This week SitePoint published an article entitled Design contests made me a better designer and tell their side of the story with the help of a designer who has done well for himself through contests. You’ll notice healthy doses of promotion for both 99Designs and said designer throughout the article.

In the end, the whole editorial angle on this article amounts to a load of spin and is quite telling of the defensive stance SitePoint has taken on the issue.

Other links

• NO!SPEC
• Spec work in the Internet age
• Andy Rutledge on re-design contests
• Zeldman: Don’t design on spec

Once you start getting a few such libraries going on a site, you can end up with a whole pile of script includes in your header for minor user interface enhancements here and there. This can be a hassle to deploy over various page templates/master pages/etc, particularly if you work with large sites. More importantly, you want to minimise requests to the server if they’re not necessary - it’s been shown that reducing HTTP requests can reduce response times and improve server performance.

There are various ways you can reduce HTTP requests from the front-end (like using CSS sprites to reduce image requests, aggregating CSS and JS files), but the tip I want to share is to not include multiple javascript libraries (eg. jQuery plug-ins) on your pages but having your main JavaScript file load the relevant libraries on demand, as the need arises.

JQuery has a handy method for dynamically loading script files: $.getScript()

But you don’t want to load all libraries on $(document).ready (thus when each page loads), instead you only want a plug-in to load when it’s needed. You can do this by testing for the existence of the relevant element(s) first. You can’t do this (as I found when I looked at Firebug’s console) by saying:

if ($(".tabs")) {
	$.getScript(URL, callback function)
}

This will work in other helper libraries like MooTools (as it’s just short form for document.getElementById), but jQuery will return an array of all matched elements, so even if that array is empty it will never return false. This is actually a good feature of jQuery as you don’t have to test for the existence of anything before applying behaviours.

There’s an easy way to get around this (which wasn’t obvious to me right away). Make sure the array length is greater than zero, of course:

if($(".tabs").length > 0) {
	$.getScript(URL, callback function)
}

So a more complete code snippet would look like:

$(document).ready(function(){
	if($(".tabs").length > 0) {
		$.getScript("/scripts/jQuery.idTabs.js", function(){
			$(".tabs").idTabs();
		});
	}
});

Basically, if you include that snippet in your main JS file, then whenever you have an element with given the class “tabs”, then it will load idTabs.js from the location specified and then initialise Sean’s neat script, and you’ll have yourself nice easy tab behaviour.

Thanks to my co-worker buddy Nick at the Valley for introducing me to the $.getScript feature in jQuery.

It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.

BusinessWeek, May 25 1998

So you can’t go out and ask people, you know, what the next big [thing.] There’s a great quote by Henry Ford, right? He said, ‘If I’d have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me “A faster horse.”‘

Fortune, CNNMoney.com

These are really insightful quotes, especially if you work in creating anything for a consumer mass market. The big point here is that you can and should design for users but you can’t expect users to tell you how to innovate. What you find when you read more about Apple’s ethos is that the big innovations in design come from when you design for yourself. Make something *you* would want to use.

There are big advantages to designing for yourself. As a designer for the web, I know my strongest designs come about when I fall directly into the main segment of the target audience. I immediately know when the design is solid, and I can easily justify design decisions when they are questioned.

Joshua Porter’s Bokardo.com featured an article earlier this year entitled personas and the advantages of designing for yourself, which went into some detail about the use of personas (personae?) For those not in the know, personas are fictitious user profiles created to describe different typical users of a website. He talks about how this process is unnecessary when you are designing for yourself. In the end, it really just boils down to working on projects that you feel passionate about. Or at least (in my case) owning a part of a project for which you can develop a passion over. I think I’ll call this a “creative enthusigasm“.

I look forward to and really get into design projects where I am essentially designing something that is aimed to appeal to me, and that I have some level of ownership over. If I love the end product, then it would hopefully follow that there will be users out there who feel the same way.

The interface is really easy to use and it looks as though this is aimed at your average non-designer web user, with easily navigated albums and photo editing interface.

This is really setting a new benchmark in rich web apps. The beta is available for a test drive now.

Any web developers that spend any time using CSS would be familiar with the Firebug add-on for Firefox. (If you don’t have it, get it. It is the best web development and diagnostics tool out there.)

Having become completely dependent on this tool, the first thing I noticed when I upgraded Firefox a while back (well, it upgraded itself) is that it no longer worked for inspecting links and images (a and img elements). I had a bit of a search around and found that there was a problem with something called dom-utils in the latest Firefox.

The temporary solution I came up with (until the next Firefox release hopefully) was to reinstall Firefox 2.0.0.11. I did it straight over the top without uninstalling and everything went fine (Windows XP Pro). I found somewhere that also said installing the latest Firebug beta would also solve the problem.

Related links

• Bugzilla.Mozilla.org - Bug 416896
• Firebug
• Firefox 2.0.0.11

Naz Hamid has written about perfecting your designs by paying attention to all the little details. I wasn’t hugely impressed by this article. I echo some of the comments made in that the article didn’t offer a lot of original insights (”less is more” and “take a 15-minute break now and then”), but I guess the importance of an eye for detail and getting all the little finishes into your designs is worth the reminder.

On Creativity by Andy Rutledge sparked a lot more interest from me. What creativity is, and what being “a creative” means, needs clarification within the context of the business of design. Particularly relevant is his discussion of constraints being the source of creativity and not its enemy. Creativity being technical and analytical, and not merely self-expression also rang true.

Creativity is…

…never having to say you’re sorry. Creativity is precious; it is a glowing light that resides within each one of us, making us special and unique…

Well, not really.

Explaining creativity as the process of understanding in detail, problem-solving and qualitative discrimination that comes from a specialist extends beyond design and into other disciplines and business in general. In a nutshell, Andy is saying that creativity in the design and business world is about having a disciplined and intelligent approach to solving problems, then using your specific skills to deliver what clients are paying you for, and not just sharing your innate uniqueness with the world.

While on creativity, I recently came across this video of a talk by Sir Ken Robinson. This entertaining talk (in an old-academic-dad kind of way) discusses how our school systems are completely skewed against creativity and in fact are geared towards drumming the creativity out of people. It’s worth a watch (or listen) if you have 20 minutes to spare. In fact those TED talks have some interesting presentations by some pretty big names.

So the web awards winners have been announced. The very talented mob at Preloaded took out the game category as well as best of show with Launchball, a great time-wasting (and educational) puzzle game for the Science Museum. Congrats!

The winner of the art category was Viscosity, a neat flash toy that lets you create cool abstract pieces at the stroke of a brush (er, mouse). It’s a shame Wolff Ollins didn’t get their hands on this tool when they were designing the London 2012 logo. Might have come up with something a bit nicer… (Oooh was that bitchy / unoriginal / hackish? Do I care?)

So, as far as a redesign goes, I’m at the sketching stage at the moment, but I’m thinking even cleaner while improving the visual hierarchy, less cruft around the edges and more focus on typography and a very strict grid structure. I also plan to post more design-related bits and bobs.

Now I know I’ve promised a few people some more travel stuff so I’m going to mix it up a bit and keep posting photos up here. I particularly want to put a few more shots taken in Mexico and South America as well as the other stops around the place.

I’ll leave yas with this fun little piece of motion graphics - What if the opening titles of Star Wars were designed by Saul Bass:

The significant other and I are still living it large in London-town. We’ve just returned from a little play over in Portugal with Em and Ads, having visited Lisbon, Evora and Porto, where port originated (but not a whole lot of BBQ chicken).

I’ve not long ago got my RSS feeds going again and have been feverishly trying to digest the Internet… The latest from my feeds:

Mr Speaker comes to terms with the Gregorian calendar (in his own inimitable way) and Laura got a pasta machine (*ahem* dinner invite). This news is a few weeks old now, but I still think it is worthy of a mention, Kris is now a granny in blog years, having recently celebrated her 7th blog-birthday. Amazing!

Elsewhere, the ever useful Smashing Magazine continues dealing good web-geek gear with it’s list of Shopping cart examples (very useful to me in my current line of work), David Airey recently having retrieved his site back from the hands of an unscrupulous cracker makes it into How Design’s top 10 websites for designers and the very instructive Digital Web lays out some tips (and fine examples) on creating the perfect portfolio. Awesome.

Meanwhile at work, Snow Valley has relaunched Majestic Wines (cited as a good example of a shopping cart at Smashing Magazine), the online stores of Levi’s Europe (lot’s of Mootools and AJAX goodness!), MFI furniture and a host of others. It’s been busy as hell these last few months.

So, what’s happening in your world then? Do share…

Via Ffffound!

A short list of highlights (and the odd low point):

• Travelling through 11 countries spanning four continents (so far)
• Scuba diving in Thailand and Vietnam
• Like, pretty much all of Mexico
• Having my laptop stolen in Peru
• Still in Peru, kicking arse on the Inca Trail to get to Machu Picchu
• Getting set up in London. It’s already been 5 months here now!
• Getting a new job doing challenging new work
• Making about no. 53 on David Airey’s top 50 list of design blogs. LOL. That’s pretty good for the amount of effort I put in around here. If I work hard I think I can make it to number 51 next time.

I’d like to keep adding more photos and stories of the last few months of travel prior to arriving in London, so I’ll probably be mixing that in with the usual design and geek stuff.

To all my friends and family back home, missing you guys heaps, please stay well, I’ll be home soon to share a drink! In the meantime, any of you from the Oz crew want to doss in my lounge room, the airbed is yours.

I’ll leave you with this thought:

PS Don’t forget to sponsor a mo for Movember!

During the name server change over, I’ve had to slightly reconfigure my blog database and mailbox settings, so I’ve only just realised that I’ve missed a couple of days of mail, plus a an extra “w” in “www” (”wwww”) when I was playing around with the database broke the blog for a little while, but all should be in a reasonably tidy state now. Just cleaning up a few loose ends (like a few odd characters showing up on the blog here and there) and catching up on the last couple of days worth of emails.

Now for a post or two…

This is not just another in a recent trend toward “design contests” but a whole community site purpose-built around them. The otherwise respectable web development authority, SitePoint has become the posterchild for speculative work. I find this quite disappointing form for SitePoint.

In case none of this makes sense, here’s some background:

What is spec work:

…any requested work for which a fair and reasonable fee has not been agreed upon, preferably in writing

Basically, you do creative work in exchange for the possible opportunity to get paid, without any guarantees. This idea has become quite popular in recent times in the advertising and creative spaces. Large full-service creative agencies are often in the position to pitch on spec work, but young individuals trying to get their break are less able to afford to spend hours on designs with no guarantee of remuneration. This idea devalues the graphic/web design industry and seems to be fairly unique to the creative space. I can’t think of any other professional service that would be expected to complete the service first when providing a price, and only then given the chance to be selected from a host of others.

An analogy, quoted from David Airey:

I went for a dental check-up yesterday. After the dentist inspected my teeth, she suggested some work to prevent further tooth decay. I told her to go ahead, and if the dental work was satisfactory, I’d be more than happy to pay. She responded that she wouldn’t be able to do that, because she normally provides a service when a fee is agreed upon up-front. I said I’d let her know after I checked in with other local dentists.

Design contests

In this case, many of the posted “contests” are not really contests, merely freelance labour auctions with creative work thrown in up-front. Many “prizes” offered are $150 - $200. A prize that is less than the market rate for what was produced. I find that somewhat exploitative…

This concept attracts clients who think design is a commodity rather than a service, and have a very low regard for this profession. I really do wonder about the businesses that are submitting these contests. Putting being a designer aside, I would have a fairly low trust level for a company that held a competition to have its logo or website designed and awarded a prize of $200 for it. I also wouldn’t have high hopes for the design they ended up with either. As always, you get what you pay for.

One thing I will say for SitePoint, they at the very least safeguard the copyright of all entrants’ work. According to the contest rules, copyright ownership is only transferred upon the winner accepting the prize. This is unlike many other contests, where the contest organiser retains ownership of all submitted entries. I find that idea unfathomable.

I realise that not everyone will agree with me on this one, and yes, designers aren’t forced to participate in these contests, obviously. But I would encourage young designers (any designers and agencies, really) to avoid engaging in these design contests and any other forms of speculative work as they only serve to harm our industry in the long run.

Other links

• NO!SPEC
• Spec work can damage your business
• Andy Rutledge on re-design contests
• Zeldman: Don’t design on spec

I’ve recently been using grids of thumbnails to link to Flickr photos as they relate to blog posts (e.g. my previous post). One thing I’ve wanted to do is find a way to show these images without sending viewers over to Flickr and away from my site for fear that they might get lost (if they are navigationally challenged) or simply be pulled into something more interesting and not return. This would be a good excuse to add a little Script.aculo.us and AJAX sweetness to my blog posts.

What I needed was:

• To be able to embed images into blog posts and just link to my Flickr account rather than hosting the photos myself;
• A list of thumbnails for when there are several images to show;
• To avoid encouraging users to go off-site without resorting to pop-ups and such;
• A JavaScript solution, ideally, but I wanted to avoid adding more libraries (e.g. Mootools) and if possible re-use the ones my already rather bloated Wordpress theme already uses (in this case Prototype).

Solution:

Here’s an example of the end product. Click on the thumbnails…

Plaza de las Tres Culturas

Monument at Plaza de las Tres Culturas

Statue of JPII

Basilica de Guadalupe

Obsidian carving

Temple of the Moon at Teotihuacán

At the Temple of the Sun at Teotihuacán

You can hit escape, click the close button or anywhere outside the box to close the overlay. Mouse over the image and click on previous or next to view other images (when part of a series). Even use keyboard shortcuts (P and N). NICE.

For this I had to use my many and varied skills (such as searching on Google, copying and pasting code snippets, checking my Facebook) to come up with the best solution. The end result was shamefully easy and involved:

• Floating the thumbnails and captions in a grid (using a DL element) was a nice reusable way of displaying the thumbnails regardless of container and text size. TJK Design has a good scalable technique for this.
• Modal windows are becoming a good solution for contextual user interactions when used appropriately. They are becoming fairly familiar to users, especially those who use Windows Vista (where they have the annoying tendency to come up every 10 seconds or so), and are quite appropriate for viewing larger images in the context of a gallery.
• Using AJAX to load the images (as I wanted to load an external image rather than load all the images within the page or launch another window).

I found a few great contenders but I settled on the very excellent Lightbox 2 by Lokesh Dhakar, as it did exactly what I needed, looked good and used prototype and script.aculo.us. If I wanted overlays in general for other interactions or content, I would have gone with one of the scripts previously mentioned, or the very cool ModalBox, and if I was using the Mootools JavaScript framework (which would have been ideal, I really like Mootools) I would have used MOOdalBox.

I was pleased to find I didn’t need to really hack any JavaScript out at all in order to get this going, I just had to make a few changes here and there to tie it in with my current Wordpress scheme.

This type of interaction is something you will see more often in sites rich in functionality. I’m currently starting to use these type of techniques at work in order to build user friendly standards-based e-commerce user interfaces. The down side of the ease of using these types of libraries is that it’s very possible there will be a flurry of overuse leading to massive user annoyance. Use wisely…

Day 112 - 117, Mexico City

After saying goodbye to Carter and Jade who put us up for another night in their funky converted office apartment in Dallas, 15 March saw us fly from Dallas-Fort Worth to Benito Juarez International Airport in Mexico City. With our trusty Lonely Planet Guide to Mexico in hand, Meg and I took a cab to the Centro Historico of Mexico City to Hostel Moneda, around the corner from the Zócalo, the Palacio Nacional (National Palace) and the Metropolitan Cathedral. In Mexico, every city and town has a Zócalo, which is the town square, usually in the Centro Historico (historic centre). The Zócalo of Mexico City (also known as the Plaza de la Constitución) is one of the largest plazas in the world.

Hostel Moneda charged 140 Pesos per night (US $14), which was a little more than we expected for shared dorm rooms but there was free breakfast (the best free hostel breakfasts we had anywhere - Mexican eggs, frijoles, bread, cornflakes/coco pops and varied every day!), a free downtown walking tour plus we did meet some cool people there.

We were lucky enough to catch up again with the ever-lovely Maxine (Web Directions) for a post-SXSW Mexican meal and beer at Casa de las Sirenas, a relatively expensive restaurant that was quite charming in its décor but otherwise mediocre. It was an extra treat to watch her work her photographic magic.

Downtown walking tour and Lucha Libre

Our second day in Mexico City saw us get right down to business with Hostel Moneda’s free downtown walking tour. This was no stroll with a staff member down the street to look at old buildings but rather a detailed tour of the Centro Historico with a very knowledgeable English-speaking tour guide. On this tour we saw an archaeological excavation of the Aztec Templo Mayor (Great Pyramid), destroyed and built over by the Spanish, had a stroll through the Metropolitan Cathedral - built over an Aztec sacrificial site (a glass covered excavation shows buried remains), and the Palacio Nacional which featured some fantastic murals by Diego Rivera depicting five hundred years of turbulent history. We managed to get lots of photos of the murals but to see them and have each scene explained by a guide is definitely much better.

Street markets on Calle Moneda

National Palace mural

National Palace mural featuring Frida Kahlo

Palacio de Bellas Artes

Tacos al Pastor

Traditional drumming at the Zócalo

Cleansing ritual at the Zócalo

Photos courtesy of Meg. Click the thumbnails to see the larger versions… go on, do it. Now.

On our downtown tour we also walked through the Post Office Palace, a literal palace complete with gold plated décor which is actually a functioning post office (it also features an art gallery and a museum), and then walked to the Palacio de Bellas Artes (Palace of Fine Arts) where we observed its neoclassical architecture (designed by Adamo Boari in 1904), with its opulent marble facade and pegasus statues. We ended the tour with a stroll down Gante, a paved off road with lots of bars and eateries and enjoyed some traditional Tacos (rather different to Californian Mexican or Tex-Mex food - smaller and more minimal, but definitely tasty) and a walk to a restaurant on 5 de Mayo for some more traditional cuisine and some Mexican beer.

Mexican Lucha Libre seems to take a leaf out of the USA’s WWF with its glitziness and drama, but with a real focus on acrobatics and aerial stunts. All up it was quite impressive in a cheesy way…

Afterward we strolled around the lively Zócalo then chilled out back at the hostel before joining a large group for a night out at the Mexican wrestling, the Lucha Libre.

This was a weird but interesting and memorable night. Firstly, the guys who were running the tour ran into the hostel yelling at everyone that it was time to go (all in good fun), all the while wearing Mexican wrestling masks. We were all herded into 3 large people-mover vans that looked much like American FBI trucks. Ducking and weaving through night-time traffic, crazy Mexican style we then marched into the stadium where we dined on Domino’s pizza and hot dogs and chugged down Coronas in plastic cups.

Mexican Lucha Libre seems to take a leaf out of the USA’s WWF “sports entertainment” with its glitziness, theatrical antics and character driven drama, but in terms of the action, there was a real focus on acrobatics and aerial stunts. Most of it was 3 on 3 and there were about 4 or 5 events, including female wrestling (sorry, no mud guys). All up it was quite impressive in a cheesy way, just the way I like it. (This was a real contrast to the Thai boxing we’d watched a couple of months earlier in Koh Samui.)

The tour and entry cost us 180 Pesos (US $18) each which included transport, entry and some tequila afterwards (which nobody seemed interested in). Unfortunately we weren’t permitted to take photos of the event but we managed to get some shots of our Lucha Libre night’s highlights on TV.

Already in our first two days we were getting a major taste of what Mexico had to offer.

Flamboyant Luchador (on TV). Photo courtesy of Meg.

Plaza de las Tres Culturas and Teotihuacán

Sunday March 18 saw us on a tour to Teotihuacán, an Aztec pyramid complex, with several stops along the way. This tour was 250 Pesos (US $25) each for a very educational full day trip, again organised by Hostel Moneda. We started out at the Plaza de las Tres Culturas (Plaza of the Three Cultures). This place was chock full of history over three eras.

Here we saw the Aztec ruins of Tlatelolco, with a marketplace, a calendaric temple (the way that it was constructed allow it to serve as a calendar) used by Aztec priests for religious rituals, an Aztec cemetery and an altar to the Aztec deity, Quetzlcoatl.

The plaza was the scene of a lot of turmoil. Hundreds of protesters were massacred by the Mexican military on the night before the 1968 Mexico City Olympics.

Built right on this site, on the foundations of a razed Aztec building was a five hundred year old Spanish Cathedral, the Templo de Santiago. This along with just about every other colonial building in Mexico City seemed to be leaning one way or the other. We learned that the historic centre of Mexico City was an island (Mexico de Tenochtitlán) in the centre of a large lake. The Spanish managed to drain this lake by building a series of irrigation canals, drawing water outwardly, and building their large city on the drained lake bed. The result of this is a city built on soft soil with very few large buildings standing perfectly straight.

On the south side of the Plaza de las Tres Culturas is the Mexican Foreign Ministry building. Surrounding the area are large high-rise residential buildings. Thus the Three Cultures are the classical Aztec, the colonial Spanish, and the modern Mexican cultures.

The plaza was also the scene of a lot of turmoil. Standing in front of the entrance to the Cathedral is a monument commemorating the hundreds of protesters who were massacred by the Mexican military ten days before the 1968 Mexico City Olympics opening ceremony. As usual, the details behind this government massacre were never completely revealed, and unsurprisingly, evidence of US government involvement later came to light.

Later, several of the surrounding high-rise residential apartment buildings collapsed in the Mexico City earthquakes of 1985. Thousands of people (and more likely tens of thousands) reportedly died in the disaster.

This same site was were the Aztecs made their last stand against the Spanish in 1521, where 40,000 Aztecs died.

Basilica de Guadalupe

Our group got back in the van and headed for the next stop on the tour, the Basilica de Guadalupe, a religious site featuring the Capilla del Cerrito (Chapel on the hill), the Basilica Antigua (old Basilica) and the very large Basilica de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe (Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe).

The Capilla del Cerrito is a chapel built on the location where it was believed the Virgin Mary appeared to an indigenous Christian convert in 1531. She became known as the Lady of Guadalupe and went on to be the patron saint of Mexico and is still largely revered in Mexico today. The large Basilica next door is a major attraction to Christian pilgrims from all over Mexico, who walk from the entry into the Basilica on their knees praying for help for their sick loved ones or for cures for their own ailments and disabilities. The Basilica is basically a large church with daily services and crowds of people travelling beneath the altar on travelators to take a peek at the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe that hangs there.

The Basilica Antigua was the first Basilica built at the site is a colonial church that stands crookedly due to the soft soil of the region and the many people visiting over the centuries and is now more of a museum of religious artworks. It is held together by a network of steel cables. Just outside there was a sculpture of Pope John Paul II made from coins donated by the people.

The place was like a massive Christian theme park, a “Virgin Mary World” of sorts.

Teotihuacán

Our last stop on the tour was the archaeological site of Teotihuacán. Before entering the site though, we had a demonstration of the uses of the Maguey cactus and some obsidian stone carving. Maguey is the Mexican super cactus, from which one could make (somewhat crude) sewing needles, paper from its inner lining and all of three different types of alcoholic beverage - Pulque, Tequila* and Mezcal (in order of strength). This was quite an interesting demonstration which ended in said beverage tasting. The Mescal gave us the biggest kick, especially for Meg, as she was brave enough to choose the shot that had the worm in it.

If the Basilica de Guadalupe was a Christian theme park, the pyramid complex of Teotihuacán was a Pagan theme park, demonstrating the duality of spiritual belief of the average Mexican.

Next was a demo of the carving of obsidian. Obsidian is a volcanic stone that was used for weapons and decoration by the Aztecs. It has a deep black colour with the ability to take on different colours when wet and polished. Naturally, after our demonstration and liquor tasting session in the midday heat prior to eating, we were escorted to the air-conditioned gift shop, the idea being the Mezcal would loosen our purse strings enough to buy the usual statues and textiles.

After a light lunch we visited the temple site, where we saw the large and impressive pyramids of the sun and moon. By this time I thought it was way too hot to brave the queues and climb the pyramids. Nearby was the Temple of Quetzlcoatl (which we were told was closed) and a museum (which actually was closed). I noticed a popular trend amongst Mexicans, which was climbing the pyramids dressed in white to stand in the sun and ‘receive energy’ at the top. This is especially popular during the summer solstice, where massive crowds gather at this and other archaeological sites.

If the Basilica de Guadalupe was a Christian theme park, the pyramid complex of Teotihuacán was a Pagan theme park of sorts, demonstrating the duality of spiritual belief of the average Mexican.

Meg and I ended the day by getting a cool beer and some good Mexican food at the Majestic Hotel, kicking back on a balcony overlooking the Zócalo and watching the sunset with some friends we made on that day on the tour.

* I have since found out that Tequila is made from a cactus closely related to the Maguey.

Plaza de las Tres Culturas

Monument at Plaza de las Tres Culturas

Statue of JPII

Basilica de Guadalupe

Obsidian carving

Temple of the Moon at Teotihuacán

At the Temple of the Sun at Teotihuacán

Click the thumbnails to see the bigger versions of the pics (I took these ones.)

My childhood knowledge of Spanish was coming in handy but it was certainly a dive-in-headfirst refresher course, and an enjoyable one at that. Three days in Mexico City turned into five, and they went by quickly. We managed to squeeze a fairly full experience of at least the Centro Historico in during that time. Our next stop was a day in the charming town of Taxco to the north of Mexico City before returning to Mexico City for one more night, with the realisation that after that, we wouldn’t return this way on this trip. Our plan was to work our way east, our next flight being out of Guatemala in roughly a month’s time, but we were already thinking about when we could come back to Mexico in future…

This blog sees another year… yes that’s 3 years of half-arsed blogging.

It’s August again…

(And I *did* get that redesign done!)

Day 103 - 105, Dallas, Texas

Meg and I arrived at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport on March 7 and took an airport shuttle mini-bus to downtown Dallas, and after a bit of searching we found Jade’s place. Jade is an old work friend of Meg’s who we thought we’d visit while we were in the area. She and her partner Carter were kind enough to let us stay for a couple of nights prior to taking a Greyhound bus to Austin.

In that time we went to some of the local cafés and bars. Interestingly, the streets of Dallas were very quiet for a weekday. I was told that there is a network of underground malls where you’ll find the crowds, especially during summer when the heat is treacherous.

The main attraction in Dallas (and the only one I could find) was the Sixth Floor Museum, built on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository building, from where it is believed Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. This was a very interesting and detailed exhibition about the life and death of JFK and all the controversy surrounding his assassination.

Hank, Meg, Jade, Carter and tips

Sixth Floor Museum

Photos courtesy of Meg. Click ‘em to see ‘em bigger (at Flickr). But don’t forget to come back…

Day 105 - 111, Austin, Texas - South by South West

On the 8th, we took a Greyhound bus to Austin, the capital of Texas. We arrived at the bus terminal on the outskirts of the city, somewhat lost and without a guide book for the city. We eventually decided on taking a taxi to our hotel, seeing there were very few other options.

Austin was a great city to visit. It’s the creative centre and cosmopolitan heart of otherwise conservative Texas. Austiners are very proud of this.

We stayed our first night at a fairly fancy but relatively cheap (though still out of our budget) hotel on the outer rim of Austin City. I’d left the hotel booking too late and it was near impossible to get anything during SXSW unless you booked months in advance. Austin’s only hostel (that we could find) was Hostelling International Austin (HI-Austin) and they seemed to be completely booked. That didn’t stop us from trying to get in there though. Once we’d settled in at the hotel and used the facilities, we headed over to the hostel and asked if we could get any beds in the dorms. We managed to book one and then another one became available when someone cancelled. With hostels, it’s worth hanging around on stand-by as rooms often become available at short notice, so long as it’s not one of the few hostels that now only take advance bookings online. HI-Austin was a small hostel with a great vibe and in a great location, close to the heart of the city and right on the river where you could watch teams of rowers race past.

Austin was a great city to visit. Not just the administrative centre of Texas, it seemed to be the creative centre also, the cosmopolitan heart of an otherwise conservative state. Austiners are very proud of this and are quick to point out the cultural divide between themselves and other Texans.

There are a lot of creative types around Austin. Even the beggars seemed to have a certain flair. One fellow with tatty clothes and dreaded hair stationed alongside a main road on the outskirts of town had a series of signs featuring witticisms from the ubiquitous “Need money for beer, pot and hookers. At least I’m honest” to the more entertaining “Not suffering from insanity, loving every minute of it” and my favourite “Ninjas killed my family. Saving up for Karate lessons”. This style of begging seems to work in places like this as well as San Francisco and Los Angeles, where young male tourists find it hilarious and take photos of themselves with their new bum friend to show their buddies back home. For a small donation of course…

An Austin local

A rowing carnival

The lovely Kristen

Photos courtesy of Meg. Click ‘em to enlarge ‘em…

SXSW

Okay so that’s Austin. The main reason I went to Austin was to go to the South by South West festival, where folks from all over the USA and around the world converged for a few weeks of film, interactive and music awesomeness. I got a badge for the Interactive festival. I would love to have bought a badge for the film and music festivals as well but we didn’t have much time and to be honest, I couldn’t have afforded the US $600+ ticket price (and that’s early bird pricing), especially given we were travelling around the world for seven months and then resettling in London for a while.

But interactive was more than enough for my wondering mind. Lots of interesting talks, panels and after parties with free booze. Some of the highlights for me were:

• A field guide to design inspiration
  Jason Santamaria and Rob Weychert from Happy Cog Studios discussed how they, as designers, keep the creativity in their work. Cameron Moll was also meant to be involved in this presentation but he pulled out with a bad case of the ‘flu, which was a shame as I was really keen to see him, being one of my favourite web design bloggers. Still, Jason and Rob did a great job of it (with some good laughs in there too). In a nutshell, the main gist was that you can’t turn on creativity from 9-5 and then turn it off. Being a designer means you have to think and look at the world with a creative eye 24-7. Look at the good design around the place, look at the beauty in nature and find what inspires you. Do your own personal projects and apply design to every part of your life. Design is a lifestyle, not just a day job. Good advice.
• Grids are good
  Designers Khoi Vinh and Mark Boulton presented a very practical example of how a good grid can improve the design and usability of a site. To make their point, they decided to do a re-design of a very popular site using a good grid, in this case Yahoo.
• Open-source hardware
  Slightly different subject matter but nonetheless interesting keynote presentation from Limor Fried and Phil Torrone about home made hardware, hacking consumer electronics and open source hardware. Some interesting examples were hacking iPods to run Linux, home made MP3 players built from memory cards and how to make an (illegal) bluetooth and mobile phone jamming device in a cigarette packet.
• Adobe SXSW Web Awards
  Some complimentary fine food and drinks then the very cheeky Ze Frank presented the awards for the finest websites of the past year. Marco, an acquaintance I met at the registration night drinks who’d flown over from Italy, took out the award for best CSS site with his gallery of sideways scrolling sites The Horizontal Way. Congrats…
• Helvetica
  Tuesday’s (13/3/07) main events were great (but somewhat annoyingly overlapping), starting with the 1:30pm world premier screening of Helvetica, a documentary film about the most widespread typeface of our time. It was introduced by director Gary Hustwit, who was very pleased and humbled to see a fully packed auditorium. I found the film very enjoyable and humorous in parts, but you don’t have to be a typophilic designer to enjoy it, it is a relevant exploration of modern western popular culture. Shame I didn’t get to watch the whole thing, I’ll have to get it out on DVD.
• Will Wright on user generated stories (and Spore)
  I had to tear myself away from Helvetica (and I almost didn’t) to run over and attend a talk by the guy famous for inventing Sim City and The Sims. I wasn’t disappointed. Will Wright is a hip guy who knows how to make a slick presentation (well actually the PowerPoint slides weren’t all that slick). He explained about conventional linear storytelling versus the new wave of multi-threaded user generated storylines in online gaming communities. This discussion then neatly segued into a compelling presentation of Maxis‘ next game, Spore, which by all accounts promises to be brilliant. The basic premise of this game is you take a single celled creature and evolve it into an advanced species and take over the universe. Simple right? When you have a spare 35:51, take a peek below (or at YouTube)…

Of course the Aussie contingent were representing, with Cameron Adams, Maxine Sherrin, Scott Gledhill and Cheryl Lead all doing their bit in various panels. I also caught up with Aussie web standards regulars Anson, Lachlan and Lisa.

Worth mentioning were talks I attended from Doug Coupland, the author of Microserfs, Life After God and Everything’s Gone Green (which is now being made into a film), Dan Saffer from Adaptive Path on 2Las Vegas Design”, what can be learnt from Sin City and applied to web design, and Brian Oberkirch and Dan Cederholm on the feasibility of building web apps outside of Silicon Valley. The Dorkbot event was pretty cool too, a show of home made devices and mashup technology.

At this time Meg and I made friends with Kristen and Tony who were staying at the hostel. They were a fun pair who were travelling around working as pedicab drivers. They took us to a retro Mexican restaurant. Also found a café not far from the convention centre that did decent organic coffee and excellent Tex-Mex for breakfast.

While I was geeking it up, Meg got to enjoy a little time-out from me, relax in the parks and riverside around Austin and enjoy going to cafés with new found friends. We had pretty good weather most of the time we were there, so I took a few time-outs from SXSW myself to join Meg and have a relax from all the bits and bytes…

We enjoyed the USA a lot, but besides bigger roads and cars, it felt a lot like home in so many ways. I needed to be pushed out of my comfort zone a little and get a little culture shock. Latin America would provide this. And I’d need to brush up on Spanish. Plenty of opportunity to do just that over the next month in Mexico and Guatemala…

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Day 65 - 69, San Francisco Bay Area

Meg and I arrived at San Francisco airport on January 30 after spending the part of a day flying over the Pacific from Hong Kong. It was our first arrival in the Americas. My Mum was waiting there and greeted us both warmly. It had been six years since we’d last caught up in person, and it was the first time my mother met Meg (though they had spoken on the phone previously). Just as well they got on like a house on fire - sometimes a little too well (when you get that feeling that people are bonding by siding against you - all in good fun though).

The first couple of days we did some touristy stuff like drive over the Golden Gate Bridge (”but it’s orange not golden!” - because the harbour is known as “The Golden Gate” and not the bridge), visit Golden Gate Park, have a big meal (as they all are) at the Cheesecake Factory and stop by Chinatown for our first little taste of San Francisco.

In this time we also unpacked our backpacks and were made to feel at home at my Mum’s house. It was good to just go down to the local shops and the library to borrow a book on San Francisco (Frommer’s Irreverant Guide to San Francisco) and a USA guide book (Let’s Go USA) as well as make plenty of use of the free Internet there (thanks to the Milpitas branch of the Santa Clara County Library).

California and the USA in general is quite similar to home but super-sized. It’s hard to get around on foot because the roads and blocks are really large and spread out. People generally like this because driving is fairly pleasant with a minimum of traffic, but you have to have a car. Walking around is really slow, walking three blocks in the San-Francisco Bay Area (the suburbs) will take you half an hour. Luckily I got my hands on an old 10-speed bicycle for a while there, which made things a bit easier.

Day 70 - 76, Las Vegas - Sin City

Las Vegas is a giant theme park for adults. “The Strip” is the heart of everything that is spectacular, grandiose, extravagant and opulent about the USA. Ridiculous, tacky and sleazy but a heap of fun too.

We were all invited to my cousin Sheila’s birthday a few days after we arrived, over in Las Vegas, so that was the next chapter in our trip. It was great to go and meet a whole part of my family that I didn’t even know about, and they were all great folks. Very warm and hospitable, and we had an awesome time. We had a BBQ with great gourmet food to break the ice before heading out for gambling fever.

We were lucky that my other cousin, Sharon, and her husband Steve, were kind enough to put us up at Flamingo Casino hotel for a couple of days. A great way for us to get to know the strip. We stayed up till dawn going from place to place checking out the different casinos (my mother sure had developed some staying power since the last time we went out together) and making a bit of money on our game of choice - Roulette. Afterwards we stayed at my other cousin Sheila’s house. She lives in the residential area on the outskirts of the city. Very handy and hospitality much appreciated.

This was indeed a crazy town, like a giant theme park for adults. Las Vegas Boulevard (”The Strip”) is the heart of everything that is spectacular, grandiose, extravagant and opulent about the USA. The place was at once ridiculous, tacky and sleazy but a heap of fun too. Walking down the strip you would be greeted by groups of Mexicans handing you fliers and business cards of strippers, ready and willing to come to your hotel suite or home for a night of private entertainment. Massive brightly lit signs for shows abounded, shows such as The Producers starring David Hasselhoff (?!), Foreigner, Jubilee at Ballys, Celine Dion, Cirque Du Soleil’s “O” and Zumanity, Prince, Star Trek: the Exhibition and Penn & Teller. I didn’t see any of those. There’s no way I could have afforded any of those big Vegas shows (some priced at over US$300), though Penn & Teller would have been great and Prince would have no doubt put on a spectacular show, as he did at half-time at the Superbowl, which we watched from Sheila’s. Prince played favourites 1999 and Purple Rain - in the rain no less, providing an unexpected moment of poignance. While visiting The Strip we checked out a bunch of casinos including Caesars Palace, the MGM Grand, Paris, New York New York and Luxor. They were all very swanky themed places that smelt of money (you can pretty much figure out their themes by their names). We also headed down to “Old Vegas”, the original area during the 50s and 60s. It really had that vibe of sleaze but in an enjoyable kitsch kind of way, and you could almost feel Elvis walking around the place. We learnt roulette down there, at Binion’s Horseshoe, where we both did quite well, walking away a few hundred bucks ahead between the two of us.

We did manage to catch the Mac King Show. Mac King is the old man of comedy magic. He probably invented the genre, he’s been doing it at Vegas for so long, and didn’t fail to keep the audience laughing and wondering how he does it.

Other than that, we enjoyed a bit of home karaoke (as common in a Filipino house as rice) and some Dance Dance Revolution on the Playstation at Sheila’s. My consistently low scores on both were a disaster, but of course, that never stopped me. Got into a lot of Texas Hold ‘Em at this time too. Lots of it on cable TV, plus my Mum’s man Eddie is some sort of poker god and made for a good teacher.

Road trip to Vegas

The Flamingo

The Strip

Old Las Vegas

Day 76 - 79, The Grand Canyon

From Las Vegas, we hired an RV and drove to the Grand Canyon. At around US $100 per day (including insurance and extra equipment) it’s not exactly cheap, but it is a really enjoyable way to see America. It took us about 6 hours to drive there from Vegas and we camped at the RV park with hookups there. It cost about $27 to stay, again, not cheap but worthwhile to stay right there on the South Rim of the canyon. Much cheaper than the lodges there (although along with the cost of the RV hire, probably not that much cheaper).

On the way back to Las Vegas we stopped for a night at the Valley of Fire, a site near the Moapa Reservation an hour out from Las Vegas. We’d been there the week before and decided to come back and camp there for a night. We got up early to check out all the great red volcanic rock formations.

The Grand Canyon.

Our RV, at Hoover Dam, on the way to the Grand Canyon.

Valley of Fire.

Day 79 - 97, San Francisco, the Bay Area and Sequoia National Park

We returned the RV and hung out at Sheila’s for another night before returning to California. From here, Meg and I visited San Francisco a little more, just the two of us. We were there for Chinese New Year, but the day we went, there weren’t any major parades or celebrations. Just lots of tourists. It was interesting to see though, being the largest Chinatown outside of Asia. We had a few beers and the odd martini at neat place on the corner of Jack Kerouac Lane before taking the BART subway over to Mission Street and checking out a bit of the nightlife on Valencia. We returned another day and toured around downtown a bit before going over to Haight Street and seeing the old bohemian centre. Lots of boutiques and cafés but just a ghost town compared to how it would have been thirty years ago. Still, a cool place to visit. We stopped in to Giant Robot San Francisco, a little comics/art/design boutique and must have spent an hour or two in there, they have oodles of really cool stuff, like books, prints, mags, toys and this cool Super Mario thing I sent to Mr Speaker.

Giant Robot, San Franciso.

Inside Giant Robot.

Back at my Mum’s, the beautiful (but ill-fated) 17″ display, 240GB Hard Disk with 2GB RAM Hewlett-Packard lappy I bought finally arrived… While free internet at the library was okay, I needed my own machine to take care of all our blogging, Flickr’ing, last.fm’ing and Skyping needs. The ever reliable Anton took the time to pack up the lappy and accompanying crumpler bag and post it over to my Mum’s.

Said laptop accompanied us on another road trip up to Sequoia National Park to see the old Redwoods. We got up as far as snow and turned back because we didn’t have chains, but we stayed at the very charming Sierra Lodge, Three Rivers, where Ozzie and Eva took great care of us at a nice price. Definitely recommend it if you’re in the Sequoias. Free WiFi in the lobby there too…

Day 97 - 102, LA, Modesto and Napa

On the 1st of March we hired a car and drove down to LA and stayed at USA Hostels Hollywood for a few days. Not a hell of a lot to do in that town unless you’re really into celebrity spotting or you’re trying to crack into Hollywood - some locals that we were talking to late at night at a pizza joint told us so. But we did enjoy visiting the Getty Centre which is an art museum with beautiful modern architecture.

The Getty Center, Los Angeles. Photo courtesy of Meg

Meg at the Getty Center, Los Angeles.

The Getty Center, Los Angeles.

Later we drove down to Long Beach to take a peek and enjoy the sunset there. That night we checked out the shops and carnival at Santa Monica Pier. I was very interested to see they had about a 3 square metre space allocated for smokers and the rest was non-smoking. This on an open air pier. Not that it bothered me, I haven’t smoked for four years but I couldn’t help but feel for the few smokers left in L.A. We had dinner at the very tacky Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. Restaurant. Nice enough service and the food was average, but unsurprisingly overpriced and the Forrest Gump theme brought back the feeling of being in an amusement park.

Santa Monica Boulevard, LA.

The next night we checked out Hollywood Boulevarde. There were some celebrity impersonators doing their rounds such as Jimi Hendrix, Spiderman and Chucky (the crazy doll from the Child’s Play thrillers). I also watched a live action scene out of “Cops” as I saw some DUI party girls getting arrested.

I took some photos of the stars on the boulevarde that I found interesting as well as a couple of other things from that night:

Spike Jones Star on Hollywood Boulevard. That’s the crazy 40’s cartoon music guy, not the ‘Being John Malkovich’ guy.

Orson Welles Mural on Hollywood Boulevard. Orson and Meg ponder eachother…

Jimi at Hollywood Boulevard.

More stars and things at my Hollywood Boulevard set at Flickr.

L.A reminded me of Sydney but on a bigger scale. It’s a big city with probably the warmest weather out of California’s cities but the traffic stinks and you pretty much can’t do anything without a car. And you can’t find anywhere to park. Like Sydney. We got two parking tickets while we were there, and they’re not cheap.

California pretty much has it all - beaches, lakes, mountains, great towns and cities

On the way back we drove up via Highway 1 along the Pacific coast for most of the way. A beautiful scenic drive passing green hills, beaches, small towns and great ocean views. We went straight from there back up north to Modesto, home of George Lucas so I’m told, to visit my cousin Sharon. At this time I caught quite a severe flu which had me floored for a few days with headaches, an aching body and a high fever. I still managed to down a few pills and head out with Meg and Sharon’s family to Napa and do some wine tasting at the V. Sattui Winery. A fine-looking old establishment with a great deli and of course a cellar door. I tried some wines and got chatting with the wine guy. Turned out he was good buddies with Max Goldman who is the developer behind the humorous time-waster, ytmnd.com. The conversation mainly revolved around how filthy rich Max is now from advertising revenue on the site. After a couple of wines I went outside and enjoyed the good weather by having a little snooze.

This month was a good chance to relax and unpack and feel at home again. It was great to meet up with family and spend time with my Mum and Eddie as well as my cousins and their kids. Everyone was so hospitable and we saw some pretty cool stuff. California pretty much has it all - beaches, lakes, mountains, great towns and cities. But we had the itch to get moving again, as it felt a little too much like being at home. Our next stop would mean catching up with some friends of Megan, Carter and Jade in Dallas, Texas for a day and then moving on to Austin for the SXSW festival. That’s next post…

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Day 63 - 66, Hong Kong, China - a busy, modern metropolis

On January 28, we arrived at Hong Kong International Airport. We took the Airport Express shuttle train to Tsim Sha Tsui where we then took the shuttle bus downtown. I looked after our (by this stage very excessive) luggage while Meg walked around and inspected various buildings for accommodation. There were various “mansions” and “guesthouses” but in reality, they were single apartments that were subdivided into maybe 10 or more tiny rooms and charged out at something like US$30 per night. So we got our tiny cot room, little more than a queen bed surrounded by walls and a closet that had a bathroom inside.

Somehow this was a novelty for us, and it was only for two nights so it was cool. Plus we had cable TV. Even with this entertainment at our fingertips, we felt the need to leave our diminutive enclosure for most of our time there and explore this busy cosmopolitan city. This is pretty easy in Hong Kong as the mass transit infrastructure is very well developed, with the MTR, KCR and Airport Express railway systems, buses, trams and taxis.

Our tiny room in Hong Kong.

MTR Subway.

Streets of Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong.

I was always under the impression that Hong Kong was a cheap destination, but this seems to be an outdated perception. There are many other cheaper shopping destinations in Southeast Asia. I’m told Hong Kong became a lot more expensive when it was returned to China in 1997. Shopping for some things (some electronic goods, fashion) in Hong Kong is still relatively cheaper than Australia, but I found food and beer to be as expensive or in some places even more expensive than Sydney (I’m talking Lan Kwai Fong), and accommodation isn’t very affordable for shoestringers such as ourselves.

In fact, many things about Hong Kong reminded me of Sydney. I thought Hong Kong would be like a big dirty Chinatown, but instead it is clean, efficient and modern. Notable differences to Sydney are there are a lot more high-rise buildings and high-density residential developments, and as I said earlier, they have very good public transportation (very much like what Sydney doesn’t have). Hong Kong also seems to be a diverse melting pot of races and cultures, noticably with people of Chinese, British, Indian and African descent, and of Buddhist, Muslim and Christian faiths.

On the second night we were there, we went out to the over-priced ex-pat drinking and dining area of Lan Kwai Fong, obviously not knowing any better. We ended up going to a decent Indian restaurant on the cheaper side of things, and after some good curry and knocking back some Kingfishers, we thought we’d go to a couple of the pubs around the place. We ended up shooting pool and knocking back quite a few more beers at the Kangaroo Bar (if my memory serves me), an Australian themed place, seemingly without any Australian staff or patrons. Here we bumped into our English yobbo friend from the weird pub that wasn’t really a pub in Hoi An, Vietnam. This was a real trip for him. Turns out he’s an ex-pat Brit living in Hong Kong. Anyway, we chatted to him and some other friendly people there until he was sufficiently drunk and decided to go somewhere else. We also chatted a fair bit to the kindly bartender there, another ex-pat Brit. Well kind of, he’s what they call a BNO, a British National (Overseas). He spoke perfect Cantonese and was something like a third generation Brit living in Hong Kong, which, he explained, put him in the unique position of not being Chinese nor British. He said under current law he was unable to gain residency in Britain or China. I guess he’s a full Hong Konger then. Anyway I thought that was pretty interesting.

At the pub, Lan Kwai Fong.

I really enjoyed the dazzling night lights and crazy in-your-face style of the advertising in Hong Kong City. I also thought I’d mention that while we were there, our respiratory illness came to a head, but at some of the subway stations they have these chain-stores that sell medicinal teas (and dimsum!) that really help with colds and flus, I thoroughly recommend them. Also while we were there, walking by the harbour, a lady on a boat offered a cheap tour of the harbour, which was a pretty good way to kill half an hour.

McDonalds Hong Kong special. This poster features a photo of a person dressed as a pig kicking a person dressed as a dog in the bum.

A bank decorated with a mosaic of 50,000 credit cards.

On a boat in Hong Kong Harbour.

So that was Hong Kong. On January 30 we took our longest flight so far, across the Pacific over to San Francisco and began our USA adventures. Ahead of us lay long road trips, driving big cars on the wrong side of the road, catching up with my mother for the first time in six years (and Megan meeting my mother for the first time), meeting my American cousins, visiting Las Vegas, Texas and the South by Southwest festival. More on that next time…

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