Here's a rant that might irk you but that's life, yeah?
TF is going on the UK that we don't got? Why is their TV so much better than ours? I'm not trying to be a hater here but, without even TRYING, I can list a number of UK productions that kick the arse of Canadian television.
Watch Skins. You'll have to download it because you'll not see it on your telly. Fat chance. Morbidly obese chance, as like. Basically, it's Degrassi meets Trainspotting meets Dangerous Liasons but wholly Bri'ish. And I flamin' love it.
Hold on just a minute before you go all "Yeah you probably watch Degrassi and 90210 redux." No. I don't. In fact, I never watched Degrassi. I never watched 90210. I never watched Dawson. No teen drama has ever caught my attention -- even when I was in my teens. Nope...no OC, no One Tree Hill. Nothing.
This one is for the books and if I didn't happen to hear about Skins from my friend Liz, who's married to a Brit and loves all things British....I NEVER WOULD HAVE KNOWN ABOUT THIS SHOW. Why not? I have a 17 year old in my life. I see her once a week! We talk pop culture non-stop. (Keeps me in touch, sure but I'm also just a pop-junkie.) And believe you me, I'm going to ask her if she's ever heard of this show.
But then I stop and think...what if she downloads it? Is it appropriate for a 17 year old? And then I realize why it will never air on the CBC -- even I am second guessing the content. And I realize that I am such a product of my flamin' culture. Canadian culture.
The ever elusive Canadian Culture. What exactly is it besides politeness and friendliness? What is it beyond Anglo vs. French behind closed doors? BECAUSE WHAT EVER IT IS IT MAKES LOUSY TV.
YEAH I SAID IT. I'M SICK AND TIRED OF CBC PROGRAMMING BEING MONOTONOUS. HOMOGENEOUS. WHATEVER. WHY IS IT THAT THE ONLY PROGRAMMING WE SEE IS ABOUT THE PLAINS.
And then you get something like Twitch City, which was decent, at least. And it gets pulled. Cancelled. Whatever.
And in the UK they have Skins.
We have Anne of Green Gables, which may as well have been produced by an organized religion like The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Not that I have a problem with the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I don't. But I don't want to watch CTS. (Okay they show re-runs of The Facts of Life so I do watch CTS. BUT I SWEAR IT'S THE ONLY TIME I DO.)
I swear.
We've got Emily of New Moon. Oh my god that could have been about werewolves eating people alive and turning the whole town into bloodthirsty werewolves one bite at a time. But no....and I quote from a website:
Based upon the trilogy by Lucy Maud Montgomery, Emily of New Moon follows the life of orphaned Emily Bryd Starr who is sent to live with her stern Aunt Elizabeth and kind Aunt Laura.
She becomes friends with Ilse Burnley, whose mother mysteriously vanished when she was a child.
Nearby lives Teddy Kent, whose mother is overbearing and to complete...
Do I even need to provide you with a link to that information? Do you need to read on? Anne of Green Gables. Emily of New Moon. The Beachcombers. Heartland.
I understand it caters to a particular audience. Ok. We have Corner Gas....
And the UK has Absolutely Fabulous.
Even when we try and go metro we get things like Train 48 and Metropia. Believe you me I gave both of those shows their shot. I give them all a shot. But if the whole set shakes when a door is slammed I get huffy. Oftentimes, Canadian production value is so POOR you can hardly expect our TV talent to stay north of the border.
We have North of 60. They have Prime Suspect.
It just plain SUCKS. (Did you get that double entendre there?) Pay attention cuz I'm going to weigh in on where the Americans fit in. JUST CUZ I FEEL LIKE TO.
All reality TV aside. All of it. It's a different category for another day.....
They got the money but they do a lot of copy cat work. Sometimes it's good (ie Three's Company). Sometimes it's bad (ie Absolutely Fabulous). Words: Paris Hilton BFF. Saved By the Bell. Beauty and the Beast.
Throwing good money after bad. Throwing good money after bad.
Their saving grace is cable. Two words. HBO and AMC. More words. Breaking Bad. Mad Men. The Sopranos. Damages. Californication.
We have Kattz and Dog.
'Nuff said.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Friday, November 14, 2008
the ONE says "There is no fold."
There is no fold. Forget it. You know how I know there's no fold? You can't bend the Internet. Yet.
Here goes - a blog post after a night of bad, mad, wicked, cool insomnia.
You can't bend the Internet so there is no fold. Look, line three and I'm already repeating myself. There's nothing wrong with scrolling, neither. You know how I know? There are scroll bars on the Internet and you can grab them and use them. In fact, you can click and drag them. You can click and hold on an arrow. You can move up and down to see.
So there is no fold.
Resolution is only relevant in that we need to design for the lowest HORIZONTAL common denominator. Scrolling left to right is really only allowed when we are being "artistic". We aren't usually "artistic" when we're building dotcoms or ecoms or recons. So if you're building a website for frozen yogurt with a cute little animated girl who runs from side to side and floats around and make the world lovely then sure you can scroll side to side but for now, let's assume you should avoid that. Why? Usually there's some kind of dock or some controls and stuff at the bottom of your screen and side scrolling can be irritating as a result. Usually there's enough junk at the top and bottom of your screen so you don't want to add more. Blah blah blah. But as far as a fold is concerned. I defy you to find one. I defy you to tell me the x and y coords that people are people stretching and shrinking their browsers to these days.
Oh sure there are stats. There will always be stats. There have always been stats. And stats are better than they used to be. Have you ever been part of an old-school survey? Taken the call? Filled out the papers? Kept track of your viewing habits with a pen? Yeah. Stats are better now because Google "knows". Google sees. Google measures and that is great and I love that stuff cuz it's just sick how Google has a third eye. Kind of. But until Google knows what mood I'm in when I fall out of bed and haven't slept a wink, there is no fold.
Maybe it's because I'm tired but I'm very pleased with the Matrix-spoon-fold-bend-quantum big idea here. Am I the only one that sees it? People who have been sleep deprived begin to hallucinate within the first few days. Let's look that up.....(time passes)
Research subjects who have undergone sleep deprivation experiments typically begin to hallucinate after 72–96 hours without sleep. It is thought that these hallucinations result from the malfunctioning of nerve cells within the prefrontal cortex of the brain. This area of the brain is associated with judgment, impulse, control, attention, and visual association, and is refreshed during the early stages of sleep. When a person is sleep-deprived, the nerve cells in the prefrontal cortex must work harder than usual without an opportunity to recover. The hallucinations that develop on the third day of wakefulness are thought to be hypnagogic hallucinations that occur during "microsleeps or short periods of light sleep lasting about one to ten seconds.**
Back to the present.
Gone are the days when people surfed with their browsers full screen. Gone are the days where a 14" monitor at 8x6 was our stake in the ground. There are too many computers and too many browsers and too many users to determine where the fold is any more. It's over. Let's stop talking about the fold and just agree that we'd like to have as much RELEVANT content at the top of our page as possible. That being said we should stop trying to jam in 3 levels of navigation. Stop trying to force leaderboards and bboxes and second bboxes and all that above the fold. You can't say where the fold is so let's just agree that as much content RELEVANT content that we can have within the first 750 VERTICAL pixels and keep it about 900 pixels wide and call it a day. Are those ads relevant? Yes. Then we have to accomodate for them. Is 3 levels of nav relevant? That's another post altogether.
What we need to do if we're going to push forward is just take a breath and think. If we just keep relying on what the next best resolution is, we'll keep talking about the Internet like our experience of it doesn't change with
(Scroll down.)
Th'end.
** I took that information from here.
(Now scroll sideways...kidding.)
Here goes - a blog post after a night of bad, mad, wicked, cool insomnia.
You can't bend the Internet so there is no fold. Look, line three and I'm already repeating myself. There's nothing wrong with scrolling, neither. You know how I know? There are scroll bars on the Internet and you can grab them and use them. In fact, you can click and drag them. You can click and hold on an arrow. You can move up and down to see.
So there is no fold.
Resolution is only relevant in that we need to design for the lowest HORIZONTAL common denominator. Scrolling left to right is really only allowed when we are being "artistic". We aren't usually "artistic" when we're building dotcoms or ecoms or recons. So if you're building a website for frozen yogurt with a cute little animated girl who runs from side to side and floats around and make the world lovely then sure you can scroll side to side but for now, let's assume you should avoid that. Why? Usually there's some kind of dock or some controls and stuff at the bottom of your screen and side scrolling can be irritating as a result. Usually there's enough junk at the top and bottom of your screen so you don't want to add more. Blah blah blah. But as far as a fold is concerned. I defy you to find one. I defy you to tell me the x and y coords that people are people stretching and shrinking their browsers to these days.
Oh sure there are stats. There will always be stats. There have always been stats. And stats are better than they used to be. Have you ever been part of an old-school survey? Taken the call? Filled out the papers? Kept track of your viewing habits with a pen? Yeah. Stats are better now because Google "knows". Google sees. Google measures and that is great and I love that stuff cuz it's just sick how Google has a third eye. Kind of. But until Google knows what mood I'm in when I fall out of bed and haven't slept a wink, there is no fold.
Maybe it's because I'm tired but I'm very pleased with the Matrix-spoon-fold-bend-quantum big idea here. Am I the only one that sees it? People who have been sleep deprived begin to hallucinate within the first few days. Let's look that up.....(time passes)
Research subjects who have undergone sleep deprivation experiments typically begin to hallucinate after 72–96 hours without sleep. It is thought that these hallucinations result from the malfunctioning of nerve cells within the prefrontal cortex of the brain. This area of the brain is associated with judgment, impulse, control, attention, and visual association, and is refreshed during the early stages of sleep. When a person is sleep-deprived, the nerve cells in the prefrontal cortex must work harder than usual without an opportunity to recover. The hallucinations that develop on the third day of wakefulness are thought to be hypnagogic hallucinations that occur during "microsleeps or short periods of light sleep lasting about one to ten seconds.**
Back to the present.
Gone are the days when people surfed with their browsers full screen. Gone are the days where a 14" monitor at 8x6 was our stake in the ground. There are too many computers and too many browsers and too many users to determine where the fold is any more. It's over. Let's stop talking about the fold and just agree that we'd like to have as much RELEVANT content at the top of our page as possible. That being said we should stop trying to jam in 3 levels of navigation. Stop trying to force leaderboards and bboxes and second bboxes and all that above the fold. You can't say where the fold is so let's just agree that as much content RELEVANT content that we can have within the first 750 VERTICAL pixels and keep it about 900 pixels wide and call it a day. Are those ads relevant? Yes. Then we have to accomodate for them. Is 3 levels of nav relevant? That's another post altogether.
What we need to do if we're going to push forward is just take a breath and think. If we just keep relying on what the next best resolution is, we'll keep talking about the Internet like our experience of it doesn't change with
- technology
- how many apps we have open
- what we're surfing for at that moment
- who just jumped on and off our computers
- whether the phone just rang
- whether i just got distracted by an "allow window to be opened?" prompt
- if i'm on my laptop and connected to an external monitor
- if that changes my settings
- if it's sunny and there's a glare on my screen
- what browser i'm using based on what OS i'm using
- based on what works in safari vs. explorer vs. firefox vs. the next new thing
- based on what awful site resized my browser in the first place
- how many pop up windows just took over my screen because that's not in my prefs
- or someone turned that off without telling me
- cuz my kids are using my computer
- or how i had to change my prefs for my grandfather who is half legally blind
- and he wants to play poker
- or i didn't sleep last night
(Scroll down.)
Th'end.
** I took that information from here.
(Now scroll sideways...kidding.)
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