What if you strapped a camera to a cat?

I’m away for a couple of weeks now, so don’t be thinking I’m lazy for not blogging! I will be very hard at work eating my way around Italy.

If you’re at a loss for something to do, may I recommend:

Find out why playground tactics are the perfect metaphor for search engine trickery

Read a smart exploration of how the new 2012 logo screams 1985 like a dodgy set of legwarmers

and see the amazing adventures of a prowling cat via a very nifty cat-cam.

Why designers should get some god damn grammar (aka ‘when signs go bad #4′)

Some of my best friends are graphic designers. Of course, some of what they do is gross, and I wish they would do it in the privacy of their own homes. But I’m glad that we live in tolerant society where they can flaunt their ideas, even though what they do is by no means comparable to real work.

I’m not designaphobic, no siree. I even went to one of those awful ‘design gatherings’ once. Of course I left as soon as I realised where I was, in case I caught ‘design’ and got some unnatural cravings for crayons.

But however wonderfully open minded I am, there is one thing that I cannot accept.

Listen up, designers of the world – you might be the life and soul of the genepool, but this world is not yours, and you are living here thanks to non-designer generosity. So there are some things you must accept and adapt to in order to fit into our neat, grey world. And the first and most important of these is grammar.

Today’s lesson: its.

Its means ‘belonging to it‘. “My dog likes cats. Its favourites are lolcats.”

It’s means ‘it is‘. “Have you seen my cat? Oh, it’s in the dog.”

Now look at the picture below, taken on a street near my house in Newcastle, and notice the mistake. Seriously, I cannot believe that this estate agent board was designed, approved, printed and then plastered around the north of England and nobody noticed the glaring error.

I can (and do) blame the designer who created it, but of course everyone else down the line also has to take responsibility for allowing something so stupid to get through.

Firefox’s subtle commentary on global linguistic diversity

Interesting observation from my dad:

“I just installed an update to Firefox and then installed the spell check dictionary. I notice the American English dictionary is smaller than the British one; and the Australian one is even smaller…”

Do Brits really have so much more to say? Or is it down to how we love to colour our words with unnecessary letters?

World’s politest graffiti

Found by the Ouseburn Valley in Newcastle.

Get cape, wear cape, write

Time for a spot of self-indulgence, if that’s ok. It is? Great!

For the last 3 months or so I’ve been working as a freelance journalist for a higher education portal called HERO (higher education and research opportunities).

It’s a lot of fun – I basically get to write articles about anything that’s related in some way to higher education.

We work months and months in advance, which means that only now is any of my stuff up. Of my 16 articles now online, you can read all about… how one-molecule computers are going to rock your world, what it’s like to have a baby while at uni, what a toaster that wants to be an iPod looks like, why students are boycotting Coca-Cola, how much you could earn by writing essays for lazy students, and what Jeremy Clarkson did to get hit in the face by a pie.

And if you have anything higher education-related that you think should be a HERO feature, drop me a line!