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Articles


  1. Containing Floats (Redux) on July 3rd
  2. Title Attributes on Links, Tooltips and Accessibility on June 30th
  3. How to Make Accessible Image Links (Redux) on June 28th
  4. Freelance or a Second Contract? on June 26th
  5. How Long is your IE Stylesheet? on June 24th
  6. Boag Vs Rissington (a Web Somme in Jelly) on June 23rd
  7. Why I Dislike Flash Banners on June 23rd
  8. CMS Grafitti Can Be Reduced on June 21st
  9. Red Herring Phenomenon on June 20th
  10. Links and Affordance within a Design on June 18th
  11. Accessibility for Return on Investment on June 16th
  12. 406 Not Acceptable Error on June 15th
  13. How Cold Calling can Trash a Brand on June 14th
  14. Appreciate the Client’s Organisational Structure on June 12th
  15. Pure Tasmanian Forest in a Box on June 11th
  16. We Must Design the Whole Experience on June 11th
  17. Building Accessible Websites (Book Review) on June 9th
  18. Should We Even Mention Our Process? on June 9th
  19. Its Time to Start Using WCAG 2.0 on June 7th
  20. Several Reasons to Avoid Accesskeys on June 6th
  21. Building Style Sheets for Maintainability on June 5th
  22. Why Having Two H1 Headings is Wrong on June 5th
  23. 99 Cows (Book Review) on June 4th
  24. Policy: We Don’t Work for Friends on June 3rd
  25. Web .5 and the Tabbed Experience on June 2nd
  26. How to Make Accessible Image Links (Or Not) on June 2nd
  27. Why Hijax (or Ajax) on Forms is No Good on June 1st
  28. Don’t Fear White Space in your Design on June 1st
  29. Would You Have Taken the Pay Cut? on May 31st
  30. The Bootstrapper’s Bible (Book Review) on May 31st
  31. Are Love and Hate the Same Thing? on May 29th
  32. Templates, Hijax and our Presentation on May 28th
  33. Looking to Pick up New Contract Work on May 27th
  34. Final Week, Birthday and Illustrations on May 26th
  35. Using the Break Element on Forms on May 25th
  36. Web Design’s Golden Gun on May 19th
  37. Appreciate Your Front End Specialists on May 18th
  38. Basic Question for Ajax Gurus on May 17th
  39. Accessibilista vs Scripter on May 17th
  40. Poverty as an Accessibility Barrier on May 13th
  41. Jared Spool on Mental Models on May 10th
  42. Filching in Class is a Programming Sin on May 5th
  43. Why Don’t I Enjoy Written Interviews? on May 2nd
  44. What do you have that’s not in Mumbai? on April 30th
  45. No Country for Old Men (Movie Review) on April 30th
  46. How Restaurants can Rule the Web on April 27th
  47. Don’t Box the Blog with the Software on April 26th
  48. Reviews on this Site are Independent on April 23rd
  49. Unleashing the Ideavirus (Book Review) on April 22nd
  50. Facing your Business Blog Outward on April 21st
  51. Capturing Ideas behind the Firewall on April 20th
  52. Blogs and Wikis Behind the Firewall on April 19th
  53. The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford (Movie Review) on April 19th
  54. All Marketers are Liars (Book Review) on April 17th
  55. Business Tools of Chaos and Madness on April 15th
  56. Conte Crayon Journal on April 12th
  57. From the Foothills of Mount Wellington on April 12th
  58. I Am Legend has an Authentic Story on April 10th
  59. Undergraduate Writing Tips on April 9th
  60. Cabel Sasser’s Coda Confidential on April 7th
  61. Actively Participate in your Career on April 4th
  62. CSS and the Usual Suspects List on March 31st
  63. Two Bad Experiences with Browser Interfaces on March 30th
  64. Solving Error #80048820 and #80048439 on March 30th
  65. Clay Shirky on Social Media and Groups on March 28th
  66. How Does the Brain Interpret Art? on March 26th
  67. Beautiful Evidence (Book Review) on March 23rd
  68. Expanding on Gardner’s Intelligences on March 22nd
  69. Dean’s Honour Roll of Excellence on March 20th
  70. Vector Magic and a Sustainable Long Tail on March 18th
  71. How to be a Graphic Designer (Book Review) on March 16th
  72. NZ Government Web Standards Wiki on March 13th
  73. What Interests Bring You to this Career? on March 13th
  74. Cradle to Cradle (Book Review) on March 10th
  75. The Pandemic of Web Mediocrity on March 7th
  76. IE8 to Use Standards Mode by Default on March 4th
  77. Elastic Layouts Still Have Issues on March 4th
  78. New Templates Offer Design Consistency on March 2nd
  79. Nortypig Template and CSS Rebuild on March 1st
  80. The Elements of Typographic Style (Book Review) on February 28th
  81. IE8 - Why Not Strict Instead of Meta? on February 26th
  82. Dynamic Body ID in Wordpress on February 24th
  83. Perception and the Design on February 23rd
  84. Revised Opinion of IE8 Version Targeting on February 22nd
  85. Hunter Island Press Test & Polish on February 20th
  86. Stock Photography and Design Thieves on February 19th
  87. display: table and Firefox Intermittent Pain on February 17th
  88. Redesign of Hunter Island Press on February 16th
  89. Nortypig, Work and Back to Uni on February 14th
  90. Install Extra WordPresses as Pages on February 13th
  91. The Pain of Third Party Templates on February 10th
  92. Designing Web Usability (Book Review) on February 8th
  93. Cradle to Cradle: Sustain by Design on February 6th
  94. DHTML Utopia (Book Review) on February 5th
  95. Invention: The Beer Kong on February 5th
  96. Don’t Make Me Think! (Book Review) on February 3rd
  97. Web Standards vs Contemporary Best Practice on February 2nd
  98. Contain Floats Without Adding Structure on January 31st
  99. The Internet in Plain Old English on January 30th
  100. The Design of Flexible Identity Schemes on January 27th
  101. Data, Branding and Interaction Design on January 25th
  102. The Version Targeting In IE8 Proposal on January 24th
  103. Three Pillars of Good Web Design on January 22nd
  104. Selling Your True Skillset in Interviews on January 20th
  105. First Analyse the Client’s Web Problem on January 18th
  106. GIF and JPG Basics for Beginners on January 16th
  107. You Need More Than Unit Tests on January 15th
  108. Do Premium Themes Add Up? on January 14th
  109. False Claim of a Registered Trademark on January 13th
  110. GET vs POST for the Beginner on January 12th
  111. I’m Not There (Movie Review) on January 11th
  112. Russian Dolls Performing Recursion on January 9th
  113. Use Comment Blocks Before Functions on January 8th
  114. Was Acid 2 Only for the In Crowd? on January 7th
  115. Hand Drawn Elements in Web Design on January 4th
  116. Joe Clark on Horses and HTML 5 on January 3rd
  117. Why Are You Still Using One Monitor? on January 2nd
  118. Just Another 2007 Sob Story on December 31st
  119. How Creative is the Commons Here? on December 29th
  120. How CMS Could Trash Your Brand on December 28th
  121. Its Time to Starting Earning Money on December 27th
  122. Mrs Christmas Gave Me a Bamboo Fun on December 26th
  123. 2 Days in Paris (Movie Review) on December 23rd
  124. Bulletproof Ajax (Book Review) on December 23rd
  125. THE PROGRAM is Closing Down on December 21st
  126. The New Look Web 2.0 BBC Beta on December 19th
  127. Are You a Problogger or a Purist? on December 18th
  128. Is Chinese Manufacturing Sustainable? on December 17th
  129. DOM Scripting (Book Review) on December 15th
  130. One Man and a Wet Xmas Tree on December 13th
  131. Why Do You Need a Website? on December 11th
  132. Build Your Own Ruby on Rails Web Applications (Book Review) on December 8th
  133. Think about Timeboxing your Project on December 7th
  134. HTML Email is a Marketing Conversation on December 6th
  135. Three New Books for the Summer on December 5th
  136. A Series of Flawed Assumptions on December 3rd
  137. Support your Independent Thinkers on December 3rd
  138. Uni Marks are in for Semester 2 on December 1st
  139. Its Your Blog So Do What You Want on November 30th
  140. Linden’s Prints on Etsy on November 27th
  141. Blue Beanie Day 2007 on November 26th
  142. A Framework Question for Code Purists on November 26th
  143. Look at Frameworks as Just a Useful Tool on November 24th
  144. WordPress: Page Within a Page on November 23rd
  145. Font Family as a Last Alternative on November 21st
  146. A Sign of the Times on November 20th
  147. Publishing in Multiple Languages on November 19th
  148. 10,000 at Pulp Mill Rally Hobart on November 17th
  149. VectorMagic BETA Online Vectorization on November 16th
  150. Is HTML 5 Apathetic Your Cup of Tea? on November 13th
  151. Keeping a Reservoir of Originality on November 12th
  152. A Little Jaded on Accessibility? on November 11th
  153. My Sudanese Friend is Graduating on November 11th
  154. Unavailable Keyboard at Startup? on November 8th
  155. The Worlds Biggest Pulp Mill on November 6th
  156. Diabolical Design by Jason Santa Maria on November 4th
  157. Where is your Original Design? on November 3rd
  158. Layer Tennis for Designers on November 1st
  159. Untraining to Opera on October 29th
  160. I Don’t Care About Blind People on October 26th
  161. Ninety Ninety Rule of Programming on October 25th
  162. Install WAMP 5 and WordPress on XP on October 23rd
  163. Designing for the New Resolution II on October 23rd
  164. Designing for the New Resolution on October 22nd
  165. Prototyping with JumpChart on October 21st
  166. Don’t Throw Out Your Old Monitor on October 20th
  167. Post Mortem of a Research Internship on October 19th
  168. Our Local Web Audience is International on October 16th
  169. Its Time to Start Thinking Design Here on October 15th
  170. Al Gore Shares Peace Prize on October 14th
  171. Tas Gov’t Web Publishing Guidelines on October 12th
  172. Pareto’s Law and Web Development on October 11th
  173. Quick Introduction to WordPress on October 10th
  174. Installing WordPress on Localhost on October 10th
  175. Developing Sophisticated Designs on October 5th
  176. Your Client and the Psychological Contract on October 2nd
  177. The Cutting Edge of Occam’s Razor on September 29th
  178. Selling Personas and Scenarios to Students on September 27th
  179. Accessibility, Usability and Resizing Widgets on September 26th
  180. The Human Condition of Attribution on September 25th
  181. Content, Presentation, Behaviour on September 22nd
  182. Joel Spolsky and Web Worker Daily on September 19th
  183. EclipseME and Nokia SDK Config on September 19th
  184. Why is Using MAILTO Incompetent? on September 18th
  185. The Business Case for Blogging on September 17th
  186. Should You Be Relationship Marketing? on September 14th
  187. Design Technique 18: Design Journal on September 12th
  188. Design Technique 17: Morgue File on September 12th
  189. The Solution is a HTML 5 Apathetic Doctype on September 8th
  190. Design Technique 16: Rapid Prototyping on September 6th
  191. Hat Tip to Luciano Pavarotti on September 6th
  192. Designing for Opera Mini on September 2nd
  193. Why File Size Still Matters on the Web on August 31st
  194. Design Technique 15: Scenarios on August 29th
  195. Design Technique 14: Card Sorting on August 26th
  196. But How Does a Manager Know? on August 25th
  197. Design Technique 13: User Stories on August 22nd
  198. Design Technique 12: Parallel Design on August 19th
  199. Design Technique 11: Use Cases on August 19th
  200. Design Technique 10: Page Description Diagrams on August 16th
  201. Design Technique 9: Content Inventory on August 14th
  202. Design Technique 8: The Office Wall on August 13th
  203. Design Technique 7: Prototypes on August 11th
  204. Design Technique 6: Wireframes on August 11th
  205. Design Technique 5: Mood Boards on August 10th
  206. Design Technique 4: Personas on August 9th
  207. Design Technique 3: HTML Storyboards on August 7th
  208. Design Technique 2: Storyboards on August 6th
  209. Design Technique: Rich Pictures on August 5th
  210. An Introduction to XHTML on August 3rd
  211. Should There Be Two H1’s on a Page? on August 1st
  212. The Customer May Be Wrong on July 30th
  213. Paul Boag on Web Standards on July 27th
  214. The Fold and Its Receding Relevance on July 26th
  215. Directions to Good Neighborhoods on July 26th
  216. The McFarlane Prize 2007 on July 23rd
  217. Make Websites About Your Users on July 18th
  218. All Up in the Air Again on July 18th
  219. Animation or an Internship? on July 15th
  220. Workload and Plans for this Semester on July 13th
  221. Exam Results for Semester One on July 12th
  222. Screen Magnification Software on July 9th
  223. WCAG 2 and Testability on July 6th
  224. Design Thinking as a Management Methodology on July 4th
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Currently Reading

Information and Data Modelling (Second Edition) by David Benyon (Cover)With an eye toward implementing another web interface database solution from the ground up I'm casually revisiting David Benyon's Information and Data Modelling (Second Edition). Its critical to have a solid understanding of conceptual data modelling and knowing how to identify various things like fan traps and three way traps very early in the process. To that end, while its fine to have a basic understanding of third normal form and general ideas about relations (that which relational databases rely on), its also a great idea to spend time exploring the theory and case studies that lead to a higher understanding.

Often people I deal with just snuff their nose and say they can design a database - but often its a very naive approach. Having read this book about four years ago its time for a quick refresher over my holiday period. No, I doubt few will envy me.