As my latest desk chair disintegrates I thought I’d try something different, and after browsing around Amazon for a while, noticed this ball chair design.  I must admit though, I thought It looked a bit ridiculous. Then after a trip to the office, I noticed a colleague (who suffers from a recurring back problem) had a yoga ball on its own, so I decided I would give one a try myself.

Because you can pick one up for less than a tenner, it’s not exactly a great outlay for having a go, or to lose if you hate the thing.

So after spending a week of sitting on a 65cm yoga ball (you need to get the right diameter for your height), here are my reflections:

Pros

• I automatically sit with good posture on it for 90% of the time
• It’s comfortable for long periods
• I bounce. A lot. I don’t even notice it, but I guess this must count as exercise. I can now eat more pies.
• Something about bouncing helps me concentrate. A bit like chewing gum.
• I don’t get sleepy, it somehow keeps me alert. I don’t think it’s the fear of falling on my backside, but it could be.
• It was cheap.
• I can push it away right under my desk and it takes up no space.
• A yoga ball is easy to keep clean, and won’t gather dust like the plastic bits of desk chairs
• If you get a red one it could become a useful Comic Relief accessory (btw Amazon, I actually wanted blue!)
• If you need to, you can deflate it and take it with you. They pack up really small.
• It makes a great percussion instrument by beating it with hands.

Cons

• I woke up after my first day with back ache. That seems a bit of a show stopper. But I think this was simply because my body was not used to good posture. After 3 days this ache had gone away.
• Its an inflated ball made of rubber (well something air-tight and plasticy at least) There is no room for any ‘breathing’ so it makes you sweat. This could be the bouncing. Maybe bouncing right off the ball each time may solve this with the added ventilation. I am, however, looking for a cover but they are very hard to find. Those I have found have been many times more expensive than the ball itself, like this one.
• Sometimes you just want to sit back and reflect. This isnt advisable on a yoga ball, unless you reflect well from the floor.
• It IS still possible to slouch. I seem to have adapted quickly and discoverd new slouching methods. They are short lived, however.
• It’s possible to fall off. I haven’t. But I’m sure it’s possible, whilst this keeps you on your toes, it could make some people a bit nervous.
• If you left something lying about, like a drawing pin, and got a bit bouncy there is potential for a minor disaster. However, many of these yoga balls claim to be ‘anti burst’ which I believe just means they are constructed to go down slowly if punctured rather than popping with balloon-like drama.
• You can’t wheel yourself about between desks so easily. Now with a couple of space hopper style antlers this would be solved and add even more fun.

So, that looks like more Pros than Cons. But I’m keeping it. I’ll spend a lot of time bouncing on the ball during the work week, and other times when I need to sit back and reflect I’ll use the desk chair for variation.

The CIA/FBI should know, however, that in 1988 this guy deliberately drove us (in a lime green Vauxhall Chevette) the wrong way round the Little Chef roundabout outside Peterborough just to undertake Mark Harrod (in an orange Vauxhall Chevette). Nick, that is, not Barack.

View the demo

am conscious that some people in the web industry, including myself(!) may be getting tired of hearing the word ‘responsive’ in everything they read.  We shouldn’t be, because I don’t think it’s going to change any time soon (not until the next big web paradigm shift at least) and mobile will only become more important as time goes on and the device numbers grow and they technology evolves.

Get used to it. We, the content designers, have to be just as responsive as the interfaces we create, adapting to change as it happens. To do this we need to learn to think differently.

Responsive thinking

We now have to design and think responsively.  Our layouts and our pages need to gracefully fit the device they are being viewed on. Whilst they don’t necessarily have to be perfect in all browsers across all devices, they do have to look good and present a better user experience when compared to pinching and zooming a mobile browser rendering our pages at desktop size. With statistics on mobile browsing indicating that more people will soon be accessing the web from mobile than from desktop, we have to think carefully right from the beginning of any new site we design.

This presents a new challenge.  If we are going to wireframe our site designs, then we need to think and therefore wireframe them polymorphically, i.e. they will change shape in different situations. As we consider and add elements to what is basically the blueprint for our design, we have to ensure that everything can morph gracefully to higher and lower resolutions. Changing layout as necessary, making use of wider resolutions more effectively and possibly omitting some of the content altogether at lower resolutions (a last resort of course).

Therefore, if we wireframe this…

then we really need to also show this in our wireframes for a portrait 768pixel wide table view:

down to this on a mobile phone portrait width:

We can’t just make assumptions about how the site will adapt and leave clients in the dark about these decisions as we continue development regardless.

Mobile first

We can’t continue to think through the wire framing process from a blinkered desktop perspective.  It’s not going to be easy though. Many of us spent years advocating fixing width or maximum 960px width designs. The thought of our previously rigid designs suddenly being unbuckled and able to jump around and change layout can be unsettling.

Really, we need to start our wireframing from narrow widths outwards, or ‘mobile first’ ensuring that we can serve our content to the lowest common denominator and expand on this progressively as more resolution becomes available to work with on wider screens.

From now on we need to mentally deconstruct our site as we create our wireframes, mentally breaking it down into columns and elements that can not only exist side by side, but also above and below each other. There is no fixed interelationship any more. By starting with narrow screen devices we can ensure we solve narrow width problems first rather than running into them later on when time may be short.

Design constraints

Try as we might, there is no getting away from the fact that responsive thinking challenges our design options and certain approaches will not be as easy to implement as easily as others. Strong grid designs morph more readily as we down-sample the grid to single columns more easily than a more organic design. Also, even numbers of columns provide easier wrapping options than odd numbers of columns. For example, expanding a single column narrow site to a wide design with 5 columns could present more of a challenge than a design which expands to 6 columns. A 6 column design allows column steps of 1 X 6, 2 X 3, 3X2, then 6 X 1 columns… whereas a 5 columns would be uneven – 1 X 5, 5 X 1 with no even steps in between. Of course, we have every opportunity to switch our grid at different breakpoints, but this inflicts a further development overhead.

Wireframing compromises

If our desktop layout has a major call to action in the right hand column, where the middle column isn’t actually as important as either column 1 or the call to action:

is it necessarily right that we mechanically do this?

This may be the natural response of stacking columns left to right and this may be the result if there is little thought applied to how things transpire in a narrow resolution. This may be a more appropriate solution:

In addition to considering it ourselves and any html consequences of moving content around at different breakpoints, we also need to demonstrate to our clients that this has been thought through during the architectural process of the site design and not just arisen as a consequence of changing the layout. Thinking through the best way of presenting a site is more important than the practical considerations of swapping content with media queries.

Compromises are inevitable

In the example above, what if the call to action element was an advert? Will advertisers consider that it’s position at the bottom of the page content be as prominent as it was before? Again, we need to decide in collaboration with the client and demonstrate on the wireframe how everything will appear and agree on the inevitable compromises that must occur. Advertisers will undoubtedly be much happier with this situation:

Conclusion

There is no getting away from it, to show a complex website on a narrow screen device such as a mobile, there will have to be compromises. If comprises aren’t made in the content (i.e. we are still giving the whole site without removing content), then compromises will inevitably occur in positioning of the content. On a mobile page there are really only 2 hot areas, the header and the footer, both of which will need to carry important navigation options for our site. Everything in between is fairly equally weighted. Let’s hope noone ever starts referring to the ‘fold’ when it comes to mobile, or things are going to get very complicated indeed.

Whatever our solutions, we need to quickly wireframe our intentions to demonstrate both to our clients and to ourselves that we are thinking mobile first, ensuring that width problems are all solvable from the outset and that as we scale our wireframing upwards content can neatly and evenly adapt to fit desktop widths.

Whilst looking for some reference sites for a current design project, I came upon this site for Adapt Plc:

Generally, it’s not bad. But I couldn’t help myself and had to spend 10 minutes making it nicer. Basically simplifying and removing the copy (not rewriting I hasten to add, which is what it needs), generally cutting the crap and increasing the white space. Really. Noone is going to read all that crap.

I’m not sure why the site owners can’t see this themselves. I guess it’s because the site has no formal design ownership and is in the vulnerable phase between initial design and redevelopment -when finally it has been completely trashed and everyone decides it needs redesigning from scratch.

I would say that it was a lot further from that point than it currently feels it is. It just needs some love and attention from a designer. Not the CEO/VP/CMO.

“Benzedrine-like drug, Pervitin, causes a spider to build a one-sided web. After laying a foundation for a large web it becomes so restless under the stimulant that it cannot co-ordinate. It weaves back and forth at one end only, laying down too many strands there but not completing the whole net”

Source: LIFE, 1954.

But it’s not just the architecture. It’s also the design work of the interiors, and the surroundings of these building projects all blended together with the Arabian culture that makes it an exciting place to be. The city is full of colour, wild shapes, pattterns and a myriad of creative ideas. Oh, it’s also hot. Very very very hot in fact.

Here’s just a quick inspirational taster.

I’m generally a little bit disorganised. Despite loving the general idea of knowing where I put my keys, or left that letter to post, I lose things. Occasionally I lose bigger things, stuff that is irreplaceable. I also lose music I’ve spent hours, or weeks writing. Sometimes I just forget about it completely and it lingers away in an old file format on a defunct hard drive. Not completely lost to the world, simply lost to my mind.

So, I was looking for something in box in the loft full of the random kibble of life when I found an old C60 cassette tape. Unlabelled of course. An analogue tape, imagine that. It was branded BBC (yes the Beeb used to make chrome tape) and it displaced a memory. It took a few minutes to remember how I was going to play such an antique, when I recalled I have an equally antique mini system in the kitchen, with its very underutilised tape deck.

I remembered. I spent a week writing this piece of music. It was during a period of umployment, where I baked scones, signed on at the benefit office, ate scones, created this track, and occasionally even applied for jobs. 16 years later and it still existed, but only in one place in the universe; a small, aged, fragile, low quality C60. I listened once, and thought – “WOW”. Not, “WOW that’s great”, although there were a couple of parts I really liked. More “WOW I spent bloody ages on that”.

After hooking up the tape deck to the PC and recording the audio acrosss, I was struck by the fact the sound quality was surprisingly not atrocious considering the level of abuse the media it was stored on had taken, moving house about 5 times and being kept in all manner of harsh environments from freezing to roasting. Unfortunately I was equally stuck by the incredible noise levels in the background. Afer a bit of filtering with some noise removal software, a bit of EQ and a dash of reverb I was pleased enough with the result to include it here.

It’s basically 8 minutes split into different sections and is trying really hard to be some kind of film score. I’m not really sure what it’s about, or if it was ever meant to be about anything. I’ve called it The Hunter, mainly because it sounded cool, but also because I was living near a school called Bohunt School in Liphook, and at the time I myself was hunting for a job. Oh, and up there, well, that’s a picture of a Rhino, which looks quite pretty and is vaguely hunter-ish.

“Design isn’t just how it looks, Design is how it works” – Steve Jobs.

Wireframing is important.  I don’t think I need to labour the point about this, Its something most designer folk involve themselves with at the start of the design process.  If you don’t, you really should.

Most of the effort in wireframing is gathering together the outline of what will be on each page and where it will sit within a page hierarchy, we create a blueprint for our website when we wireframe.  Equally of importance, however, is the interaction design on each page,  between pages and how the site is navigated as a whole.  This is when we start to think beyond isolated wireframes.

Wireframing vs Prototyping.

When we start to move beyond single page wireframes and begin to demonstrate interaction we start to build low fidelity prototypes.  A prototype reveals how the site will be used, how it will be navigated and how the interaction features assist navigation and the overall experience of the site.

Planning with a prototype

I like to build the main sections of a website as a working prototype near the start of the project.  During this process a lot of thought is put into the whole framework to ensure no stone is left unturned.   The  prototype poses a lot of questions and demands answers. It challenges the designer to get stuck in and problem solve at the planning stage where they belong.  Building a prototype prevents assumptions being made and important decisions being overlooked which will inevitably reveal themselves later on in the process.  Later on it can be too late to make changes, changes which are time consuming, or simply impossible.

Planning with a prototype forces us to think things through from the beginning.  When we start navigating around our embryonic site and setting ourselves tasks, we can quickly begin to see when things are working and what the experience will be like.

The working prototype is the plan and becomes the specification for the site.  It’s a page by page model – a bit like a 3D styrofoam model an architect may build to demonstrate and explore a building from different angles.  The prototype becomes the master plan and the functional design.

Everyone wins

Clients love to see prototypes.  Development teams love to see prototypes.  The prototype acts as a central hub for everyone involved in the project, offering something tangible to explore and consider, and to show to others without getting bogged down in more aesthetic design decisions.   It helps to focus the attention on any problems that need to be solved with the site, and becomes a basis and focal point for discussion.  What’s more, a prototype shows progress, real visual progress – rather than a written document specification which may be hard to digest and visualise.

User testing

A good working prototype is a great tool for testing on real users.  Rather than waiting until more time, love and effort has been invested into aesthetic design,  testing the prototype early on can reveal any shortcomings in the information architecture, navigation, calls to action and interaction design.  The prototype can be tweaked quickly and less painfully at this stage, and this can offer huge rewards.

Showing ‘Flow’

You may think you can just demonstrate how a site is going to work with static wireframes by simply describing how it’s all going to work.  Yes you can.  But it’s really not the same.

You get a far better idea of whether a solution is really working when you can click around as it would actually be used.  Static wireframes, or approximates with notes saying ‘This will slide down’  don’t give such an effective demonstration of the interface, whether it really works and flows or whether sliding down is such a good idea.  The final solution for the site should be fluid, intuitive and logical.   Prototyping helps to demonstrate this flow, and therefore it needs to be able to work as near as is possible to the intended solution in the finished version of the site.

Building your prototype

We need the right tool to build our prototype.  We need a tool which is both fast, for getting our basic wireframing ideas together and powerful enough to add interactivity to our prototype later to create a fully navigable set of pages.

The tool must be easy to use and intelligent in the way it handles repeated elements across multiple pages so we can change things around without pain and maintain consistency.

So just build it in HTML, right?

The most effective option is probably to build it all in html from the beginning, giving us a framework which can be re-used throughout the rest of the project.  Much has been written about this, and I respect the approach.  The trouble is that building our prototype in code becomes slow and clunky (even with my many years of production HTML/CSS experience), and is far from being ‘rapid’ prototyping.  Getting bogged down in HTML and CSS and Javascript can become seriously time consuming if we start moving our page layout around on the fly.  Even though there are huge advantages in taking the HTML approach, it can limit the outlook and we can become lead by code rather than being lead by ideas and the best solution for the site.

Finding the right tool

I’ve tried wireframing in a lot of tools over the last couple of years, including; Balsamiq, Mockingbird, Flash, Flash Catalyst, Fireworks, Powerpoint, Keynote, Sketchflow, Visio, Flairbuilder, HTML, various online solutions and of course pen and Paper.   Yes, pen and paper can be great for getting initial ideas down in some meetings.  However, my experience of flip charts, whiteboards or passing paper around is that things can quickly get messy. Constantly redrawing page ideas from the beginning becomes tedious and often I’ve ended up with a pile of meaningless scribbles at the end of the meeting which can easily be misinterpreted.

Wireframing in software during client meetings can also have huge pitfalls such as; losing data, discovering the client has a lower resolution projector than anticipated, or software/hardware which starts to generally misbehave for no good reason.  All things considered it is still my preferred method and worth the occasional pain.  It allows decisions to be made which all can see and read, keeps everything fluid and gives a realistic idea of how much usable space is available on a page.

Most tools suck

I’ve rebuilt entire prototypes in tool B rather than tool A because tool A was causing so much pain.  But, to be honest they all cause pain sooner or later.

I want a tool that aids creativity and helps to inspire original solutions. I want to be able to create new interaction ideas as well as being given a bunch of preset components. I want to be able to show large hover ‘mega’ menus, I want to show large sliding panels, interface elements with fixed positioning and show how items will open and close and how the rest of the page flows naturally as with any regular HTML page.  But demonstrating all this is quite painful with all the wireframing/prototyping tools I’ve tried to date. Hopefully things will improve in time.

Current tool of choice

I’m currently testing Axure.  It solves the fundamental issues of being both fast for quickly throwing ideas together, but it’s also powerful when needed.  It has some great features for both creating and presenting working prototypes.  As well as all the usual simple drag and drop components, It has really powerful interactions, dynamic panels with multiple states, master elements and a feature I particularly love, a slider control to decide how linear or ‘sketchy’ you want the whole thing to feel.  It will even output a complete specification document from all of your notes and page comments if that’s something you are required to produce.

It’s not perfect though of course. It’s also very expensive compared to some other tools. But building a prototype is important work, and worth investment just as Photoshop is worth the investment for graphical work.

Things to consider

A few of the things I consider when looking at wireframing/prototyping tools:

• Is it regularly updated and developed?
• Does it have a development team, rather than being developed by an individual?
• Does it have a thriving community?
• Is it stable?  (Some of the tools I’ve used repeatedly fail).
• Has the community built a downloadable libraries of preset objects if you need them?
• Does it let you assemble wireframes without fuss – could you use it quickly infront of a room full of people?
• Does it have a complete site map allowing quick jump from page to page?
• It is fast and responsive even with large projects?
• Can you build a working prototype with it in a fraction of the time it would take you to build in HTML?
• Does it allow the creation of complex interactions when you need them?
• Does it allow the creation of realistic forms?
• Does it allow logical operations, ‘if’ statements etc?
• Does it have templates, or a library function of updatable objects to ripple changes rapidly across your model?
• Does it have layers, to lock elements down in the background so they don’t get in the way?
• Does it have a selection of basic design tools in case they are needed?
• Can you choose if you want it to look ‘sketchy’ which can be distracting – or more ordered and linear?
• Does it let you collect notes about pages or elements to assemble your thoughts?
• Is the viewing mechanism easy to distribute to team members or a client?
• Is the final output built in HTML – therefore pages can be navigated more realistically rather than Flash?
• Does it allow feedback from these viewers?

Conclusion

Building a good set of wireframes that become a working prototype helps your web project get off to a flying start, it becomes the hub of the design and development project which everyone involved can refer back to.  You need to find the right tool to build your prototype. It must be capable of demonstrating how everything will work, whilst not being a complex or fickle beast you have to battle with. Ultimately you need a tool to help shape your thoughts and create a tangible model which is robust enough to be tested with real users and take you through to the next stages of the design process.

I’m really keen on infographics at the moment. There are far too many words around and I feel the need to try and make some visual sense of all the complex, wordy ideas. With more time this would have had more graphical ideas for the categories. As it stands it is little more than an annotated table, but a quite pretty one.

View and download

eb sites are not posters, nor should we design them to be posters. I’ve heard this idea a lot recently, that we should be designing posters instead of web sites. But there’s an important difference here. Posters are designed to be seen from a DISTANCE. They need to grab the attention of the passer by.

Posters are designed to be an iconic representation of a film, show, event; with a large title and everything else weighted to be of less importance other than key facts, such as star names, dates and locations.

Stop Shouting

We are usually only a matter of inches from the screen, so why do so many sites assault my visual senses and shout at me SO LOUDLY?

Posters are designed to advertise and inform of a very small amount of information. A website is designed to deliver a greater range of information and of course, interactivity via navigation. Posters are not a two-way process, they are flat and lifeless.

A website does not immediately benefit from enormous typography and does not always need to grab the attention. We are already in front of the site, it already has our attention. If we merely want to prioritise one piece of information over another then an H1 does not need to be 500% larger than an H2. Our visitors are not blind. (well, OK some might be).

Our users may well be travelling from site to site, but they do not need such a cheap gimmick to distinguish our particular website from a mass of other posters pasted onto a vast wall as they run for a train.

Long Pages

By making everything enormous we simply create very long pages. We reduce the content to a scrollable linear experience when it really had no need to be. It would have fitted so easily if only we hadn’t decided to use a 90pt title.

Sometimes when text is beyond a certain size it becomes more difficult for the eyes to quickly scan; the brain has to trace around the whole shape to identify the words. Single words are better in this respect than short sentences, but the choice of font can be equally as impeding.

Why the trend of enormous typography?

Is it simply because we can, now we have better typographic technology at our disposal and can’t control ourselves. Are we just filling space unnecessarily? Or do we think this makes us appear to be better visual designers? Is the copy we are choosing to make enormous, the right copy for the job?

Maybe it’s because we believe the larger the type, the clearer the message becomes? The more our message stands our from the crowd. Or is this merely the same as shouting more loudly in English at the confounded non-English speaker, instead of trying to communicate the information in a more intelligent and clear manner.

But it looks nice

Well fair enough then. I think it can look great too, after all posters often look great. Type can be as beautiful as an image.

I just know that posters and websites are very different mediums and have very different intentions and requirements. We should be careful not to start creating posters with navigation that don’t blend the art forms but rather dilute and confuse everyone.

onferences always inspire me. I attended Aral Balkan’s one day Update Conference 2011 in a very blustery Brighton this week and came away with lots of ideas buzzing around my head. Ideas ranging wildly from music to video to game programming on iOS.

Update 2011; Dome Theatre, Brighton.

As well as a diverse range of interesting short and punchy presentations, I loved the creative mixture of music; including an excellent live video mix by Ithaca Audio, a very inventive live Xbox Connect music performance and 100-Robots performing with musical iOS app-based audience participation.

The rest of the sessions left me thinking about the following:

Matt Gemmell

Left me with an understanding of just how many things designers and developers can do badly to piss off their users.  Most of it seems so obvious, but it still happens.

Jeremy Keith

Left me with whimsical memories of Encarta on CDRom, wondering WHY we put stuff on the web and wondering if I have ever done anything to contribute to humanity.  I’m not convinced I have.  Not yet, anyway, although I’m not entirely sure I care.  He left me wondering about the reasons that apps have been jumped on by so many companies and developers, and what the driving force is behind it all.

Seb Lee-Delisle

Left me feeling very inspired to look at Corona for creating iOS/Android games and apps, and reminisce on programming in Basic.  He left me wondering about the possibilities of tools such as Corona and looking at his website since has inspired me to look into lots more ideas.

Sarah Parmenter

Left me with renewed determination to never use Lorem Ipsum again, Luke Wroblewski’s touch reference guide, thinking about disclosure and hidden interface elements.

Geek Ninja Battle: Web vs Native apps

Relly Annette-Baker

Left me wondering why CERN has 18,000 different websites,  and that I should break everything down ‘bird by bird’.   But mostly that lots of apps are made the wrong way round;  1)  lets make an app!!   2) Hmmmm   3) Profit!!   We should be focusing on content first, the idea is key and not the delivery method or potential reward.

Anna Debenham

Left me worrying a little about what goes on in my own children’s schools, what they are taught about the web, how they are monitored, what they are allowed to see, and what their understanding of the internet is.  I have a suspicion they think the Internet is mainly YouTube (as they’re too young for Facebook!)

Joachim Bondo

Left me wondering who and why anyone would spend 300,000 Euros on a watch (investment??) that the beauty can be on the inside, in the code – the mechanism you never get to see, and that someone who spends all day filing a single cog to atomic perfection would probably rather enjoy the relative immediacy of debugging CSS.

Cenydd Bowles

Left me wondering why we tolerate the insulting way most advertising deals with us and a sudden realisation that I really, really need a toaster with a ‘little bit more’ button on it.   He made me wonder about humanising technology, putting the humanity back into design, and putting design first.  The possibility of an mp3 player that suggests we ‘LISTEN TO SOMETHING NEW!’ or technology that ‘knows’ us and tries to understand, empathise and push us is very intriguing.  He left me wondering about intangibles such as love for Twitter, and that when everyone else is Zigging, it’s probably a good idea to start Zagging.

Geek Ninja Battles

Left me thinking again about the Native vs Web debate with some new food for thought. If I could only have a single app, I can’t deny that it would have to be the browser. But only If I always had a fast, reliable and free connection, home and especially abroad.

Aral Balkan

Left me convinced that he really wants to be on stage more than he wants to sit in cafes coding -  I think he could probably have done the whole thing himself if he’d wanted.  With his charm and enthusiasm he’s like the John Barrowman of the web world, only with less bouncy hair. He produced an excellent conference day, and it was very clear he has shed blood, sweat and tears putting it all together. I just hope he hasn’t set a precedent for anyone else to sing show tunes at the start of their conference.

Interview with Ronald Wayne, the ‘other’ Apple founder.

Best moments of the day

Ronald Wayne being given an iPad 2 after all the talk of him never owning an Apple product.  He was a great guy and really interesting to hear his story.  Was quite touching to see him presented with this (although a small dark part of myself did wonder if he had a tiny inner voice screaming in tortured, regretful agony).

The speakers and helpers being lined up across the stage at the end was very theatrical – disappointed they didn’t take a bow, but rather glad they didn’t burst into a rousing chorus.

A party in a museum was a great idea.
Museum + wine + live ’chill-out’ music = winning formula.

Excellent view from the Jumeirah Beach Hotel, Dubai. From this vantage point it was particularly interesting to watch as people put towels on sun beds at 7am. Some would at least paddle a bit or swim a quick length of the pool to justify it.

A little ‘punk-pop’ song (my first and probably last) to mark the occasion of my daughter’s 12th Birthday. Written from her point of view – she’s supposed to be singing it, but well… she was too scared. I’m no singer, but processing has advanced enough to make it bearable.

It’s a little song about the things she says and does, a blossoming identity, the current love of various bands and the all too familiar horror as her parents ‘invade’ the forbidden sanctuary of her bedroom.

With backing vocal help from her little brother.  Lyrics below.

ROCKSTAR NINJA UNICORN

Dont want to wear my coat today, this hoodie’s cool,
So cool – it’s minus 4 out here, but hey I’m no-ones fool.
I know so many people who just don’t know their own mind,
They copy what I do and wear and everything I find,

I just want to be a rockstar ninja unicorn

Uh oh – They’re coming in now,
Oh no – Asking to show,
Uh oh – Things I want to hide.
Oh No – Too many questions,
Oh No – my indiscretions,
Oh God- It’s like a freakin’ Zoo.
GET OUT OF MY ROOM

LMAOL What the hell, I’m gonna face palm through the day,
My world is full of random stuff and I live the Gerard way.
My Charlotte’s pretty Good now and I’m bowling for my soup,
Romance is clearly Chemical, get your hands off my favourite groups.

Uh oh – They’re coming in now
Oh no – Asking to show,
Uh oh – Things I want to hide.
Oh No – Too many questions,
Oh No – my indiscretions,
Oh God- It’s like a freakin’ Zoo.
GET OUT OF MY ROOM

I don’t know where I’m heading,
and I’m quite used to getting,
more of what I want than what I really need.

I’ve got this little brother, he plays Minecraft. He’s a geek.
Spends his days in virtual landscapes, digging blocks and annoying sheep.
I haven’t got a halo and my duty’s hardly called,
My ops are pretty black though, from my eyeline to my walls.

Uh oh – They’re coming in now,
Oh no – Asking to show,
Uh oh – Things I want to hide.
Oh No – Too many questions,
Oh No – of indiscretions,
Oh God- It’s like a freakin’ Zoo.
GET OUT OF MY ROOM

[Repeat]

Some events are horrifying, frightening beyond belief and the outpouring of emotion in the aftermath, overwhelming.

Sometimes it’s unexpected, beautiful and moving beyond language. I don’t have the words, I only know how it makes me feel.

Got back into writing music last night after recently setting up my ‘studio’ on a shiny new machine. I seem to have produced some kind of short orchestral space journey that sounds quite American – guess it’s that horn sound.

Anyway, quite fitting that the last shuttle returns to Earth today; so it gets named accordingly. Knocked up a quick little video as some visual accompaniment too.

Footage courtesy of NASA

I very nearly gave up the whole idea this morning when I saw what a hash I made rushing to lay slabs as the light faded last night. Fortunately I found some energy, lifted, re-laid and cemented the worst offending slabs and got it at least level enough to form a solid foundation.