Alex Hardy

£360!

*does a little dance*

I got me a Wii for free! I got me a Wii for free!

[UPDATE] Bloody time waster! Re-listed…

[UPDATE 2] Well, the second auction closed at £320 with a buyer who actually paid! Woohoo!

An amusing little story that’s flying around caused a smile. It reminded us of Martin Lambie-Nairn and his rather controversial re-design of the BBC logo.

Legend has it that Pablo Picasso was sketching in the park when a bold woman approached him.

“It’s you — Picasso, the great artist! Oh, you must sketch my portrait! I insist.”

So Picasso agreed to sketch her. After studying her for a moment, he used a single pencil stroke to create her portrait. He handed the women his work of art.

“t’s perfect!” she gushed. “You managed to capture my essence with one stroke, in one moment. Thank you! How much do I owe you?“

“Five thousand dollars,” the artist replied.

“B-b-but, what?” the woman sputtered. “How could you want so much money for this picture? It only took you a second to draw it?”

To which Picasso responded, “Madame, it took me my entire life.”

A tricky one certainly, and a question that’s familiar to any freelancer. The key I suppose is to charge what you think your service is worth if you have a clear idea of how long a job will take. Just because you had a flash of inspiration and produced a superb logo design in two hours doesn’t mean you should charge £50 for it… For less defined projects (especially where the possibility of serious scope-creep is looming), it’s by-the-hour all the way…

Nintendo replaces Wii wrist straps.

It seems Wii have a problem - just not the one that these cretins are claiming. Like the girl who fell over while, presumably, flailing around like a lunatic while wearing high heels.

I have no sympathy for people who are so stupid.

I hope they do put together a class action, just so Nintendo can slap them down with words to the effect of “the Wii remote is an inanimate object. You were making unnecessarily vigourous gestures and threw it / hit someone with it. Perhaps they should be suing you instead.”

D3 Creative, online home of talented designer and co-conspirator Mr Stephen Meehan, has replaced its placeholder with a portfolio page.

Ste emphasises that the page is temporary, but aren’t they all?

Go and have a look at his work.

I used to regularly buy a few magazines and when I was in college I bought them from a particular newsagent - a small shop run by a bloke called Jerry. This shop didn’t have the widest selection in the world but it did have Edge, in addition to something else: a personal relationship with the owner.

I would go in and know that a copy of the magazine I wanted was already put aside for me. I’d stick around for a moment and have a chat. He’d ask after my mum, who also went there to buy a newspaper. On many occasions I would find myself in the W.H. Smiths on the other side of the town square and notice that the new issue was on the shelf. I’d leave the shop and walk across the square because my magazine-buying money was for Jerry.

I wonder to myself as my own project develops in my mind: can that kind of relationship with your users be cultivated in a website? Is the playing field *really* leveled for the little guy on the Internet? I’ve neither the resources nor the desire to achieve Global Mega Corp Inc status, but I suspect there are more rewarding ways than that.

I’ve got some ideas up my sleeve.

Call it shrewd or call it shameless profiteering, but there was no way I could ignore the frenzy that’s happening on eBay over the newly released Wii. I watched nearly thirty auctions today - the least one went for was £310, and the most was £480.

£480! For a console with an RRP of £180! Bonkers!

So when Game called me up to tell me that they had one reserved for me, I brought it home and put up an auction.

If it sells for an obscene profit then brilliant. If not, then it’s time to set off again to rescue Princess Zelda

With a new generation of consoles out, it’s time for the routine bunch of is the PC doomed? articles…

Of course, the PC isn’t dead - quite the opposite. Games like The Sims and World of Warcraft are enjoying huge sales. It is clear however that there is a general decline in sales. A degree of blame is aimed at the spiralling costs of developing a title, but this isn’t a unique concern to the PC. Some dissatisfaction is also expressed with current integrated graphics and their relatively weak performance compared to more expensive GPUs.

Now, there will always be a need for somebody to be pushing the platform forward and making incredible looking games like Crysis for the hardcore PC gamer. I watch ads for PC World on telly though and see Mr Consumer walking out the door, apparently very pleased with his £400 Compaq notebook.

Mr Consumer will not be playing Crysis, whether he wants to or not.

It does beg the question though “why can’t I have a little fun on my brand new machine that cost me more than an Xbox 360?”

When I started learning multimedia design, one of the first things we were told was “design for the lowest common denominator”. Instead of building games for next year’s hardware, why not build them for what is commonplace now? A small development studio could make use of middleware such as the Quake 3 engine, online distribution and episodic releases to create worthwhile games that would run perfectly well on today’s computers and who knows, perhaps sell a lot of copies?

(see article)

Most websites are ostracising disabled people by failing to adhere to the most basic accessibility standards, according to a United Nations (UN) commissioned survey…

It makes you wonder if there shouldn’t be some sort of universally recognised accreditation for web designers and developers - to separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were.

… to change a light bulb?

I’m not changing anything.

After much noodling around last night, we have a strong candidate for the final logo. Ste has scurried off back to his drawing board, to refine it over the next few days. We reckon that come early next week, we’ll have it nailed

After that, it’s time to start designing pages…