Simone Quentin de Manson

Found Via Bust. Tara McPherson inspires!

From this:

To This:

From This:

To This :

From this:

To this:

Theres more where those came from

Well I had a few issues awhile back i consulted the www about, and the first solutions I came across “seem” to be working. Yay!

First it was the aphid infestation:

I applied a recipe of:
1/2 litre of water,
tsp of crushed chillie
1/2 tsp of dish detergent
Grapeseed oil
Strained so the crushed chillie bits didn’t clog up sprayer..

And Voila! 3 days/ 3 sprays later!

Still some aphids but nowhere near as bad! (I also planted a tansy in there.. aphids hate that stuff I have heard)

Grapes: The Powdery Mildew

I applied:
1/2 litre of water
1 tsp of baking soda
1/2 tsp of dish detergent

3 sprays / 3 days later :

Powdery mildew seems to be going, to reveal brown splotches.. bugger… will have to wait and see.

Over the Christmas break I was lucky enough to be able to spend time in a little known town called Murchison. My mum and her partner have a place there. Not only did I go mad, with camera, in her garden (she has a FANTASTIC garden) I also spent one evening taking photos, running back to my laptop, checking out the photos, making adjustments, running back out to take more images.. until I was satisfied that I had taken a few successful shots and tired enough to get some sleep (2 oclock i think)

The first shots were completely black, but as I got to know my camera, I found the right ISO and shutter speed (holding down button for about a minute) and I got out my torch to have some fun! Here are the results:

As some of you already know I am addicted to online communities. I have always been a bit of “lurker” and not contributed much. However, lately I have felt the need to offer my opinions and/or help. This community approach is popping up all over the place in my design research, the lean towards collaboration and communities, what I have heard called the “online village”.

As the world becomes that much smaller, I get to know and have conversations with wonderful people from countries like Alaska, India, UK, Australia, America and Ireland to name a few. This creates a sort of online village of people supporting and inspiring each other with words, images and voice. To be subtle and quiet about it, I LOVE IT!! Really.

I have been recently listening to Ted Talks (as you may of guessed) I go through phases. I am working through a section themed collaboration. The last two talks were very interesting, worth a listen if you interested.

• Ted Talks : Richard Baraniuk: Goodbye, textbooks; hello, open-source learning
• AND Steven Pinker: A brief history of violence

While I am fighting to keep up with the pears and apples dropping in the garden I look at this lovely purse and think of how fruit inspires many such designs and colours, not only are they visually inspiring they are also tasty! I was given this for my birthday from Katy, a lovely lady that goes to the craft group on thursdays.

Her stuff is sold at Cherry Blossom on Tuam Street.

If you can’t watch, just listen. Fills this cynics heart with hope.

The Problem

I have a client I am designing a website for that will have many different types of users coming to his site. He has a brick and mortar store and is getting us to create a website for him, one that creates a multi channel experience. The way a person finds a product has to be as easy as talking to the sales person in the shop. In other words, The customer asks “I need something for this“, or “my favourite brand is this” or “I have always had these, I want some more please“. Not only does the category navigation and search have to help the journey it also has to be simple. As a result I have decided to do some research, the problem being our client wants something that in my gut I think is FAR to complicated, so it is my mission to come up with an alternative solution and sell it to him.

Solution?

Its a combination of a simple advanced search plus a way for the user to narrow down their products with a few simple drop downs. This is of course the first solution, the wonderful benefit of working at LeftClick is we look after the client and new website for a decent amount of time and if something is not working or being used we get to change it! Wooo hooo!

Since this research has been so helpful to me, I thought I should share it here, giving kudose to the websites I found the helpful info on.

Documentation

1. First there was this very helpful documentation I found on e-consultancy that 37signals wrote, this pointed me to some sites that worked well. It also has some helpful hints on in-site search requirements.

Websites

2. Then there are the actual sites that I liked the search on:
-Lands End
-Nordstrom

Now all I have to do is make this “persuasive” (another kettle of worms all together). Then the coding gurus need to make sure the search engine works intuitively keyword wise, which will come later…

I finished knitting a nice wee vest awhile back and Ravlery are now using my photos to represent the pattern (granted no-one else has knitted it yet) I am still happy. Loving the vest too.

There was a conference last week called webstock. This is the second time I have been unable to go. Money is the deciding factor… but my work paid for some of the longer term people to go (fair enough I reckon) They kindly handed out the free stuff to us when they got back. Now this sounds like they might be giving us the booby prize, I think not. Teashirt…. niiice, bag… NICE!! Woo hoo! It made my day, so sad, so “consumer” but such a nice bag. Its also much lovelier when its  a gift.

Still writhing with jealousy at my workmate getting to see some of the ultimate web super stars in person… he even got his shirt un-buttoned by one of them…