Reg
The Star Wars Lego walkthrough
The brilliant Alarm will sound covering the Aphex Twin
Our Last.FM accounts: John Oxton and Hicksdesign
John endorses Wusthof Classic chef knives, sharpened by Taylors
Mutiny over the Bounty by John Shuttleworth, grieving for the loss of the cardboard tray in the Bounty Bar.

Will it Blend?

Episode Fourteen

therissingtonpodcast@gmail.com (Jon Hicks and John Oxton) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 11:06:25 +1000

Comin’ atch from the ‘wolds!

This episodes Linky Poos

Not many linkys this week – there more abstract concepts than usual.

asv_tumblog plugin for Textpattern
Chryp, the lightweight blogging engine.
We use Samson USB Condenser microphones and record CD quality in Audio Hijack Pro. The recorded file is then levelled in the genius Levelator and put together in Garageband.

Stinking Bishop cheese. Smells like arse, tastes lovely

Episode Thirteen

therissingtonpodcast@gmail.com (Jon Hicks and John Oxton) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 10:06:10 +1000

The episode in which we give you space for reflection.

This episode’s linky-poos:

Sender of the stickers The Fawcett Inn
Tea Cosy, Teamrooms
Tony Hart
Take Hart
The amazing adventures of Morph (youTube)
Upper Rissington
RAF Little Rissington
DOM scripting
JavaScript: The Definite Guide
jQuery
Source of the GOOD MEAT about 2.05 mins in Stalins brother the babysitter (youTube)
Mouseposé
OmniDazzle
ScreenFlow
Metal Mickey
Metal Mickey theme tune (youTube)
Tascam US122L USB2 audio interface
Logic Express
JML toastbags
Coldplay iTunes ad
That cheesy pony ad tune
Cockney Rhyming Slang

Graphics Editor or Text Editor?

Episode Twelve

therissingtonpodcast@gmail.com (Jon Hicks and John Oxton) — Thu, 29 May 2008 09:05:58 +1000

Being the episode where all 4 of us in Team Rissington share 2 mics. We also implement a swear-box, with donations going to our breakfast baps and Quake Aid Casserole.

The Linky-Poos!

Finding the central meeting point of several addresses on a map Mezzoman
We’re mentioning and linking to the WordCamp UK Wiki and Mailing List because Ian asked very nicely.
Kev Adamsons question generated an ad about Yurt Camping in Wales
The panel mentioned the glorious Speak your Branes, and suggested The Serif, AceJet, Dieline (packaging design blog), Monoscope and Textism.
Brands we love and are inspired by: Howies and Lego.
The embedded player in the podcast comes courtesy of jnm_audio textpattern plugin.

Phil Sherry’s charity Eyefund

BBC Wales uses arial instead of Verdana

Please no more questions about Textpattern, Fireworks or favourite text editors!

Episode Eleven

therissingtonpodcast@gmail.com (Jon Hicks and John Oxton) — Wed, 21 May 2008 01:05:41 +1000

The Texpattern appreciation episode or, if you prefer, the diss Paul Boag episode.

This episode’s linky-poos:

Bite Size Standards
Elbow
Textpattern
Hicksmade.com
Unlimited Custom Fields plugin for Textpatterm
Unlimited Categories plugin for Textpattern
TextCommerce ecommerce for Textpattern, currently in Alpha
Trading Eye ecommerce solution
Fontstuct online font creator.
Fontforge open source font editor
Fontlab Studio the professional font editor app.
Angel Delight DON’T MIX WITH FRUIT!
Nice cup of tea and a sit down
Textpattern Resources
Textpattern tag list
Textpattern Tumblelog plugin

Dancing priest