The big birthday

I believe that today is the birthday of (alphabetically) alan_ie, pilot_moondog, rozk and pingopark, so many happy returns to all! And tomorrow for zeke_hubris too. Popular day!

Hours of build up and then it's all over in a second

Went down to Canterbury to watch the end of Stage 1 of the Tour de France yesterday. It all went swimmingly: a very pleasant ride down, easy parking very close to Rheims Way, a good position on a roundabout opposite the old Norman castle and I was there in time to watch the Caravane go past first.

But after a myriad of support vehicles and ones pushing advertising, the actual peloton zoomed past in a couple of seconds and that was it. No breakaways, no nothing. A minute or two later, two stragglers came past, then the same interval before two more, then one final chap some 5-10min behind everyone else, and that was it. I'm very glad I went but I must admit it was a bit anticlimactic. At least at the Isle of Man TT, they do laps, so you get repeated chances to see them! I was impressed by the huge turnout to see it, too - as I was on Saturday for the Prologue, which I watched from Hyde Park Corner.

But in terms of time spent, I got a lot more entertainment from Canterbury Cathedral. I was faintly dismayed at how tatty it is in many places, outside and in, compared to, say, il Duomo di Milano, possibly the last great Mediaeval cathedral I spent so long exploring - but then, I think Canterbury is centuries older. Still a wonderful place, though.

Then a very pleasant run down along the south Coast to Hastings for dinner, where I scooped up some seawater and a few shells to enliven the seamonkeys' surroundings. They continue to prosper. Hard to tell if a seamonkey is happy or not, though. Alas, my first visit to Hastings was rather ruined by getting a parking ticket when I went off for a curry. Did about 250 miles yesterday, all in, and I'm knackered today as a result. Glad I did it while the weather held, though.

Speaking of small happy beasties, the mice are finally working out how to use the wheel I bought them some weeks ago, and one or 2 are in it virtually continuously now, producing a constant chorus of the grating screech of metal on metal. At least my fat little mice are turning into lean fit mice as a result.

I was thunderstruck a week or so back to go downstairs one morning to discover a purring Neffie and a dead mouse on the kitchen floor. I have no proof she caught it or indeed brought it in, but I can't see why any other cat would bring me one. She is really getting more and more catlike in her middle age.

The spare room is provisionally let out, too, to a mate of alyxzandrauk's. Anyone got any recommendations for cheap removals companies?

Why is is that so many modern websites are so horrendously bad?

This weekend just gone, I tried to find info about where to go and when from the several official and unofficial Tour de France sites, such as the abomination that is http://www.tourdefrancelondon.com/

Very pretty, almost completely useless, Flash-driven monstrosities. Horrid.

Given that the world now has so many professional web designers, how come most commercial websites are so absolutely crap?

It seems to me, given that I am a bystander - I've not designed a site in about 10y and it's nearly that long since I've updated my own properly... that there are a few simple rules.

To design a website:
Step 1. No Flash.
Step 2. No graphics.
Step 3. Nothing browser-dependent.

Now, design your site so that it conveys the info people want efficiently, even if they're on a low-bandwidth link with no ability to display any graphics or animations, even if they are blind and have no mouse or other pointing device, or are on a mobile phone.

Got it working? Good. /Now/ you may judiciously decorate it with graphics and animations, so long as they don't in any way hinder its use.

AJAX sites like Gmail and Google Maps are a little different - they're very focussed and expect a high-powered device on a fast link. That's OK. But they aren't really websites, they're apps delivered through a browser.