July 2011
8 posts
3 tags
Laps led, on the pace and 3rd overall
It was an interesting weekend in Durban as I took part in a “Pre-National” event to gauge my pace against some of my main opposition.
Friday testing was awesome as I was clearly the fastest in my class but Saturday did not go so well.
The pace was upped by the other drivers and for various reasons I just couldn’t match them. It was a big dose of reality and to be honest I was a...
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Pre National - Day 1. We're getting quicker!
Just a quick update, the day could not have been better. We obliterated our best time from the previous test with a 44.7 and did consistent 44.8 - 44.9 second laps during most of the day.
Some of the main competition was also testing but they couldn’t seem to match our pace. We will see on Sunday whether they were playing games or if we are genuinely as quick as it seems.
Other good news...
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WatchI don’t think there is a car on this planet which sounds like this.
The new Pagani Huayra.
Source
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Back to Durban I go
On Thursday I get back on a plane to Durban for some more testing. Since I’ve been back I have tried to do as much exercise as possible but my ‘other life’ (read: work) seems to be getting in the way!
This weekend is a regional race event but because it’s the last race before the main African Championship event I expect to see many of my competitors entering this race to...
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Fourty Five Dead.
While I wait to board my plane back to Cape Town.
14 hours later…
So I’m back and, wow, what a trip. One thing I forgot about motorsport (actually sport in general, no doubt) are the highs and lows you can experience in just one day.
For day two of testing we got to the track nice and early as we had some work that we still had to do on the kart. Once preparation was done I went out...
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Day two: Do I still have it?
It’s been a super long day but I finally have a chance to fill you in on my first day back on a kart track in three years.
The long and short of it is that things went really well.
In karting, pace/lap times are measured in the 1/10th of a second. That is juuust faster than the blink of an eye.
If you are three to four tenths off the pace of the fastest guys then you are considered slow...
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I'm going racing.
In a few hours I’ll be on plane to Durban.
The reason for my trip is to climb into a kart to see if I still have what it takes to compete at the highest level.
Once upon a time, my dream in life was to have a career as a racing driver. The pinnacle of my ‘career’ was competing in the World Rotax Max Championships in 2007. I ended up 6th at the race but wasted an opportunity...
March 2011
1 post
4 tags
Re-designing Motribe →
Earlier today the new Motribe site was launched. The design is done by Obox (yours truly) and I could not be happier with the outcome.
It started with a phone call from one of their co-founders, Nic Haralambous. Nic and I have known each other for a while and we both respect each others businesses considerably.
My initial thought when he asked me to redo their site was “WOOHOO!”,...
February 2011
6 posts
3 tags
Is this the start of the second dotcom bubble? →
The arrival of a “New Thing” that cannot be valued in the old way. Dumb-money companies start paying over the odds for New Thing acquisitions.
Smart people identify the start of a bubble; New Thing apostles make ever more glowing claims.
Startups with founders deemed to have “pedigree” (for example, former employees of New Thing companies) get funded at eye-watering...
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That thing on the right
If you look to your right you will see an advert by Carbon Ads.
We have advertised on the Carbon network before and the results were quite favorable.
This, however, is the first time I have ever been on the receiving end of advertising. When I was younger I always dreamed of making money from ads off my site but it never happened.
Even though this Ad will only bring a tiny amount of $ a month I...
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The wallet
My spare wallet has been ‘taken’ from my desk, I can still see a square mark around the area that it was lifted from. So to make light of this dire situation we are coming up with titles for its disappearance:
The nomadic one
My wallet has been crowdsourced
My wallet is crowd sourcing users hands and pockets to come up with a better, ergonomic design.
But, the best one so far...
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More on sign up forms
I read a good analysis on 37signals earlier about their sign up form redesign.
This is quite an interesting clip:
We’ve been watching a lot of Clicktale recordings of form usage and we noticed that just about everyone scrolls down to the bottom of the form, then back up, before they start filling out the form. So we wanted the redesigned form to be markedly shorter than the one it was...
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Discussing a sign up form design and user path
Gavin Elliott: It's a self contained form, my eyes are on the form. etc. I'd fill that form in. I'm wondering though, "Create an Account" ...can I click on style your site (Tab 2)?
David Perel: I'm considering how to sort that out because, no it wont be clickable, so the button at the bottom maybe has to say "proceed to step 2" instead of "Create your Account" OR I must put everything on one page (but I'm not sure they can do that with their current system).
Gavin Elliott: Are the top three things steps?
David Perel: Yes.
Gavin Elliott: Can you create an account without styling your site? Why is there a finish button if you've already created the account?
David Perel: The finish button will confirm your details
Gavin Elliott: Ok, just getting you thinking.
David Perel: If I change that 'Create my Account' button to 'Proceed to Step 2' I think a lot of these questions will no longer be questions. Also I think that the tabs at the top either need numbers or arrows to signify steps or something to that effect.
Gavin Elliott: Yeah they do, or you somehow need to talk them through it.
David Perel: No, it needs to be intuitive. If I can remove the steps and make it all on one page, then all these problems are solved.
Gavin Elliott: Maybe even hide the process? So create my account, once you hit it takes you to the style your site bit. Then people won't be like... oh for fucks sake there is a process to this?
David Perel: Or I can remove the tabs and say: "Step 1 of 3: Create your Account"
Gavin Elliott: Because you technically don't need a "Finish" tab.
David Perel: Yea, agreed.
Gavin Elliott: Because finish is technically creating your account.
David Perel: True, since the title says "Sign Up"
Gavin Elliott: Exactly yeah.
David Perel: Maybe if it said "Build your network", then it would be a completely different story
Gavin Elliott: Yes, but "Build your network" isn't a demand.
David Perel: True
Gavin Elliott: "Sign up" is a demand
David Perel: And that's what we want them to do, we need to tell them exactly what needs to happen, without having tell them how (minimize all the copy).
Gavin Elliott: Yup. Number 1 had a big itch by the way. Just looked at it again.
David Perel: Ye it was literally attempt 0.1, it was the alpha of alpha, I think I let it out too soon. Image 2 is miles better.
David Perel: Thanks for the feedback
Gavin Elliott: No worries.
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The new Mailchimp site, my thoughts
I think MailChimp have got their new home page design wrong.
I am not a fan of the colors or the noise / diagonal stripe textures. This however is a matter of personal taste and I am sure that many of you will like it.
What I think is wrong is that they don’t tell you what they are. In order to find out what MailChimp does you have to watch a video. What if I don’t have time for...
January 2011
13 posts
3 tags
Set clients deadlines
Despite always telling people that we ‘only’ run a theme company we also have a stealth custom development business.
Last year we closed it down to focus on themes but felt that we were missing out on big opportunities in terms of cool projects as well as turnover. So after only 2 months of closing it (we did wind it down for 2months prior) we ‘reopened’ it but without...
“When you find that you are stuck and need someone or something’s...”
– Flickery
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Skype chat between my bro and a fellow developer
Donald: $("#donski").append('');
Marc (my bro): $("#donski").append('').after(".work");
Me: TGIF
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Overtaking in F1 →
Martin Whitmarsh (McLaren F1 Team Principle) has said it best:
“I don’t think overtaking is an important as some people think it is. It has become a bit of an obsession. To be honest, some people with a lack of creativity have jumped on the bandwagon and are saying that is what we need to do.
“I think what people want is uncertainty of outcome. Going into the race weekend up...
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“You often hear the argument that the iPad is all new and the Internet is all...”
– Quoted from this article by Information Architects
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Renegade Spotlight: David Perel →
Recently David Ursillo interviewed me for a feature on his blog.
I usually don’t enjoy interviews because there is a tendency for the questions to be the same all the time, for example “What do you think the next big thing in WordPress will be?”… I dunno, your guess is as good as mine…
However, with Dave his questions were different from the norm and I enjoyed every...
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4x4 Sports Cars. The baine of the car world.
I read this earlier today:
Audi has registered the nameplates Audi SQ5 and Audi RSQ5. Are high-performance SUVs in the works?
I’ll keep this brief.
When you take a SUV sized vehicle and lower the ride, give it stiffer suspension and up the horsepower what are you doing?
You are making it useless.
4x4’s are meant for, at the very least, curb crawling. When you turn them into...
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Interview with Valentino Rossi →
Really good interview of ‘The Doctor’ by Dieter Rencken. It’s not the usual PR bullshit replies but instead thoughtful replies because of the way the questions are asked.
Interesting to hear Rossi’s approach to the start of the 2011 season. He is usually always fast right out blocks and you would expect someone who is at his level to assume so but he is so experienced and...
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@Font-Face in Firefox
I got the following question recently and have been meaning to blog about the answer:
Q: Why does @font-face work correctly in Chrome and Safari but when I open my site in Firefox they do not work at all?
A: The reason @font-face doesn’t display correctly in Firefox is because they block any fonts which are being called from a separate server or domain.
For example, if you host your fonts...
Exclusive Interview: Phosr Founders, John O’Nolan,...
startuplistinterviews:
There has been a steadily growing hype of what the mysterious, yet stunning holding page with Phosr gently placed in the middle, was really aiming to become. Now, the creative team behind it, accepted our invite for an interview to explain what Phosr truly is. We hope you enjoy this completely exclusive, engaging, and inspiring interview of the team behind Phosr, who...
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Welcome 2011 - My Resolutions
Welcome to 2011 people. It’s New Years Resolution time.
I have never ever made any resolutions before, I think once I toyed with the idea of stopping eating cereal but that was a weak attempt at answering a ‘What are your resolutions’ question.
This year however I have some things that I want to write down which I can then look back on and compare notes. So here it goes.
In no...
December 2010
8 posts
3 tags
Apple's design process →
Posted all the way back in 2008 but I think it still makes good sense and is quite interesting to read.
2 tags
New Top Gear Season Vid →
How badly do you want to watch this? I know I cannot wait.
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The difference
In my pursuit for a new car that I absolutely don’t need, I decided that my time with Renault has now passed.
After trying with a THIRD dealer, to get the new Renault Clio 20th Edition, and yet again getting no response I realised that it was time to move on. So, no more Renaults for me.
With that out the way I started looking around for other cool ve-hicles. Since my family have been Audi...
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Fireworks vs Photoshop (Workflow) →
I am glad someone did this so I didn’t have to. Just like you all told me to get a Mac, well now I am telling you to start using Fireworks for Web Design.
It is an absolute no brainer, if we were to compare PS to FW it is like comparing Windows 2000 to OSX 10.
The link above will tell you why. Stop lying to yourself and make the switch. 1 step back, 2 steps forward.
(hat tip @mattyza for...
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“The biggest hurdle is rejection. Any business you start, be ready for it. The...”
– From The Entrepreneur via SLXS
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Renault, why don't you want to sell me a new car?
One particular reason I work so hard is because I have a passion for cars. Yes those things which are a complete waste of money. I can’t help it, I was quite literally wearing a helmet on my head when I was 16months old, there is petrol in my blood and it isn’t going anywhere.
Unfortunately this passion costs money and though I don’t drive a Ferrari, or even an Audi RS5, I still...
Blogging
It’s such a mission.
November 2010
2 posts
3 tags
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My trip to Brazil. 'twas rad
I spent most of my life trying to become a Formula 1 driver but during the entire time that I pursued my dream I had never actually seen one live. Sure I had seen them on static display, I even sat in one, but I had never seen one moving.
Courtesy of F1 Grand Prix Tours, that all changed last week when my brother Marc, my friend Werner, and I took a trip to Brazil to watch the second last round...
October 2010
2 posts
3 tags
My take on being inspired
Last night I got the chance to go and watch the Facebook movie. It was brill, the script was definitely a highlight and the acting was unexpectedly top notch. I won’t give anything away though and this isn’t a review, just know that you must go watch it.
The screening was organised by a tech company called Integr8, most of the people there were techies so most of them ‘got...
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September 2010
6 posts
4 tags
The SA Blog Awards - Pass me a soap box and a red...
Ok so now that the SA Blog Awards are done I can say that I enjoyed myself from the start of voting all the way till two days AFTER the awards.
What a comedy from so many sides. I loved it.
It started off with the haters hating (read those comments, awesome) that some people actually make money off their blogs. Only in South Africa could this possibly happen, how dare you actually make money...
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“This is the point of the supercar. They are not built, really, to be driven....”
– Jeremy Clarkson on Supercars. Nail. Head.
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G27 Steering Wheel review →
I am a huuuuge race simulator fan. My two favourites are Gran Turismo (PS3) and rFactor (PC). They are two very complete games but to get the most out of them you need good equipment.
That means steering wheels and pedals. I have about 10 sets of wheels & pedals lying around my house. I literally use them till they break (pedals in particular).
At the moment I have a G25 which is broken (the...
“Only a mediocre person is always at his best.”
– Somerset Maughan - via @djfreshsa
August 2010
7 posts
2 tags
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We got nominated for a .net award! →
Initially I thought it was a joke when a mate of mine popped up on skype and said “I voted for you”. I wondered wtf he was talking about, and when he said that we were nominated in the .net awards I literally thought it was a joke.
Turns out it’s not joke. Our video blog, From the Couch has been nominated in the Video Podcast of the Year category. Heavy days. Even though in the...
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Skype Etiquette →
I am definitely guilty of hitting enter mid sentence but for the most part I couldn’t say this better myself.
“Death is not such a bad thing… It just has bad PR.”
– My dad. Legend.