Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
My girl and her latest friend — Penelope, a wonderfully soft, cuddly, pink bunny.
While I’ll freely admit that I’ve never been the gothiest of gothlings, I’m still at times very amused that I ended up with a girl who’s big into the pink and fluffy side of life. Just one of life’s odd little quirks, I guess.
I’m keeping my black wardrobe, though. ;)
On the one hand, I really like the new collections organization structure that Flickr just added. It’s not perfect, but it’s nice to have more control over organizing my photos.
However, the interface is getting…well, cluttered is about the nicest way to put it. By the time I’m looking at one of my sets, I’ve got no less than five different sets of toolbar/breadcrumb buttons above the pictures!
Line 2 (constant): The main navigation menu bar, where every option (save ‘Home’ and the search field) is a drop-down menu with more options.
Line 3 (appears when navigating within collections): The ‘breadcrumb’ trail leading from the user’s main page to the individual set.
Line 4 (appears when viewing your own set, not visible for other people): Set-level editing options. 3/5 of the items are dropdown menus.
Line 5 (constant): Set-level view options, available to everyone looking at the set.
It’s getting to the point where it’s UI overload — which is doubly grating on a site that’s normally incredibly well-designed and remarkably intuitive to navigate through. By the time all five toolbars appear, not only does it push the photos (which, I believe, are supposed to be the focus of the site) pretty far down the page, but I’m starting to lose track of which options are hidden in which set of menus or links!
Additionally, while the breadcrumb navigation (Line 3) is a necessary addition now that Collections allow you to organize your sets and collections up to five levels deep, it feels kind of abandoned — just shoehorned in somewhere — and quite possibly easily missed. Since that breadcrumb line is the only indication that a set is part of a collection and might have other, related sets ‘nearby,’ it seems that it should be better and more obviously integrated into the overall design. Perhaps somewhere around the set title and Line 5? Over the title, or either under or integrated with Line 5?
Honestly, I’m not entirely sure what the best solution might be. This just strikes me as an area where there’s a lot of room for improvement.
Also amusing (to my mind): the somewhat confused reactions of many locals in the Seattle LiveJournal group that I found this in.
Did you remember to set your clocks forward today?
(Said in your best Crocodile Dundee voice) “You call that a zoom lens? Now, that’s a zoom lens!”
According to DPReview, there’s “no news on price, availability or weight yet.” Weight. Heh.
(via Carpe Icthus)
It’s International Women’s Day today.
International Women’s Day has been observed since in the early 1900’s, a time of great expansion and turbulence in the industrialized world that saw booming population growth and the rise of radical ideologies.
The new millennium has witnessed a significant change and attitudinal shift in both women’s and society’s thoughts about women’s equality and emancipation. Many from a younger generation feel that ‘all the battles have been won for women’ while many feminists from the 1970’s know only too well the longevity and ingrained complexity of patriarchy. With more women in the boardroom, greater equality in legislative rights, and an increased critical mass of women’s visibility as impressive role models in every aspect of life, one could think that women have gained true equality. The unfortunate fact is that women are still not paid equally to that of their male counterparts, women still are not present in equal numbers in business or politics, and globally women’s education, health and the violence against them is worse than that of men.
However, great improvements have been made. We do have female astronauts and prime ministers, school girls are welcomed into university, women can work and have a family, women have real choices. And so the tone and nature of IWD has, for the past few years, moved from being a reminder about the negatives to a celebration of the positives.
So make a difference, think globally and act locally !! Make everyday International Women’s Day. Do your bit to ensure that the future for girls is bright, equal, safe and rewarding.
So — hooray for women!
Old hotness: Battlestar Galactica.
New hotness: Heroes.
Two new images for the title banner have been added to the random rotation, one from each of the last two posts. The cropped versions have been added to the end of my header images roundup (which may lose a few soon — as we move into spring, I may remove the obviously wintery choices).
