Rojo, my web based feedreader went offline for most of Sunday in a scheduled upgrade. Recently they were acquired by industry notables Six Apart, and announced there would be improvements to the service in September. I am unsure as yet if these are the final changes, but I was actually quite disappointed in the changes from both a usability and accessibility perspective.

The first thing that annoys me and has done in the past is their server management. When they take the system down, they must relocate their holding page to another server, which clearly can't cope with demand despite the short amount of text it provides. I know this because it can take two or three minutes to get a page that finally says, "Sorry, we're doing some maintenance" (or along those lines), that is if you get it at all and the page doesn't time out.

The niggles with the update are more fundamental. For those who are unfamiliar, Rojo provides two main pages when logged in. The first is the 'homepage' and is an expandable list of headlines of articles that Rojo users are 'Mojoing' - or basically favouriting. Enough users clicking the Mojo button moves them onto the homepage. I don't use this facility so can't comment if there are any improvements here.

The more important second page (the one I use all the time) contains the same setup with all my feeds in. With the old design you would have a big article title, with an expand to full article '+' image on left left and a 'Mojo This' image link on the right. It was easy, following standard implementations of tree structures. But they decided to change this.

The new version moved the 'Mojo This' link to the left, where the old expand and collapse link was. They smartened up the image as well, but got rid of the text that tells you what the button does, and stuck the number of Mojo votes below the icon, unlabelled. So immediately I'm trying to click there to expand the article and I can't.

This problem is compounded by the removable of the old +/- system, which has been replaced with a small rectangular (image) button below the 'Mojo This' link with the text READ or CLOSE depending on it's state. Being the most used button it would make sense to keep the hit area the same, but although it has been elongated, height-wise it is more fiddly to locate than the taller square shaped button that it has replaced. These are real usability problems.

Secondly, in this new version, you can now choose to have up to 100 feed stories on one page. I like this idea, and so whacked up my stories-per-page number. Now before it used to be set at around 20 (I can't remember exactly), and when all the stories were expanded the page got looooong. So much so that I would often use the Skip to Top link provided at the bottom of the articles. Now I have the option to set the number to higher than 20, the page gets even looooooonger, by 400% infact. So why, oh why, did they decide to remove the Skip to Top link? It now takes half an hour to get back to the top of the page. This is both a usability and accessibility mistake.

As far as I can see, the improvements made have been weak if not detrimental to the service. One thing that has always got me about Rojo is that it can go down for maintenance, and does, and often when it does, it goes down for longer than it says it will. This is something a offline reader can offer that Rojo can't. However, there is an appeal to be able to read your feeds wherever you are, and Rojo offers more than my inbuilt Yahoo Mail Beta feed reader.

Will I stick with them? I'm not sure. I've been thinking about changing for a while now. This isn't the killer reason for me to go, but it may just be my inquisitive nature that will eventually lure me away to pastures greener.

What more could a guy ask for than a Friday night in, disassembling then reassembling his keyboard and working on some emergency graphic design for a client...? Erm... yep, I can think of few things...

Well it's not so bad. I went out for a few drinks last night and ended up sitting around with most of OSH for the evening. There was some good discussion about music and... well I'm not to sure, but we definitely discussed music at some point. Actually it was Tom's music and if you are into a bit of a hard punk ska reggae (with some political opinions to boot) then you might want to give his MySpace a visit. It's a bit heavier than what I generally listen to, but the people on his scene seem to like it. If you want to know what Coprolite (the name he's gone by) it means fossilised dinosaur excrement. Which is nice.

Devito phoned yesterday. He's back in the country and seems impressed with his new setup out in Spain. There is a good chance there will be some kind of trip out to visit sometime soon, but for the moment we're just trying to organise a meet up in Blighty first.

A couple of things worth doing if you also find yourself stuck in on a Friday night:

1. Watch the TED video podcasts. I've been working my way through these for a few weeks now and there is some really good stuff. Basically its a series of lectures by some high profilers in front of other high profilers and the discussions, technology and debate is fantastic. If I recommend any my top choices are:
• Ken Robinson on creativity in education (very impressive/good talk)
• Al Gore (in his own words "the man who used to be the next President of the United States") on Climate Crisis (before hthe release of his new film on the topic)
• David Deutsch (Physicist) on the universe and human knowledge
• Ross Lovegrove (British Industrial Designer) works with fantastic organic forms - don't be put off by this
• Tony Robbins (Life coach) you'll probably know the face - passionate and enthusiastic speaker
2. Dismantle and reassemble your keyboard for maintenance. Actually, don't bother.
3. Respond to emails that you shouldn't have recieved. I know Bruce had a little thing going a while ago, but as a website designer I do find it interesting that I should be contacted about whether I would like a new website (and this is high quality spam, I'm not talking that normal rubbish). Results to follow soon.

I just wrote a fantastic, inspired lengthily analysis of yesterday's Apple product unveilings, and then the frickin' WDM hit some bad memory of something and froze. Probably some kind of malicious attempt to stop me writing about decent hardware. Bloody computer.

In my anger I have decided to not do any links, or even paragraphs. Instead you will have to suffer with a bullet point overview:

• iPod updates - clearly savvy to add kick to the product line before Xmas
• iTunes 7 - Really great updates, including Coverflow integration. This works better on Mac than Windows, but such is the way of poor graphic handling by Microsoft.
• Movies in rebranded 'iTunes Store' - US only, but upped resolutions sounds tasty
• Automatic artwork grabbing great but not 100% reliable. A coup by Apple as everyone who didn't have an iTunes account will now sign up and be forced to browse to find the correct naming for their albums. Especially if they are sticklers like me. Very clever.
• iPod nano 2nd generation - reserving judgement until I see it in real life. Anodised finishes are cool, adverts are great, but I liked the old design. Need to hold it.
• iPod Shuffle 2nd generation - fantastic reinvention - will sell at least the number they sold before (10 million). Beautiful industrial design work; loving the hinge/jack. Will people miss the direct USB connectivity; I don't know. I think sales figures this shows that Apple knows what they are doing, unlike all the people who say "What's the point of the shuffle?" - clearly kids and people not wanting to fork out loads love these, and now they have even more reason too. Beautiful.
• iTV - odd that this was preannounced, very un-Apple. I predict we will see other manufacturers producing similar wireless video-streaming products before or during the Xmas period, and Apple knew this so they warned the audience they knew would hold off until the Apple version was available. I think it probably was due to be released this quarter, but something technical stopped it as it would have made a great Christmas buy.
• Use of the terminology 801.11 technology, and not specifying 'g' or other indicates to me this is going to be a higher spec wireless; probably seeing the new and faster 'n' version being used.

Well that was about as much paraphrasing as I can stand, so the next paragraph will be in proper prose.

I've been applying all the new found PHP/MySQL knowledge into my replacement folio site. I replaced it early this year with a stop-gap design that I never liked, and so have put together a decent one that I feel happy with. I'm still working on it, but aim to launch very shortly. Still can't believe this bloody computer! D'argh!

Recently I've been trying to sort out what I want from this "year out", although it strictly isn't going to be a whole "year", nor strictly all "out". My aim is to get some more travelling done before I finally make the big push and put business plans into full throttle. That said, there are a few little enterprises and experiences I'm going to sandbox this year to get my ideas together and hopefully generate a little cash.

I was wondering how to do this, but somebody appears to have solved my problem and built a map system that allows you to chart your adventures. I'm hoping to add New Zealand, South America and somewhere in Africa to the list of countries by this time next year. Looking forward to it.

In the meantime work is flowing in steadily and there has been a fair whack of roughing out CSS layouts in the past few days. There has also been a significant increase in book absorption too as I start to convert through to PHP.

Looks like Devito is back from Spain for ten days starting Wednesday so there is likely to be some kind of meet up soon, and most of the OSH lads are back off to uni in the next week and a bit so there is going to be sociability on that front too.

On the creative side, the cat has managed to rub herself all over Father's newly painted door frames and is now a glossy white/tortoise-shell mix.

The past few days have been remarkably busy. On Thursday I went to Birmingham with Sister One, primarily to escape the house during the nice weather and secondly to do some cultural stuff.

We visited the IKON gallery, an Victorian gothic building (which looks like an old art college) near Brindley Place which has been converted into a display space. The building and the gallery fitting was very good, although I wasn't all that bothered by most of the exhibits. There were one or two things that caught my eye however. Firstly an interactive experiment to judge how we all see colour differently (although I do wonder how accurate it could be) and a date project which showed a ridiculous level of commitment. The artist had made a piece every Sunday since 1966, the day's date carefully painted on a stretched canvas in the language of the present locality. If the piece was not completed before 12 midnight on that day, it was destroyed. Apparently the artist is still adding to the collection. That means they are doing one right now.

Saturday was Multipack day. I met Stu and Matt on the train in Birmingham and then met everyone else in the Pitcher and Piano in Nottingham. Another Victorian neo-gothic conversion, the pub fills the entire building and Kate had made sure we had seats in the choir stalls.

There was much beer, food and discussion about the return of comic sans (*spits*). There was also a discussion on photography and Gaz and I sidetracked on freelancing/travelling for a while before we were chivvied out of the choir stalls to be replaced by a stag-do.

There were a few new faces once again and at about 7pm we all went our separate ways (unfortunately the trains from Nottingham never run later than about 9pm on a Saturday so there seemed little point pushing it). Upon getting within two blocks of the station we were however stopped by the police.The street was filled with emergency services and we found out that there had been a controlled explosion a few minutes earlier. Thankfully we only caught the tail-end of whatever excitement had been, and ten minutes later we were (surprisingly) on a train back to New Street.

Other things of note from this week include hearing from Swanny, who let me know that once again Mike had come down to visit him in Romford. Bearing in mind the last time Mike went down he was refused entry to all the venues he tried as he didn't have any ID on him, he had hoped this trip would have been more of a success. Apparently he was wrong. Being a quiet night, only one place in town was open and when he tried to go in the bouncer stopped him and told him he couldn't come in. The reason? He was carrying his insulin pen. Mike argued that this was a critical piece of medical equipment, the bouncer argued it could be used as an offensive weapon. Mike argued that it would be a silly idea to go around stabbing people with his insulin, especially since he was diabetic and this was his lifeline. This went on for a few minutes before the manager thought Mike had been talking to the bouncer for too long, told him he didn't want to hear it and sent him and Swan away. Denied entry because you've got diabetes. Hmm.

Whoever thought that calling the period when you produce a mountain of edible fruit a 'good year' was unforgivably deluded.

This morning I was instructed to go pick some apples, a request which occurs once a year and strikes the fear into the soul of the poor unfortunate who is given the task. It's not the actual picking that's the problem. I have no issue with standing out in the sunshine, in the fresh air, being berated by the cat for giving too much attention to the apples, and just whiling my time away. What is objectionable are the painful thoughts of endless apple related foods for the next eight months.

Unfortunately, every three or four years we have a bumper crop of apples from the four trees in the garden. At the beginning of each of the past thirteen years (while we have lived at the current Higgs residence) I have dreaded to see if this year is going to be "it". I will go out, remove a vast quantity of apples, fill a few Jurassic Park T-Rex Transporter size-boxes full of fruit, only to look up and find there are exactly the same number of apples on the tree as before I started. It is paranormal.

Today I tackled one tree, and by the time I'd finished filling the available boxes, the tree had already filled up with apples again. The other thing is that this fuit ends up everywhere, and I do mean everywhere. Due to lack of suitable containers, for the next six months we will be pulling apples out from every apple-shaped-crevice in the house and garden. There are stacks, bowls, pots, trays, counters, sheds, garages, washing machines (ok, maybe not washing machines) full of bloody apples. And next week the apple food will start. It's not too bad for the first month; apple crumble is great, but there is only so much you can handle before it starts getting to you.

• Apple crumble
• Apple pie
• Apple and blackcurrents
• Stewed apple
• Apple stew
• Apple and rhubarb
• Apples and cheese
• Apple sauce
• Apple dumplings
• Apple fritters
• Lettuce, raisin and apple salad
• Apples and custard
• Apples without custard
• Apples quartered
• Apples halved
• Apple juice
• Apple turnovers
• Apple upsidedown cake
• Grated apple
• Apple coulée
• Porridge with apples
• An apple
• Apple in a bed of apples
• Baked apples
• Baked apples with a selection of apple
• Roast apple
• Grilled apple
• Fruit salad (with apple)
• Apple in a white wine sauce

The list continues. Prior attempts at selling the remainder of the harvest have always inadvertently failed. This is because most of them look, well, organic, which is what they are but does mean that they are usually riddled with nasty bits and not at all what you get in the shops. Father will sit there for half an hour spooning the bad bits out so we can have some apple with, well, anything. I even predict a downturn in behaviour from the the cat she starts finding apple in her Whiskers.

And one final thing; I don't even bloody like apples.

The past few days I've been keeping my eye on my Google Analytics to see what my spam-prevention methods have done for cleaning up my search engine placement. It looks to have been 100% successful so far, but even if this doesn't work in the long run, I still have one more trick up my sleeve which I think should be the mother of all solutions (at least on my little blog).

In trawling through the statistics I discovered a couple of things that surprised me. A while ago I wrote a simple explanation (I hope) of feeds, with the idea that if anyone wants to know what they are, they could get a decent version here. Well, hits have been low on this particular article compared to others - forty or so views in the past month. I thought this might be higher. Conversely another article I wrote on solving problems with stuck Macbook DVDs is, over the same time period, attracting heavy traffic, with over eight pages of search engine results from hundreds of problem-stricken Macbook/Macbook Pro owners.

I would hope that Apple might consider that as a reason to readdress the technology in future models. It's not like it's a really awful problem, but it is apparently more widespread than I might have imagined as my website statistics testify.

I'm still working on my CV and it looks like there is a new project in the offing today as well. I'm feeling a little more settled about the situation now.