Rumyra's head

Roo’s green salad

1/2 red onion, chopped
I packet trimmed and sliced runner beans, chopped
I packet Alpeno feta with olives
300g chicken, diced
1 garlic clove, diced
I packet rocket, spinach & watercress, washed
2 tblsp each of balsamic vinegar and lemon juice

Add onion, runner beans, feta, vinegar and lemon juice to bowl and stir.

Fry garlic and chicken until chicken is white. Add rocket, spinach and watercress until whilted. Stir into bowl with other ingredients. Serve.

Apparently an image being an image is confusing!

Is it soo strange that I truly believe; only use images when you are actually showing an image? You know like a pretty photo, or nice little diagram…

Headings, (to me anyway and I am a little crazy), are NOT images! Even if you have to render them as one because they use a non-system font. I actually thought this fell under basic rules for nice mark-up. Not according to the giant-which-you-think-can’t-get-any-bigger-and-yet-does Apple.

You see really I should be posting a link to this article, and actually giving my two pence worth over the flash/adobe/apple/all-pricks debate, but no, all I want to say is really? A company with the technical caliber of Apple? Check out the source, and yes you are seeing it right, the heading is an img. Assuming of course they have some lovely imagemagick generator - ok I’m backtracking now, essentially it’s not inaccessible…

Let’s say they have used a generator, making an image for each content manageable heading. I have to say I have used similar things and now all I’m thinking is a generator that makes the image and puts it in as a background image.

One up on the way Apple do things - always been a personal goal, watch this space!

Ada Lovelace Post - Women in technology

I couldn’t think of any one woman in particular I wanted to blog about for Ada Lovelace day, in fact I struggled to think of one woman I knew of and respected, in a technology based industry, who wasn’t a work collegue. Due to this I decided to give my respects to all women in a technological environment, mainly because I work within one myself.

The problem that will arise with me paying respects to all those women, who everyday have to speak louder, prove themselves far harder and have the patience of saints to work within a male environment, is that no matter what I think of about this post everything in my head is extremely sexist.

Having experienced a very male dominated industry, (I have been a web designer/developer for five years now and have only in the past year come across other females in my line of work), my feelings are mostly of resentment and lack of respect towards my male counterparts. Thus I begin to question why this is and then begin to feel as if I could write five other posts with personal reasons. One example I can’t let go, (and wonder whether I will), is a couple of months into one role my manager actually turned to me and stated (as if it was one of his best achievements), ‘-well we only employed you because you were a girl’. This was quickly responded to with a fixated glare from me and he stuttered ‘-well we were looking for a year and you were the best by far’. With comments like this littering my daily routine, my respect for male colleges gets knocked down more and more everyday.

Stop Rumyra! See it’s inevitable… how do I pay respect to these women without making this post a personal sounding board.

Maybe I don’t, maybe I do just pay my respects for every woman who’s ever been told she was wrong when she wasn’t, who’s had to raise her voice in the boardroom to be heard, who’s had to bend her knees so her male junior is looking at her in the eyes and not in the chest and who has had to work twice as hard to prove she knows just as much as her male counterpart - it’s not hard it is just rocket science/brain surgery/quantum physics!

Shooting List

Five people you are allowed to shoot on site, should you actually see them.

1. Robbie Williams
2. Jimmy Carr
3. Trisha Goddard
4. Cheryl Cole (CHAV)
5. Probably David Cameron (or whoever the current Tory leader is)

A note on map useability

OK so you’ve integrated a google map onto your webpage - proud? - you should be. However before patting yourself too hard on the back - have you used it?

Caramel syrup, that’s what I’m lacking. A little bit of that in my coffee and it’s happy Roo. Obviously thinking about this hard at work, the mecca of all high streets is below me, and I have a lunch hour. That’s it - Whittards, course, they do my candy!

So off I pop to the website storefinder. Bless, check out the little Google Map, it’s quite sweet, it’s nice to have it there, can I see where I have to walk - not really the zoom level is too far out.

So assuming it’s just an image, (reguardless of being sure in myself storefinders don’t go to the trouble of integrating the whole map), but with no zoom or pan controls visible this is easy. I click on it - it doesn’t take me anywhere. I realise clicking and dragging is panning the map, great it’s actually integrated and not just an image. But wait - how the hell pieces do I zoom, there’s no controls and clicking is not gonna help.

Wait, wait - yep there it is, the scroll wheel on my mouse! Phew, I almost thought I would have to go through the arduous 3 step process of copying the postcode, go to Google Maps and find the shop myself!

So what do we do about the users who don’t have scroll wheels? Honestly this is probably another post, I certainly assume users have scroll wheels these days…