View from the Potting Shed

I love typography, fonts and all that jazz. In my time I’ve created a couple of rather pathetic-looking handwriting fonts, and compiled a couple of fonts for use with mahjong documents, but I’d love to create a good, professional-looking font. Maybe one day.
I’ve tried a few font creation applications including:

FontCreator
FontLab 4.6
Fontographer 4.1

I currently have […]

Microsoft have just announced Service Pack 3 for Microsoft Office 2003, which has prompted me to make sure that all my Microsoft Office applications are up-to-date.
What is a Service Pack?
A service pack (often abbreviated as SP) is a collection of updates, fixes and enhancements to a software application or operating system — such as Microsoft […]

It turns out that Microsoft have been listening to the voices of impoverished students across the globe and are currently offering Microsoft Office 2007 Ultimate Edition for only £38.95 (the RRP is £599.99) as part of their The Ultimate Steal promotion.
What you get
Microsoft Office 2007 Ultimate Edition includes:

Word 2007
Excel 2007
PowerPoint 2007
Outlook 2007
Groove 2007
Publisher 2007
OneNote 2007
InfoPath […]

I was chatting with a friend online this evening (hello Steve!) about web coding, and I offered him my three favourite add-ons for Mozilla Firefox which I find absolutely essential for coding and debugging HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
Work in Firefox, debug in IE
When developing code I tend to always work with Firefox first. When […]

Before and after: Windows Mobile 5 (left) vs. Windows Mobile 6 (right)
I’d read a few days ago that O2 would be offering a free upgrade to Windows Mobile 6 so yesterday I went in search of such delights, and lo! as it says in the good book: seek and ye will find: software update for […]

Here’s a quick, easy and free application for taking screenshots on your Windows Mobile 5 device: Ilium Software Screen Capture.
As the website says:
Using Ilium Software Screen Capture takes just six simple steps:

Start the program on your device
Use the Options menu to define the key you want to press to take your screenshots
Leave the program […]

Last night my conceptual model of how my favourite RSS reader, FeedDemon, works when synchronizing with NewsGator online changed.
Conceptual models
In Donald A. Norman’s book The Design of Everyday Things he writes about the importance of conceptual models:
A good conceptual model allows us to predict the effects of our actions. Without a good model we operate […]