Jo on Bike

Another one...just cos!

3D Effect Photography

Found some cracking examples of 3D effect photography online and have used the effect with one of my own photos...I feel a trend coming on :-)

Dear Santa...

Since you asked...here's my top 3 things I want for Christmas, this is why I've been a good boy all year!

No. 1 - DJ Hero
Following on from the Guitar Hero/Band Hero/Everything Else Hero series, finally here's one that suits me to the ground! I played this in HMV and had to hold off a queue of 10-year olds who wanted a go but, "guess what little man? I was here first and I'm awesome so I may be some time!!" He ran away crying!

Pretty cool Daft Punk trailer here


No. 2 - Designing Obama
As a Graphic Designer, this book looks really good to me. I always admired the way Obama set himself apart from the more boring Republican candidates (apart from the obvious methods of having realistic and agreeable policies) and his campaign team seemed to know how to use the modern media, art and design to the best of his advantage. I don't read much (that is, not at all!!) but this one would probably have me hooked!


No. 3 - Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2
Just because I fancy having a go at mowing down innocent bystanders without having to pay a price!


And a sneaky No. 3.1 - Khet
This was a late addition to my Santa list. It's a game called Khet, which is a cross between the simplicity of draughts, and the strategy of chess...but with LASERS!!!!! It's pretty awesome, I managed to find an online version here (note that you need Silverlight installed).

Roll on xmas day :-))

Video Evidence anyone?

The Irish must be hurting right now! They must be...otherwise they wouldn't be ridiculously crying out for a replay of their World Cup playoff qualifier against France!

Maybe if I was in their shoes I'd be doing the same but from the outside looking in, a replay would have disastrous repercussions for football.

Into Extra Time with only minutes left before going to penalty kicks, a long ball comes into the Irish box, and an (offside) Thierry Henry handles the ball twice to keep it in play before squaring the ball into the centre for William Gallas to head home the decisive goal, sending Ireland out of contention for South Africa 2010.

But who's to blame?

In my personal opinion, the referee and his linesmen need to take a fair share of the responsibility. The officials' job is to be in the right place at the right time to be able to make a judgement on any given situation throughout the match! Thierry Henry has been vilified in the press at home and abroad, and for what? All he's done is instinctively raised his hand to keep the ball in play! Yes, that's a foul! Yes, that's a yellow card offence! But d'you know what? It's entirely up to the referee to make that call, and he didn't, because he didn't see it! Thierry Henry is absolutely correct in everything he has said in the aftermath of this result. In my view, he's been honest enough to admit that he did handball it, and I think anyone who has played football and has been in a similar situation where the ball comes at you at speed, there's occasionally an instinctive human reaction to raise your hand to keep the ball under control. You see it more often than you think, it's just that this one was in a major match at a really important time. It's not premeditated, it just happens! And 99 times out of 100, the player will be penalised for it.

All of this could of course have been resolved at the time in a matter of seconds!

UEFA and FIFA have time and time again refused to adopt the use of video technology in football, but unfortunately haven't yet given us a good reason as to why!

Rugby, tennis, cricket, and pretty much all american sports have utilised video refs for a while now, and if it works ok for them, why not the most popular sport on the planet?

Football is such a huge business now, there is so much at stake for winning or losing a match. I heard reports that the Irish economy would now miss out on a €20Billion boost for missing out on qualification!! That's €20BILLION, not million! Not to mention the feel-good factor it would have given the country at a time when they need it most!

Teams are going bankrupt and disappearing off the pages of our Panini sticker albums after being relegated because they can't afford to keep up the payment of players wages etc.

With so much at stake, surely we need to make sure we get the big decisions correct? And without video evidence, match officials are going to continuously take abuse from fans like me for making, let's be honest, human errors that would happen to anyone! So why should the referee suffer? Because of FIFA's refusal to accept modern technology, that's why!

So, back to Paris, in an ideal world, from the point of view of the referee:

"Extra Time, free kick, Henry squares the ball and Gallas nods it into the net. The French players and fans celebrate wildly...but hold on, why are the Irish players all surrounding me so sure that something was wrong? I better quickly check this one out."

The ref makes a TV shape like he's playing a game of charades, gets on his earpiece, and asks the video ref to confirm whether the goal should stand. The video ref checks the replay three times, taking about 20 seconds to make sure, then gets back to the referee saying that no, a free kick should be awarded to Ireland on the touchline and Thierry Henry should be yellow carded for deliberate handball.

Henry is yellow-carded, Ireland take the free kick, the remaining minutes are played out, it finishes a draw, and Ireland then get knocked out on penalties.

But d'you know what?

Nobody complains!

Can creativity be measured?

10 months ago, I had my first Performance Appraisal with my new boss. Like everyone else, I had to set my ‘targets and objectives’ for the year. This, I was told, would enable Senior Management to ‘assess my performance’ over the coming 12 month period and reflect on any ‘outstanding achievements’, or indeed ‘areas for improvement’, within that period.

Understandable, I thought, makes sense.

However, on reflection, 10 months later, I look back and have been wondering why that appraisal did nothing for my motivation, or hasn’t affected or improved my performance at work! Surely that was the aim? Was I getting lazy? Didn’t I ‘get it’?

I have been pondering this for a while now and have only just recently realised why! Apart from the fact that some experts claim that appraisals don’t work anyway, that they "encourage mediocrity by rewarding safe behavior as opposed to risk-taking … employees are rewarded for not being challenged and creative."

But for me, it’s simpler than that! I’m a Studio Manager, a Graphic Designer… I’m a ‘creative’ type, if you will!

Targets and Objectives are fairly easy to set if you work in a Sales team or if you develop a Product, for example! If you sell or develop x amount of y within z months, then you’ve achieved the target or goal that you set!

I don’t fit into this category by a long shot, so my question is:

“…how the feck do you measure creativity?”

One of the reasons for setting goals in these appraisals are to give the employee a motivation to ‘earn more money’ or ‘gain a promotion’ or other such rewards.

However, creative people are a different breed, we are motivated by ‘intrinsic’ rather than ‘extrinsic’ reward. This means that I am happier to see a well-designed piece of work coming together in an imaginative or innovative way, rather than be paid a bonus for it! It’s the ‘warm feeling inside’, and indeed the recognition, that motivates me.

I’m not an idiot, however, the money is nice and we all need that or we wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning…but it doesn’t ‘motivate’ me to come up with my best work!

Sure, you might argue that we can then set a goal to ‘create x amount of designs in an imaginative or innovative way’…but in my view, that’s not how to get the ‘best’ out of a designer. After all, it’s probably one of the few areas of employment where it’s about ‘quality rather than quantity’!

A designer doesn’t know where or when inspiration for a good design will come about, if he’s rushed into coming up with ‘x’ amount of ideas within a deadline, they won’t be the best he can come up with. Almost guaranteed!

As a Studio Manager, I need to have these ‘performance appraisals’ with my own team, they need to set their targets and goals for the 12 months ahead and we’ll use that to assess their performance…blah blah blah!

But if appraisals don’t work for me…why the heck would it work for them?

Don’t get me wrong, I understand why some people need appraisals and it really benefits their performance at work, etc. But I just don’t think that it works for everyone…at least not done in the traditional way!

I do believe that performance at work needs to be reviewed and monitored, obviously, and I do think that it CAN benefit creative people, so I have been looking at alternative methods.

I have decided that I would want to have a ‘Creative Review’ rather than an appraisal.

Simply put, my team objectives for the year would be to develop and apply the corporate brand and materials in a way that is attractive, appealing, consistent, and comes across strong and confident, so as to instil an element of trust in the customer.

A Creative Review would be a look back at all the work which has been done by the designer over the last, say, 6 months. It would be laid out in chronological order and the whole ‘journey’ would be assessed by both designer and manager.

"Does it portray the corporate brand in a consistent, attractive and appealing way?"

"Does it represent the brand in a way that portrays a strong and confident company?"

"Does it ‘develop’ the brand in a way which takes the identity of the company forward?"

And as a manager, if I thought the answer to any of the above was ‘no’, then the designer is not meeting the company’s, and therefore, their own, objectives!

But then, who am I to say? Isn’t all of design subjective? I may not think it represents the brand in a strong way, but someone else may think otherwise!

What needs to happen

He started it!

You knew it and I knew it...well...I knew it anyway! Don't get me wrong, I haven't used Windows 7 yet, (I won't like it!), but after it was launched recently, I couldn't help but feel some of the 'new features' seemed very familiar to me!

1. Taskbar

"Manage lots of open programs, documents, and browser windows easily with thumbnail and full-screen previews of open windows."

Are you serious? For real? Taskbar? Dock? Anyone?

2. Windows Search

"Instantly locate and open virtually any file on your PC, from documents to emails to songs, right from the Start menu just by typing a word or two."

Errrrrm, ok, anyone could have come up with this but, to me...and this is just me...it smacks of Spotlight!

3. Pin

"Pin programs to the taskbar. Pin files to Jump Lists. Just like tacking notes on a bulletin board, you can use pin to keep the things you need close at hand."

Dock! Dock Dock Dock!

Add to that the new-look aqua graphics and translucent windows and, well, you may as well get a Mac, at least it won't get virused (unlike my grammar!)

Although don't take my word for it. I present Exhibit A.