2004-03-12 MENU CONSTRUCTION

Cointinued to create the menu's for the cartridge site today. The homemenu has been completed and tested. There is a problem with the displaye width on dqm__maindesc3 and dqm__subdesc3_0 through dqm__subdesc3_8 which will need to be ironed out before the menu's are replicated for each instance and context.

The immediate next tasks, apart from project work are to complete the t_range templates by setting the background and foreground fonts and colours, and also to set up the final layout.

2004-03-11 SEA CHANGE ?

It occurred to me today that over the past twelve months or so, I've had this growing interest in rural Australia. Maybe it's because we've spent much more time travelling in Australia over the past three years or was it because of overseas events. I'm also reading Black Kettle and Full Moon ... a book by Geoffrey Blainey about life in Australia from 1850 to about 1910.

Now for the real shock, I think that I'd like to get out of Sydney and live somewhere else. I love Sydney and the excitement of living here, but I just wonder sometimes wether it's better to go away and live the excitement as a holiday rather than the other way around. I don't see my commuting north of the hawkesbury as leaving Sydney ... it's still part of the great megaplex to me.

There's so much of Australia out there. Of all the places I'd love to live I think Northern Victoria is good, but then so is South East Queensland (but is that moving out of a city ?). I don't think Margie could live anywhere more than about a half hour from the sea. I'm dreaming of course. Theres bills to pay. Nothings free.

Back to current thoughts ... I've found myself looking on the net for rural radio stations, and each Sunday morning I'm watching Prime5 to get my weekly fix of On the Land. (A great show).

Still dreaming ... how can I get away.

2004-03-10 MORE SCRIPTS AND WIREFRAMES

Did more menu script and wireframes today. The scripts for the menu's in the cartridge site are proving to be a big time consumer. The wireframes have progressed marginally since yesterday ... have to get stuck into them tomorrow once I am back in the office.

Today has been productive though .... I managed to get so many more things done outside of the office ... I think it's because I can think in my own space a whole lot better than a noisy open plan office.

2004-03-09 VISUALISING THE WEB
Okay, well not quite. Today I started work on mockup diagrams for the re-designed website.

This is a daunting task, there needs to be a balance between doing everything (Revolution) and doing the right amount of things (Evolution). But which will get the revenue and customers ? To me, a revolutionary approach is needed.

2004-03-08 WORK FINISHED TODAY
Finished the rewrite of the merge files for the cartridges site. Started work on creating the context menu's for the cartridge site and the rem statements for obsoleted code.

The site re-design was discussed and I naw have a new task of creating some screen prototypes for the catalogue and product pages.

2004-03-07 SITE REDESIGN
Site re-design is the flavour of the week. Whilst I like my home page design for this site, I think it needs something else ... it'needs structure and clarity. The same applies for the work website which is now officially under re-design. The specification is being worked on from this week, starting with an all-day meeting tomorrow. There is a lot of work involved with this and I think the full 4 week design phase will be utilised.

2004-03-02 WRITING FOR THE WEB
All up this was a waste of a day ! I wont recommend this course to the company.

2004-03-02 WRITING FOR THE WEB
I'm currently attending a writing for the web course in Sydney. This course is interesting in that it has explained the differences between writing in say a newspaper format, and writing for an online application. I hope this will assist me in wrtiting even better content for websites and I see it as a perfect entr einto further usability research.

JOINT WEB / MARKETING MEETING AT HOMEBUSH
Meeting at the moment to. discuss web design.llrr .