Touch My Phone

Visiting from an iPhone*? Things should look a bit clearer now, thanks to Blogger Touch (a port of WP-Touch, apparently) which can 'automatically' create a mobile-friendly version of your blog.

The website logs you in, creates the code and walks you through adding it to your sidebar with a suitable link, couldn't be easier (although I decided to tweak that and copy the script into the HTML header, which means the redirect happens much quicker). Commenting works well (give or take the odd bug to do with updating the comment count) and frankly it's an absolute disgrace that Blogger hasn't done this itself by now.

Anyway, all this means that, after sorting the kerfuffle with moving a self-hosted Blogger site away from FTP publishing, I now don't have to up sticks to Wordpress just to make it work better on the iPhone.

Phew.

* other mobile devices are available :)

Tinkerman

I'm having a muck about with Blogger templates.

Don't be alarmed.

Fresh Prince

Now I'm not a massive gamer, but I do remember spending hours of my youth on things like Donkey Kong (on my Dragon32), Jet Set Willy (on a Spectrum borrowed from Guppy's Computer Club in York) and later on, the wonderful Prince Of Persia. The latter is being turned into a blockbuster with Jake Gyllenhaal as we speak and someone recently posted a link to original game designer Jordan Mechner's journals on Twitter:

jordanmechner.com : Old Journals

I can honestly say I haven't been so utterly engrossed for a long time. It's a compelling set of insights into the mindset of a 20-something game designer in the mid-80s, on the cusp of something groundbreaking in the video games world (whilst also harbouring designs on becoming a screenwriter), but also getting to grips with the mundanity of passing his driving test and getting wary landladies to rent him an apartment in San Francisco. He digitizes his little brother running, hanging from walls, swordfighting, etc which forms the basis for the award-winning almost-human (for the time) animation in the game. Imagine being that boy. Wow.

And moments like this:

"But the real breakthrough this week was invisible: I moved a bunch of stuff around so the main game code can use the auxiliary language card. Basically, I’ve just freed up an extra 12K. That gives me some breathing room I’ll sorely need [...] It was a good weekend."

12K = 12,288 bytes = a good weekend :)

Really worth a read.

Yes You Can

This is quite a cool online generator thingy:

Soft Drink Can Generator

Soda. Pop. Coke. Whatever you choose to call it, welcome to the Soft Drink Can Generator, where you can create your own brand of carbonated sugar water. Enter some text, choose an emblem, pick your colors and patterns, and click the 'Go' button. A soft drink can will be generated for you. Collect 'em, trade 'em, put 'em on your website, or e-mail 'em to your friends.

OK, "trade 'em" may be pushing it but it's quite fun. I've gone for a kind of 'knock-off slightly-murky ginger-esque beer' look for mine. Oh, and an added bonus pun for those that know me:

Chrome Plated

As kottke says, people have been speculating about this for over 7 years:

Google Chrome

"All of us at Google spend much of our time working inside a browser. We search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And in our spare time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends -- all using a browser.

What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build.

On the surface, we designed a browser window that is streamlined and simple. To most people, it isn't the browser that matters. It's only a tool to run the important stuff -- the pages, sites and applications that make up the web. Like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome is clean and fast. It gets out of your way and gets you where you want to go."

This is going to be worth a look :)

Purl Pot?

Jaw droppingly, er, jaw dropping:

Knit Your Own Hitler

I really did like the comment from the Jewish Network though:

"You would hope people would have more sense than to take a cuddly Hitler into work."

Er, yes. Yes, you probably would. Wouldn't you? Yes.

(thanks, Urban Woo)

Logo Agogo

Worth a glance, some fantastic olde worlde company insignia evolving into the brands we know today:

Neatorama: Evolution