Showing all posts tagged: design
Mocha Mousse 17-1230 selected as the PANTONE colour of year 2025
13 December 2024
We’re twelve days out from the big one, and high in the silly season, as the brevity of recent posts here may allude to. Otherwise, the major highlight has to be the annual announcement of the PANTONE colour of the year. As I wrote two years ago, this was a big deal during my web design days. Well, a somewhat big deal, as we were always on the lookout for new colour inspiration.
Anyway, the PANTONE colour for 2025 is Mocha Mousse 17-1230. Mocha Mousse. I can’t decide if that’s a dessert, or a hair product. Whatever, I’m liking it. Here’s how PANTONE describe the hue:
Simple and Comforting: A Soft, Warming Brown. With its sophisticated, earthy elegance, PANTONE 17-1230 Mocha Mousse can stand alone or serve as a versatile foundation, enhancing a wide range of palettes and applications—from minimalist to richly detailed designs—across all color-focused industries.
To whip up some designs featuring Mocha Mousse in your favourite graphics editor, here are some common colour generating codes. The HEX code is #9e7a68. If Red, Green, and Blue is your thing, use these values: R = 158, G = 122 B = 104. On the CMYK colour model, go C = 31%, M = 47%. Y = 49%, K = 18%. For the HSB colour system, go H = 20°, S = 34%, B = 62%.
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Y2K, a film by Kyle Mooney, the Y2K bug seriously strikes back
12 December 2024
I’m not sure if this horror re-imagining, trailer, of the Y2K “bug” will have a cinematic run in Australia, or is going straight to streaming.
Two high school nobodies make the decision to crash the last major celebration before the new millennium on New Year’s Eve 1999. The night becomes even crazier than they could have ever dreamed when the clock strikes midnight.
With dire fears of road traffic signals failing, ATMs crashing (causing some people to keep cash on hand), and aeroplanes falling out of the sky at midnight, on the first of January 2000, what more would you want in a horror story?
Those who came in post 1999, can read more about the Y2K bug here, but here’s a quick summary of the problem:
Many programs represented four-digit years with only the final two digits, making the year 2000 indistinguishable from 1900. Computer systems’ inability to distinguish dates correctly had the potential to bring down worldwide infrastructures for computer reliant industries.
Apparently some organisations spent up big trying to fend off the bug, although some IT experts felt the money could’ve been put to better use. In late 1999, I was having some weird computer (think clunky desktop with bloated monitor with an actually pretty small screen) problem (of a Windows nature, not Y2K), and had a computer fix-it guy come around and look at it. The issue was resolved, but I ended up being auto-subscribed to the fix-it people’s monthly newsletter.
Out of politeness, I read the first few newsletters they sent, before unsubscribing. In the February, or maybe March 2000 edition, they did a “recap” of their clients’ Y2K bug experiences. The fix-it people claimed many, many, organisations had averted catastrophe, thanks to their efforts. Unfortunately, or conveniently, as the case may be, not one of these organisations wished to talk publicly about how the fix-it people had saved them from certain doom. Of course.
In late 1999, I launched a Y2K bug inspired Neocities-like version of disassociated, here’s a screen grab. See them bugs in the lower right hand corner, hey? I picked up on the idea of traffic signals failing, and roads choked full of cars, trapped amid the chaos. Notice also the news box. They were ubiquitous on personal websites of the day; a design trend. Today the whole site is a news box.
Mooney’s movie might make for a great glimpse of the world, and the internet, in late 1999 though.
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design, film, history, Kyle Mooney
One Minute Park, One Million Checkboxes, win Tiny Awards 2024
29 August 2024
One Minute Park by Elliott Cost, has been named winner of the main prize of the Tiny Awards 2024, while One Million Checkboxes by Nolen Royalty, took out the multiplayer player gong.
One is your lucky number this year. Held annually since last year, 2023, the Tiny Awards recognise excellence in non-commercial websites designed by individuals and/or or groups of creators.
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awards, design, IndieWeb, technology
Dense Discovery notches three hundred editions, opens reader community
7 August 2024
Melbourne based Australian designer and publisher Kai Brach’s weekly publication, Dense Discovery (DD), is one of the few newsletters I subscribe to. If you have an interest in, well, everything, then DD is for you. First published in September 2018, the three-hundredth edition was posted yesterday.
And to mark this most impressive of milestones, Brach launched a community space, the DD Lounge, especially for supporters, friends of DD. That a regular newsletter can go on to spawn a community says a lot. Yes, I know there are other similar such communities, but still it’s something.
Congratulations on publishing three-hundred editions DD.
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content production, design, publishing
disassociated turns twenty-one again, sort of
6 August 2024
This is — again: sort of — /timeline page content, which seems to be a bit popular on InterWebs and IndieWeb at the moment.
Today — or rather last Sunday 4 August 2024 — does not really mark the twenty-first birthday of disassociated. That would’ve been back in 2018, given the first non-blog inception of this website went online in 1997. But, the oldest, presently published blog post, dates back to Monday 4 August 2003. A post about the Windows Operating System (OS), NT4, that I’d been forced to stop using, after upgrading my then computer.
I had a few nice things to say about Windows OS’s back then, quite the contrast to the present time. Ever since properly rebooting disassociated in May 2022*, I’ve gradually been restoring selected old posts from the early days. The post I wrote twenty-one years ago, predates content management systems (CMS) such as WordPress, and was instead written onto a static HTML page.
In 2007, as I was preparing to migrate to WordPress, I spent several months copy and pasting several years of “blog” posts onto a template, I would later upload into my first WordPress database. WordPressing, was the term I used to describe that process. But anyway, there we have it. Twenty-one years (unless I restore even older posts, and there’s one or two), of blog posts at disassociated.
But then again, who doesn’t like turning twenty-one a few times?
* though I’d sort of been back since September 2021.
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blogs, design, history, technology
Tiny Awards 2024 shortlist announced, public voting open
24 July 2024
The shortlists for the 2024 Tiny Awards have been published. Now in their second year, the Tiny Awards honour “interesting, small, craft-y internet projects and spaces which basically make the web a more fun place to be.” Think the work of small, and independent creatives.
To be eligible, websites need to be non-commercial, and launched during, or after, June 2023.
Rotating Sandwiches — a website featuring images of rotating sandwiches, go and see for yourself — won the inaugural award in 2023. The 2024 winners — there are two categories, main award, and multiplayer — will be announced on Sunday 18 August 2024.
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awards, design, IndieWeb, technology
Sometimes my personal website looks like a bad photo of me
17 July 2024
Stefan Bohacek writing on his Mastodon page:
The problem with redesigning your personal website is that it looks great for about a week, and then you start to hate it.
This is a problem of the ages. In the late 1990’s I’d redesign my websites (I had several back then) every few weeks. Or what felt like every few weeks. The need to constantly update came from the desire to look as good as the other ever-changing personal sites that were around then.
It was also necessary — you understand — to be up with the absolute latest design trends, and apply our own interpretations and variations of them to our websites.
For instance, does anyone remember, or know of, TV lines? See an example here (not my work). TV lines became de rigueur with fad-like ferocity in late 1999 I think. If you didn’t feature at least a few images with TV lines, you were no longer with the times, you were w-a-y behind them.
The notion that a website should be redesigned about every six months began to emerge, perhaps, in early 2000. The idea being some consistency in appearance was desirable, while not lasting forever. It also, mercifully, gave us time to focus on other things. Non web things, among them.
Today, the design of disassociated has barely changed in years. It’s been in a single column “note pad” format since, I don’t know 2009/2010? The “d” logo came along in around 2013. It changes colour now and then. I call the current inception the “fruit salad” logo. It’s been here for two years.
The overall site design feels a bit bare sometimes, but I like to keep things on the minimal side. Pictures — when I post them — are meant to stand out, and not be swallowed up by the design. Otherwise though, I don’t have much time presently to think about whether I like the look or not. It’s a bit busy elsewhere right now, and writing posts is really my main priority.
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blogs, design, history, technology
Well-built furniture should last centuries, not a couple of years
12 June 2024
When Lauren was pregnant with a child who’s now turning 25, we purchased a comfy dark-brown leather sofa which fits our living room nicely. What with kids and relatives and employees and cats and Standards Comittees and friends and book clubs and socials, the butt-support cushions had, a quarter century later, worn out. So we had them replaced, at a fair price, by a small local business. Which is something that modern capitalism is trying to make impossible.
An old neighbour runs a furniture recycling business. His speciality is something called mid-twentieth-century furniture, sometimes mid-century furniture. It has a darker, wood stain/grain look, and really isn’t my thing. But it’s sturdy, well-built furniture, and will still be here long after the self-assembly particle-board stuff, this is presently so popular, has crumbled into ruin.
Short wonder my neighbour can’t keep up with demand for furniture that’s seventy-years old.
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The 100 year WordPress plan preserves your website for posterity
28 August 2023
WordPress, creator of the CMS I publish disassociated with, has unveiled a one hundred yearlong website hosting and domain name registration package. If you have a lazy US$38,000, then there’s nothing stopping you from signing up. But I like the idea. It makes sense. When I first began designing websites in 1997, there was a consensus that the web, websites, and even email, was a fad. A craze. Something that would come and go. As did pet rocks and CDs.
It took only a few short years — or was that months? — before we realised though we were going to live on the internet. Forever. No, we weren’t going to crank up the modem and login via dial up, a couple of times a day, rather our computers would be plugged into the grid every last waking minute. And who could have foreseen — back in the 1990’s — that we would one day carry devices in our pockets allowing us to remain online constantly?
Now that I think about it, I cannot remotely conceive of a notion that the web, and all of its interconnected peripherals, were a mere passing phase. disassociated has been online (in one form or another) for twenty-five years, and I occasionally find myself wondering about its long term future. Like what happens when I’m longer here? The thought of making provision in my will, to keep this website registered and online, has crossed my mind once or twice.
I can’t imagine I’m the only one. To some people, their website is an integral part of their identity. I’m talking particularly about those who document every aspect of their lives on a website or blog. It would be a shame, a loss even, if upon the death of the publisher, these resources simply vanished because no one was paying the domain registration and hosting bills. These are matters I doubt few people even remotely considered twenty-five years ago.
The WordPress one hundred year package is therefore compelling, even though I can see people baulking at the $38,000 price tag. I quickly ran the numbers, and based on current domain and hosting costs, could keep disassociated afloat for a century for maybe half that cost. But I’d need someone, a dependable descendent, I could rely on to carry out the necessary administrative tasks of keeping my website online when I’m gone.
On that basis, the cost, although steep, begins to look a little more palatable. Everything is taken care of, without the need to burden someone else. But the WordPress proposal poses intriguing questions. Do you believe preserving your website is essential to preserving your memory? People are already giving thought to what happens to their digital assets, things like email accounts and social media pages, on their deaths, but what about personal websites and blogs?
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Indie Blog, see random blog posts, go places in the blogosphere
4 August 2023
Indie Blog, is a blogroll website by Andreas Gohr, akin to ooh.directory and feedle, but with a slight difference. Instead of searchable lists, Indie Blog takes visitors to a random post from one of the websites on their directory. You mightn’t know where you’re going, but that’s half the fun.
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