UPDATE 2: TurnTubelist is now LIVE. Go now and play with it and let us know what you think. We are still tweaking it but we decided to get it up and out there. More details to come soon…

So Webjam 8 was the biggest and best so far by all accounts. There were brilliant presentations and competition was as tough as ever, but it was to Mr Speaker’s and my absolute delight to win first prize for TurnTubelist, a little pet project we’ve been mucking around with in our spare time. Props where due, Mr Speaker (aka Earle Castledine) presented brilliantly as always in his own inimitable style, not to mention his JavaScript prowess in turning a beer-idea into something well cool. When it’s available, I’ll also put up the vid of the presentation hereThe vid is now at the end of this post.

Mr Speaker at Webjam. Photo by Halans

TurnTubelist demo. Photo by Halans

Sneak-peek at TurnTubelist

TurnTubelist is a web application that lets you crossfade YouTube videos and build your own playlists for continual YouTube fun. It currently works entirely on the client-side using HTML, CSS and lots of JavaScript (mainly jQuery). It’s not up yet but we aim to put a beta up on the web really soon.

Earle has come up with some neat wizardry that hooks up to YouTube via their API, does some nice AJAX to search for YouTube vids without interrupting playback and stores your playlists in a cookie. Not to mention, the sliders, keyboard shortcuts and a whole bunch of other stuff.

I worked on the graphics, the user interaction design and got my hands dirty with some jQuery for a lot of the user interface bells and whistles. There’s still a lot of work and testing to be done, but I think it’s just about time to put it out there to get some feedback.

Stay tuned for when we launch the beta, this thing is a hell of a lot of fun to use if I do say so myself.

In the meantime here’s the presentation video:

Published at HenryTapia.com – Experiencing and designing things

It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.

BusinessWeek, May 25 1998

So you can’t go out and ask people, you know, what the next big [thing.] There’s a great quote by Henry Ford, right? He said, ‘If I’d have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me “A faster horse.”‘

Steve Jobs

These are really insightful quotes, especially if you work in creating anything for a consumer mass market. The big point here is that you can and should design for users but you can’t expect users to tell you how to innovate. What you find when you read more about Apple’s ethos is that the big innovations in design come from when you design for yourself. Make something *you* would want to use.

There are big advantages to designing for yourself. As a designer for the web, I know my strongest designs come about when I fall directly into the main segment of the target audience. I immediately know when the design is solid, and I can easily justify design decisions when they are questioned.

Joshua Porter’s Bokardo.com featured an article earlier this year entitled personas and the advantages of designing for yourself, which went into some detail about the use of personas (personae?) For those not in the know, personas are fictitious user profiles created to describe different typical users of a website. He talks about how this process is unnecessary when you are designing for yourself. In the end, it really just boils down to working on projects that you feel passionate about. Or at least (in my case) owning a part of a project for which you can develop a passion over. I think I’ll call this a “creative enthusigasm“.

I look forward to and really get into design projects where I am essentially designing something that is aimed to appeal to me, and that I have some level of ownership over. If I love the end product, then it would hopefully follow that there will be users out there who feel the same way.

Published at HenryTapia.com – Experiencing and designing things

A short list of highlights (and the odd low point):

• Travelling through 11 countries spanning four continents (so far)
• Scuba diving in Thailand and Vietnam
• Like, pretty much all of Mexico
• Having my laptop stolen in Peru
• Still in Peru, kicking arse on the Inca Trail to get to Machu Picchu
• Getting set up in London. It’s already been 5 months here now!
• Getting a new job doing challenging new work
• Making about no. 53 on David Airey’s top 50 list of design blogs. LOL. That’s pretty good for the amount of effort I put in around here. If I work hard I think I can make it to number 51 next time.

I’d like to keep adding more photos and stories of the last few months of travel prior to arriving in London, so I’ll probably be mixing that in with the usual design and geek stuff.

To all my friends and family back home, missing you guys heaps, please stay well, I’ll be home soon to share a drink! In the meantime, any of you from the Oz crew want to doss in my lounge room, the airbed is yours.

I’ll leave you with this thought:

PS Don’t forget to sponsor a mo for Movember!

Published at HenryTapia.com – Experiencing and designing things

Day 112 – 117, Mexico City

After saying goodbye to Carter and Jade who put us up for another night in their funky converted office apartment in Dallas, 15 March saw us fly from Dallas-Fort Worth to Benito Juarez International Airport in Mexico City. With our trusty Lonely Planet Guide to Mexico in hand, Meg and I took a cab to the Centro Historico of Mexico City to Hostel Moneda, around the corner from the Zócalo, the Palacio Nacional (National Palace) and the Metropolitan Cathedral. In Mexico, every city and town has a Zócalo, which is the town square, usually in the Centro Historico (historic centre). The Zócalo of Mexico City (also known as the Plaza de la Constitución) is one of the largest plazas in the world.

Hostel Moneda charged 140 Pesos per night (US $14), which was a little more than we expected for shared dorm rooms but there was free breakfast (the best free hostel breakfasts we had anywhere – Mexican eggs, frijoles, bread, cornflakes/coco pops and varied every day!), a free downtown walking tour plus we did meet some cool people there.

We were lucky enough to catch up again with the ever-lovely Maxine (Web Directions) for a post-SXSW Mexican meal and beer at Casa de las Sirenas, a relatively expensive restaurant that was quite charming in its décor but otherwise mediocre. It was an extra treat to watch her work her photographic magic.

Downtown walking tour and Lucha Libre

Our second day in Mexico City saw us get right down to business with Hostel Moneda’s free downtown walking tour. This was no stroll with a staff member down the street to look at old buildings but rather a detailed tour of the Centro Historico with a very knowledgeable English-speaking tour guide. On this tour we saw an archaeological excavation of the Aztec Templo Mayor (Great Pyramid), destroyed and built over by the Spanish, had a stroll through the Metropolitan Cathedral – built over an Aztec sacrificial site (a glass covered excavation shows buried remains), and the Palacio Nacional which featured some fantastic murals by Diego Rivera depicting five hundred years of turbulent history. We managed to get lots of photos of the murals but to see them and have each scene explained by a guide is definitely much better.

Street markets on Calle Moneda

National Palace mural

National Palace mural featuring Frida Kahlo

Palacio de Bellas Artes

Tacos al Pastor

Traditional drumming at the Zócalo

Cleansing ritual at the Zócalo

Photos courtesy of Meg. Click the thumbnails to see the larger versions… go on, do it. Now.

On our downtown tour we also walked through the Post Office Palace, a literal palace complete with gold plated décor which is actually a functioning post office (it also features an art gallery and a museum), and then walked to the Palacio de Bellas Artes (Palace of Fine Arts) where we observed its neoclassical architecture (designed by Adamo Boari in 1904), with its opulent marble facade and pegasus statues. We ended the tour with a stroll down Gante, a paved off road with lots of bars and eateries and enjoyed some traditional Tacos (rather different to Californian Mexican or Tex-Mex food – smaller and more minimal, but definitely tasty) and a walk to a restaurant on 5 de Mayo for some more traditional cuisine and some Mexican beer.

Mexican Lucha Libre seems to take a leaf out of the USA’s WWF with its glitziness and drama, but with a real focus on acrobatics and aerial stunts. All up it was quite impressive in a cheesy way…

Afterward we strolled around the lively Zócalo then chilled out back at the hostel before joining a large group for a night out at the Mexican wrestling, the Lucha Libre.

This was a weird but interesting and memorable night. Firstly, the guys who were running the tour ran into the hostel yelling at everyone that it was time to go (all in good fun), all the while wearing Mexican wrestling masks. We were all herded into 3 large people-mover vans that looked much like American FBI trucks. Ducking and weaving through night-time traffic, crazy Mexican style we then marched into the stadium where we dined on Domino’s pizza and hot dogs and chugged down Coronas in plastic cups.

Mexican Lucha Libre seems to take a leaf out of the USA’s WWF “sports entertainment” with its glitziness, theatrical antics and character driven drama, but in terms of the action, there was a real focus on acrobatics and aerial stunts. Most of it was 3 on 3 and there were about 4 or 5 events, including female wrestling (sorry, no mud guys). All up it was quite impressive in a cheesy way, just the way I like it. (This was a real contrast to the Thai boxing we’d watched a couple of months earlier in Koh Samui.)

The tour and entry cost us 180 Pesos (US $18) each which included transport, entry and some tequila afterwards (which nobody seemed interested in). Unfortunately we weren’t permitted to take photos of the event but we managed to get some shots of our Lucha Libre night’s highlights on TV.

Already in our first two days we were getting a major taste of what Mexico had to offer.

Flamboyant Luchador (on TV). Photo courtesy of Meg.

Plaza de las Tres Culturas and Teotihuacán

Sunday March 18 saw us on a tour to Teotihuacán, an Aztec pyramid complex, with several stops along the way. This tour was 250 Pesos (US $25) each for a very educational full day trip, again organised by Hostel Moneda. We started out at the Plaza de las Tres Culturas (Plaza of the Three Cultures). This place was chock full of history over three eras.

Here we saw the Aztec ruins of Tlatelolco, with a marketplace, a calendaric temple (the way that it was constructed allow it to serve as a calendar) used by Aztec priests for religious rituals, an Aztec cemetery and an altar to the Aztec deity, Quetzlcoatl.

The plaza was the scene of a lot of turmoil. Hundreds of protesters were massacred by the Mexican military on the night before the 1968 Mexico City Olympics.

Built right on this site, on the foundations of a razed Aztec building was a five hundred year old Spanish Cathedral, the Templo de Santiago. This along with just about every other colonial building in Mexico City seemed to be leaning one way or the other. We learned that the historic centre of Mexico City was an island (Mexico de Tenochtitlán) in the centre of a large lake. The Spanish managed to drain this lake by building a series of irrigation canals, drawing water outwardly, and building their large city on the drained lake bed. The result of this is a city built on soft soil with very few large buildings standing perfectly straight.

On the south side of the Plaza de las Tres Culturas is the Mexican Foreign Ministry building. Surrounding the area are large high-rise residential buildings. Thus the Three Cultures are the classical Aztec, the colonial Spanish, and the modern Mexican cultures.

The plaza was also the scene of a lot of turmoil. Standing in front of the entrance to the Cathedral is a monument commemorating the hundreds of protesters who were massacred by the Mexican military ten days before the 1968 Mexico City Olympics opening ceremony. As usual, the details behind this government massacre were never completely revealed, and unsurprisingly, evidence of US government involvement later came to light.

Later, several of the surrounding high-rise residential apartment buildings collapsed in the Mexico City earthquakes of 1985. Thousands of people (and more likely tens of thousands) reportedly died in the disaster.

This same site was were the Aztecs made their last stand against the Spanish in 1521, where 40,000 Aztecs died.

Basilica de Guadalupe

Our group got back in the van and headed for the next stop on the tour, the Basilica de Guadalupe, a religious site featuring the Capilla del Cerrito (Chapel on the hill), the Basilica Antigua (old Basilica) and the very large Basilica de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe (Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe).

The Capilla del Cerrito is a chapel built on the location where it was believed the Virgin Mary appeared to an indigenous Christian convert in 1531. She became known as the Lady of Guadalupe and went on to be the patron saint of Mexico and is still largely revered in Mexico today. The large Basilica next door is a major attraction to Christian pilgrims from all over Mexico, who walk from the entry into the Basilica on their knees praying for help for their sick loved ones or for cures for their own ailments and disabilities. The Basilica is basically a large church with daily services and crowds of people travelling beneath the altar on travelators to take a peek at the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe that hangs there.

The Basilica Antigua was the first Basilica built at the site is a colonial church that stands crookedly due to the soft soil of the region and the many people visiting over the centuries and is now more of a museum of religious artworks. It is held together by a network of steel cables. Just outside there was a sculpture of Pope John Paul II made from coins donated by the people.

The place was like a massive Christian theme park, a “Virgin Mary World” of sorts.

Teotihuacán

Our last stop on the tour was the archaeological site of Teotihuacán. Before entering the site though, we had a demonstration of the uses of the Maguey cactus and some obsidian stone carving. Maguey is the Mexican super cactus, from which one could make (somewhat crude) sewing needles, paper from its inner lining and all of three different types of alcoholic beverage – Pulque, Tequila* and Mezcal (in order of strength). This was quite an interesting demonstration which ended in said beverage tasting. The Mescal gave us the biggest kick, especially for Meg, as she was brave enough to choose the shot that had the worm in it.

If the Basilica de Guadalupe was a Christian theme park, the pyramid complex of Teotihuacán was a Pagan theme park, demonstrating the duality of spiritual belief of the average Mexican.

Next was a demo of the carving of obsidian. Obsidian is a volcanic stone that was used for weapons and decoration by the Aztecs. It has a deep black colour with the ability to take on different colours when wet and polished. Naturally, after our demonstration and liquor tasting session in the midday heat prior to eating, we were escorted to the air-conditioned gift shop, the idea being the Mezcal would loosen our purse strings enough to buy the usual statues and textiles.

After a light lunch we visited the temple site, where we saw the large and impressive pyramids of the sun and moon. By this time I thought it was way too hot to brave the queues and climb the pyramids. Nearby was the Temple of Quetzlcoatl (which we were told was closed) and a museum (which actually was closed). I noticed a popular trend amongst Mexicans, which was climbing the pyramids dressed in white to stand in the sun and ‘receive energy’ at the top. This is especially popular during the summer solstice, where massive crowds gather at this and other archaeological sites.

If the Basilica de Guadalupe was a Christian theme park, the pyramid complex of Teotihuacán was a Pagan theme park of sorts, demonstrating the duality of spiritual belief of the average Mexican.

Meg and I ended the day by getting a cool beer and some good Mexican food at the Majestic Hotel, kicking back on a balcony overlooking the Zócalo and watching the sunset with some friends we made on that day on the tour.

* I have since found out that Tequila is made from a cactus closely related to the Maguey.

Plaza de las Tres Culturas

Monument at Plaza de las Tres Culturas

Statue of JPII

Basilica de Guadalupe

Obsidian carving

Temple of the Moon at Teotihuacán

At the Temple of the Sun at Teotihuacán

Click the thumbnails to see the bigger versions of the pics (I took these ones.)

My childhood knowledge of Spanish was coming in handy but it was certainly a dive-in-headfirst refresher course, and an enjoyable one at that. Three days in Mexico City turned into five, and they went by quickly. We managed to squeeze a fairly full experience of at least the Centro Historico in during that time. Our next stop was a day in the charming town of Taxco to the north of Mexico City before returning to Mexico City for one more night, with the realisation that after that, we wouldn’t return this way on this trip. Our plan was to work our way east, our next flight being out of Guatemala in roughly a month’s time, but we were already thinking about when we could come back to Mexico in future…

Published at HenryTapia.com – Experiencing and designing things

Day 44 – 46, Chau Doc and Cantho, Mekong Delta area, Vietnam

I couldn’t help but feel the difference as soon as we left the first boat and walked across the border into Vietnam. There were still kids coming up and selling stuff or wanting to carry our bags (good luck with that) but we’re used to that. Maybe it was just me, but after doing our passport stuff and sitting down for that first ph? (beef noodle soup), I felt a sense of the positive here. After a short lunch break, we got onto the next boat, a small river boat and headed on down the Mekong River into the Mekong Delta.

We travelled down the Mekong River into the Delta region where we saw various river communities doing their thing. Lots of people fishing and taking baths in the river (not at the same time, and not naked). We were enjoying this tour somewhat for its non-touristy vibe, and didn’t originally know that there was a three day/two night option (we originally bought this ticket assuming it was simply boat transportation to Saigon), so we switched up. Accommodation was included with the transportation, all-in-all a pretty good deal for USD $39 each.

We stayed overnight at an unremarkable guesthouse on a nice hill overlooking rice fields and the nearby town of Chau Doc. That night we took a walk into town in search of my first Banh Mi (Vietnamese sub) in Vietnam. I was not disappointed. I’m a big fan of Vietnamese pork rolls (Banh Mi Heo), so much so that I must have had at least one per day during our stay in Vietnam – generally bits of meat with coriander, carrot, shallots, chilli, soy sauce and mystery spices on a French-style baguette. Often they’d put sardine paste on as well. Sounds weird but actually okay. And these rolls were damn cheap (although a bit smaller than the huge ones they make in Sydney).

Anyway, I digress, more about Vietnamese cuisine another time. In the morning we hit the road to see the markets and other happenings in the town of Chau Doc as well as getting on some small boats to see fish farms and river life. We also learned about various minority groups in the region, like the Cham, who are Muslims that have been living in Vietnam for hundreds of years, and Cambodians, who had come over as refugees during Pol Pot’s rule.

Cham villager, Chau Doc, Vietnam.

Chau Doc is a great place to see Vietnamese people doing their everyday thing and a great place to visit if you’re travelling through, especially if you want to get away from all the tourist traps of the bigger destinations.

We travelled further down the Delta into a town called Can Tho, and stayed at Hung’s Homestay located in a humble village on a small island in the Delta. Our host, Hung, lived in a large house on the river with space for about 8 guests where he and his family fed us large communal meals and showed us about the place. (He’d recently added a bunch of bungalows on the river in response to demand.)

From Hung’s we did a little walking tour of the area where we saw how the local people lived. The folks here were so friendly and the kids would come running out to play and say hello (not asking for anything!). We walked around the village and crossed a rickety monkey bridge over a small creek, and on the way back to Hung’s some old Vietnamese guys invited us onto the porch of their makeshift pub for a few Saigon beers. Conversation was lively considering they didn’t speak English and none of us understood Vietnamese, but we were still able to yell “YO!” which is “cheers” in Vietnamese.

Crossing the rickety monkey bridge. Photo courtesy of Meg.

Afterwards we ate well back at Hung’s. We learnt his home remedy for all manner of ailments – cupping:

Cupping home remedy – Our host Hung demonstrates how it’s done. Photo courtesy of Meg.

More cupping. This got rid of Meg’s stiff neck and left some raised purple circles on her back for a few days.

On the morning of the third day we woke up to Heart’s “Alone” blaring out on Hung’s stereo at 6am, which I found pretty entertaining (but I’m sure not everyone did). We left Hung’s place behind and headed out early in the morning for the floating markets (people cruising around on boats selling goods to people cruising around on boats). By then we could see how much people in the Delta really lived on the water. During this trip we also saw a Vietnamese silk factory, a place where people made incense by hand (which is more interesting than it sounds) as well as visting a place that produced rice noodles. Meg took some great shots of these:

Incense making shop in Vietnam. Here women are rolling scented dough onto sticks. Photo courtesy of Meg.

Incense sticks drying in the sun. Photo courtesy of Meg.

After the liquid rice mixture is poured and cooked it is set in the sun. Photo courtesy of Meg.

The last leg of the trip was by bus (with a slightly annoying barge ferry episode) into Saigon, arriving in the late afternoon in the middle of the Pham Ngu Lao backpacker area.

Day 46 – 48, Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City), Vietnam

Ho Chi Minh City (also known as HCMC and originally and still quite often referred to as Saigon) is a large busy city with a lot of traffic, pollution and as malodorous as any large city in South East Asia. Yet I really liked the place. We stayed in a decent hotel room for US$12/night off Pham Ngu Lao which is a big tourist spot and is mentioned a lot in the Lonely Planet. The people here (and so far Vietnam in general) are really friendly and laid back. English is quite commonly spoken by the locals if you are anywhere near a tourist attraction.

Generally, I thought Saigon had a good vibe. We didn’t do much here but relax, enjoy decent food (of course I got my daily fix of Banh Mi) and a few beers in some cool bars. If you visit Saigon, visit Crazy Lam’s and go to the top floor bar and you might meet Crazy Lam himself. We sat at the bar and got chatting to the bar owner (Lam, a knowledgable, fun loving local) who gave us a free glass of wine and a bit of food. We also met a generous Canadian fellow who was sampling some of the local stuff. My tip is to always sit at the bar if you want interesting things to happen.

While we were chilling out in Saigon we caught up on things like laundry and getting in touch with friends and family, blogging and snail mailing things we didn’t need back home. After our adventures at Saigon post office we managed to very briefly visit the War Remnants Museum (once upon a time known as the Museum of American Atrocities). It was pretty interesting but we only had enough time to zip through and take a bunch of photos. Here are a couple:

An American tank on display at (not attacking) the War Remnants Museum.

Journalist’s camera at the War Remnants Museum. An American journalist was the owner of this trusty camera. It saved his life when he was shot, the bullet being caught in his camera.

At this point our plan was to spend the next three weeks making our way north to Hanoi and then getting a plane to Hong Kong which was where our next pre-booked flight was. So while in Saigon we organised our flight from Hanoi to Hong Kong and also bought an open bus ticket to Hanoi. This is the second best way of getting around Vietnam. Basically, you can buy a ticket allowing you to visit various cities (travelling in one direction) at your own pace Рyou just need to let an agent know the day before you want to travel. So we got a ticket that would take us to six cities, from the South to the North, (Saigon, Da Lat, Nha Trang, Hoi An, Hu̩ and Hanoi) for USD $21.

That’s the second best (but definitely the cheapest) way to get around Vietnam. The first best way is to get yourself an Easy Rider motorcycle guide (woo nice site!), which we did from Da Lat, our next stop from Saigon. More about that next post…

Related posts

• Travel plans

Published at HenryTapia.com – Experiencing and designing things

So for anyone interested, here’s our itinerary.. Subject to last minute changes:

• November 06 – Manila, Philippines
• December 06 – Hong Kong, China
• December 06 – Bangkok, Thailand
• December 06 – Koh Samui, Thailand. Then back to Bangkok
• December 06 – Siem Reap, Cambodia.
• December 06/January 07 – Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam. Then we figure out a way back to Hong Kong…
• January 07 – San Francisco, USA
• March 07 – Dallas, USA . Dates adjusted to allow for my attendance at SxSW Interactive in Austin.
• March 07 – Mexico City, Mexico – Might also stay a bit longer here…
• April 07 – Guatemala City, Guatemala – transfer directly to Antigua, avoiding Guatemala City…
• April 07 – ChicagoMiami, USA – I think we’re sticking with the summer wardrobe a bit more…
• April 07 – New York, USA
• May 07 – La Paz, Bolivia, then overland to Cusco, Peru
• May 07 – Arequipa, Peru
• May 07 – Lima, Peru overland to Bolivia then Ecuador
• May 07 – Quito, Ecuador
• June 07 – Madrid, Spain
• June 07 – London, UK

We then settle in at London for a while, get some work and a place to live (easier said than done!) and then some short trips to the continent from there… PHEW!

There’ll be plenty of photos here and at my Flickr page. Any words of advice, places to see or anything else most definitely appreciated…

Update 17/10/06

We just finalised our bookings on the weekend and I’ve updated the itinerary accordingly, with Cambodia, Guatemala and Bolivia added to the itinerary. Now that’s a PHAT trip!

Update 30/10/06

How on earth did I forget to mention almost a whole month in Vietnam? Updated now…

Published at HenryTapia.com – Experiencing and designing things