Archive for April, 2006
Perfect Round in AFL Tipping Competition
This will probably never happen again for me this year so I have to record this here. Anyways, Only 2 people in the national comp picked 8 out of 8 this round out of about 4300 tippers. Anyways my tips for round 5 are as follows:
Annoying Digital TV Guide - Channel 10 Australia
I’ve been using Digital TV for a couple of years now, and its been most annoying that when i want to see what is on Channel 10, I have to wait for a rotation of shows in the TV guide sub channel. I want to know what is on now and what is on next.
I don’t care about what was on at 8:00am this morning, I don’t care about what other shows this station features unless they tell me what time it is on! Seriously, this photo was just a random pic taken, i didn’t wait for it to take to emphasise a point, this is it.
Too much space is wasted on useless images like the lime - why do they have that? Why advertise a show that is on “later”. Why spell out “Channel - it is the most dominant piece of text on the screen. I just want to know what is on now and what is on next! Ok, maybe show a couple of items of what i missed, but seriously if they are going to rotate something, make it the first and last few shows, they are less important. If they are important to some, people will wait - it will work faster rotating less shows.
I’ve quickly whipped up a my own variation without any real thought just common sense. I’m sure if i had the resources that a CHANNEL would have, then more efficiency could be achieved.
In my variation, i’ve given the most important part of the tv guide- the tv guide the majority of the space. There is even room for the live preview and for any advertising. The bottom bar can be used for any tickering of weather or advertising, but things like the time, logo and date should be static.
I’ve highlighted the current show, and given it some sort of position in the middle to see how it fits in with the rest of the daily schedule. Emphasis is given on what is to come as i’m more concerned with that than what i can’t watch. Sure its nice to see what i’ve missed, but i much prefer to see what is coming.
The first and last two listings will rotate with shows which appear before or after the times of the shows that are viewed statically. If people really want to wait for shows hours before or after the current the can wait the short period of time for it to rotate. It is much quicker to rotate fewer items.Emphasis is given to the time as this whole schedule relies on the current time.
There are sure to be better ways of doing this, but you can see just from a quick redesign how this page can be better laid out.
Live From The Field
My second greatest fan
The votes are in and yes I have won back to back AAMI driver awards!

Today I was presented in the mail the coveted AAMI driver excellence award for being a Rating 1 for life customer. I recieved a letter, a CD compilation disc which is pretty cool actually - chillout style music by known artists and most importantly a
WordPress has a nice taste - Weblog to CMS
WordPress, whilst i’ve only started using this blog software appears to be very powerful, more than I can handle at this present time. Glenn Kentwell directed me to this article about using WordPress as a CMS. Seems pretty easy for

