Future of Web Design

Posted on May 28th, 2008 in Technology, Work by Jim Prince


Andy Budd – FOWD London 2008 from Future of Web Design on Vimeo.

Today’s brown bag session was from a colleague who attended the recent Future of Web Design Conference in London. He played the above video presentation from Andy Budd.

It’s well worth a watch for anyone with a passing interest in Web Design or Usability, and has some interesting insights as to why certain sites do the things they do.

Also check out http://www.silverbackapp.com/, if only for the awesome, but ultimately pointless, parallax scrolling technique.


How to turn off that annoying beep in Virtual Machines

Posted on May 27th, 2008 in Technology, Work by Jim Prince

I have to run a Windows XP VM as the CISCO VPN client we use doesn’t work in 64bit Vista, here’s a quick and relatively painless way to switch off the annoying beep that happens when, for example, your remote desktop connection times out.

Open System Properties -> Hardware -> Device Manager
Click View -> Show Hidden Devices
Navigate to Non-Plug and Play Drivers and expand.
Right click on Beep and select properties.
Change start-up type to disabled.
restart your VM.

Voilà – no more beep.


Petrol Prices

Posted on May 27th, 2008 in Personal, Technology by Jim Prince

Fuel Prices
I noticed this graph in an article on the BBC’s Website and I gotta say it makes depressing reading. I’d like to see an annotated version for the reasons behind each rise in costs. Also note the gulf in the costs between Diesel and Petrol, this was one of the reasons I switched back to a petrol car a couple of weeks back – a 2.0 litre Golf GT. It’s not the most environmently friendly or fuel efficient but I got fed up trying to source a 1.4 TSI which was what I really wanted. Patience is not one of my virtues ;-)


Want One!

Posted on May 20th, 2008 in Books and Films by Jim Prince