James Oppenheim’s blog

http://www.paumanokreview.com

Clean, simple, interesting content and updated regularly. What more do you want in a website?

The Paumanok Review is a quarterly Internet literary magazine dedicated to promoting and publishing the best in contemporary art, music, and literature. Purely setup as an electronic publishing house The Paumanok Review has been producing quality work for five years.

The quality of this sites look and feel is not where my praise will end. Skilfully hand crafted with clean, valid and semantic XHTML and CSS this site pushed the boundaries of what can be achieved in a simple text editor.

Take pleasure in this website and don’t be afraid to submit some of your work.

This weekend I went to Heide, the Museum of Modern Art, on Templestowe Road in Bulleen, Victoria.

What a fantastic way to spend a sunny Sunday afternoon. “Spectacular views. Monumental forms. Dramatic skyline.” is how the Heide website describes this unique space. I could not agree more.

Walking around this tranquil outdoor setting relaxes the body and stimulates the mind. Weaving in and out of the modern and contemporary art one cannot help but feel their inner artistic passion bubble and grown inside. To see some more photos of this fantastic place please view them at my Flickr library.

If it is sunny outside and you have some free time I highly recommend the trip.

http://www.pieceofshow.com

Wow, what beautiful work!

Piece of Show is a forum for the work of Andrew Zbihlyj. Andrew takes paint, tape, ink, paper, some harmful chemical and fire to create some stunning artwork.

While I don’t like the functionality of this site, I find it awkward to use, the work easily makes up for this shortfall. Maybe my dialup connection does not help the situation. With an excellent use of negative space and screen real estate this website really does what it intends to do, showcase the artwork.

Exquisite work with a political bent, I love it.

I have just become a member of Technorati.

What is Technorati I here you ask, with a quizzical look on your face. Well… Technorati is seen as the authority on blogs. It is a search engine designed to specifically search weblogs and as of August 2006, Technorati indexed over 50.6 million weblogs. Welll 50.6 milliion + 1 now that mine is on there.

The name Technorati is a portmanteau, pointing to the technological version of literati or intellectuals.

Well now that you know all this why not take a peak at my profile: Technorati Profile

Technorati Tags: Technorati, personal

On Thursday I went to a Web Standards Group meeting held by Jonathan Oxer entitled ‘Making Things Move: Finding Inappropriate Uses For Scripting Languages’.

It was a strange experience, one that I am sure I will never forget.

Jonathan Oxer is the head of Linux Australia and when he pulled out his solder iron to hook up his computer parallel port to control the fan in the back of the room, I know I would be in for an interesting night.

He went on to demonstrate how scripting languages such as PHP can be used to control and collect data from any household item such as a letterbox, light or sprinkler system. Who wants to check the mail like a sucker, when you can get your computer to inform you that ‘You got mail’?

He has also surgically implanted with an RFID chip into his arm, what? He uses this to experiment with technical issues such as authentication as well as philosophical issues such as privacy and identity.

Wow, what an interesting presentation!

Made me think. Maybe I should get my computer to make me a cup of tea and some toast in the morning. Or should I just get a butler or some helper monkeys?

http://www.dontclick.it/

Now here is an interesting site that pushes the bounders of user interaction offering an experiment on how we interact with websites. To click or not to click, that is the question. The navigation within this site is set up so that a rollover activates the buttons rather than the traditional click. This removes the need to click at all throughout your journey of the website.

An interesting idea. However, I found myself wanting to click on the icons and links within the site. To the point where it was quite unnatural and somewhat disconcerting not being able to click with in the interface. This is such an ingrained habit that I was constantly tempted to click and wanted to click even though I know I shouldn’t.

Why should we reinvent the wheel, I am sure Jacob Nelson and Steve Krug would agree. Interesting research and a very strange experience to boot. I think Steve’s book sums up my feelings on the situation ‘don’t make me think‘.

What do you think?

Hello world!

This is my first exploration into the blogosphere. While I have been around websites for years, both viewing and creating them I am now taking the plunge into the sticky pool of the World Wide Web, going from consumer to creator. Look out Rupert Murdoch I will have a global empire soon enough.

Please drop me a line and come back soon as I will be trying to update this site on a regular basis.