Posts from July 2000

31st July, 11:18 am

Wooooh! We got a new water machine at lunchtime and I can once again breath easy, assured that my daily drinking requirements will be met.

My friend Henry is updating his site. Go here once he's done it to see what he comes up with.

I'm thinking of doing a text only version of iamcal for lynx and so forth, modelled along the lines of kibo's text only page. Any thoughts? Everone's input is welcome.

Mat, (the evil destroyer of water machines) has started his g4cube site and i've added a forum. So come and chat with us.

Some bloke at nixter thinks this site has a good design. Let's all save up and buy him an eyetest.

The game I'm working on has been updated. (You can follow Saturdays's links for other versions). Your challenge (should you choose to accept it) is to get (not find, but get) the flipchart. Answers on a postcard to me.

29th July, 10:34 am

I've had a mixed week really. On tuesday night I went out with my girlfriend for our one year aniversary. That was nice. Waking up at 4am and being violently sick was not. Wednesday saw more illness and sickness, but by wednesday night I could walk again. On thursday I went to the dentist who decided to hurt me, then make me pay for the pleasure. On friday I went to have my injections for my holiday, had them, was sitting in the waiting room and promptly passed out. Guess I'm not that well after all. Haven't really eaten anything since tuesday, but I'm definately getting better.

I bought a Palm Vx on wednesday night. It's groovy. I have already started to write a game in Z-Code. Download this Palm interpreter to play it, or get this version for the windows interpreter.

For everyone who bothered to download the panoramic of my office, then here's a guide to my desk. For those that didn't, here's a picture of my desk anyway.

For fun and games try pootpoot with the rather amusing 'pootify'. Great stuff.

Today's quote comes once again from Paul Edmonds. He's just full of them:

I love everyone...but express it as global irritation for some reason

Still no water, by the way. Grrrr.

25th July, 9:21 am

If you're epileptic, don't follow this link. Along the same lines of sillyness, take a look at absurd and wonder, like me, how long that took. How would they know if it crashed?

Todays first picture (see top left) is of evil 5emedia designer matt broke the water machine. He is obviously evil. He will be appearing in this months Internet Magazine, so nobody buy it in protest. Stand up to water mahine vandalisim.

This glorious device gives us cold water on hot days, but was calusly destroyed by mat for some reason. Some bod came to fix it this morning, but it promptly broke again as soon as he left. I was reduced to buying bottled water for 70p a bottle. Rediculous I think you'll agree.

The best quote I've heard since last posting hase been on ark by Stacia, the Avocado Avenger:

Goldfish don't fit through the air nozzle of most erotic dolls.

I won't bother explaining the context of that thread :)

There's no particular reason for having three pictures today, but this section has been looking a little text intensive recently. That should clear up as soon as the conversation get's bumped off this page.

See you all later.

22nd July, 9:16 am

There's a massive bunch of stuff to tell you today, so I might well miss some out. This is not intentional.

Welly net has a new third page, inspired by Paul's insult about marketing people. I like this one alot. Paul (and others in the office) have been coming out with some brillinat quotes:

Paul: I'd be happier in SegaWorld. Actually, "I'd be happier in SegaWorld" is just generally true.

Andy: When is the 2 o'clock meeting?

Facility Woman: Do you drive a red clio. Are you sure?

Talking of the office, we have a brand new QTVR panorama of the office for your enjoyment. It's 2.5MB big and you'll need quicktime to see it. You have been warned :)

Terrania, stunning as it is, has been upgraded to fix some minor bugs and is going strong. Please log in and create some creatures.

Last post, I forgot to add James 'Kibo' Parry to the list of people i'd like to recieve email from. I've started posting and reading at alt.religion.kibology and have been converted :) Leader Kibo has come up with the bext quote of all this week:

The world is your friend and we want to make it easier to hug.

I urge you all to check out Name that bar, a quiz show for all the family. I could get about 90% right. How about you? If you get bored of that, then head on over to Sodaplay, where I garuntee you will waste much time. It's great!

Not much left today other than to say check out my updated portfolio and especially the 5emedia website. Oh, and don't trust the 'BedfordNetwork'. They're up to something...

16th July, 7:23 am

How have I managed to go so long without posting anything? God knows. I finally got a better picture of Mark's cool perl plates.

There are quite a few sites of choice today, so please bear with me. First up comes my own latest project, Terrania. Well worth a look.

Everyone in my office (well, almost everyone) seems to have caught the blogging bug. Paul E has started blogging at another crappy dot com and is also posting stuff at the wildly amusing welly net. Matt has also started a blogger powered effort at his urbanbox site. Hopefully more to come on that.

Microsoft have an interesting page all about cars. Well, kind of anyway.

Last weekend I bought a really groovy camera which aided me to take photos on my trip to Alton Towers, best theme park in the world. Due to my lack of memory, those photos have not yet been scanned but you can expect to see them soon.

I have now found out what Sally looks like. Who said programmers had to be old?

On the subject of new sites (not that we were on that subject, but hey) I am working on a very cool collaboration with Peter Fielding (Darkgarden of Artbeast Fame). He has a very slick site here.

There's still loads left to talk about that I don't have time for today. There still hasn't been a continuence of my conversation with Warren, who refuses to read my previous posting. I still haven't documented my discussion on religion that I had with Amy Golder. Very interesting. I still havn't found pictures of Jelly Tots anywhere (very odd).

My life is half complete, I have decided. It is my aim to recieve email from Jason Kottke, Larry Wall, Meg Hourihan, Jefrrey Zeldman, Katie, Greg Knauss, <a href=""http://www.haughey.com">Matt Haughey and Ted O'Neill. I've recived mail from Jason, Katie, Greg and Matt, so it's only a matter of time :).

On the subject of Jason, it's pronounced cot-key. Great stuff.

9th July, 9:28 am

Today you get a little glimse into my mind. This is a conversation between me and Warren which started off as an argument about DHTML being tacky but went on to discuss the ideas behind content creation and the delivery of information. This makes for interesting reading. I'm in bold, warren speaks in italic. No reason for that.

So all rollovers are tacky?

Yes, they're an unimaginative way of enhancing your website.

That's simply untrue. You'd prefer the web fully static would you?

Using your imagination, and having a different view to other people dosn't make me a wrong, it makes me an individual. If people didn't have different views then nothing would ever change.

So you're saying that no progress has been made since the invention of the web. You're saying nothing on a page should move. Then why not read a book instead?

I never said nothing should move, I said there should be more than just a roll over image. I'm saying that the world wide web shouldn't just be a collection of pages. I'm saying people should enter an entire different world when they log on. People should feel a part of the web, not just a spectator. They shouldn't feel like they're just reading a fancy pop up book.

And the first step to that is to make the web interactive.

The web is already interactive. People need more, they need to interact with more than their mouse and eyes. The whole body needs to play a part in the experience.

Warren, that isn't possible. Technology isn't that far ahead. You have to think about what's actually possible.

What i mean is you know when you watch a film (eg. romeo and juliet), it may make you cry. Or when you listen to a really fantastic bit of music and you get a sort of shivery sensation down you back - you can feel the music right though your body. What does the internet do? Nothing. It dosn't even leave anything to the imagination like books do, so you feel nothing from it. You just look and sometimes play a little, its just a thing, not an experience.

Yes, and you can't change that yet. It doesn't make it tacky.

You can change that, its just people won't, and that's what makes it tacky.

How then?

Who knows, but if people can do it with art, books, TV, film, music and speach, it sould be easy to do it on the internet as it combines all of them in some way.

But it doesn't. The way you're saying it, is to reproduce these things onto the internet. That's pointless. Why can't you think creatively and try something different? Why do you only think along the lines of what's already been proven?

I never said we should put all the other media on the Interent. I said if we are able to get feelings like intense sadness, happiness, comedy, funny tingling down the back etc. from the other medias, we should be able to get some feeling from the Internet - that's what people really want. People watch horror movies so they will be scared, but its more than just being scared, more than going 'Oh I didn't like that'. You become part of the movie, you use your imagination and really its not the movie scaring you but your own thoughts and feelings. The internet is very WYSIWYG. Not enough is left up to the person.

That's why we have DHTML - to let the user have some level of control. People don't all want the internet to be this big all-immersive media. It's still primarily a reference and always will be.

Its not control people need, it's the chance to use their imagination. When you ask a person what do they like in a film, they will say sex, women, men, comedy, action, etc.. that dosn't mean they don't still want these feelings and don't want to be taken into the film, its just no one really knows how to explain the experience. People don't know what they want until they have experienced it.

What's stopping people from using their imaginations when theyn use the Internet?

You don't just have to let people use their imaginations, you have to stimulate their imaginations for them.

But I don't want to. The internet is about information, not keep an audience. If people don't want to get involved in something I do, without me having to try especially for them, then they can leave. That's the point of the net - content doesn't have to be aimed at everyone. If you don't like something, don't look at it. Just because something doesn't stimulate your imagination doesn't mean it's tacky.

If you're not bothered about people looking at your website, then why put it on the Internet?

I don't want everyone to read my stuff, just people who want to. I'm not trying to get anyone in particular to look at my stuff, just people who choose to. That's what this is all about. If someone doesn't like what I do, why should I care? There is NOTHING in the world that everybody likes. That doesn't mean that everything is pointless.

But what about the people that don't understand what you're about?

Then my stuff is not for them. Nothing is created for everyone - only the people who understand it. Think about art. Think about literature. Think about film and video.

One of the main aims of all films is to appeal to the cinema go-ers, who are 15-19 year olds. They may also be for older or younger, but are nearly always aimed at 15-19 year olds. But these films are still viewed by millions of over 19 year olds and under 15 year olds, and even though they aren't in the age range they still love the film. I'm not interested in big aliens and traveling at super light speed, but I still liked Lost In Space. Even though I don't understand all of Romeo And Juliet I still love the film.

But just because you enjoy it doesn't mean everyone does. Are you saying that content only has value if it appeals to a wide audience?

To be continued....

6th July, 9:23 am

Just a quick not to alert you to the fact that our office chair race will be commencing shortly. Much fun.

5th July, 11:12 am

I was mightily confused yesterday when Mark mentioned peeps and Andy started talking about lumps of sugar. People - lumps of sugar. I don't get it. Luckily I was informed that peeps are, infact, little edible sugar things from America. Hurrah.

Back in the real world, I've been searching for cool computer peripherals again and have found this groovy flexible keyboard.

Thinkgeek, home of all things good, has a new t-shirt. I neeed it!

Sorry for the total lack of anything in the shape of content in the last fews days. Been doing lots of cool stuff which will soon become public. Remember, 'fly me friendly'.

[edit] Total lack of a pictures has forced me to bung one in at the lats minute. All will be revealed in due course. [/edit]

1st July, 9:11 am

For once , a refreshingly different 404.

I took an IQ test and was plesently suprised to get a reasonable score. If you take the test (which takes about 10 mins) then email me and tell me how you did.

It really sucks. I read in the mirror yesterday about wooden computer peripherals, but when I came to check out the URL today, I fould it didn't exist. Bloody tabloids. I found this site, but still not what I was looking for.

About

This is the personal website of Cal Henderson, Slack co-founder & CTO.

I give occasional talks, write code and sometimes articles.

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