Lift blog : news and culture

Walking to the studio

As I left the house this morning I had the urge to turn left instead of right. Rather than turn right, walk 20 yards to the bus stop, sit on the bus for 10 minutes, get off and walk for 5 minutes to the studio, I decided to walk. I always used to walk to the studio from our old house, but in December Clare, Arlo and I moved. Since then I have caught the bus, more for novelty value than anything. I also had an assumption that the walk would be too long.

This morning I decided to see just how long it would take. I turned left, put Takk on the iPod, puled on my new Berghaus gloves and set off. Now I had estimated 45 minutes, but in fact it took me 27. Easily 'do-able' on a daily basis, but I need to find a slightly different route away from the traffic fumes.

My cheeks are a little rosy, but I'm more awake than sitting on a bus and will be doing it more often. Plus it gives me more time to listen to music on the way in and think...

National Geographic is clairvoyant

Someone on Signal vs Noise posted that this story was published in October 2004 in National Geographic.

What we are doing

We are enjoying every minute of being with Arlo.
We will soon be able to announce what we have been working on for the past few months.
We are trying out the beta of evnt.
We are looking forward to the weekend.
We love Growl.

Outage expected, normal service to resume shortly...

Clare and I are shortly expecting the release of baby Carey, version 1.0. Actually at any moment. Normal service will resume shortly! In the meantime, some current thoughts:

I am currently teaching the MA Information Design students at the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication. They are already taking the brief I set them into areas I had not thought of.

Quark have announced Quark 7. OpenType support amongst other things. It is still InDesign for me though.

It is a Sunday, which must mean going to IKEA...

I dread going to IKEA. Not because of what they sell, but because of the crowds, the checkouts, the car parking etc. It turns what could be a good shopping experience into a bad one. This has improved recently by us going to a different IKEA (we used to go to Wembley, but now we go to Bristol). Same travel time but less stress.

While standing in the queue yesterday, I was thinking 'why don't IKEA offer online shopping?

It fits into their ethos of low-cost, choose it yourself shopping. In the UK they use 3rd-party delivery firms, so that side of it would need strengthening (do not get me started on those delivery companies). But it would make sense for them, and surely increase revenue, especially for those of us that cannot face the trip to a store.

Well looks like it may happen.

No news is good news, so they say

The Lift blog has been a bit sparse of late, mainly due to a week away in Cornwall. It was a chance for us to relax, and we hired a cottage from Classic Cottages, took the walking boots and our new kite (a Flexifoil Super 10) and had a great time. Just taking in the colour and scenery down there has inspired us no end.

some links...

I have not posted to the Lift blog for a while, as I have been distracted by work and del.icio.us! So to make up for it, here are a few random links:

• New website from GAWDS
• Just installed refer from textism and loving it!
• NetNewsWire 2.0 beta
• Watch these people as they have a piece of amazing software on the way!

Hit by a spam attack

Sorry for the problems with the Lift blog over the weekend -- we were hit by a movabletype comment spam attack :(

So have had to delete some old posts, and turn comments off for now.

time to get serious...

the tour de france hits the mountains today, and now things get interesting. the first week is for the sprinters, and i enjoy it, but this is what the tour is all about for me. big hills, searing heat, mad crowds and one rider doing the ride of his life up a mountain. :)

war of the worlds...

sci-fi geek hat on time, with some great war of the worlds links from blackbeltjones.

What webloggers are reading this summer...

A really interesting list, and puts me to shame. I am working my way through a wonderful birthday present from Clare -- a box set of classic 60s fiction. Just finished Papillion, which I never got around to reading. The design of the covers is great!