After reading David Airey’s blog post about his URL ABC, I decided to make a list of my own. I typed a letter in my browser’s address bar and made a list of the first URL of the typed letter that appears.

A: allrecipes.co.uk At this website, just list the ingredients that you have in your kitchen and you get a few recipes!

B: bronzeage.co.uk This is the static version of the website – I am still working on the final version to go live soon!

C: culturepicture.com My colleague’s MA final project at St Martins in London.

D: downloadfestival.co.uk I am a big fan of this annual festival in the UK – I try to stay on top of the news and line up…

E: ebay.co.uk One of those things…

F: facebook.com Also one of those things…

G: gumtree.co.uk Received a message from @cyberdees to have a look at the new design – very nice indeed!

H: hsbc.co.uk Need to keep an eye on things.

I: istockphoto.com To buy reasonable priced royalty-free stock photography, vector illustrations, stock video footage, audio tracks and Flash files.

J: justincline.com Graphic and web designer from Denver, Colorado. I really like his website and his work.

K: kreestal.fr I have always wanted to speak French, but for now I just look at the illustrations.

L: linkedin.com My Linkedin profile.

M: michaelkelleyphotos.com A photographer from Los Angeles with a great website and photograpy with a twist.

N: national.co.uk I had to get a tyre sorted out. A website with a lot of useful information.

O: o2.co.uk My mobile service provider. Up till recently they were the only company in the UK where you can get an iPhone.

P: paypal.com Things are so much easier with PayPal.

Q: qualityxhtml.com I do have a Q.

R: raileasy.co.uk Booked a train ticket to go visit my brother in Basingstoke, UK.

S: semblance.co.za That would be me.

T: twitter.com Before I follow someone I like to have a look at their Twitter page first.

U: usabilitypost.com Interesting articles about good design practices.

V: very.co.uk An online department store – I now and again find a gem here.

W: wordpress.org Probably the most popular blogging and CMS platform.

X: xe.com My favourite universal currency converter (they have a nifty iPhone application too!).

Y: youthedesigner.com I was reading the blog post: 30 Clever Coaster Designs.

Z: zeldman.com Jeffrey Zeldman’s blog, focusing on web design news.

This was a nice recap of the pages I have been browsing lately.
Perhaps I should start a round of graphic design tennis…

Growing up close to the Cape Winelands in South Africa, I have developed a love for wine. I decided to attend a wine tasting evening hosted by Margaret Silbermann from Connoisseur. Connoisseur host different classes, from shorter weekday classes with topics from Matching Food and Wine Tasting, Wines From Chile Tasting, Wine with Cheese, to longer Saturday Basic and Advance Wine Courses.

I attended the Wine and Spicy Foods course. In this experience I had the opportunity to taste 8 different wines with a variety of 7 different spicy foods.

The first discussion was about the four recognised stages of wine tasting:

• appearance
• “in glass” the aroma of the wine
• “in mouth” sensations
• “finish” aftertaste

Secondly, we moved on to the 8 different wines up for tasting, with the different spicy foods. These were good quality wines and a good example of the chosen grape varieties:

• PINOT GRIGIO 2008 Fibiano Veneto Italy
• TORRONTES 2007 Santa Ana Mendoza Argentina
• RIESLING 2007 Siegel Mosel France
• SAUVIGNON BLANC 2008 Nobilo Marlborough New Zealand
• SYRAH Rose 2007 Montiac Vin de Pays d’Oc France
• PINOTAGE 2007 Klippenkop Coastal Region South Africa
• CARMENERE 2006 Ravanal Colchagua Valley Chile
• ZINFANDEL 2006 Ravenswood Lodi CA USA

The first round of wine tasting was all the wines by it self (without any food). Following the four step wine tasting process, there is a clear difference between the wines. Such as, the appearance is not just red and white. The white wine vary from almost as light as water to more light green/yellow. Holding a glass of red wine against a white background, the differences in red is clearly visible and the age of the wine can also be judged. By smelling and tasting the wine, exciting and surprising flavours were discovered. From the Pinot Grigio with a taste of summer fruits, Riesling that smells dry but taste sweeter, Sauvignon Blanc‘s exotic fruits with slight bitterness on the palate to the more spicy Syrah, Pinotage with dark fruit aromas and a pepper taste on the palate, Carmenere‘s smokeyness on the nose but cinnamon and vanilla on the palate and Zinfandel‘s explosion of fruit.

After the first round, the rest was up to a journey of discovery. A round of tasting took place of each of the 8 wines with the following 7 spicy foods:

• Garlic & Coriander Nun
• Spring Roll
• Samosa
• Spicy Chicken
• German Pepper Sausage
• Mexican Salsa

The Conclusion

Everyone has different personal tastes. In general there were the favourite specific wines that everyone agreed on to go well with spicy foods. The Pinot Grigio was fresh and fruity on its own, but could not keep up with any of the spicy flavours. Even the garlic and coriander was to overwhelming. The Riesling was the overall favourite to keep its flavour, by not getting to overwhelmed by the spicy taste of the food. I personally find the Riesling to sweet and prefer red wine in general. The natural vanilla and cinnamon flavours of the CARMENERE 2006 Ravanal Colchagua Valley Chile, without being sweet (for me) made it the best combination with all the spicy food.

For someone that have not discovered their favourite grape variety or never know which wine to choose in a restaurant or just for a nice night out, wine tasting evenings like this is highly recommended.

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!