It’s become quite a common practice to ask for websites to ask for your email address twice on sign-up forms. Re-confirming your email address supposedly reduces the chance of typing it in wrong altough I’ve often wondered if it’s really worth the extra effort. In any case I, like many people, save time by copying & pasting the address from the first form field into the second form field.

The folks at the Travel Lodge clearly decided that people like me shouldn’t be allowed to use our best judgement in filling out their sign-up form and have disabled pasting into the email reconfirmation field! By adding onpaste="return false" to each of the <input> tags they effectively prevent anyone with JavaScript enabled from pasting content into the form fields.

It confused the hell out of me. And annoyed me. But it did force me to retype my email address.

I’m honoured and excited to be doing a presentation at the first GeekUp Sheffield next Wednesday. It’s a condensed version of a workshop I did at PlusNet last month about how usability affects every aspect of our lives. By making people think about usability in everyday life I hope to encourage developers and designers think about usability in their work too. The presentation format is Pecha Kucha (20 slides shown for 20 seconds each) which I have never done before. I’m preparing the slides now and finding it quite challenging!

So if you’re in Sheffield on 7th May, pop down to the Fat Cat on Alma Street for some geeky fun. It’s free but you’ll have to buy your own beer. Big thanks to Jag Gill for making it happen.

I’ll be going to Chinwag Live: Real World Usability next week courtesy of PlusNet. It’s a panel discussion about where usability is headed as a discipline. Not sure quite what to expect but they’ve got some good speakers so it should be interesting. I’ll be blogging it on the Community Site.

Update: Blog review now posted

Do you sometimes feel you spend more time on the London Underground then actually at the office? Village Underground have gone a step further and converted some old Jubilee Line carriages into offices!

Going Underground has the scoop and more pictures.

Incidentally I rather like how the Village Underground site uses scrolling in an unconventional way. The foreground is fixed but the background can be scrolled about to see more images of the space. What they perhaps hadn’t considered is that this causes problems for people on mobile devices. The small screen of my phone means most of the content (and all the background) is hidden from view and cannot be scrolled.

[via Reaction!]

My original plan for a-mix-a-month fell through in January when I failed to produce anything. Now I’ll just put these out as and when I have time.

Featuring classics from Aphex Twin and Mr Bungle as well as some more obscure tracks, this mix showcases some of my favourite computer game-inspired music. It’s a bit shorter than usual because I wanted to keep the quality high. Extra geek points to anyone who can tell me which game intro the bonus track is from!

Download Mixtape vol. 7 - “For Great Justice” and/or subscribe in iTunes.

1. Jellyfish - Ignorance is Bliss
2. Mark VII - Comic Enemy
3. Subi - Mario Theme (Miyamotonian Remix)
4. Power-Pill - Pac-Man
5. ChthoniC - Linear Groove
6. Dhsu - Koopa vs Kefka
7. The Minibosses - Zelda
8. Mr Bungle - Zelda Theme
9. Fuzz - Bomberfuzz
10. Bonus Track

I’ve just been without electricity for half an hour while the landlady installed our new oven and I helped her carry the old one out to the bins. I suppose I could just as easily view it as an enforced exercise break

So here it is, Merry Podmas… and not a Christmas song in sight! It’s an easy-listening, I’ve-eaten-too-much-please-don’t-make-me-get-up kind of mix. And unlike alcohol, no moderation is necessary in the enjoyment of this product.

Download Mixtape vol. 6 - “Half Way Round” and/or subscribe in iTunes.

1. Forss - Characteristics
2. Doves - Firesuite
3. Simian - The Wisp
4. Fat Freddys Drop - Ray Ray
5. AGK - The Liking Of Things
6. Beastie Boys - Root Down (Free Zone mix)
7. Souls of Mischief - 93 ’til Infinity
8. Sébastien Tellier - La Ritournelle
9. Orbital - Transient

With 33% extra FREE!!!

Download Mixtape vol. 5 - “Four to the Floor” and/or subscribe in iTunes.

1. Trickski - At Les
2. Âme - Mifune
3. DJ Gregory - Elle (Âme Remix)
4. Underworld - Jal To Tokyo (Paul Woolford Vocal)
5. John Tejada - Big City Music
6. Santos - Somatique
7. Röyksopp - Remind Me (Tom Middleton Cosmos Mix)
8. Mode Hookers - Breathe (Instrumental)
9. Luke Vibert - Breakbeat Metal Music
10. Leopold Gregori - Renaissance
11. Supermayer - Two of Us (Album Version)

I got a spam MMS from my mobile provider, 3, this afternoon with a short video promoting Yahoo! Go. At the end were some instructions:

We’d like to keep you up to date with what’s now on 3. But if you’d prefer not to receive further messages just send us an email to preferences@3mail.com quote your 3 phone number in the body of the email and type ‘opt out MMS’ in the subject header.

I duly did that and received an automated response telling me they would deal within three days. A few hours later I received a phone call from 3. First the agent asked me to confirm my details - you called me, confirm your details! Then she asked me if I would like to opt out of 3 MMS - well, yes, clearly or I wouldn’t have emailed. And finally she politely asked me if I was aware that I could do all this on my phone through the My3 web service. I politely advised her that maybe she should be telling that to whoever wrote the MMS.

Seamless.

Just in time for October.

Download Mixtape vol. 4 - “Moderate or Good, Occasionally Poor” and/or subscribe in iTunes.

1. Janis Joplin - Mercedes Benz
2. Para One - Musclor feat. TTC
3. Hasil Adkins - She Said (played at the wrong speed)
4. Lo Fidelity Allstars - Battleflag feat. Pigeonhed
5. Hybrid - Marrakech
6. Tunng - Bullets
7. The Cure - Lullaby (Extended Mix)
8. Deniece Williams - Free
9. Blackalicious - Rhythm Sticks
10. Klute - Hell Hath No Fury
11. Tom Middleton - Margherita
12. Ronald Binge - Sailing By