A Donkey on the Edge

If ever there was a web page that said "OK, so now shut up already"

This is it :-)

Hide your search interface

The big Visa widget at the top has the shape, drop-shadow design and position of a search input box. This one kept trying to convince the auto-pilot part of my web users brain that I should click on it.

In the process of Googling the stuff I was looking for I came back to the site a few times before finally noticing the tiny search interface hidden in the grey bar at the bottom. I reckon I need to start testing search styles and positions (there seems to be a bit of a trend for moving away from top-right and into top-centre) but this is ridiculous.

Very search interface

I recently tried out the @verynetwork web store to get a feel for what retailers are up to these days. This store is run by the same company that redeployed Woollies as a digital pure-play but doesn’t have the brand equity that Woolworths does. Incidentally, the fact they’ve launched a party-specific url suggests they’ve done a lot to understand the needs of the average Woollies customer.

One thing I find intriguing about very.co.uk is they sell high-street fashion and electricals from the same interface. Nothing wrong with this, just that traditionally, we all felt the electricals customer expected a certain level of specialisation and expertise from her vendor.

Anyways, I just wanted to mention that my test went well and my new jumper arrived swiftly and was entirely as described including the sizing which is often a problem for me.

On the down side, as a test to see how Very went about selling tellies, I did a search from the home page (search bar in an unusual position, I’d be curious to see their test data on that) for a 32 inch Sonia Bravia and got the error message above.

My guess is that the client-side validation script was written by a PHP jockey (because PHP is vulnerable to POSTed code, often included in double-quotes). By trapping the double quote, the browser robbed the ecommerce system of an opportunity to parse my query and sell me a TV.

I’d much prefer the browser to send the garbage to the server and let the server do the heavy lifting, that way I increase the chance of returning an engaging search result.

Come on Very, you’ve got it mostly right, why not let your customer search for a 48” chest or a 50” television or a 19” monitor?

Gardening beard

One of the fun side-effects of not shaving for a few weeks is that you get to give yourself a funny beard before shaving it all off:-)

Stopping the Digital Economy Bill

Or at least lets make sure the darn thing gets a proper debate in parliament. The bit that frightens me most: Big Copyright getting the right to disconnect my daughter from the internet. I wished I had been recording Cory Doctorow (above) instead of photographing him as he made a beautifully worded case for the absurdity of the bill.

updated: he’s on Youtube

Piracy is a problem, but it’s also a red herring. The real problem is industry using it’s lobbying power to manipulate copyright law and resist change. We’ll know we’re heading in the right direction when the rights to Mickey Mouse enters the public domain and the record industry develops a healthy business model in partnership with its customers.

Until then, yall need to look at supporting the EFF the FSF and the Open Rights Group (ORG briefing here) amongst others. Oh, that, and call your MP:-)

Ruth's memory tree

Her tree is impermanent, an apple tree among the firs, but the thoughts expressed should last forever…

This is the last post about Ruth’s passing and subsequent service. I am now going to return this blog to its normal pattern of nonsense from Dug’s head. I am building a page for Mom and will transfer all the Jobbles Wood content to there when it’s ready.

If you want to add a thought to the tree picture, you can comment here or add your thoughts to the picture’s Flickr page

Ruth's celebration, Sunday March 7, 2010

Ruth’s celebration was held at Salem Chapel East Budleigh, Devon, on March 7th 2010.

Many who attended the ceremony expressed a desire to read the text of the remarks by the Humanist officiant, Alan Turner, Ruth’s sister Elsie, her husband Jed, daughter Ohna and son Dug. While Dug is planning a more permanent home for this information, here are some of the transcripts:

Elsie, Ruth’s younger sister made the following remarks

Ruth and I grew up in Brooklyn New York.

We were three sisters-daughters of Norwegian immigrants. We were part of the American ‘melting pot’. Although people immigrated to have a better life in the US, they hung on to their identities for a long time. Everyone in our neighborhood , which was predominantly Italian, Irish and Norwegian, identified themselves as belonging to the country of origin of their parents or grandparents. So we grew up identifying ourselves as ‘Norwegian’ and we shopped at the Norwegian businesses. Our eldest sister, Mary, spoke Norwegian as her first language and all three of us could understand our parents, although we answered in English.

We grew up influenced by our parents’ European culture.

When we travelled—and we all wanted to travel—we were always asked if we were Dutch, or Scandinavian, surprising people when we said we were American. I think this ‘dual citizenship’ made it easier to take on the role of a foreigner living in another country. Mary and Ruth did quite well, when in 1969, they both left the United States never to return. Mary moved with her husband Dan and four of their children to Norway, Ruth and family moved to Paris, then to Italy, back to Paris and finally to Devon.

With every move she had to adjust to running a household in countries with different customs and languages, make new friends, get the children settled in schools, and support her husband in his endeavors. Luckily she was very smart, practical, inventive and not fazed about being a stranger in a strange land.

We were a small family. My mother and father came separately to the US, and met and married in 1929. The Depression and WW2 put a damper on further immigration and our relatives remained essentially unknown to us except for an occasional visitor. So birthdays, Christmas, and other occasions had the five of us as a core.

In the 1950s, girls were expected to live at home until they married.

Mary followed the rules and got married at age 19. Ruth, who was 4 years younger, seemed content to stay in the family nest. I wasn’t. When I was 21 and Ruth was 26, I announced I was moving in with roommates in Manhattan. It was a wakeup call for Ruth who complained YOU CAN’T MOVE OUT BEFORE ME-it was too embarrassing to have your younger sister leave home first.

So I moved out in July 1960 and she left for San Francisco in August. At that point our lives diverged, but that close beginning forged our basic outlook on life, and as our lives developed new chapters and new directions, we stayed connected.

Whenever I saw Ruth we could start our conversations by finishing the sentences we had been speaking the last time.

I may not know all the important events in her life as they occurred but we were right on top of OUR shared history that grew with every year. We saw each other infrequently, but corresponded often-real letters-not email. It was always exciting to see an airmail envelope in the mailbox with her familiar handwriting.

It is very odd hearing people talk about Ruth as if they knew her.

How could they know her-she was MY Sister-but then I have to concede that she was also YOUR wife, YOUR mother, YOUR grandmother, YOUR aunt, and YOUR friend. She had a different existence with each of you.

The threads of her life were interwoven with many people. Now one thread of my life is broken.

Goodbye Ruth.

Dug, Ruth’s son, made the following remarks

Ruth, my mother, was an enabler.

We don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the enablers in our lives.
We don’t consider the air we breathe, we don’t appreciate the water we drink and we don’t even worship the sun anymore.

So today I’d like to say thanks to my greatest enabler.

My Mom who spent a large part of her life creating wonderful things for her family, for her friends.

Today, I’d like to say thanks for all the gifts my mother enabled for me. These are precious gifts that will be with me until my own death. They are gifts I hope to pass on to my own children as well.

• Thank you for making me capable of trying for the impossible
• Thank you for the self-belief to push on doors and take chances
• Thank you the peaceful sleep I enjoy even as I navigate seriously troubled waters
• Thank you for letting me know what it feels like to be safe, to be cherished
• Thank you for the keys to everything.

Finally, I’d like to read you a short message of thanks, a poem I copied out for Ruth in June 1969 and that she tucked away in one of her scrapbooks.

“Pour ma mere” de Maurice Carême

Il y a plus de fleurs
Pour ma mère, en mon coeur,
Que dans tous les vergers;
Plus de merles rieurs
Pour ma mère, en mon coeur,
Que dans le monde entier;
Et bien plus de baisers
Pour ma mère, en mon coeur,
Qu’on en pourrait donner.

Thank you.

Ohna, Ruth’s daughter, made the following remarks

My mother was the most nurturing, loving and caring person. She was my safety and was my point of reference. She was a hug when I needed it, and a sharp word when I needed that. She was ‘home’ wherever I was and for quite a while after I left.

She was so welcoming and easy that my home became my friends’ second home and she became their 2nd mom. After she died, I even received messages from siblings of my friends expressing their sadness and respect for her, wanting to share with me how important she had been in all our young lives. So much so that my childhood friends have come from Paris today to say good bye and share in her memories.

She had no strong rules or formalities that we had to live by, and yet imparted a strong moral sense - that eventually my brother and I seemed to soak up quite unnoticeably. She was nurturing but also gave me a lot of freedom and independence. She made me feel trusted and confident, and gave me room to be me and grow. My friends’ parents were sometimes quite taken aback with my lack of grooming. My French friends’ parents taught me how to eat with the correct tilt of the bowl, and the correct way to sit and hold my knife and fork. My friend Sonia’s mother used to brush my hair before she would let me out to play (I usually turned up with great big knots at the back of my head I couldn’t be bothered to tease out). In fact, I missed out on being rebellious because I never felt I had anything to rebel against.

She was also a very individual mom and role model. For a start, most my life she was foreign (as was I) and her ways were always her own, not like anyone else’s. This meant I grew up never knowing that I had to be like anyone else, because it was a given I’d be different and it really didn’t matter.

She loved creating special occasions. She used to make beautiful gift packages made up of lots of little individually wrapped presents, which were always my favourite gifts to open. She put together picnics which always came fantastically presented with fabric tablecloths, real glasses and all kinds of delicious foods, and with my dad’s help spotting the muddiest tracks to go hiking down and the most breathtaking settings to settle down in, made for many a memorable weekend. She knew how to throw the best parties I have ever been to. She sat with us making papier-mache pen pots and sculptures, she weaved beautiful rugs or sewed not only many of her own clothes, but my dolls’ clothes too.

I feel very privileged and lucky that I had my children when my mother was still young and fit enough to be able to contribute with huge amounts of love and energy. She made me and my children feel that they were the most special and perfect children in the world.

My heart breaks every time I think of how oppressed she was by her many illnesses and ailments over the past few years. At times she was so tired of putting up a fight, she couldn’t see the light. While she was in hospital she talked about the battle she waged against a silver army and that she just couldn’t find the weapons to defeat them. But it encouraged me that she was still looking for them.

Right now it is hard to say what I will miss the most, as so many things remind me of her. I feel happy when I recognise elements of her in things that I do, and I hope I will continue to learn from her even though she has gone.

Alan read out a passage from Apoa and Kiloh, Ruth’s granddaughters. They wanted to both speak and their text is in the form of a dialogue.

Apoa: I feel very lucky to have been able to know my grandma so well. We spent most holidays here in Devon and many of my childhood memories were here with her. Christmas has always been the strongest Devon tradition for me - the one time I remember trying it in London wasn’t nearly as good. It always started with decoration the Christmas tree together and Grandma would point out all the old photos we used for decorations and we would pause to complete the puzzles hung in little boxes on the tree.

Kiloh: I have so many fond memories of my grandma, when I think her the first thing that comes to mind is her laugh; it was such an infectious laugh it always made me feel happy and I felt great every time I was the cause of it.
I also loved the American way Grandma would say things, like tub instead of bath and diapers instead of nappies which is something I realized I’ve picked up off her.

Apoa: I picture her often with curlers in her hair and remember her always fretting about us when our hair was wet, begging us to use her hairdryer.

Kiloh: She was always a very keen gamer she had a great skill with puzzles; and we also played a lot of cards together. Apoa and I would teach her new games, but not too well so that we could still win as she always beat us at most games. Another favourite was Chinese marbles, which we have also taught to Clemmie, and Grandma was particularly good at.

Apoa: Grandma loved books and read a Series of Unfortunate Events to us and I tried to return the favor, reading her the Northern Lights’ one time when she was feeling ill. She had a keen love for detective stories, which I inherited from her. She once sent me an article (which I think Elsie sent her) explaining how it is a Norwegian tradition to go on holiday to read detective stories once a year, which explained to us why Hercule Poirot’s crime-solving tales gave us such enjoyment. She also read children’s stories like Jacqueline Wilson books and Harry Potter though I was never quite sure if she read them because she knew how much we liked them or if it was for her own enjoyment.

Kiloh: She always spoilt us with treats, Mars Bar ice-cream were her favourite and she had a large stock and then she discovered Snickers which filled the freezer too, and these always make me think of her. She also gave us biscuits and Mr. Kipling treats in abundance when our parents weren’t there, which always felt special, as it was something I never really got used to.

Apoa: We will miss her massively but it’s nice to know that we will always have such lovely memories of her and will forever have our grandma Ruth.

Jed, Ruth’s husband was the last to speak. He added the following remarks

Ruth was a big city girl who had supported her family through seven family moves: San Francisco, New York, Connecticut, Paris, Milan and back to Paris again.

Now England and Budleigh Salterton were basically her choices, but I did wonder how my New York gal would fit in, in this very different community.

Soon after settling in, I was working in my studio upstairs when I heard a strange noise below me in the garden. Looking out, through the classic Devon drizzle, I found Ruth in a rain coat and a rain hat dead-heading the roses and happily singing to herself. “Well Done!”I thought to myself“my New York girl’s turned into a true Budleigh Gardener. We’ll be OK here.”

And we were.

Thank you for coming…

After lunch at Ruth’s home in Budleigh, we gathered in Jobbles Wood near the village of Coliton in Devon, to walk with Ruth to her final resting place. After a last message from Alan Turner, Richard, Paul, Eamon and Dug lowered her willow coffin onto a bed of pine needles and covered her with flint and earth.

The sun set during the ceremony and afterwards, lanterns and candles were lit. Those present stayed with Ruth for a while and wrote messages on a memory tree. We lit a bonfire and talked as the night set in over the woodlands.

It was a very special moment and I hope those present came away with a foundation for their future memories of my mother and a basis for working through their grief in a shared way.

On a personal note, while I still feel like crying at random moments during the day, I feel strangely positive about the experience. I’m glad my whole family was there and I’m glad I will be able to visit Mom and make patterns in flint and pine needles with my children and know that as Ruth returns to the earth she does so in her own space which she loved and in a way that her family can share with her.

Bonnes Fête Maman, 1er Juin 1969

The text reads:

Il y a plus de fleurs
Pour ma mère, en mon coeur,
Que dans tous les vergers ;
Plus de merles rieurs
Pour ma mère, en mon coeur,
Que dans le monde entier ;
Et bien plus de baisers
Pour ma mère, en mon coeur,
Qu’on en pourrait donner.

Not bad for a five year old:-)

Turns out it’s a set piece by poet Maurice Carême who apparently wrote many verses about his mother and whose work is dilligently copied by little French girls and boys all over the land in time for Mother’s day.

I can’t believe it’s taken all this time for me to take a look through Mom’s old scrapbooks. I’ve read two of them, and there are easily another twelve on the shelf behind me.

Mom's scrapbook, Thanksgiving 1963

Actually, while this one was on Mom’s shelf, I reckon the items where mostly collected by Dad, but nonetheless, I found this page quite moving

and so we enter this new age, this thanksgiving day, brutally shaken, but more aware than ever before of the dark forces around us—and within ourselves—that can still be controlled. If we have learned anything, we have learned that there is no such thing as security. When anarchy reigns—and anarchy begins when you stop caring for your fellow man—then not even the most valuable man in the land is safe. All the guns in the secret service could not keep him safe, and all the weapons of destruction at at our command will not keep us safe. The only shield is compassion and understanding, firm in the face of hate…

From “Holiday at Half Mast” by Herb Caen

Even though I was born 10 months before JFK was gunned down, this bracelet was inserted in the same page as the San Fracisco Chronicle clippings. Sat here in her empty office in Devon fourty years later I can imagine Ruth holding me and wondering what in the world the future might bring.

Ruth Marie Falby née Ohna, 11 March 1934 - 24 February 2010

Mom died last night.

She was admitted to the Royal Devon & Exeter on the 12th of Feb after a fall in the kitchen which broke her hip. I headed down on Friday afternoon and caught up with Mom and Dad in the A&E where Mom was in the middle of something that looked like a stroke and stayed with her until some time in the early morning when Dad and I headed back to the house.

Since then she’s been on oxygen as the doctors tried to stabilise her enough to operate on her hip. It’s been a painful week and it turns out Dad had been toughing it out on his own most of January as Ruth’s health nose-dived (Dad, you should have called sooner) and was running on empty (Dug, why didn’t you call him sooner) so the three of us stumbled through Friday night and then Saturday morning…

Fast forward to today, what’s going on in my head? Well the first thing that keeps coming back is why did I leave her on Sunday? I waved goodbye around Sunday lunchtime so I could drive back to London to be at work in Paddington on Monday. I can still see the look in her eye as she waved at me (slight confusion, a little bewilderment) and I waved at her. I had been reading Stieg Larsson to her and her morning was fairly quiet. The nurses had come to give her her morning bath and that was my queue to leave her space…

…and then the call this morning. And the call last night: that’s the other thing, Dad called me late last night at work to tell me Mum had been prepped for the hip surgery but had relapsed and was having difficulty breathing again. I thought perhaps I should head down but I was knackered and it was freezing so a late-night three-hour bike ride seemed like a bad idea.

This morning, after Dad called to say she had left us around midnight I just wanted to kick myself—if only I had gone down the night before… So in the end I got to Devon around lunchtime today. The chaps in the mortuary were great and even though I had arrived unannounced, with no appointment and before the required time had passed they sorted me out after only a short wait.

I’m still kicking myself that I didn’t go down last night but this morning felt like I had a chance to say goodbye properly. I stood with her for a while and talked with her and cried and then thanked the mortuary staff and headed outside. Being alone with my thoughts I felt I could experience both the sadness of Ruth’s struggle through pain and confusion and ultimately death and then experience that more fully, though I’m sure the week ahead will bring other feelings and experiences I felt more connected and more, I guess more like I was giving Mom some much needed respect just by sitting there.

So now Jed, Elsie, Ohna and I have got to work out the next steps. I hope Mom is happy with whatever we come up with.

Why would you want to work at the beeb?

Look around your office, now imagine being a part of this massive redesign

We set out to broaden our ambitions; to create a design philosophy and world-class design standards that all designers across the business could adhere to. We wanted to find the soul of the BBC. We wanted something distinctive and recognisable; we wanted drama. We knew whatever we created needed to be truly cross-platform and that we needed to simplify our user journeys.

Together, over the last four months, we’ve spent countless hours and created countless iterations of designs, components, mastheads, footers, polar maps, word documents, pdfs and grids… and whilst it’s still a work in progress, I’d like to share with you where we’re at with both the design philosophy and the latest version of our global visual language styleguide.

Oh to have a license-payer’s fee eh? Oh, to have a thinking space with a wall big enough to share and iterate over the big picture…

I’m glad Neville Brody is keeping busy and lovely stuff and top marks all around to the BBC but I’m reminded of a talk I just attended where Christian Crumlish made an interesting point:

Pattern libraries are more useful, more engaging and have a greater longevity in the enterprise than design guidelines.

I think his point is that most styleguides start becoming obsolete the moment you complete them. Clearly a large and complex design resource needs guidelines, but I think Christian felt that giving a team a system of patterns and the understanding of the user needs they satisfy was a bit like teaching a man to fish instead of handing him a tuna steak.