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You've arrived at the homepage of Stephen Stewart. The archive is available here for those who want it. This site is happily hosted by Dreamhost. Click for more?

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links to other people's sites

Recommended Viewing

• 300†
  Does exactly what it says on the (comic book) tin. Loved it.
• Little Miss Sunshine†
  Very funny, disturbing (the beauty pageant) and completely messed up -- but in a good way.
• Laputa: Castle in the Sky†
  Story great, characterization a little on the weak side -- though the big robots are cool.
• Porco Rosso†
  Stylish, funny, exciting.
• Grave of the Fireflies†
  Very sad, which was a little unexpected since I didn't know much about it before watching it. Can be a little too slow in places though, otherwise it's very good.
• Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind†
  The story can get a little dense at times what with the various factions, but still really enjoyable, inventive and engaging.
• X-Men: The Last Stand†
  Opportunity, talent, money - all blown. Over 3 films X-Men has hinted of something great that could have been, this last one says "No, sorry - not going to happen". Bah.

flickr.com

How form controls render on graphical browsers†

Google's Froogle Shopping & Wish Lists†
Here's a link to my wishlist

Pixar Artist Ronnie del Carmen's Weblog†

Snow is Fun†

Templating Systems

I've spent a lot of time working in template based systems. At BlackStar, Lastminute, Kasei and now for myself with Rails. Somebody asked me this morning to explain how I see templating, or MVC, systems from the designers point of view, here's my analogue.

Imagine a large warehouse full of goods, all sorts of everything in nice brown boxes. Those goods have been created by the program or Controller (scripts) from raw materials provided by the Model (data source). The Views (templates) are able to scoot around this warehouse, little designer types on souped up forklift trucks with gnarly flames painted down the side, they take the boxes and load them onto the waiting delivery trucks (the browser!) in the order and manner they see fit. And that's it, nice and simple.

(As an aside, the designer types on their forklifts don't like having to lift a freezer and a washing machine just to get at a toaster. It makes them mad.)

3 CommentsNovember 26, 2004

Blog Torrent - bittorrent for babies†

Firefox Web Browser article on BBCi News†

Holiday Gift Guide†

Designers Checklist (most of it is still true)†

Royal Tenenbaum's World of Futura†
See also Futura and Wes Anderson. (Incidently, I'm really looking forward to The Life Aquatic.)

Colour Logs

Watching the error and access logs is without a doubt the easiest way to pick up problems with a website. Tail your logs and pipe them through ccze to add colour and be the envy of all your friends.

tail -f /var/apache/access.log /var/apache/error.log | ccze

Thanks to petemc for the tip.

1 CommentsNovember 19, 2004

Interview with FedEx logo designer†

Google Scholar†
Search peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research.

43 days until the New Year...†

High-quality short copy will outperform poorly written long copy every time.†
But longer is better than shorter copy of the same quality.

50% Extra Cowbell

You now have Archives, Comments and a little section in About explaining How Things (Here) Work.
(The 'Cowbell' topic is because I'm reading Dooce, The World's Greatest Weblog™.)

0 CommentsNovember 17, 2004

Konfabulator for Windows†

Perfect iTunes EQ Settings†
It's important to have the right sounds while photoshopping.

How to make a TODO list in Rails†

Thunderbird logo design process by John Hicks†

Nikon D70 - Popular Photography Magazine Camera of the year 2004†

Introducing LAMP Tuning Techniques†

Placeholder in Firefox

If you are coming over to Firefox from IE you may notice image placeholders appearing while a page is loading. You may not like this. You may even what to change this. Isn't it lucky you're using Firefox?
Step 1: In the area where you'd normally enter a URL, type 'about:config'.
Step 2: On the page which is presented type 'placeholders' into the Filter.
Step 3: Change the 'browser.display.show_image_placeholders' value to 'false' by double clicking it.

Tada! Isn't Firefox just lush?

0 CommentsNovember 11, 2004

iPod Socks†
Give a man an iPod sock and his iPod will be warm for a day. Teach a man to knit and see the money roll in...

Luxo is a blog dedicated to Pixar†

The Photoshopping of Firefox†

MT Amazon Reading List Plugin†

MSN Search Beta†
Look! The Emperor has no clothes!

Kottke-esque

"All art is plagiarism" someone once told me, and I believed them. In that vein I've now added links as interstices between main posts, a la Kottke.
Do you think the feeds for 'links' and 'posts' be separate or all-in-one?

0 CommentsNovember 10, 2004

Delicious Library†
Import, browse, and share all your books, movies, music and video games with Delicious Library.

Welkin is a graph-based RDF visualizer†

The etymology of the term 'Warnocked'†

Tony Bowden is blogging again†
Lawsuits, panicking directors - ah, the good old days...

Spread The Word

No, it's not the ABC Warriors, but Firefox, which has reached version 1 and is now in official release.
I've been using Firefox for about a year or so and even as beta software it was better than Internet Explorer. Tabbed browsing, better pop-up blocking, better search, better support. Stop using Internet Explorer, start using Firefox.

While you're at it you may want to take a look at Thunderbird as your email client, the perfect partner for Firefox.

0 CommentsNovember 9, 2004