The BBC recently concluded a 6-part series of articles by Michael Blastland, author of The Tiger That Isn't, and an advocate of logical data analysis, not media-hyped misinformation. Obviously, we should all be an advocate of this, but it can be easy to under-analyse what the media tells us, so these articles are well worth a read.

Below is a graphic with links to all the articles, just click the one you want and it'll open in a new window - just like that:



Here is a link to a review of his book and another BBC article, pre-dating the summer series:

Guardian Review: The Tiger That Isn't
BBC: The facts in the way of a good story

I was recently checking out an article of new AJAX services as I've not done much work in that area before. The list was interesting but most things offered relatively small increases in functionality for the work I do, not giving me as much incentive to change my ways as I'd hoped.

There were, however, a number of great photographic design ideas at varying levels of completion. Some of the best were still 'in construction' with just teasing demos showing off their potential. One such tool was JCrop, a service that allows images to be cropped in real-time directly on a webpage, with various aesthetically-pleasing functionality. The only problem was that the API was only partially completed and only for the more basic functions.



However, I played around with the service and have come up with a nice demo of my own - who needs APIs, eh? The concept was to hide a hidden message beyond a character string that would animate the message if the string was entered correctly.

Obviously, I'm not vindicating its use for genuinely secure information, but as a fun tool it might just work. So, I hit upon the idea of having my mobile phone number revealed if you enter some information that only my friends / clients are likely to know.

All you have to do is enter my two home-towns and my phone number will be displayed, one digit at a time:



I've customised the use of this service, moving away from any cropping purpose, to just use the animation and highlight functions, set to an image map and link id values, assigned to the correct animation and location.

The background image can be changed very easily as well, meaning each coded message could look different. I'm considering expanding the idea as a service (similar to Photowords), but we'll see if I have time!

JCrop from Deep Liquid
20 Excellent AJAX Effects You Should Know
Q Gallery (beta) - Thumbnail Scroller

The way webpages are shown on company sites has varied over time, from simple screenshots and drop-shadow thumbnails to iTunes-style reflections and increasingly, perspective shots.

The principal is simple - take a screenshot of your webpage and add a reflection, but instead of a face-on view, take a side view in perspective. Some of you may be wondering how best to go about doing this yourselves - and thankfully, it's pretty easy in Photoshop.

Let me start by showing you an example I created, using my Fringe 2008 Site as the template [click to enlarge]:



The effect is a nice one and allows your work to be showcased in a stylish manner. Here's a quick run-down of how it's done:

1. Open up a new document, roughly 2000x2000 and add a background colour.
2. Open the webpage you are showcasing and press 'Print Screen' - open a new document and paste this in.
3. Cut out your webpage from the screen grab using the rectangular marquee - paste it into the first document.
4. Hold CTRL and use your mouse to resize the webpage, keeping both sides straight and the bottom angle bigger than the top (see example).
5. Duplicate this layer and use the same technique as above to make this layer a rough reflection of the first. Reduce the height of the layer of a bit to enhance the reflection effect.
6. Set your foreground colour the same as your original background and set the gradient tool as foreground / invisible.
7. Finally, use the gradient tool to fade out the end of the reflected image until you get a good fade-out - again, check the example for reference.

I hope that makes some sense - Good luck in creating your own :)

Nothing like a bit of satire, eh?

Here's the launch of Credit Crunch Cereal - for those hard economic times :)

Well the first F1 night race kicked off in style yesterday in Singapore with large crouds and plenty of excitement. Now I'm not a big F1 fan (it's my dad's favourite cure for insomnia though!) but there was something pretty spectacular about seeing the F1 cars under floodlights in the middle of Singapore.

It wasn't just a night race, but a street race as well - with reporters saying it could quickly become the 'new monaco' of the F1 circuit.


© Lawrence Ripsher



This last photo is the best one I could find on flickr and can be enlarged with a simple click:

© William Cho (Flickr)

With more night races planned, I look forward to seeing some more great shots and who knows, I might get interested in the sport too!

After previously posting a World comparison of the last 3 Queen's Speeches (conclusion: they're all the same), I thought it was time to tackle the US Election Race.

Barack Obama and John McCain both recently gave speeches at their party's Election Conferences, so I thought I'd use Wordle to create tag clouds of the 10 most frequently used words in each of their speeches.

In order to do this, I removed a few annoyances from the data - people's names - so out went 'John', 'McCain', 'Barack', 'Obama', 'George' and 'Bush'. Also, I combined a few words that were getting at the same thing: 'America', 'American' and 'Americas' all became America.

So here are the results [click to enlarge]:


Barack Obama Conference Speech, 2008



John McCain Conference Speech, 2008


Make of that what you will - but a quick summary seems to suggest Obama is concentrating on talking about being new, different and energetic whilst McCain is aiming for fighting talk, experience etc. OK, we already knew that but interesting to do none the less!

Barack Obama Speech - Full Text
John McCain Speech - Full Text
Article #45: Wordling the Queen's Speech
Wordle - Create

I’ve recently developed a bit of a vested interested in the various islands off the UK (it’s vested as I want to visit them!) and have trawled the internet to find some interesting places, stories and photos from our watery rocks.



Firstly, I was interested to note that the most populated island in the UK (bar the mainland, of course!) is in fact one that many people here will not be familiar with. For the island of Portsea off the south coast is home to a large portion of the city of Portsmouth and although only seperated by a small strip of sea (and happily connected up by roads) it is by still an island all the same.



According to google maps there are three major bridges connecting up the island and what looks like a roundabout-bridge - is that unique in the UK?

Probably best to ask the Roundabout Appreciation Society

So moving on from Portsea, we’ll head west northwest to the Britsol Channel and the Isle of Lundy. It’s easy to see why people love visiting here with rugged UK cliffs and beautiful blue sea and sandy beaches, it seems to offer the best of the UK all in one island. Below are two image of Lundy, the second being a live webcam image:




Isle of Lundy Webcam Image

As with quite a few islands they have a penchant for producing their own stamps - and for people to enjoy collecting them - and Lundy is no exception. The following is taken from wikipedia and you can just about see the postcode, this letter is going to around Waterloo Place in Edinburgh - not far from me!



I know that you’re thinking - "can’t we jump needlessly halfway up the country to a new island?" - well, yes we can...

The Isle of Seil is connected to the mainland by the famous Bridge Over the Atlantic and is somewhere I’ve visited recently. It’s similar to Portsea Island in the fact that it is connected to the mainland by a small bridge and is only separated by a small channel of sea. But with the Isle of Seil, there aren’t the thousands of residents, mostly due to it’s remote location on the west coast of Argyll. But it’s a lively spot and is home to the Oyster Brewery which has it’s own bar on the harbourside of the main village, Eillenabreich.



Just off the coast here is the only unnavigable stretch of water off the UK, the Corryvreckan whirlpool but it also happens to be one of the finest marine environments in UK waters so if you’re a diver, it’s well worth a wee look!

Now moving a little further from the mainland (but not far) we come to the majestic Isle of Rum. In terms of rugged looks, this is my favourite island in the UK - it’s just such a perfect shape: a mountain popping out the sea, seen here from the Eigg:



Seen in glorious sunshine, Rhum looks like a tropical paradise but can also boast some high peaks, snowy winters and great climbing - but even in this shot the sun is shining...I promise that’s not always the case, not by a long shot! the island across the water is Eigg, so this shot is almost a reverse of the one above:



The Inner Hebrides have their own unique flavour, but for sheer ruggedness it’s always good to head offshore. So winging our way around the country, to the north west coast, we move on to Fair Isle.



I love this photo; it conjures up all the nice aspects of a rugged island, rough sea, sharp rocks, big cliffs, a lighthouse, and (unusually!) fine weather. Our islands and always easy to inhabit but they offer a wide range of landscapes in which to do so, all of which have their charms!

Just to keep this post contemporary, here’s a webcam image from Fair Isle, which should keep updated - although may not work too well in the evening:


Fair Isle Webcam Image

"Hang on a minute! I’m bored, can’t we swing all the way round the other end of the country and finish of?"

Alright. The last place I’d like to touch on is Sealand. Some may have heard of it and sound may haven’t, but it’s got an interesting history and is probably the world’s most well-known micronation. A micronation is an area that has declared itself independent of the country it lies in, but has no international or national recognition of this status. In other words, they are normally small areas of land owned by eccentric people having a bit of a laugh.



Sealand is slightly different as it lies off the UK coast in international waters and is an old oil platform. It doesn’t consist of much other than a few portacabins and a helipad but it gets by all the same - they even have their own passports, just ask Prince Roy!



That’s quite enough island hopping for now, but hope you enjoyed the journey - feel free to check out the relevant links below:

Wikipedia: Portsea Island
Wikipedia: Lundy
Wikipedia: Isle of Seil
Wikipedia: R%C3%B9m
Wikipedia: Fair Isle
Wikipedia: Sealand
UK Webcam Map