davidthedesigner

au contraire, mon ami

Well here I am, back from Wales. Only just though: because if those Welsh hill farmers had their way I wouldn't be here at all. First of all one tried to knock me down in Dolgellau - and all because I was stood on the pavement looking in a shop window. Admittedly it was an estate agents: perhaps he thought I was about to buy up the whole town (as if! - although most of it does appear to be up for grabs). And then I went walking. With my friend Ray. Up a hill. On a footpath. Except we had trouble finding exactly where the footpath joined the farm track (and, yes, we were using an Ordnance Survey map). So this is where we stopped and asked for some assistance - our position's marked on the satellite image here:

And have you ever spoken to a Welsh hill farmer? Because the first thing is that they flatly refuse to make eye contact with you. And then if you ask them where the footpath is, this is what you get: "no footpath here - sign at the bottom says that." Bloody miserable sod.

And of course there is a footpath there: through the gate and round the dog-leg above the red circle there. Come at it from another direction and here are the footpath signs (on the gateposts there):

So, byddaf yn anghytuno, fy ffrind. You're not going to stop me coming to Wales. And walking on your footpaths.

I missed the launch of the iPad while I was away, of course. Now maybe those Welsh farmers have put me in a grumpy frame of mind. But that's a pig in a poke by Apple standards, isn't it?

a week without blogging: whatever next?

I've been a busy, busy bee me, this past week or so. So no time for blogging I'm afraid. Whatever next? Well another week without blogging, probably. I'm off to deepest, darkest Wales for a few days, where it's rumoured that there's no internet access. But when I get back I'll show you what I've been up to. Promise.

Look after the place while I'm away.

today i'm over there...

...on Mike's new blog.

no post today (apart from this one, obviously)

My TypePad editor is playing up today (I guess it must be the snow). So instead of the usual icons that allow me to do things (like insert images and links and things), I'm getting the above - i.e. that greyed-out area below the word 'Body'. Which turns the job of posting into a chore revolving around a lot of trial and error. And I don't have the time or the patience for that.

Anyway, it means you'll have to wait until another day to read that post about humility. Sorry about that.

this made me smile #101

When the earth moves for you, presumably.

(via my China correspondent)

four score (= 80)

As you'll have noticed, I'm not one of those bloggers that reposts everything I see on the web: I'll leave that up to others. But then I saw this: it's by Bruno Munari. It's from the wonderful (and Spanish - I think) 80magazine, which is well worth a bookmark.

thanks for your feedback guys and (so far one) girl

Well, it's good to know that I'm not here just talking to myself.

Now, here's a question for you: what do graphic designers do when it snows?

Answer: we move the studio outdoors.

are you still with me?

You'd think I'd have learnt my lesson by now, wouldn't you? Tinkering about with the blog layout and settings: it always leads to disaster. Like the time that TypePad lost all of my images (granted that you'd need to have been visiting for an awful long time to remember that).

Anyway, I thought it might not be a bad idea to try and earn a bob or two from what goes on here. Nothing too overt - you know my views on that already. But Google AdSense would make sense, wouldn't it? Or at least it wouldn't be evil, now would it?

OK, so I signed up. And guess what:

All of my RSS subscribers have vanished. Every single one of you.

Thanks a bunch Google.

a few small changes

The new year brings around the time when I like to take a look at this blog and see if I need, or want, to make any changes. And that's what I've been and done - except that this year it's no more than a bit of tinkering about. First, as you may have noticed, I've removed the shop. But only temporarily, since I'm moving it, rather than doing away with it. And moving it because that shop widget was rather cumbersome, especially in the way that it pulled in it's images across the web. So I've decided to move the shop to ebay. That'll take a bit of time to organise, but I'll let you know when it's done.

And then I've had a long think about the "I'm watching these ten" links over on the right. That top ten has been a feature of this blog since it started - way back in 2006. But blogging's changed a lot in that time, hasn't it? Not least because I (no doubt like you) do most of my blog reading these days via a news reader. Which comes as a bit of a shock when I look back at my initial struggles with those beasts. But now I'm happily living with NewsFire: but that means that my reading list - at this morning's count - has extended to 65. And you don't really want a "I'm watching these sixty five" list over there, now do you?

To be honest, I'd wondered whether to do away with the list altogether. Because the other thing that's changed blogging, especially in the last year, is Twitter. And once a blogger starts twittering they stop paying regular attention to their blogging, don't they? And I don't want to point you to a blog when the last post was made two or three months ago. But in the end I've decided to stick with it - at least for the time being. The criteria is that each has to be a blog written by a fellow designer, and they have to post fairly regularly. There's been one addition to the list this year, though: can you spot who it is? (And, of course, one deletion: but it would be very rude of me to tell you who's been chopped.)

this made me smile #100

Well here we are at the beginning of a brand new decade - give or take a non-working day or three. And how appropriate to start it with a smile. The one hundredth as well: I couldn't have planned it better (although it is purely coincidental, I assure you).

I'm guessing that this is where MPs take their cars to be serviced.

(If you're reading this from elsewhere in the world and you don't know what I'm referring to, it's all about redaction.)