If you live in Melbourne (or New Zealand) and you have a "thing" for magazines as I do, then if you haven't already, you really should go spend a while in Mag Nation (site). I try and browse there once a month or so and end up coming out with a dent in my bank balance and free coffee cards (spend a certain amount equates to free coffees)... they cover just about everything, and if they don't, they'll find it for you.

When they describe the company on their website with the following…

Our mission is to ensure that not a single person in the developed world will ever think of doing number twos without taking a magazine with them.

All the girls who work at mag nation are gorgeous. All the boys have big schlongs.

…you knw you're going to be well looked after. They won’t get cranky when you browse for hours reading their magazines, and cause they're so kind, they offer free wi-fi in the store. No wonder they won the Australian Retailers Association's "Most Innovative Retailer for 2007"!

OK, here's where you can help me out - here's a link to my original design - SDV1.

Let me know in the comments or email me and let me know which you prefer...

Or maybe I should have themes and a choice of both?

No, I haven't disappeared, but just (clich

So, here, after seeing only 4 days of daylight, SDv1 is replaced with hardly a trumpet fanfare in sight by Version 2! It seems like only days ago I was lamenting the fact that I'm never happy, always looking for something better - especially in regards to my work. Well, here's the beginnings of (hopefully) something better... Version 2.

Version 1 was, well, nice. Nice is never good. It looked like every other blog out there sans drop shadows and gradients! So here is hopefully the makings of something a little different. It's going to be a work in progress over the next few weeks as little additions make their way into the design, but I still want it to remain fairly basic and "airy", sans drop shadows and gradients. In the meantime I'll work on the rest of the sections and get my portfolio organised. I probably should have done that BEFORE I started looking for work. Oh well, it'll keep me busy at least.

One think I did notice yesterday while testing on Windows (under Virtual PC) is how damn ugly web pages look! I have got used to OS X's crisp smooth type and Safari's excellent standards support. So I was very disappointed to see that the left column (logo, photo, meta info) doesn't remain static when displayed in Windows IE. So IE users will have to put up with the scrolling left column and all that white space below. Unless anyone's got a hack? I've even tried using it as a fixed background image. But IE just doesn't seem to like position: fixed; any more than it likes smooth crisp typography.

How do you keep yourself motivated? Or perhaps more specifically, how do you stop yourself from always looking for the next big "thing" or "design" or "trend"? I find myself constantly craving something better, something bigger (or smaller, depending), something louder, something more refined... Just something that is going to quell my hunger and tide me over for even a little while.

I mention this in regards to my current Work In Progress, the design I'm currently working on for Structural Deviations here. This site is still sitting on my sexy little Beast chugging away churning up web pages, PHP and mySQL like a champ. It isn't even live yet. Still tethered on it's leash, it can only catch a slight glimpse of it's destiny once it's set amongst the already crowded blogosphere. And yet I have to squash the urge to start work on V2 when Version 1.0 (beta) isn't even out of the gate.

Today I blame Ryan. Wow!

Tomorrow, well, who knows, maybe, just maybe I'll get this thing ready and live and start working on V2, probably while dreaming of V3...

While testing a site today I just realised there are three little things I couldn't do without (of course there's more, but I'll cover more another day) and thought I'd share them with you. Well, if you're running Safari that is. They don't work in Firefox or Camino, but I'm sure someone may be able to tweak them to work. They are essentially a set of bookmarks I have in my tool bar (I made a "Scrn" folder to put them in) which run a little piece of Javascript to resize the browser window to predetermined size and position on the screen.

I use these with a monitor set to 1280 x 1024.

• 1024 x 768
• 800 x 600
• and my personal "everyday" setting 970 x 720

Also makes for a quick resize when nasty sites think they know better.

P.S. It's not really -10° in Melbourne, it's a bug that seems to have crept into Weatherpop recently...

Was it pure coincidence that upon opening my browser today that I had to do a double-take (or double-refresh in my case) upon stumbling across a number of redesigns? Take the following;

• Dave Sheas mezzoblue
• Doug Bowmans Stop Design
• Justin Goodletts SkinnyJ
• and with eager anticipation Ryan Sims' Justwatchthesky

I would have to say on a personal note that the one that really stans out (perhaps for all the wrong reasons) is mezzoblue. I just don't think it has the same level and attention to detail that Dave's older design "Radar" had. Thankfully there is a style-switcher so you can still load up his fantastic content in a more familiar design, but, guess what? I find myself sticking to this new one. Why? I want to see how it progresses - Dave himself said it's a work in progress, and I for one like seeing how a design evolves over time - and who knows, maybe the new design will be a grower...

Then to the favourite - Doug's Stop Design. A man after my own design sensibilities! Very clean, minimal, with plenty of wide open space to concentrate on what we're all there for - reading. Very pleasing and very easy to read.

And as for Ryans Justwatchthesky - well, yes, yesterday I was one of those who took a peek under the hood so to speek hoping for some little tidbit and clue as to what was coming and was sorely disappointed - not today however, though today being the 27th (at least in Autralia) I am resisting the urge to refresh the site every 10 minutes. My mum always used to say “Good things come to those who wait” - and she was right - I eventually got that Commodore 64 for Christmas!!

Ah well, I'd better get back to redesigning designing my little piece of turf...