Like It Is

Once upon a time, all a model would get out of bed for was to sashay down the runway. As long as they were doing what they did best (and preferably keeping their mouths shut) no one cared whether they were doing lines or modelling them.

Not anymore. Looks like a large part their energy appears to be being spent on keeping themselves from being thrown in the slammer. But it’s their own stupid fault of course. This time it’s Supermodel Ms Naomi Campbell who, though just 36, has a fiery temper of legend. Looks like her well known temper may actually land her in jail in the not too distant future, unless she again manages to dredge up some more remorse for flying into one of her now-famous rages.

Ms Campbell was told she was “absolutely obliged” (translation: turn up or else) to be at Manhattan Criminal Court on November 15 over the accusations by her (latest) maid that she allegedly threw a mobile phone at her. Her maid needed four stitches. The mobile phone was said to be a diamond encrusted Blackberry. Hello? A diamond encrusted Blackberry!? Wonder if the diamonds are round the screen or the keyboard? I’d love to see one myself. But I digress…

If Naomi doesn’t appear in court in November a warrant will be issued for her arrest. She was already arrested in March this year. Yet this is this is not the first time the supermodel has been in trouble over her “temper tantrums”. And it surely isn’t possible that ALL her maids and assistants are lying.

In February 2000 Ms Campbell pleaded guilty to an assault charge for beating her assistant with a telephone while making a film in Canada in 1998. She expressed remorse for the assault (though she wasn’t in court to enter the plea) and was released without punishment or a criminal record. She was ordered to take anger management classes. In August 2005, Ms Campbell was questioned for assault of a fellow model in Rome.

Those anger management classes clearly didn’t work very well. Ms Campbell might want to ask for a refund.

She’s already denied second degree assault for the latest charge. If she’s convicted she could face up to seven years in prison.Maybe that isn’t such a bad way of teaching someone you just can’t go around bopping people with your bloody phone every time you get pissed off about something they say. Chances are though she has a good lawyer… for starters he might gently encourage her to attend her next court appearance. He’ll be fully clad in protective gear of course – and all telephones (fixed and portable) should be removed from the premises. Just to be on the safe side. Or at least be well out of missile throwing range…

But wait – perhaps the problem isn’t Naomi’s at all. Perhaps it’s all the fault of the telephones, since they now look to be the weapon of choice for temperamental, out of control and otherwise-challenged celebrities.

Remember Russell Crowe?

Source: Times Online

We had such a wonderful time in Montreal and Quebec City. As a Brit used to hopping on a plane to go on holiday, driving to our destination was really something quite different for me. When going on holiday within Canada and to the States Canadians tend to drive, since it’s where they are going is usually but a few hours away by car. I’d hesitated in the past, but now can’t wait to do it again. Our experience was wonderful –romantic, relaxed and leisurely. No waiting for planes, rushing to airports. lugging luggage to the various gates which are always miles away from where you actually check in. I really relished the difference.

A picture is worth a thousand words I believe, so our photos on Flickr will hopefully help capture the story of the fantastic time we had. Right now I’m working on re-naming them our photos, and will upload to my Flickr site over the next few days. I’ve uploaded some already, and some are also on the blog, so feel free to have a look. And enjoy.

As I mentioned in my previous posts on Quebec we spent most of the time walking – almost all it uphill, exploring Old Quebec, taking photographs, taking in the stunning views, and sampling the excellent gastronomic delights of Quebecois cuisine and hospitality in the great restaurants. Portofino, the photo in my current header is one of the restaurants we went to that came highly recommended – it did not disappoint. It is known as the best Italian restaurant in Quebec City. Oh my! It was amazing. The walking was great exercise – there is nowhere that is flat in Quebec City – especially visiting the Citadelle and the Plains of Abraham. We are pretty fit, but boy, did we feel it the day after. We had great weather, and the one rainy day was the last day we were there, so that worked out very well.

My husband is into beer rating (he has rated over 1,700 to date from all over the world) so we also visited a couple of Brew Pubs and Microbreweries – La Barberie being one of them. La Mere a Boire was another – where we could taste (and he could rate) some interesting Quebec beers. It was great fun – just us and whatever we wanted to do. I think the most pressing question we had was “Where shall we have dinner this evening?”

So, for those interested in visiting historic Quebec City – I would highly recommend it. People told me I would love it and now I know why.

I absolutely did.

A doddle! Application and concentatration - that’s the name of the game…

Similar to my previous theme, Pressrow, this one takes the same clean lines only with a tighter design. It’s by the same designer as Pressrow and I have to say I really appreciate the readability that Cutline (and Pressrow) afford. So I’m giving Cutline a whirl. I may go back to Pressrow yet…but this one may be a keeper, we’ll see. WordPress just keeps on bringing out these cool themes…

It’s amazing what you can come across when you’re blog-hopping - or blog exploring as I call it.

I came across Persephone’s BoxBlog, today, with this very pertinent (at least to me) article and even more revealing comments about being able to read some blogs. It’s called…
Attention All Brilliant White on Black Bloggers

Designers, blog owners take note.

The comment by Pony makes the most salient point, which I’ve paraphrased slightly:

If the point of your blog is to communicate, and anyone coming to your blog can’t read it because of your design - then you have not communicated.

Although I’m not a designer, I worked for a few years in web design environment with some very talented web designers - and extremely demanding clients. I write this as a blog reader as well as a blog owner. My focus, when being asked to evaluate and test web sites was and always will be about usability, and most if not all is applicable to blogs. I love good design but what constitutes good design seems to vary depending on whether you are the user or the designer. We may not design blog themes ourselves, but we certainly choose them for our blogs. Usually because we like the design and it helps present what we have to say.

Ultimately, though, don’t we want through our blogs to communicate with our readers? How easy is it for the reader to read what you’ve written in your blog? Do you know? Easy or difficult? Would you dare ask them or would you rather not know?

I do have a beef about white text on dark backgrounds, which comes in part from what I personally like to encounter and from what I know from my web days. I know many designers think light text on a dark background is cool, even funky.

Here’s some information which designers will probably, for the most part ignore because they love their cool designs:

Tiny fonts, tiny spacing white or pale text on dark backgrounds is bloody hard to read. As such, to me it’s poor design. I was surprised that, only when I changed my previous theme Regulus (which had a white background, but pale small fonts) to Press Row did some of my readers tell me that Regulus was so hard to read and that this new one was much easier. That the number of readers has jumped since changing I’m sure is no co-incidence.

But maybe as designer you’re designing only for yourself and don’t really care whether your readers can read what you’ve written, or as a blogger you happen to really like pale texts on dark backgrounds. If a blogger’s readers cannot read it, or have difficulty reading it, your reasons for designing it are secondary at best.

Readers will suffer in silence of course, or be forced to highlight your text to read it, or even, as I hear get hold of some tools to zap the colours (neat, didn’t know you could do that!). More often than not they will click away from your blog even though it may look interesting.

And if many have difficulty reading, what’s the point of writing anything in the first place? If you have the most brilliant article on your blog, it’s completely missed the mark if your readers have to squint to read the content or the comments, have to blink several times to read the tiny white or pale text on your wonderful cool dark background. If I come across a blog with pale text on a dark background I click away, sadly, but deliberately.

As bloggers we are publishers as well. This is a reading medium and blogs should at least give consideration to your readers (since they are the ones that read and leave comments - and assuming you want them to do this), more than simply being about the beloved design or template.

No doubt many designers will take the “No way I’m changing my cool design that I’ve put hours of sweat and toil into, are you crazy?” approach. But maybe some will really care about what their users want. Some blog owners, from the responses to the above mentioned article are being accommodating and changing the blog template so that readers can actually read their posts.

And if we bloggers (their users) demand themes that enable us to produce readable rather than unreadable blogs for our readers (i.e. dark text on at least a pale background) perhaps designers will take note and design accordingly.

Just what is different? And why is it different? The nearest I’ve got to an answer is one of those “just have one, and you’ll see what we mean/you’ll understand” suggestions, which provides a convenient cop-out for those asserting “it’s different” and, if I was silly enough to follow their advice, would leave no way out for me.

On one hand it seems to suggest that anything that irritates me about children, such as running round screaming and making noise in adult environments, constantly demanding attention, throwing tantrums, yelling, being disruptive, kicking my seat when at the cinema (theatre) at a late showing and the like would become somehow miraculously o.k and acceptable – when and if they are my own. There is something wrong with this , only I can’t quite nail exactly what. But it may go some way to explain why it is that parents appear not to care when their offspring are disturbing the world at large.

Pro–natalists and parents say that it’s different when they are your own. “Have a brood of your own they say, go on, you just need to try it…just jump in, like we did. Don’t like kids? It’s different when they’re you’re own… I used to feel the same way…”

Since they are generally not talking about the good things that children bring, do they mean the upheaval, the lack of sleep the lost/missed opportunities, the broken relationships, years and years of parenting to bring children up, the sacrifices are different? Or that the constant demands of children, the noise, the struggle, the financial straits, the lack of economic power, the disappearance of self become different?

Or maybe the poop smells different, changing endless diapers is more pleasant, constantly feeling exhausted and having to fork out endless amounts of cash for the latest new must have for kids becomes good fun – because after all it’s different when the kids are your own.

Perhaps what they really mean is that “you have to put up with it all because you have no choice when they are your own?” If so, how would that make a childfree person change their mind and want to have kids? As a way to convince, it’s lousy.

On the other hand, it leads me to wonder if perhaps some parents really don’t like children in general themselves (in which case one wonders why on earth they had them, and why they persist in trying to convince childfree people that having kids is just the best thing ever) but make an exception for their own kids. So, everything they dislike about OPK’s (other people’s kids) becomes suddenly acceptable when it’s their own kids. OPK’s may be rude and noisy. But certainly not their own offspring.

I remember once talking to a friend about being on a plane where a young child was screaming for a good hour after take off. It was probably because of the effect of the pressure on the baby’s ears, but that didn’t make the screaming any easier to bear. It was a particularly piercing, impossible to ignore scream, so not a chance of shutting it out. Not the baby’s fault, in my opinion, but the mother’s. I’m sorry, but why fly with a young child, when you know (or you should know) that the pressure on take off is going to be very painful for your child? I just don’t understand that.

At first the mother was trying to calm the child down. After a while she gave up. Nothing she could do. And the screaming continued unabated until the child wore itself out or the pain stopped – whichever came sooner.

Relating this story to my friend, I was amazed when she blithely said, “Oh I really hate the noise of other children too, it just really gets on my nerves, parents should do more to control their kids. Mine is a good child though, hardly ever cries.”

I was too gobsmacked to suggest that maybe she’s immune to the noise and antics of her own offspring. People without children unfortunately, are only too aware, except we are told we should put up with it and, since we are heartless childfree people, that we “wouldn’t understand”. Well, they are right. I don’t understand why I should have to put up with the noise and disruption of children where they probably aren’t supposed to be in the first place.

I’m told that I would think differently if they were my own.

I take that to mean I’d be as oblivious to whatever my kids did as other parents are. I would hope not.

Education Originally uploaded by TownieBrit.
One of the amazing sculptures we came across during our walk through Old Quebec City, on Rue Sainte Anne. It’s hard to describe how I felt when I saw this, but when I did I absolutely had to take a photo of it and pray it captured the sense of the surreal.

Originally uploaded by TownieBrit.

Just a few of the over 200 photos we’ve taken so far in beautiful historic Quebec City. Over the next few days I’ll be uploading most of them to my Flickr photosite, so if you’re interested in seeing more you can see them there.

Originally uploaded by TownieBrit.

Originally uploaded by TownieBrit.