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Book meme:

- Grab the nearest book.
- Open it to page 56.
- Find the fifth sentence.
- Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
- Don’t dig forour favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

Mine:
From Designing The Obvious by Robert Hokeman Jr.

LOL, that quote is amazingly relevant right now, what with our work on IPB3. Designing The Obvious has been a great resource while I've been working on version 3 - those that have also read the book may recognise some of the usability tips that have made their way in.

Follow the instructions above and post on your blog, and leave me a comment so I can check it out (or if you don't have a blog, feel free to post your answer as a comment on mine).

via Leah Culver's Blog

The IPB3 skin designing is well underway, and thus far, is nicely semantic and valid. Headings are used where they should be, and divs don't litter the code.

That said, being semantic - in some cases - is easier said than done.

Take for example the post block. Semantics dictates that this should be a p tag - or more correctly, several p tags as necessary. This is how I coded the skin, and it works fine... until you consider it further. The problem is, the post block contains user-generated data. It's very difficult indeed to ensure that user-generated data remains valid. I'll use a list as an example. Imagine this is how a (bbcode inserted) list appeared in my nice, semantic post view:



The p tag should be closed before the list, and reopened after the list, since p tags can only include inline elements. But how should this be implemented? The obvious answer would be to have the BBCode start with a closing p tag, and end with another opening p tag to continue the post. For most purposes that'd work fine. But what if a post is exported by RSS to another site? What if one skin on a site has used a div for the post? Suddenly you've got a random </p> in your content.

And this is the problem. There's no guarantee that a post will be written or viewed as a designer might intend. A p tag with block-level elements inside will break (not to mention be invalid). I'm not suggesting that this problem is absolutely insurmountable - I'm sure with a lot of work we could come up with some intelligent skin logic that figures out when it should close individual tags and so on. But is that worth it? I'm not sure it is - which is why I'm now using a div tag as the post block. It's not 100% perfect in terms of semantics, but it's a whole lot easier to deal with technically.

Semantics are an important goal in modern web design. But sometimes, it really is easier said than done.

Footnote: Ironically, you'll notice that the text in this entry appearing after the code block has lost its formatting. This is because when Blog was designed, p tags were used for the entry. This nicely illustrates the problem! In the next release of blog, those p tags will also be changed to div.

Today I spent some time creating a theme for my blog here, mostly because I wanted to, but also to see what could be done.

I'm pretty happy with what I have now. Theming could certainly be pushed further than I've done - probably much further. The only 'complicated' part of mine was I used the > combinator to selectively hide the header image, turn the link into a block and set my own background image, the one you see up top; you can see my CSS for the exact code to do it.

I'm going to keep this theme for my own blog right now, so I don't think it'll be one shipped with Blog or added to the resource site. I do plan to work on a couple though that will be distributed via one of those routes.

Let me know what you think

I've created a custom theme for my blog to demonstrate theming - this is only 3 lines of CSS, but you're free to edit any part of the page. Go crazy, we're looking forward to seeing what people come up with

Over the past month I've completed two more figures: a hobbit, and a Barrow Wight*. I'm really pleased with this - my painting is improving with every figure I do which is encouraging. These are 1" scale models - the hobbit is 1", the Barrow Wight is 1.5". Let me know what you think

Hobbit




Barrow Wight*



*Barrow Wights didn't feature in the LOTR movies, but they're in the books. They are undead warriors that paralyse Frodo & co in Fellowship of the Ring

Last night I went to see the brand new Lord of the Rings Musical, at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, London. Until Friday the show is in previews, with the official opening on Monday.

We were lucky enough to have seats in the front row. Often in a theatre this is bad news because you can't see the back of the stage and you feel like you're watching everyones feet, but those weren't really issues here - everything happened at the front of the stage, or up in the air at the back, so everything was clearly seen.

The production is absolutely mind-blowing. I cannot stress this enough. The theatre was literally unassembled and put into storage, and a new stage installed. The new stage has (I believe) 17 independently raising and rotating sections. It still requires some imagination, but it really adds a lot to the show. The set design and lighting really give a unique feel to each setting. I was particularly impressed by Lothlorien, it really felt magical.

The scene with the Balrog literally blew me away. I don't quite know how they did it, but it felt like there was a hurricane in the theatre. The raising stage was used to good effect to create the bridge, with an enormous figure of the Balrog present too.

The creative side is also outstanding. The way that characters such as the Ringwraiths, Ents and Spider mistress are brought to life is incredible. Without wanting to give it away too much, they all use circus skills, but not really in a cheesy 'big top' style. It's all very sophisticated.

I think it's important to know the story before you see the show, because a lot of important details are missed out (bear in mind they have had to condense it into around 2.5 hours). For example, there's no reference to Helm's Deep, and Minas Tirith only gets a passing mention and a short dance segment. I was also puzzled that they left Weathertop out completely - instead, the Ringwraiths actually find Frodo at the Prancing Pony, and stab him there. Interestingly, Theoden isn't released from his curse by Gandalf The White, but just by Strider turning up, which seemed bizarre to me.

Some other bits I noticed missing are: Merry and Pippin aren't captured by Orcs, although it is referred to; then they come back. Although the Ents are featured, you don't see the attack on Isengard (understandable, I have no idea how they'd pull that off on stage). A couple of key characters missing include Grima, Faramir, Éowyn, Tom Bombadil and others.

These things aren't so much critisisms, just notes. As I said, it's helpful to know the full story before seeing the show so that you're aware of what's going on, otherwise you may be a little confused by plot holes, and you'll probably wonder why Strider, Gimli and Legolas are present at all (with the large battles of Men mostly ignored, these three characters don't really have much to do after breaking of the fellowship).

I have to reserve this final bit to awarding the character of Gollum a huge award for Best Actor. I cannot begin to describe how good he is. From his first entrance where he literally crawls down the curtain from the top of the theatre, right to the end, he's a masterpiece. He was so good, that the audience actually ended up laughing when they probably shouldn't - I think people were just amazed, and that usually results in laughter. Indeed, the guy that plays him also played in at the Toronto production, and there he won a prestigious Best Actor award.

I must say, I also though Sam was excellent, though that's not to say all the other characters weren't very good indeed.

So in conclusion... If you're a fan of LOTR, I would highly recommend you save your pennies (it's quite expensive) and get a ticket to see the show. Go with an open mind and realise you aren't going to see the films on a stage, and you will have a fantastic time.

Balin isn't featured in the LOTR movies, but he's a dwarf that featured in The Hobbit. Here's the latest figure I've completed:

Here's another figure I painted, Legolas this time. It's not 100% finished, but it's pretty close. I'm finally starting to remember how to do it properly again!



Again, bear in mind it's only 1" high!

It's true, I do.

I bought some Games Workshop figures last week.

Wait wait, before you run off in horror, let me explain. When I was younger, I used to love painting Warhammer figures as a hobby. I've never had any interest in playing the games, and still don't. The closest I ever got to playing Warhammer was getting HeroQuest (anyone else remember that?) one christmas. But I have always loved creative stuff, so I found painting the models interesting.

As I grew up I gradually lost interest, I probably last painted one when I was 15. The other day I was in a shop, and they had a small Games Workshop section with some of the newer Lord Of The Rings figures, and it resparked my interest. For a while now I've been looking for creative things I can do off of the computer because I kind of get bored in Photoshop after I've done a days work. So I decided to pick up a box of figures and a few pots of paint to go with my old stuff, and try it again. The set I got consisted of all the Fellowship, so 9 figures in total.

Here's the first one I've completed, Gandalf (the grey, obviously):



I'm really pleased with how it turned out (bear in mind in real life it's only 1" tall). It's better than any of my old ones, so I must have grown a better eye for detail in the 8 years since I last did it. As I work through them, I'll post pictures if anyone has the slightest interest.

I feel so nerdy, but hey, I have fun doing it - better than watching TV. But as CTerry said to me eariler, I'm lucky I found Bec when I did, because I don't think I'd have much hope now

Here's the 3rd third of blocking. Unfortunately I didn't finish the last shot, so it's not included here, but I'll add it once it is done. Comments and critisisms please, as usual!