boreders

After all too long a delay, I have finally managed to put my ‘web design’ site back online… I’m admitting right now the site is basic, the content is off the cuff, and I fully intend to do more with it later. However, the site has been offline for months and I have more than one link to it hanging around online. Nothing worse than a dead link. Well, okay, there are a lot of things worse than a dead link… but, you know what I mean.

So, I consider the site being back considerable progress. I now have an aching back from leaning over the computer putting the site together, but it’s a positive pain. I hand-coded the whole thing and did the images myself, so all the principles of plain, simple web design remain intact. I couldn’t have lived with myself if I’d used someone else’s template to put my web site online. That would have just been embarrassing.

You can find the new website at backtobasicsweb.com or b2bw.boreders.com – keeping it simple.

In an ideal world, I think technology should be as flexible as possible, meeting myriad needs of the average user in a single compact package. For example, since I got a new computer a while back I have been searching for something that will allow me to blog without having to visit my blogs. I tried MarEdit and WordPress on the iPhone, and now I’m trying Flock, which is not only letting me post to my blogs, but keep an eye on Facebook, Twitter and the World Wide Web. I like that.

I have been plagued with a similar frustration for features around Twitter clients on the iPhone. Ultimately, if the app lets you tweet that should be enough, right? Nah. I’ve tried Twitfire, Tweetie, Echofan, NatsuLion, Tweetdeck, Twitterific, and Tweetie 2 – which is my current primary client. They all have something to offer, but Tweetie 2 has delivered landscape typing, which I’ve been hankering after for an age.

Now, it might not seem to fit into the bracket of technology, but I have been struggling to find a ‘pad’ for work. If I just wanted something with lined paper, I’d be fine, but that isn’t enough. I could pick up a pad from stationery if I wanted something so simplistic. I have seen Oxford notebooks that have hard covers, spiral binding, nooks for keeping loose papers in, and lined pages marked with points to allow you to draw vertical lines for improvised graphpaper, but… I’m at a loss to define exactly what it is that I’m after. I know I need something more, but I’m not entirely sure what that is. Perhaps, I’d like paper that was lined on the front and graphed on the back, with enough weight in the paper to mean I can use a marker on either side without suffering seepage. I undoubtedly would like tabbed page dividers to keep my notes in order, but I’d also quite like some kind of integrated indexing tab dispenser with those narrow colourful tabs that Post-It do. And maybe the card cover of the pad could double up as an impromptu wipeboard… Too far?

So, I find myself plagued by a need for features – might explain the number of hardly used apps on my iPhone. I hunger for functionality… and yet, I wonder whether having found my Holy Grail I won’t be left wanting for just a little bit more.

… Several Words Arranged To Confound preHension.

I currently suffer from a severe case of acronygnorance (see what I did there?) at work, where the TLA (three letter abbreviation ((Yes… abbreviation. An acronym forms a pronouncable word and since when has TLA been anything of the sort?)) ) rules supreme. I, as an upshot of this, find myself staring blankly at emails, notes and documentation bemused by the needless density of hidden meaning generated by a fascination with reducing everything to a minimal length.

When you text someone or post a classified advert in a newspaper, I can understand the need to abbreviate – letter count can cost money and time better spent elsewhere. However, anyone communicating thoughts, intentions or a new process should endeavour to do so with clarity. No one wins over anyone with confusion. Send me a document laced with acronyms and you can expect me to attend the next meeting none the wiser and far from convinced about the point and purpose of your initiative. Want feedback? Sure – stop using stupid acronyms.

Adding a glossary can help, but even that represents a degree of laziness. In theory, a piece of software like Word can actively replace a series of letters with something else – so if you know you intend to use a technical term that begs for an acronym, set it up for automatic replacement. HTML provides an alternative with the ACRONYM tag, which allows you to provide the meaning together with the acronym – revealed simply by hanging over the term in a supporting browser. Perhaps software could provide something similar for those reading documents via computer? That would considerably assist poor sods like myself who struggle to keep up…