Internet Explorer = My Personal Irritation

Bit of a Monday Morning rant to start the week off: I see that the right sidebar is getting pushed down in IE 6. How bloody typical! It’s such a lousy browser and causes me no end of trouble. I’ve got to the point where I am just thinking of saying, sod it, and not fixing it. I recently saw an example of how one website designer dealt with this by putting up a “Your Browser Is Out of Date” message right across the centre of the page. Nice.

I really don’t know why people persist with IE6. Everytime I venture from my Mac I end up cursing. Browsing the web on anything else just isn’t a good enough experience. 

Email Interviews versus Face-to-Face

I was interviewed by Annette Schwindt this week. Annette handles the PR for Norwegian author Pål H. Christiansen.

The interview is about my translation of Christiansen’s amusing novel The Scoundrel Days of Hobo Highbrow.

The interview was done entirely by email, as Anette is based in Germany and I’m here in Stockholm. I often do “email interviews” when working as a journalist; however, I have to say I prefer actually talking to someone face-to-face. You get a better sense of the person you’re working with.

Email is very useful for follow-up work, getting some decent quotes and checking material. I’ve found this particularly important when I’ve done pieces on Cell Biology ! But it’s incredibly sterile. There’s all that paralinguistic information missing that reveals so much about a subject.

Still, when it came to being interviewed as opposed to asking the questions, I felt quite comfortable being able to write my responses as opposed to just saying them and having someone scribble hasty notes.

I’m yet to do an interview with someone via Skype or iChat but I guess it will happen eventually. I’m not sure about using a web-cam for an interview, though. I always find it so weird having to look up into the camera on the top of my iMac.

The interview with me should be online sometime next week, according to Anette is available here.

Website Redesign

I’ve changed the design of the the site this week as I didn’t like the colour scheme of the last one. The layout was nice but it just wasn’t working colour-wise. Plus, I wanted something a bit more flexible.

As of right now the CSS is 100% Brian Gardner’s Revolution Pro Media theme, which I recently purchased. Brian’s templates are purely for WordPress, which I don’t really like so I converted the theme to to ExpressionEngine. I simply don’t like using WordPress. It’s not as flexible as EE and I just find it so much easier to build complex sites with it.

I’ve done quite a bit of testing but no doubt there are a few glitches in the system as I write. Over the next few days I’ll tidy up any remaining problems and customize the design a bit more to suit my tastes.

I’ve been meaning to update the design of my site for quite a while but I’ve been busy finishing a few projects the last month or so.

Web Site Updates

I’m just in the process of changing the design of this site so there may be a few broken links around the place. Apologies for the interruptions. I’m having a bit of trouble with ExpressionEngine’s pagination code.

The Face of Journalism Today

The Miami Herald just laid off copy editor Brayden Simms off.

[He] wrote a blog for them about saving money in this terrible economy. He wrote a depressing column about how they tricked him into taking a full-time job and then outsourced it to India. Now he is blogging—for the Herald!—about meeting with his financial planner to discuss how to survive without an income. This is just sick. Jesus, they’re making him dig his own grave after his execution. Please forward this to every journalism student you know. (Gawker)

Depressing this might be; unfortunately, this is the current state of journalism today. Jobs in the newsroom are fast disappearing and nowadays journalists are going online to survive, resurfacing as bloggers, webmasters and copywriters.

Although print media still pays better, the momentum is definitely behind working online. I think I see four or five web-based jobs to every print job.

On a related note, I read an email today from an aspiring 18-year old journalist wanting to know about how to get into the profession. I’m not sure what journalism is anymore. It’s perhaps better to build a portfolio of writing skills that you can use to generate work as a content provider for both print and digital media. Traditional journalism is going to have to reinvent itself to survive.

Telegraph Blogs 2.0

The Daily Telegraph’s blog set-up has finally got a much-needed make over. Gone are the slow page load times and now the whole set up has a much more self-contained feel to it.

I don’t like the idea of limiting comments to the most recent five before having to navigate through subsequent pages. Some posts regularly attract over a hundred comments and reading throught the conversation becomes incredibly frustrating, clicking through page after page.

What I like most about the site is that it’s very cleanly constructed, putting the emphasis on text and readability. Oh, except for the Foreign Correspondent’s page which doesn’t render properly in IE. Typical.

It’s good to see one of the UK dailies continuing to develop their blog content, taking the conversation to the audience. 

Summer Plugging: Leon Kuhn Exhibition

If you find yourself on Gotland between July 15-25 check out the summer exhibition by one of my favourite artist’s, Leon Kuhn at Ljugarn.

The exhibition opens on Wednesday July 15 from 12:00 until late afternoon. Leon will be there for the opening and also on site at the gallery on the 16th. Gunilla Larsen, the gallery owner, will be curating until the exhibition ends.

Webpublishing + Pictures

Kudos to Norway’s Dagbladet. Today’s review of Alanis Morrisette’s concert in Oslo this weekend comes complete with a 360° photograph. Watch as the picture moves around to check if you’re in the audience!

It’s one of the best pictures I’ve seen from a concert review in that it captures the moment and gives you an eerie sense of watching Alanis’s performance on stage. 

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