In the Halloween spirit, a Twitter background redesign was way overdue. My new Twitter background was inspired by my god-pet, Terry (at the moment I can not have any pets of my own). He is a healthy big cat. His proportion to the chair in this layout, is over exaggerated only by a tiny bit. So much for the Twitter bird…

View the design at Semblance’s Twitter page.

BarCamp London 7 was 24-25 October 2009 at IBM, Southbank, London and it seems like the dust have not settled yet. BarCamp London 7 was my first unconference and my excitement beforehand turns out to be not for nothing. Also read Ben Fletcher’s more in depth experience about this unconference.

It was an early start (for a Saturday) to get to the premises. Registration started from 9:30am. After the opening talk at 11:00am there was an opportunity for everyone to book a session on the time table.

My Schedule for Saturday

• BarCamp Bootcamp - It was a nice way to get into the groove of things and to get to know some peeps.
• How Facebook broke the tube
• Information and real options
• CSS nuggets
• @font-face – new fonts for the web
• Side project with Lego
• Graphic design of LOST
• The Government to release more data
• Ranting: Everything that is wrong with the world
• Why to say no to clients
• Web scale identifiers, use and abuse

My Schedule for Sunday

• The perfect match
• 10 F*$%ing awesome bands
• Developers Happiness
• The thing called Social Media
• Contradictions
• Lightning Talks - few peeps had 5 minutes to say something
• Clothing design as a constraint
• Combined session with Asian snacks and chatting about science and religion

Even though I made use of most of the time slots available to attend a session, it came to my attention that there was a lot of interesting topics I missed out on (I am still in the process of searching the web, hoping to find some).

The BarCamp was made possible by a great team: Cristiano Betta, Paul Brannigan, Mary Rose Cook, Tobias Kunisch, Robert Lee-Cann, Caz Mockett, Tom Morris, Kevin Prince, Melinda Seckington, Dan W and volunteers. Last but not least, great sponsors: IBM, Nestoria, TechSmith, The Team, Be Broadband, The Proactive Accountant, lastminutelabs, Nudge Social Media, Vodafone Group, Geekery.in, JISC, Nexus Globalnet, Starbucks VIA, PayPal, Guardian Open Platform, myMuesli, Nokia.

Everything was well thought through. I even received the Sunday newspaper to read with my breakfast and coffee. The only thing I can think of that could have been better: – I should have taken better notes of who was running the sessions, a website link etc.

Photos of attendees have been uploaded and can be viewed at the Flickr Group.

Not so long ago my sister asked me to design her an email party invite for her birthday. With me living in the UK and missing my sister in Cape Town, South Africa, I happily agreed to set it up as a birthday present. It is spring in South Africa and everyone is getting into the summer spirit (no pun intended). She is having a spit barbecue (in South African terms: Spit Braai). She requested something colourful. I was also reminded not to forget about her “hearts end”: her big black cat (with white features mixed in), a Sausage Dog and her Golden Retriever. Gathering a few elements, getting a bit nostalgic and putting my illustrating skills to the test, I thought I will post about it.

Just at the right time I read Little Box of Ideas where I downloaded the ‘Free Day Scene’ from Day And Night Scenes – Fun Free Vectors to use some elements for the background.

View the full version!

Logo design for a range of healthy treats, with a subtle difference for dogs and cats. The business is in memory to a dog named Max.

Saxon Fencing Club website is for the local fencing club I go to in Acton W3, London UK. The Saxon ‘S’, mask and the blue has been with the club for a decent part of the 50 years. With all of that, the design somehow represent an actual club with the content as the ‘trophy cabinet’.

View live site.