I have lived in Sydney for just over 18 months since moving to Australia from London and I still have to catch my breath every time I see the bridge. My favourite view of the coathanger is at night when the lighting makes the bridge appear to hover over the dark waters of the harbour. I can imagine myself living in this city for many years and never getting tired of this view!
I recently went to Perth for a holiday (and a tiny bit of work). I don’t know anyone in Perth so put the word out via the Aussie Bloggers forum to see if any bloggers wanted to meet up. It just so happened that a bloggers meetup was happening on the Wednesday I was there and as it was close to where I stayed in Northbridge I went along.
This was the first blogger meetup I’ve attended. There have been Adelaide blogger meetups organised and I’ve never been able to make one for various reasons which makes me feel a bit guilty.
The cold and wet weather kept a lot of people home but there were about eight of us and it was good to meet some other bloggers face-to-face. There was a familiar face as I’d met one of the bloggers at Web Directions South last year. A big crew of Perth people go all the way to Sydney for this conference, and it sounds like they will do so again this year - with a couple of them to present.
But, back to the blogger meetup.
I felt a bit awkward at first because I wasn’t sure what to say and the others knew each other so I initially felt like I’d joined in on a conversation that had already started at a party. But once I got over my initial shyness and once I asked if anyone watches Dexter the conversation went from there. At that stage I’d nearly finished watching season 2 and now I have. I’ve finished the rollercoaster ride Gary! Anyone who’s watches season 2 of Dexter will know what this means.
Just before I had to leave (to put my boy to bed) I passed around a piece of paper to get the URLs of the blogger’s blogs to have a look. They were, Gary Barber - Man with No Blog, Al - My name is Al, Simone - Enjoy Perth, Bret - Free beer, Teresa - ChiBits, and a couple of people left before I got their blog addresses.
The above crew weren’t the only bloggers I met during my week in Perth. Cellobella from Red Sultana met us on Saturday morning, also in Northbridge. It was lovely to meet her, have a coffee, watch my son (the photographer) take a heap of photos of us and everyone else in the establishment, and talk blogging and other things. I haven’t yet tried the no-knead bread but I want to give it a go.
If I had the money, it would be great to travel and incorporate blogger meetups around Australia and the rest of the world into part of the travelling. It would be good fun, provide blog fodder, and you could find out the good shopping spots from a local before you arrived rather than on your last day.
Making the world an easier place to live.
Many companies, organisations, managers and designers recognise the importance of testing new ideas on users and customers before putting them into practice. Unfortunately user-testing is often bypassed with the excuse that there is insufficient time or money. Even worse, some designers think they know their client’s or employer’s customers well enough that they don’t need to bother asking them.
The fact is that it is simply not possible to read the minds of the potentially vast range of users and customers that a web, print or industrial designer, architect, engineer or other design professional has to develop a product or installation for.
Usability Challenge 2008 raises awareness of the importance of user and customer testing by saying “Hey, we’re customers … we’re suffering from bad design decisions … and we’re going to let you know about it”. But it’s more than simply complaining about being on the receiving end of bad design decisions and process. It’s rising up to the challenge to invent a better solution and suggesting it to a company or organisation.
This year’s Usability Challenge is being held on 1 August so if you want to get involved then quickly pick one of the many design frustrations you face daily, come up with a way to fix it and then write to the offending company and let them know!
Hopefully through this united effort we can ensure that user testing is integrated into all design projects, be it designing websites, supermarkets, ATMs, movie ticket queues, elevators, pay parking machines or toasters.
For my contribution to the Usability Challenge this year I think I’ll be writing to the ANZ bank with some suggestions on how they could improve some of their online loan application forms as well as fixing their Canberra Centre branch because currently from the seating area you can’t see the numbers of most of the desks in the branch - a bit of an oversight.
So head over to the Usability Challenge 2008 home page now and get involved!
When you think about traditional Australian food the damper must be right up there. It also happens to be really easy to make and pretty cheap to make. I don’t know about the nutritional value, to be fair it probably isn’t that good for you, but in saying that I can’t see how bad it would be at the same time.
Now if you’ve ever checked out any of my recipes before you’ll know that I’m not big on rules and measurements. When I go into the kitchen I’m not interested in measuring every little thing out so you may have to experiment.
So what do you need?
Mix the salt and flour together in a bowl, mix the butter into the flour until it forms a fine crumb mixture (look, if you want more butter, I’m not going to complain). Mix in the water or if you’re feeling posh, milk until it forms a dough. There are some who add a couple of teaspoons of sugar to the mix too, I can go either way on that.
Pop the dough on a tray and put in the pre-warmed oven, what temperature? Ummm like I’m currently using a really old gas oven so I have no idea, um 300? Take a guess and keep an eye on it.
As soon as it has risen and browned on the top take it out, cut it up (or rip it up), spread butter and golden syrup and Robert’s a guy that your aunt married.
If you want to have a snazzy button to link to the Aussie Bloggers Blog and Forum, and don’t have the time to make one up on your own, we have a selection of 29 different buttons - in all varying sizes from the “antipixel” (80×16px) all the way up to photograph size, which, of course, you can resize to fit your own needs. 
They also come in all different colours from green and gold, to the colours of the flag, and even black-and-white. Most of the images feature a map - some have Tasmania, some don’t, but can always add them back in, right? 
As another part of the celebration of six months of existence, we present to you the Aussie Bloggers button collection, suitable for posting on your own site, but remember that you should host it on your own site, as displaying the images as hosted on here is considered hotlinking, and you might wind up facing a surprise.
To help you out with getting the images hosted on your own site, here are a couple of tutorials, the first designed for those with access to their own site’s FTP, and the second for those who don’t have access at all to upload files to their own blog (i.e. Blogger users) -
Before showing the images, you can download all the images by simply saving this Zip file and choosing the one you want out of the selection.
And now, without further ado, here are the 29 buttons that make up the Aussie Bloggers button collection:
