Author Archives: songsta
Language observations #231 – crescendo
Recently on CNN: “The situation reached a crescendo when…” I find this secondary usage quite interesting. My background in classical music makes his usage quite jarring to my ear. To me, the more correct word to use in this instance would be ‘climax’. The word crescendo originates from the Italian ‘to grow in sound’, soContinue reading “Language observations #231 – crescendo”
Life Skills #2549
Life Skills #2549 Don’t stop and congregate at the top or bottom of stairs or escalators. If you don’t know which way to turn, just move out of the way. The people behind you will be grateful.
Daily Motivation
“You are an average of the five people you spend the most time with. If the five people you hang out with eat wings every night, you most likely will too.” – bodybuilding.com
Get the basics right – address your users correctly
This is a rookie error. We all understand that a system will need to send out a number of automated notifications, but they should be as personalised as possible to carefully mask the fact that they were programatically generated. Using the format “[surname, first-name]” is extremely impersonal. No humans would communicate like this. Just callContinue reading “Get the basics right – address your users correctly”
What’s in a word?
A SOLD sign is something we all know well. We understand it – a seller has made a sale. Their property has been sold to a buyer. However, Reynolds has a different take on this.
Designing for life
I am fascinated with how our creations – both physical and virtual – are conceived and designed to fit into our lives.
Let’s start again
I haven’t truly written anything for a long time. I have spent so much time consuming content that I forgot how important it is to create content. In fact I’m sitting here right now trying to think what I should write next. It’s really not that easy if you haven’t done it for a longContinue reading “Let’s start again”
Take a step up
I watched a very interesting TED video yesterday – A monkey economy as irrational as ours by Laurie Santos. Laurie, along with a team of students from Yale performed a series of experiments to try understand why the human species makes the same il…
Usability…
I’m on a usability drive. I want to make sure that whatever website or web app I write is immediately and easily usable. So I’ve almost finished reading Steve Krug’s “Don’t make me think”. Great book, great style of writing. So now I think of ever…