I've been procrastinating excessively about getting this site up and running, and after seeing the above video on 43 Folders, I decided it was time to pull my finger out and get things moving. There are dozens of things I want to accomplish with this site, but if I try and finish it before I bring it online, it'll never get it out there.

So in the spirit of Ze Frank, this is me, getting it out there.

James May said of the Bugatti Veyron:

“

Getting the car to do 155mph, frankly, isn’t really very difficult. The Veyron needs just a piffling 270 horsepower to do that speed. But 253 (mph)? Crikey!

...The faster you go, the more mother nature tries to hold you back, so to do the next 100 mph, the 100 mph that takes you up to 255 mph needs another 730 bhp!

Those kind of figures sound impressive. They are impressive. The Veyron is, after all, the fastest production car in the world (And the most expensive at that, understandably.)

In terms of speed and power, the Veyron is very impressive, but it is only in reach of the elite. The rich of the rich.

Today however, the French TGV train laughed at the Veyron and brought speed to the masses, smashing the world speed record for a train on rails in the process, reaching 356mph (574.8km/h). That is only 5 mph slower than the experimental Japanese MLX01 maglev train. The attempt was made using a modified version of the modern TGV train, with bigger wheels, and with more power (6000 volts more) being pumped to the train via overhead lines.

The train only requires a mere 23,999 horsepower more than the Bugatti Veyron to reach its top speed and it cost £22 million. Now when you consider the number of people it can carry, and the distance it can cover that’s not bad value compared to the Bugatti.

A 350 mph train is all very well and good, I would have thought you might feel at least a little disorientated if you looked out the window at those speeds!

A video is available on the BBC Website so you can get a feel for just how fast the world flies by at that speed!

Today I was proved wrong, when tuning in to the BBC1 1 o’clock news (traditional media actually breaks the news first this time) I was greeted with the news that Apple & The record label EMI have signed a deal to offer EMI music on iTunes without the FairPlay DRM.

Of course it isn’t completely straight forward, as DRM free tracks will cost $1.29, an increase of 30 cents in the US over the standard price for a track. However, it’s not only the price that is increasing, but the bit-rate of the tracks too. DRM-Free tracks will be encoded in 256 kbps AAC format, which Apple claims will result in “audio quality indistinguishable from the original recording”.

Owners of existing EMI tracks will have the option of ‘up-grading’ their (EMI) collection to the new DRM-Free format for 30 cents per track. Fortunately iTunes users will still be able to buy DRM protected $0.99 tracks, as they will be given the option of which format they would prefer when purchasing music.

I have to say this is an encouraging move by EMI, and I hope more follow where they lead, and make digital media a fairer prospect all round. Further information can be found in the Official Apple press report.

No?

Neither did I until Microsoft decided to class me as a spammer, and if you read on you might just save yourself from loosing several days of your life trying to implement one.

Me Sir, a 'spammer'?

Anyway, to understand what I'm rambling on about we need a bit of background, and why this 'SPF Record' is getting me so wound up.

I, unlike the majority of people with common sense, use Hotmail as my primary email provider, and have done since I first starting using the Internet. In fact I had my Hotmail address before it became part of the Microsoft empire. One thing that annoys me however, is that I am now having to put up with more and more spam, despite efforts to curtail it.

We all know the stress of sorting through spam, and thank the people who work on solutions to filter out or just stop that crap coming through. However, I am sure you will understand my annoyance when I found out that thanks to the configuration of my (dv) dedicated-virtual server I have in fact been branded a 'spammer' by Microsoft, and as a result they appear to be black holing any mail sent to a Hotmail account from my (dv).

Before I go any further I would just like to clarify that this is in fact nothing to do with the (dv) server as a product or Media Temple, but rather the way in which a virtual server environment works. I have found dozens of references via Google of people complaining of the same problems, and interestingly most seem to refer to people running VPS environments using Plesk.

As with all things, when something goes wrong, you have to learn how it works to be able to fix it, and thus I have been learning some of the ins and outs of running mail servers and the DNS system.

Where is my mail going!?

After getting in touch with the guys at (mt) I decided that I needed to find where my bloody mail was going. I wasn't getting a bounceback mail from the Hotmail server, and Thunderbird told me that the mail was delivered. Thankfully due to the fact that the (dv) allows you to delve into the OS to see what's going off, I thought I would interview the SMTP log and see what was going off. The SMTP server in Plesk's case is called "Qmail' and the logs are located at # /usr/local/psa/var/log/maillog and can be read in a number of ways. In this case I found the easiest way to track what was going off was to use the tail -f command which spurts out the log information for events as they are happening, and this is what I got when I tried to send an email to my Hotmail account:

So it would seem that the Hotmail server is accepting the mail, queuing it, but never actually delivering it, due to their spam filtering technology. A quick search on Google showed that plenty people seemed to have experienced the same problem. Interestingly most were using Plesk, and virtually all of them were using Qmail as their SMTP server. Clicking the seemingly never ending list of results, I realised that not one had any comments regarding a working solution, but the acronym SPF kept popping up a lot, so I decided it was worth a look.

The Sender Policy Framework

The Sender Policy Framework allows a domain owner to specify which machines are allowed to send email on its behalf. This kind of mechanism is unfortunately not present in the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, a fact that allows spammers to send e-mail from forged addresses relatively easily, as there is no inbuilt validation when an email is sent and then received.

Fortunately the remedy is relatively straight forward to implement. The SPF record is applied as a TXT type entry in the domain's DNS record, and it's as simple as that. Now, when you send an email, the receiving mail server can use this SPF record to verify that the origin of the email is legitimate. To help illustrate what is happening, below is a MIME header from an email I sent between two accounts on my (dv).

Return-Path: 
Delivered-To: 3-sayhello@helloian.com
Received: (qmail 32062 invoked from network); 
29 Mar 2007 17:59:58 +0100
Received: from 85-211-13-70.dyn.gotadsl.co.uk 

(HELO ?192.168.1.5?) (85.211.13.70)
  by distillate-hosting.net with (DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA encrypted)
  SMTP; 29 Mar 2007 17:59:58 +0100
Message-ID: <460BF1EE.4020508@distillate.co.uk>
Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2007 18:05:50 +0100
From: Ian Halliday 
User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.10 (Windows/20070221)
MIME-Version: 1.0

The confusion arises when the receiving machine reads the email is claiming to be from the domain 'distillate.co.uk' but has been sent via the server 'distillate-hosting.net'. As far as the machine is concerned, there is no link between the claimed sender and the machine it originated from. There is no way to tell if this information is legitimate or not.

The reason that my initial searches on Google seemed to show that it was mostly VPS users with multiple domains that were suffering from this problem is that by its very nature, a VPS server running by multiple domains will send mail from the mail server of any given domain (in my case distillate.co.uk) through the SMTP server of the host VPS platform (distillate-hosting.net in my case). Unfortunately emails sent using this setup look very similar to 'spam' messages, and the Hotmail spam filter (known as 'SmartScreen') is quick to step in and black hole the email, meaning it never reaches its destination, despite the Hotmail server notifying the sender that the email has been received and delivered.

Fortunately, this is where the SPF record steps in to clear matters up. The SPF record tells the receiving machine that the server 'distillate-hosting.net' sends mail on behalf of the mail exchanger for the domain 'distillate.co.uk' and this is written as:

v=spf1 mx ip4:XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX mx:mail.YYYYYY.YYY ?all

Where:

• v=spf1 Denotes the following as a SPF record.
• mx States that the Mail Exchanger sends outbound mail for server as stated in the next segment<./li>
• ip4:XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX Is the IPv4 formatted IP address of the (dv) server.
• mx:mail.YYYYYY.YYY States that the Mail Exchanger of the domain specified (YYYYYY.YYY) sends mail through the IP previously specified.
• ?all States that any IP's that fail to meet any of the listed 'mechanisms' will return "neutral", thus will be treated as if a record does not exist.

To clarify, the SPF record for my domain distillate.co.uk is entered in the DNS zone file as:

v=spf1 mx ip4:216.70.127.122 mx:mail.distillate-hosting.net ?all

The Open SPF website explains the above is more detail, and offers a tool to help you set up your SPF record. Microsoft also have a similar tool available which after being referred to by Hotmail technical support, turned out to be more of a hindrance than a help. The Microsoft tool, and many other references recommend that a PTR mechanism is included in the SPF record. The PTR record allows reverse lookup of an IP address; that is identify the domain of an IP address. The reverse lookup is used to verify that the domain name and IP address in the email MIME header actually correlate and have not been faked. Whilst this sounds like a good idea, actually processing a reverse look up takes a considerable amount of time and it is not generally a method employed by large email providers like Hotmail. In fact Hotmail refused my initial SPF record as it included this PTR mechanism. To quote Hotmail technical support:

The specification for SPF records (RFC 4408) discourages use of "ptr" for performance and reliability reasons. This is especially important for Windows Live Mail, Hotmail and other large ISPs as a result of the very high volume of mail we receive each day. We highly recommend you remove the "ptr" mechanism from your SPF record and, if necessary, replace it with other SPF mechanisms that do not require a reverse DNS lookup, such as "a", "mx", "ip4" and "include."

Troubleshooting

The very nature of the DNS system made this problem a very frustrating one to tackle, as you don't see instant results from your implementation, but of course have to wait anywhere up to 48 hours for the information to propagate throughout the internet. You can however use some of the tools on the Open SPF website to check your record is configured properly. Once you have confirmed that your record is set up correctly you can also send a blank email to check-auth@verifier.port25.com which will test your SPF record, and email you back the results.

I also found dnstuff.com invaluable in testing my DNS set-up. Whilst it doesn't check the functionality of your SPF record (it only checks that you have one), then DNS Report tool on dnsstuff.com gives you feedback on all aspects of your DNS configuration and can be an excellent tool for troubleshooting.

SPF Works!

Finally I can email Hotmail users without worrying if it will go through, and if you are running a (dv) or similar setup then I strongly suggest you use a SPF record, even if you are having no problems at the moment. One way of making life even easier for yourself in the future if you use Plesk would be to use your Plesk server as the nameserver for all domains residing on it, and set up a SPF record in the main server DNS page, accessible from the main server configuration page. By doing this all new domains will automatically have the correct SPF record setup for them. If you are only running a few domains, just make the changes in (mt)'s account center and continue to use the (mt) nameservers.

If the above doesn't work for you, get in touch with your hosting provider and make sure you have run all the tests I mentioned. Unfortunately in the end there is no substitute for really understanding what is going wrong, so I suggest you familiarise yourself with how the DNS system works. Wikipedia has an excellent article and Media Temple's Knowledgebase has a more concise article available, either of which should put you on the right track.

The ‘station has effectively been in a state of hibernation for the past few months, as I haven’t been able to get online to wake it from its slumber. The details of my problems are going to follow in a later post, as I have learnt much about the state of Internet access in the UK, and just what the companies that provide it can, and are, getting away with. Until then, all you need to know is that I am back, thanks to a new Linksys Router, and more importantly, a hell of a lot of perseverance on my Dads part.

Over the past few months there have been a lot of changes in my life, and that’s going to be reflected on the ‘station. I have a new design coming, which hopefully will remove the mental blockage provided by the current layout which encourages long posts, an issue that Derek discussed recently. I’ve also come to realise that the saying “every day is a school day” is definitely true, as I have learnt a hell of a lot in a whole lot of areas since January, and I hope to share some of that new-found knowledge with you.

Until next time (which will be soon), take a look at Google Sketchup. It’s just awesome!

The exercise should be quite interesting because I’ll be working behind the bar between 19:00 and 02:00, so I will be taking the photo’s with my Sony Ericsson K800i and uploading them to Flickr straight from the phone, which I have never done before.

All of the photos will be posted here when I get chance, and will hopefully be up on my Flickr account pretty much straight away. If you want to see what everyone else is up to, why not check out the Flickr Pool.

15:00

Here I am backing up Firefox with Febe before I put a clean copy of XP to make the new year a little less stressful!

Transitions

Over the past few months as we approach the end of 2006, I have come to realise I need to step it up a gear in the employment stakes. After graduating from University I promised myself some quality time to read, do and learn all the things that project constraints prevented me from doing during my time at University. Since the summer I have learnt a lot about all aspects of the web, programming, Linux & the *nix shell(s), 3DS Max and my other software tools. Whilst my hunger for knowledge and skills is still strong as ever, I feel much more confident about my knowledge of the tools of ‘my’ industry. Hopefully over the coming months I intend to try and distil what I have learnt and post it here, both for my own benefit - as revision and in the hope that some of my experiences may help others.

Singletrack

Unfortunately this great learning experience has had its downsides. Once I start on doing something, or learning how to do something, I become focused on that one task. I know what is possible with the tools I use, so I constantly strive to push myself to or even beyond the limits of these tools. When it comes to a personal project, I find it very hard to draw the line and say ‘that’s enough’ for any given iteration. This can have a seriously detrimental effect on my time, as I can invest a great deal of it on a seemingly simple task in order to do it to the best of my ability. Whilst at times this is no bad thing, it can, and often does mean one project suffers for the sake of another, and this is what has happened over the past 6 weeks or so.

Transformations

At the moment I am still in the middle of that transformation phase, somewhere between ‘full time student’ and ‘working designer’, and I am having to gear what I am now having to gear what I am doing towards what is going to be most valuable in terms of generating business, or finding employment. It is this transformation that has kept me away from the ‘Station and begun to align me towards a new direction. I have been busy working on a new business project which you will be hearing about soon, as well as spending some considerable time on my portfolio. I have also spent a lot of time rediscovering life away from the computer screen, and getting in touch with some neglected skills and hobbies, mostly via my sketchbooks; some pages from which I intend to share with you soon.

Elsewhere

Most of my TV time recently has been dedicated to catching up with possibly the greatest Sci-Fi series ever - Battlestar Galactica which at the midpoint of season 3, leaves us with a fantastic cliffhanger until it returns on January 21. I won’t go into detail for those who are yet to see it, but the end of the episode shows us a new side to Adama, one which even appears to supprise Tigh.

Unfortunately my temporary separation from the online world has left me behind with my reading, but today I found out that Brian Gilham has secured his well earned place in 9rules, so congratulations to you Brian. I look forward to seeing what 9rules brings to Ekonoline, already knowing what great content you will be giving to the 9rules readers.

Christmas is fast approaching and I have some last minute shopping to finish off and a busy few days ahead at work. I hope to deliver you a few festive treats before Sunday, and hopefully get some of the things I haven’t had time to offload from my mind, uploaded to the ‘Station.

Untill then, don’t let it get to you, and if it does, sit back take a deep breath and remember, it will all be over in a matter of days!

Technical Skills

I am sure you may wonder what I mean by technical skills. Well back in the a day before the Mac (or PC) was common place in a studio, a product designer’s technical skill set primarily involved manual draughting, rendering and model making, the skills that allowed them to communicate their ideas with others. These skills took many hours of blood, sweat, tears and discarded first attempts to build up, but were, and still are and invaluable component of the designer’s tool kit. To put it simply, if you were going to make it as a designer, being able to draw well and having good (visual) presentation skills well was pretty much a prerequisite.

3D, the traditional way

At University, I learnt that this is now becoming less and less the case, as the widespread use of computers in design at every stage is negating the need for these basic skills. As a kid I always enjoyed drawing, and took art at GCSE and A level, and always saw good drawing skills to be incredibly important in design. After all, they say a picture paints a thousand words, and what is design if not communication? 

When I first started my product design course I was surprised by the lack of emphasis that was put on these basic skills, and in fact in many ways it seemed they were considered to be secondary to the more academic aspects of design. Whilst I do not question the value of what I leant at University, or the quality of my course, I am still amazed that what was once a fundamental skill for any kind of designer is now considered much less important.

The gift of sight

With the extensive use of computers in every part of the design process, this can now be the case, as you do not have to be able to draw a beautiful sketch or layout to be able to produce something of remarkable quality on a computer. I remember my art teacher talking to me at secondary school and telling me that the key issue with drawing is not how you draw, or the act of drawing itself, but rather in how you look at the world. If I drew something that didn’t look quite right, it wasn’t because I had drawn it wrong, but rather that I hadn’t looked closely enough at the subject. This can be exemplified by analysing how children and indeed the majority of adults would sketch a face. You can guarantee that the drawing won’t look quite right to you, and more interestingly if you ask an adult how they think they are getting on whilst they are drawing, they likely be pleased with their progress at the time. However, once they have finished the realisation that it’s not quite right will begin to kick in. The reason for this is that during the act of drawing we are so absorbed by the process itself, that actually looking at the subject takes a back seat. What we actually draw is not what we see in front of us, but rather what we think we see.

This idea is even more apparent if consider this concept from a different angle and you look at the work of a sculptor, or more specifically, a wood carver. I once asked a wood carver how he produced his magnificent works, and he simply replied that it was all in the wood. He said he could look at a piece of wood and see a form inside, waiting to be released. He had his sight so finely tuned that he could see the final piece in his minds eye before he began work.

Fundamentally I believe that artists and designers are not gifted with the ability to create specifically, as creativity is a core attribute of humanity, but rather that creative types have the gift of sight. By this I mean they look at the world in a different way; they see beauty and promise even where there would appear to be none, such as on a blank canvas. This gift is something that must be nurtured in order to harness its true potential. This is why I feel that this basic skill should be developed and held as a core value of any design curriculum.

Physical to digital

Like many others who transitioned from working in traditional mediums to working with a digital workflow, I still use my drawing & model making skills daily. Every website, graphic or 3D model I create starts life as a drawing in my sketchbook or a quick 3D mock-up made from card or blue foam. The computer becomes a tool for me to either work quicker, more productively or to a higher standard than I could reasonably do by hand.

Can you judge the true size and form of this product?

The downside of working digitally is that in a sense I loose my connection to the work. There is no feedback other than what I see on screen, and how it correlates to my input. When I first started working in 3D on the computer, I found it quite difficult to maintain an understanding of the model I was working on. Even using Pro|Engineer, which allows me to use actual dimensional constraints to construct models, in a similar way I would do by hand, I still found it a challenge to truly understand what I was creating on screen. Without that direct interaction of the real world where I could feel as well as see my creation, I felt as if my senses had been numbed. However, having my original sketches and mock-up models to fall back on meant I could experiment with ideas with my hands, and then tweak them on the computer. Using this process I feel I can work much more productively and produce a much more effective end result.

Comparing the size of the CyberAngel to a Mobile Phone

Skipping a step

Unfortunately there appears to be a growing trend for working straight on the computer, removing that essential initial step, producing work which is often more an offspring of the undo button than your own creative process. The way I see it, a computer makes it so much easier to create imagery because it removes the need for sight. Multiple iterations of a design can be carried out much more rapidly, and complex changes can be made by the click of a button, rather than working by hand through a long process of careful consideration and construction (whether it be a 2D image or a 3D model).

Creation on a computer can become more of a process of trial & error than anything else. When working by hand, be it pen & paper or sculpting wood or modelling foam, there is a direct connection; a relationship between the artist and their work. A canvas or a sculpture demands your care and attention, for one mistake could ruin the piece. In real life there is no Ctrl+Z, there is no undo. Without having the undo key to fall back on, you are forced to painstakingly consider every line, stroke, or cut.

Getting Lazy

The other issue here is of course that most modern software programmes handle the technical aspects of producing a piece of work. Taking page layout for example, Photoshop or Illustrator, in fact any program you could use for this automatically deals with typographical issues like kerning and word spacing. The computer user does not need to know, nor care about these technicalities.

However, having an understanding of these technical issues is core to knowing how to lay out a page of text correctly. We have all seen pages badly justified or even worse, truly horrible layouts created in something like Microsoft Word; most likely using the infamous Comic Sans, and which defy every typographical convention there is.  Many a time I have seen people make obvious errors (and I’ve been guilty of the same from time to time), through laziness brought on by the very fact that the computer does so much of the work.

What can be done?

In no way am I against the use of computers in design, far from it. However I think everyone, particularly students or those just starting out in a career in design, need to make sure they can crawl before they learn to walk. Take the time to invest in these traditional skills, and I can assure you the investment will pay for itself many times over throughout the years to come. Even if you know 3D Studio Max better than the back of your hand, take the time to come back into the physical world and create something out of whatever materials are at hand, even if you only have paper. Just how refreshing this change can be might surprise you.

If you are interested in learning more, I recommend http://www.amazon.co.uk/Presentation-Techniques-Dick-Powell/dp/0316912433/sr=8-1/qid=1161969246/ref=pd_ka_1/203-9996730-6976729?ie=UTF8&s=books@>Presentation Techniques by Dick Powell, of Seymour-Powell fame. I bought this book back in secondary school and found it an invaluable resource which contains a complete overview of traditional drawing techniques from how to create simple perspective layouts to complex presentation drawings. The book also covers in great depth the various pieces of equipment you might use for these tasks

Finally, don’t forget, all you really need is some paper and a pen/pencil to hone those skills!

]]> University, 2006-10-27T17:27:01+00:00 http://helloian.com/journal/article/me_my_time_you_tube http://helloian.com/journal/article/me_my_time_you_tube#When:18:12:00Z Once again the need to move things forward seems to be the very thing that is preventing me from doing just that. My current battle with Just3G seems never ending, and whilst I may have lost a significant amount of money, I can at least take some satisfaction in the fact that it would appear my efforts have stopped Just3G from catching anyone else out with their dubious terms & conditions. Now I’m looking for a new phone contract, and will be going with a reputable dealer in the hopes that this does not happen again.

So, other than the immense amount of hours I have spent on the Just3G case these past few months, I have been working part time to cover the bills so I can continue to spend the rest of my time working on my portfolio. It’s taking a long time, but hopefully the effort will pay off in the end, as having seen the standard of work at New Designers, I really need to make my folio something special.

My Time

Alongside my portfolio, I have been putting a lot of work into the Innovation-Station, notably going Pink for October. At the moment I have a good 9 or 10 drafts that I have written on various aspects of design, that I really want to get up in the next few weeks, along with a couple of pages for the resources section talking about modelling in Pro|Engineer and working with Stamp chips, which will hopefully come in useful to the guys from IPD. A couple of the drafts have been there for a fair while, and it has taken me ages to get round to finishing them, which is a source of constant annoyance. Not just with regards to those particular drafts, but to the fact that everything seems to take forever to get done at the moment.

As I have learnt, one of the downsides of Product Design is that most employers expect you to be able to do the work of a Graphic Designer, an Engineer, a Media Designer, a Materials technician a Model maker and have an excellent knowledge of all their respective tools. In effect employers seem to be looking for Product Designers who can do the work of 2 or 3 specialists. Now, don’t get me wrong, the freedom afforded by the Product Designer’s “Jack of all trades” skill set is the very thing that attracted me to this subject and career in the first place, but constantly keeping my technical skills up to date is a very time consuming activity. Whilst this discussion is a different topic all together, it kind of leads into what I originally wanted to write about.

You Tube

The chances are you have been on YouTube, if only once, and if you hadn’t heard about it before you will surely know of it after it was bought out for $1.65 bn by Google. Now I don’t really go on YouTube very often, but when I do, I am invariably sickened by what I see, or more accurately, read.

Earlier I watched a cool video of four Sony Qrio robots dancing, and scrolled down the page, not to only to find comments about how great the engineering was, but comments ranging from “how Japan is better than engineering than the USA” to slightly more offensive comments stating “America could wipe Japan off the map” and “the Japanese are backwards”.

The ‘chat’ in that instance was actually pretty tame compared to one thread I read after watching a video about the new Eurofighter Typhoon - Britain’s new Tornado replacement. The abuse being banded about was extreme to say the least, with one guy from the states taking great amusement in recalling the events when ‘a third world country’ (Argentina) sunk a load of British ships (one ship, HMS Sheffield), because the British Pilots protecting the fleet were ‘A bunch of hooligans and chavs’. This, all spanning from some comment stating that the American F22 fighter was better than the European Eurofighter. Come on guys, get a life!

The Cost of Free

Like many I believe in an internet where freedom of speech reigns. However as history proves, give people freedom and it brings out the not only the very best, but the absolute worst in humanity. Like many others I usually try to spend my free time constructively, working on my website, developing my design skills, reading all my feeds. I don’t contribute to the web or blog communities as often as I would like, however I only contribute when I feel I have something valid and useful to say.

Some people though, seem to be able to find the time to spend hours commenting on sites like You Tube, choosing to spend their time abusing others for no good reason. What does anyone get from such mindless acts?  To prove my point, I am going to look at the comments on the first video I click on inside YouTube’s homepage. And the winner is…

Go f*ck yourself bloody whorebag! Your videos are just crap.

And that is in response to a video of a teenage girl talking about her life. Granted, it may not be the most interesting of videos to most people, me included, but I don’t think the girl in question is a ‘whorebag’. This leads me to the part that is most amusing about this situation: People watch videos which they surely will be of limited value or interest, yet watch them anyway. This I presume is just to allow them the privilege of spouting off some of their own expletive coated wisdom to the creator just to make themselves feel good.

It saddens me greatly, when I see this kind of behaviour on the internet, and it is not just on You Tube, it’s all over. Saying that, I am still trying to put my finger on what exactly makes YouTube such a magnet for these morons. Go to Flickr, and you will see nothing but genuine praise and friendly conversation in the comment lists. Go to YouTube, and you see the very worst in people. The question is, what is it that prompts people to behave like this on YouTube, and is there anything we can do to prevent it? Unfortunately this is a question I have no answer for, but just maybe, you do.

]]> Life, 2006-10-16T18:12:00+00:00 http://helloian.com/journal/article/better_pink_than_never http://helloian.com/journal/article/better_pink_than_never#When:13:32:00Z Welcome to a new, ‘pinkr’ version of the Innovation Station. The site has gone pink (slightly late admittedly) as part of the ‘Pink for October’ initiative championed by Matthew Oliphant, to raise awareness of Breast Cancer.

This is an issue that is very important to me, as my Mother was diagnosed with Breast Cancer in January of this year, and thankfully it was caught early enough to allow her to make a full recovery. The sad truth however, is that the majority of people lack an understanding of cancer, and those that do cannot separate fact from fiction through no fault of their own. There are many misconceptions when it comes to this illness, and just hearing that word is enough to cripple people with fear, a fear which you don’t have to be victim to.

Busting the myths

As with all illnesses, the best weapon we have in the battle against cancer remains early diagnosis, and this can only be achieved by everyone making an effort to educate themselves about the illness, and what to look out for. Around one in seven women will develop breast cancer over their lifetime, and unbelievably one in a thousand men will be diagnosed with breast cancer too. Due to its rarity, male breast cancer is all the more deadly. Until Matthew and Brian brought this to my attention recently, I didn’t even realise men could get breast cancer, despite learning quite a bit about the disease in the past nine months. This just goes to show how important self education on this matter is.

The Station in October

Over the coming month I am going to be talking a bit about my experiences, more about the disease itself and what we can all do to help. I will also be talking about my plans to run the London Marathon, should I be lucky enough to get a place! Oh, and for those that are interested, I will be going through some of the modifications I made to K2 for this October theme.

]]> Wordpress, 2006-10-06T13:32:00+00:00