AspireCreate.com

TED

TED

A site that I regularly visit is TED.com. The site contains hundreds of video clips of talks ranging from 3mins to 30mins from some of the greatest minds on earth. It’s a great site to get inspiration from and totally free. Over the last 6 months I’ve downloaded about 90 talks. Below is a list of some of my favourite talks.

15 ways to avert a climate crisis – Al Gore
An atheist’s call to arms – Richard Dawkins
Decoding the future with genomics – Juan Enriquez
The mystery box – J.J. Abrams
The universe on a string – Brian Greene
Why we age and how we can avoid it – Aubrey de Grey
Hans Rosling reveals new insights on poverty

3Dconnexion SpaceNavigator

After spotting the 3Dconnexion SpaceNavigator featured in my recent .net magazine I decided to go and buy one for myself. I’m a fan of new gadgets and a price of just £40 from Amazon seemed reasonable enough.
I received my new 3D controller a few days later. It’s smaller but yet heavier than I expected it to be.
There are currently 3 program that I can use it with. SketchUp, Google Earth and Photoshop.
I went strait to SketchUp, seeing as this was the only program out of the 3 that uses all the controller’s dimensions.
It’s very tricky to use at first, it takes a little getting used to.
It keeps crashing my photoshop though, but I’m sure this will be fine once I upgrade my computer, as I’m still using a G5 PowerPC iMac.
One little thing that did annoy me was that after one month of use. I got a message saying that my commercial licence had now expired. The message directed me to a site to purchase a new licence. How on earth is anyone going to know what I’ve used it for? anyway.
Overall I feel like I’ve spent the money wisely.

Google SketchUp

Google SketchUp

An opportunity recently came up to create a 3D layout for a Honda exhibition stand. Google SketchUp was the perfect tool.
Before this project I had only briefly played around with google’s 3D tool, but it didn’t take long to get to grips with. The outcome took only took a few hours and I was pleased with the finished result.
Since then I bought ‘Google SketchUp for Dummies’. Like other ‘for Dummies’ book the content was very good. The book was accompanied by video clips from YouTube.
The programme has a very low learning curve so it really didn’t take long to be a SketchUp expert.

Second hand PC

In the years past I’ve used my Virtual PC to check my site in IE6. Unfortunately my copy of Virtual PC has recently ceased to work for unknown reasons. All attempts to fix the matter have failed.

I currently still use an Imac with PowerPC and therefore VPC was, as every one using VPC with their powerPC Mac will know, slow as hell.

Many cups of tea later I’ve made the unlikely move and bought a second hand PC. The spec is 1.6mhz, 785mb Ram with a 17” LCD screen with XP, all for £80.
I’ve planted the PC right next to my IMac. I Networked the PC to the internet and my IMac and also changed the screen saver to the fish tank. Every thing working fine. After using the PC to check this site I now realise the benefits.

I can now check my sites in IE6 and IE7 much quicker than before, open files I cannot on the Mac and use the BBC iPlayer (If I choose to do so). Even more importantly I can check how my sites look on the PC screen. Colours of various site look different on the Dell PC screen to my IMac. The resolution is also much lower and therefore site look bigger. I would imagine that most people will have a Monitor close to the one I’ve just purchased. I would recommend other web designers to do the same.

AspireCreate redesign

This is my first post on my newly redesigned Aspirecreate.com website. This will be my fifth redesign of the site. I believe I have improved certain aspects of the site from the previous version including Usability, Coding, Design and it now includes a Blog. I have chosen to use the Content Management System (CMS) Textpattern which so far seems to be an excellent CMS.

I have chosen to include a blog, mainly to experience the knowledge of creating, designing and maintaining the blog itself. I will post my experiences with all things design related.