digitaldust

Have you got what it takes to be an academic?

We are looking for a new lecturer to join our team at the University of the West of England. Basically what we are looking for is an Information Architect, Interaction Designer, Interface type of person. The kind of person we are looking for has industry experience, not necessarily academic credentials – though obviously that is good. You would be teaching on stuff that contributes to the BSc Web Design and MSc Information and Library Management courses.

Now is a good chance to get in on the ground floor of the BSc Web Design course and teach at the intersection of design and technology.

You will be a dynamic enthusiast, eager to develop new areas of research and teaching in information architecture. By the using the term Information architecture we refer to the emerging discipline which includes some or all of the following:

• Content design and management for web sites
• Structural design of information space
• Organising, labelling, classification and navigation schemes within web based information systems
• Metadata development and taxonomies
• Developing principles of design to web based information systems
• Searching, finding and managing information
• Social media and Web 2.0 technologies and applications

An appropriately experienced candidate may be given responsibility for the further curriculum development in web design and information and library management.

Go to the UWE site to download the job spec and apply

If you’ve got any questions then leave me a comment of drop me a mail at dan dot dixon at uwe dot ac dot uk.

Their Sticky Toffee Pudding is better than sex.

tower bridge detail

New toys arrive by the minute. The DSLR has opened the floodgates. I got my new Lensbaby the other day and have started to get used to it.

It is a bit weird to begin with. I’m trying to apply all my large format learning – lens angle equals half the angle between the film plane and the focus plane, yadda, yadda… but it seems to be a bit more unpredictable than that. More of an intuitive experience. Which is actually a bit more enjoyable. Screw the maths I can just take lots of pictures with the DSLR and hope I get it right. Shoot from the hip!

I screwed up my site for a bit there by messing around with wordpress and having it do a naughty thing with my .htaccess file. Wordpress uses the .htaccess file to rewrite map human readable URLs to its query strings. That will teach me for trying stuff first thing in the morning before work and not thinking stuff through. All works again now thanks to James C.

And my new flickr gallery stuff is working now properly too, which was what I was trying to do. I think I might eventually make that the core blog bit and have a blog built around my flickr feed.

After trying in vain to get fickr badges on here I’ve just resorted to a linked image.

Here’s some pictures of a dragon parade that Heather and I bumped into while wandering around Penang at night.

I’m off to New Zealand by way of Malaysia. Be back in the new year.

I’ve made it official today – handed in my notice at the Beeb. It’s been unofficial for nearly a month and a reasonably well kept secret, but now the cat is out of the bag. I’ve hated having to stay quiet about it for this long.

I’m off to join social software wonks headshift to do some serious socialising with software. It’s a positive and exciting move, it’s a role I will enjoy, it sounds challenging and stimulating and a nice bunch of people I can learn from.

It’s been one of those sorts of days where things come together, quiting my job and getting a Mac.

My new playmate
Originally uploaded by digitaldust.

Two exciting and life changing things have happened today. The first was my new iMac turning up.

(More accurately it turned up at Heather’s work and she had to bring it home in a taxi and lug it up to the flat… thank you xx)

Life is already looking better through the crisp clear 20″ LCD screen and it’s beautiful white box… maybe not all life, but the bits of life you have to access through a screen certainly look better.

So yes, I’ve Switched, and I’m very happy about it.

I’m going to try moving to a blogger published blog for a bit. Enable my comments again. I might then get on to typepad, but I will see how I like blogger and flickr tied together. The URL will be the same, digitaldust. I think the RSS feed might still be the same. If not and anyone out there in blogville is subscribe then you might have to get back on.