Peek: User-Testing my website.

I have been using a new tool on my new website before I properly launch it.

It's called Peek: http://peek.usertesting.com/

The idea is, that you submit a website, and one of Peek's community of users will use your website for around 5 minutes, while recording their screen and voicing their thoughts out loud. Peek also has a couple of prompt questions to elicit useful responses from them. The idea is that you get real-world feedback about your website: how it looks, its usability, any issues with it, what stands out about it, etc.

Here's one of mine: CLICK

It has been massively useful for me, and surprisingly nail-biting, watching and hoping they like it, hoping they find the things I've put there. Even watching where the person's mouse moves to is useful. I can see when they seem a little lost about where to go next and tweak things to make it clearer. Watching the video and seeing my website with that heightened level of anticipation and hoping people find what I want makes it glaringly clear where my website needs tweaking, even before the users start talking.

I'm not being paid for this, but I would recommend running your own website through it at least once (you get three free goes a month) because just watching the video almost and knowing there's a fresh set of eyes behind it gaves me a whole new view of this website that I've become so familiar with since I set it up.

#useability #user #testing #website
Get a peek into your site's usability.

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My thoughts on the passing of Terry Pratchett.

Sir Terry Pratchett has died. I’m very sad about this – surprisingly sad.

Don’t get me wrong – I find death can be a very sad occasion but it is a necessary one and one that is a unique experience to none of us. I don’t know why I’m so saddened by this person’s death. I didn’t know him. I’ve never so much as met him in passing. I didn’t follow him particularly. I knew little about his life. My daily routine won’t be affected by the fact that he’s not around any more.

I do like his writing though. I did wonder if I’m just being selfish and sad because there will be no more Discworld books for me to read. The truth is that’s part of it. It was nice to know there could always be more and it is sad to know that now there will not be, although that had been off the cards for quite a while now.
Pratchett’s writings ushered me into adolescence and manhood and I still maintain that of all the fictional characters I’ve read, Terry’s collections of witches, trolls, wizards, werewolves, anthropomorphical entities, deities, and other creatures are the most human I’ve ever read. They are fantastical creatures flawed, half the time, in such boring ways that they just feel so real.

Growing up, I tried my hand at writing. In fact, I devoted huge swathes of my time to it. Most nights I sat up way past my bedtime hunched over my little Psion palmtop computer, under the duvet, typing away furtively by the light of its screen.
I have pages and paged of unfinished novels, short stories, and filling several notebooks with ideas for plots, characters, and scenarios from my teenaged mind and he was the kick. He was a spur and a goal post each time. He was very often consciously in my mind as I wrote and reading back through some of it, this is embarrassingly obvious.
His books shaped the way I think in some ways and are certainly present to some degree in the things I find funny. The Coggingtons may well not exist without seeds dropping from Terry's imagination and implanting and germinating within my own.

But I haven’t yet gotten round to reading half the books he has written so I’ve a wealth of reading to do before I need to worry about there being no more for me to read.

Maybe it’s because it had been reassuring to know the mind that gave life to this wonderful collection of people, fictional though they were, was still ticking over and giving them fresh breath.
But more than that, I think it just felt nice to know that mind was out there; one that seemed to understand what it was to be human so well, and was able to continually synthesise it into heartbreakingly hilarious prose. It felt like each new book might shed more light on life.

Terry just seemed to get it.

And now I’m not sure there’s anyone out there who does.

I'm sure he was bluffing it just like the rest of us, but it felt like he knew. Either way, he wrote about it well.

I’m feeling inspired to start huddling under my duvet with my laptop at night again, to see if I can’t at least have a bash at figuring it out.

‪#‎TerryPratchett‬

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Head down.

When did this happen to me?

I used to play more. I used to draw and write and give reign to my imagination. My jobs were fun and I set my own hours. I could stay up late and get up late and do what I wanted. Sure I seemed to work a lot and I was always broke and maybe I'm wrong but it feels like I used to be happier. 

Now I'm the kind of person who hates Sunday nights. I hate them for two reasons: firstly it's the end of the weekend. That period of time where I feel like I can be me again. That one night and two days of endless possibilities. Where I can draw and write and bring all the ideas that get backed up in my brain during the working week to life and go on all those fun adventures that have occurred to me in the week. Although, in actuality, it's that time where I'm knackered and sluggish and just about manage to do the chores and make those phone calls I needed to and do those favours I promised and make a token gesture towards doing something creative while lamenting the fact I am so broke I can't go off on an adventure. I don't even hate Sunday nights for  being the end of my free time. I hate them because it's the time I inevitably lie awake cursing myself for having done nothing to further myself. 

Secondly, I know that tomorrow, I get to go back to work and do that job where I talk to children about how the big company I work for makes billions of pounds that I will never see and how some people in it use some of that money to do worthwhile stuff that I will never be a part of. My part is to turn up, punch in and earn just enough money to ensure I can sustain myself well enough to turn up and do the same tomorrow.  At the same time, I will be utterly frustrated by a veritable treasure trove of creative ideas, plans, and designs that I can't act on at the time. So I put the ones I can remember at the end of the day off until the weekend.

And I don't know how to break this cycle. 

Until I die. 

And so what if I do?

And so what if I don't?

Either way, my grave will be the same size. 

This is not me. This is not me. This is not me. This is not me. This is not me. This is not me! THIS IS NOT ME! 

Progress report on "The Unearthing"

I've had a piece, "The Unearthing", in the works for ages now. I started it over a year ago, but then got distracted by Coggingtons cards and work and life and the like and it was shelved with the aim of me picjking it up to finish sometime.
Well, that time is now so I'm soldiering on with it now.

Check back soon to see how it looks.

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New Valentines Card!

Well I have been massively neglecting this blog as of late so I need to show it some love.
What better way than by telling you about my new Coggingtons Valentines Day card, "Clanking in Sync" - which I think would not be too amiss on an Anniversary either.

Available here! - £2.65 + p&p

(Use voucher code CRIPESBLOG for a 1% discount on all purchases until Valentines Day.

Inside it reads "Like perfectly paired cogs".

It's been a year since I produced my first greetings card - my first Coggingtons Valentines card so I'm very excited to bring you my newest one!

Please note that this item is a printed card design incorporating my original hand-drawn digital artwork, and original photographs I've taken, manipulated together.

If you want me to handwrite a message inside the card and post it directly to the recipient, write this in the notes when you checkout.

Dimensions: 105mm x 148mm (4.13" x 5.82")

The card is a thick 350gsm, FSC credited paper stock. With a light satin coating on the outside, the inside is left uncoated, making it easier for you to write your own message. Each card is individually scored, ensuring a clean fold.

Each card comes with a thick, crisp white envelope with a bright splash of pink hidden inside!

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Je Suis Charlie Hebdo

I'm not saying I agree with all that Charlie Hebdo does. But I do feel that all things are open to criticism. Everyone has their right to their beliefs and views, just as everyone has their right to criticise those beliefs and views. Above all, I believe that no one has the right to take life over an insult, perceived or real.



I feel the recent events in France are important and as an artist, I feel they are relevant to me.
That said, I don't believe has the right to publish or broadcast downright offensive materials either. I do think there should be a line, otherwise it is just mass-disseminated hate-speech and that can't be condoned either.

The way to draw the line is through discussion and negotiation. If I know anyone who thinks that when a party feels that line has been crossed, the acceptable sanction is a multiple assassination, then I have sorely misjudged you.
My thoughts go out to the families of all the murdered people at Charlie Hebdo, and the police officers killed in the line of duty.



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Where's a Warrior Without Her Pride?

When I was a teenager, I wrote a lot. I started a lot of stories and finished very few of them. Some of them were awful. Just bad.

Some of them, however, I think had promise. I had big ideas for a series of novels that would all interlink at various points in time, space, and character and be part prose, part graphic novel. 

For some reason, I was reminded of this one the other day - one that was meant to start such a series that would have one story now, and then pick up the themes and maybe some characters or places much later.This is the start of a story that I started when I was 17 and I added to it periodically until I was about 19 and discovered going out and girls, and then university. I got as far in as writing about 50 A4 pages before I added no more, so as it stands, the story is incomplete but I thought I'd share the intro, the first 2 pages of it, here. 

This is about 12 years old, so please be gentle with it. I haven't altered so much as a punctuation mark from when this was last saved to my old laptop in 2002.What do you reckon? Should I pick this up again?

This is the beginning of, "Where's a Warrior Without Her Pride".

    There she stood, stripped to the waist, waiting. Silence pressed down, heavy as a wet pelt rug spread over the scene. The quick, tight pat of the drums had long faded and the chants had reached their high fevered climax moments ago giving way to the soft voice of the wind.
Crushing terror beat about her like an enormous winged thing, threatening to capture her, but she instead caught it and leashed it and brought it under her control until its only freedom was in the sweat that broke out over the girl’s tanned exposed skin.
The chattering of the crowd at her back dulled to a murmur as the shaman and Gaideon, the leader of the warriormages, stepped to behind her. Area tightened her grip on the stakes. A drop of blood appeared below her palm and hung for a moment before dropping into the dust. Swallowing despite her dry mouth and ever-present threat of vomit, she closed her eyes tightly, shutting out her town which rose before her. She concentrated on sensing nothing; not the sun searing her bare back, not the low murmurs of the watchers she could not see, not the agony that was now almost upon her. For long moments, silence reigned.
Making formal declarations in the Old Tongue that Area would have understood if she’d been concentrating on them, the two highly respected men took their positions, beside each other, directly behind the girl. Area heard the curt scuff of their footsteps coming to a stop on the dirt. The time had come. Her breathing became quick and shallow and the sweat ran down her body in glistening rivulets. She adjusted her weight on her feet a little and braced herself.
Still murmuring in the Old Tongue, both men linked hands then extended their free arms towards Area. There was a static hum, then suddenly, flashes of blue-white, buzzing energy issued forth from their hands like Lightning, as he impels his awesome chariot through the clouds. The blasts lashed into the girl’s shoulder blades, charring her skin. She stiffened her back as an instant response, arching in throes as the twin blasts streamed into her, burning her back, but she did not release her grip. The energy was not just burning her. Aside from the consuming agony, she could feel the crude energy coursing into her and through her, probing her. Testing her. She could feel it racing through her veins into every part of her and it made her shiver and sweat and it made her feel ill. The smell of her flesh burning drifted to her nostrils. Fixed at their source and fixed at their target, the intense bolts whipped and snapped, playfully interacting with each other, twining lustfully round each other in one instant and repelling each other with the violence of a lightning strike in the next. The assembled audience of townspeople could hear the buzz and crack but they could barely see anything; so blindingly bright was the light from the fitful energy streams.
As she grunted in pain, all thoughts paled into obscurity, then were seared from the girl’s mind; all except the purifying agent of those blasts of pain. Blue-white pain-flash was all she could see, all she could hear, all she could taste; sour and bitter on her tongue. Still she held her arms out and gripped the stakes. Now, she could not even think about her arms. She had overcome the initial urge to snap them down protectively but then any thought of moving them had been blown away and she could only tighten her grip ever more. Radiant pain grew ever more in her mind until its intense brilliance threatened to blind her consciousness and shatter her mind. She could feel every part of her part of her body resonating a scream of torment that grew louder like the wail of so many trapped spirits suffering in turmoil and it joined with the throbbing pulse in her ears, and it climaxed and it felt to the girl as if she were about to rip and release the horrible pain from her body and the blasts stopped.
Every person in the crowd remained squinting, transfixed. It was now to them as if they had come into a dark room after staring at the sun. Every single person could, however, feel the charge now in the air.
Silence.
Her jaw was clenched tight, the muscles bulging beneath her cheeks. Some moments later, Area’s raw and aching hands released the stakes. She barely winced as muscles rubbed beneath dual symbols newly burnt into her back.
Area stands motionless between the stakes for a long while, hanging like a ball thrown up at the peak of its ascent, in the instant just before it falls. She opens her eyes wide, takes a deep gasp of air, and slumps, but immediately catches herself on her knee and with weary determination, she stands.
The shaman and Gaideon come to her side. They do not help to support her. The shaman drapes a dark robe about her shoulders. Slowly, Area turns to face the audience. She is smiling.

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