Monthly Archives: September 2003

…and the week ends with food poisoning

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I very seldom eat in Brighton. Not that there’s anything wrong with the restaurants there, as a whole, but we have some nice ones within walking distance here in Worthing.

But last night we went to celebrate a friend’s birthday. She chose a place called the Cactus Canteen, a Tex-Mex restaurant just off the lanes.

Please make a note of that, in case you’re tempted to eat there.

The food was of poor quality, the service slow, and the prices high for the ingredients used and the lack of skill demonstrated by the kitchen – one of our number had to send back her ribs because they were so fatty and unpleasant, my main course Chimichanga was fried to crispy oblivion, and I’ve been physically sick overnight.

Do yourself a favour and find somewhere else to eat.

Apologies for the lack of Dangerous Thinking

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The working week started with my laptop messing up its Windows XP installation – I’ll tell you more about this sometime. It’s going to get to the usable stage today, if all goes well.

Then, all I need to do is catch up on the stuff that’s slipped backwards owing to lack of primary computer and being away from my desk for two full days.

Guess what I’m doing this weekend?

Usability and Dangerous Thinking

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When I set up Dangerous Thinking on MT earlier this year, I made a few tweaks to one of the standard themes. Basically, a few changes to the fonts.

Then I added blog rolls and other links to the main index template.

But it’s funny how I’m always finding myself in that ‘mailing pack’ mindset. What’s that? Well, a decade or so ago, when I freelanced around some of the bigger and better direct marketing agencies in London, I was taken into the world of mail packs and how people read them, progressing from envelope line to order form.

Somehow, Web site or blog usability seems intimately related to that kind of concept. A new medium (NOT media, oh ignoramuses), but almost the same question – how do we make it easy for people to get to where we want them to go? Or was it, where they want to go? Yes, that’s it. A new angle for a customer-focused age.

Are you still with me? There is a point, I assure you – and I’m getting to it now.

There are some ‘given’s about blogging. The whole enterprise is very date-centric. All the entries are timed and dated, and arranged neatly and chronologically – just like a diary.

But most blogs are so much more than a diary. And Dangerous Thinking covers all sorts of stuff – some time-related, others not time-related at all.

And I’ve been talking to some regular readers – some who like the marketing and copywriting stuff; others who just like to see what I’m gassing on about today; others who want to see all the photographs I’ve posted.

All these people are more interested in categories of posts and the latest stuff I’ve written, than the dates on which I posted them. Which got me thinking about how they could find what they’re interested in.

Until last weekend, the categories were somewhere off screen heading off towards where my blogroll is. So I moved the Categories links up to just below the search box. In a fit of further creativity, I removed the blogging jargon (‘out abstruse geeky terminology’) and replaced it with the more reader-friendly THINGS I WRITE ABOUT.

Then I sat back for a few days and felt rather smug.

But today it hit me. Why do I have the damned calendar right at the top? When was the last time you used the calendar to navigate a blog? I never do.

So there’s still some more work to do on the templates. THINGS I WRITE ABOUT is going up top – that way I don’t have to design the buttons I was planning to go across the the top of the blog, below the title and subhead – followed by the search box. Looking at my logs, I know people use that surprisingly often.

And then what? I’m not sure, but I’ll certainly be questioning the position of everything in the right hand column because I’ve realised that, certainly as far as Dangerous Thinking is concerned, dates aren’t king.

Please read this

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Take a little time to read what Crawford Kilian has to say about writing for the Web:

Webwriting is good writing adapted to the limits of the Web as a medium and to the needs of Web users.

OK, that’s the one-liner. Now let me expand on what I just said. “Good writing,” by my definition, is plain text that does not usually call attention to itself. Orwell called it “transparent writing,” text that lets you see the subject without even noticing the words that convey it.

In fact, if you notice the elegant style, the similes as aromatic as fried shoes, the stuttering staccato of alliteration, then it’s not good writing. It’s just the writer showing off how cool he thinks he is.

This is a philosophy of writing, not a scientific law, and if your idea of literary heaven is mainlining on the high-calorie prose of Cormac McCarthy, I wish you every joy of him. But I aspire to Orwell’s clarity.

It’s one of those rare pieces that I can honestly say, I agree with almost every word.

Writing for the Web

Doesn’t it make your mouth water?

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OK, I admit it. I’m being lazy this evening. You’ll forgive me if I put some product in the oven to have with my stir-fried vegetables and noodles, won’t you?

What are you eating?, you all say together. Product.

Look, it says it here on the pack in bold capitals: ‘ENSURE THE PRODUCT IS PIPING HOT THROUGHOUT BEFORE SERVING’.

What idiot wrote that? How about food, dish, or chinese chicken… Wouldn’t it sound so much more appetising?