nuzzaci - an online journal

Through POKE I was given the lovely opportunity to work with the great people at Ottolenghi and help them to design and build their new website. When working for a medium-sized company such as POKE (approx. 50ppl), where larger clients take up the majority of studio time, these kind of smaller/independent clients and projects come as a long awaited breeze of fresh air on a hot summers day.

A few words on the design:

Working with the Ottolenghi brand was difficult — or maybe ‘challenging’ is the correct phrase. They are very minimalistic but still carry a personality. So the difficulty / challenge was to keep it very slimmed-down but still engaging.

The above screen is of the current homepage.

The design is based around a simple 8 column grid (show / hide grid). I decided to left align the page to give use of the browser edge for a “full bleed” photographic treatment. Another repeating photographic treatment is the overlaying and slightly anti-top-aligned treatment that can be seen on all top level pages (except the blog) and on recipes where images are in portrait instead of horizontal format.

A few words on the build:

I also did the front end build of the site, while the back-end was delivered by Nilesh Ashra. It was my first project using the jQuery javascript library and the first project i’ve been involved with that uses the “Death Star”, which is a Model-View-Controller approached PHP framework developed by Igor Clark and Nilesh.

If I knew what I know now, I would probably have used the MooTools 1.2 (currently in beta) javascript framework instead of jQuery 1.2.3. Not because jQuery didn’t get the job done or was hard to work with; at the time I hadn’t tried either of them, or given jQuery a chance. Since then I have worked on another project and given MooTools a chance and it turns out that MooTool suits me a bit better.

Working with Nilesh and the “Death Star” framework worked out great. It made me hungry for more Model-View-Controller approached PHP and I am now looking into what codeigniter can do to please that part of my brain.

So, wrapping up,

I’m pleased with the result and the project was a real pleasure to work on. No other client has offered me such good meeting snacks and lunches as Ottolenghi.

One of the few downsides about working on this project was that it kept me constantly hungry. I thought that working on the GoodFood website last year had made me immune to fooling my body that the glycogen level of the liver has fallen and activating the hunger feeling by looking at food photos on screen.

Thankfully, in a few weeks, their new cookbook will be out (which I have flipped through and can confirm looks amazing) so that Willow and I can cook all the dishes I have been drooling at for the last couple of months.

My new threadless t-shirt submission is up. It’s a present for someone, so click the link and give it your best vote. And if you’re so inclined, pass it on to your friends too.

Follow this link to vote on Willow’s nice t-shirt.

Almost back to back to my post about a USB MixTape Stick, here’s a post on online mixtapes. Recently two websites have reached the echo chamber known as the blogosphere; Mixwit.com and Muxtape.com. I don’t like many things about Mixwit (if any), but the simplicity of Muxtape struck a chord.

My first compilation, titled, ‘nuzzaci’s small compilation of compelling cover songs’, is a set of 12 cover songs from various artists. Listen to it on nuzzaci.muxtape.com. The playlist is:

1. Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy - The World’s Greatest
2. Florence and the Machine (featuring Kid Harpoon) - I’m Goin’ Down
3. Mat Weddle - Hey Ya
4. Ben Gibbard - Complicated
5. Sinead O’Connor - All Apologies
6. Streets, The - Your Song
7. Sick Anchors, The - Whole Again
8. John Mayer - Kid A
9. Nick Cave - Disco 2000
10. Zwan - The Number of the Beast
11. Iron & Wine - Such Great Heights
12. Beck - True Love Will Find You in the End

During February and March, Willow and I have been flexing our DIY muscles and done some major flat renovations. It was a very intense period and mentally challenging. I think that the fact that we came out at the end of the tunnel with our mental health still intact is great achievement in itself.

So as a well deserved break from all the flat-renovation-madness, Willow and I decided to use the easter weekend and the following bank holiday to get away from the Do-It-Yourself battlefield of Flat 7 and go to Belgium.

London to Brussels with the Eurostar takes only 1hr 51 minutes from Kings Cross station. That’s about the same amount of time you need to be in advance at the airport if you’re flying somewhere. Yeah — trains rule, planes suck.

We decided to take our bikes with us. We have talked about doing a bike holiday for quite some time and thought that bringing them along would be a good initial test. The Eurostar website makes it sound so easy; cheap and accessible, but, unfortunately for us, it turned out being expensive and complicated.

When we arrived at the station on Thursday morning we found out that the Eurostar Dispatch doesn’t open until 6 a.m while we needed to board at 5:30am. This resulted to us taking a later train. A simular thing happened on our return; when we arrived back in London at 10:04pm on Tuesday and the Eurostar Dispatch had already closed at 10pm. So we had to revisit Kings Cross on Wednesday to collect our bikes. On top of this, if you have two bikes and want to send them return to Brussels, it will set you back around £80.

We stayed in Brussels at the lovely August’ INN, a bed and breakfast run by architect Geoffroy Lemaigre and his wife Sophie van der Dussen. It was really nice. This underlines that Willow does have an amazing gift on finding nice places to stay when on holiday, and that the Bed & Coffee we stayed at in New York was not a fluke.

Besides Brussels, Willow and I took the train to Antwerpen, Brugge, Gent and Amsterdam. Yeah, again — trains rule (except for the bike thing of course).

So, to summarise and wrap up this totally uninteresting post — I liked Belgium and was very impressed by Amsterdam. I’m now even more fond of Belgium beer and an Easter weekend in Belgium gets very chocolat’y.

Some photos can be found on willow’s flicker