Last night I saw the new Banksy film, Exit Though The Gift Shop and it was, in one word, brilliant. Not really so much about Banksy, but an international look at the history of street art and a mini-biopic of the now famous, Mr Brainwash. Who seems to have turned himself overnight into an international cultural-pop-art superstar. Definitely worth watching if you’re even vaguely aware/interested in street art.

References

• http://www.banksyfilm.com/
• http://www.mrbrainwash.com/
• http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/world_news_america/8548779.stm

The Canon 5D MKII has been making quite the splash since it’s launch. First Greg Yaitanes announces he’s going to record the season finale of House with an 5D. Now John Mayer releases this beautifully shot docu-thing. If only I had the pennies for one.

Filmed on May 5, 2010, a mostly first-person chronicle of the day’s events leading up to a performance in Wollongong, Australia. Shot on Canon 5D mkII with 50mm 1.2 and 24-70 lenses.

I’m soon to start a new contract that’s going to be very HTML5 & CSS3 themed. I decided to pull together a couple of resource posts and realised it might be useful to more than just me.

Specifications

W3C HTML5 Draft
It’s still only in working draft phase, but offers a comprehensive 900 pages of detail into the future of the web.
http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/

Articles & Reference

Dive Into HTML5 (by Mark Pilgrim)
Excellent insight into a number of features from the new specification. Well explained and professionally written (not surprising as it’s going to be turned into an O’Reilly book.)
http://diveintohtml5.org/

HTML5 For Web Designers (by Jeremy Keith)
Get your mitts on this one from the A Book Apart team. It’s got some top reviews already and is by educational wonderkids of A List Apart.
http://books.alistapart.com/

An Introduction to HTML5 (by Robert Nyman)
A great overview of basic markup changes in HTML5 (over HTML4) and the relevant pros and cons.
http://robertnyman.com/2009/10/14/an-introduction-to-html5/

Is HTML5 Ready Yet? (by J. Cornelius)
Ok, so it doesn’t have that much practical use but I threw it in there anyway. The site is counting down until the official launch of HTML5 in 2022(!!!) Hopefully we might get there a little earlier than that.

Future Web Accessibility: HTML5 Semantic Elements (by Aaron Andersen)
Interesting review of the new specification from an accessibility perspective. Worth a good read, as the new semantic elements really work for the accessible web – so there’s less excuses now.
http://webaim.org/blog/future-web-accessibility-html5-semantic-tags/

Google APIs + HTML5 = A New Era of Mobile Apps (by Adrian Graham)
Interesting look into mobile app development, and how the new APIs (particularly the geo-location aspect) will effect mobile technologies, within the context of Google’s APIs.
http://googlegeodevelopers.blogspot.com/2010/05/google-apis-html5-new-era-of-mobile.html

A Brief History of Markup (by Jeremy Keith)
It’s always worth knowing a bit of background, and this is an excellent (short) article from A List Apart on the development of markup as a communication language on the web.
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/a-brief-history-of-markup/

Resources

HTML5 Javascript Shiv
In keeping with Internet Explorer tradition, all currently released versions of IE don’t support HTML5, nor custom markup (IE 9 apparently will.) Luckily a hack for IE has been developed and it’s pretty simple. All you need is this pre-written script to do the job.
http://html5shiv.googlecode.com/

The original concept for this fix is from John Resig (of jQuery fame)
http://ejohn.org/blog/html5-shiv/

Validator.nu
You always need a good validator. The W3C validator has some support but validator.nu seems to be at the head of the field at the moment.
http://html5.validator.nu/

HTML5 Revision Tracker
Displays a descriptive review of all versions updates made to the W3C HTML5 specification.
http://html5.org/tools/web-apps-tracker

HTML5 Doctor
Useful resource to help you diagnose development issues.
http://html5doctor.com/

Visual Cheat Sheet
Quick reference guide for the markup elements.
http://woorkup.com/2009/12/16/html5-visual-cheat-sheet-reloaded/

Canvas Cheat Sheet
With Canvas now a standardised vector drawing element, this cheat sheet helps out with the list of attributes and methods needed for 2D drawing in the browser.
http://blog.nihilogic.dk/2009/02/html5-canvas-cheat-sheet.html

We found this “family favourite” whilst cleaning out the cupboards – Ouija Board by Parker Games. Not quite sure what market Parker were aiming it for. Presumably not the 70′s toddler demographic.

When we were in Sao Paulo a few weeks ago we visited the brilliant Itau Cultural. In the main lobby they had a piece of sculpture made from thousands of pieces of thick plastic strands. It was one of the most intriguing sculptures I’ve ever seen, but there was no information on who’d designed it (as it was a purchased piece for the office area.) Interestingly Creative Review have just reviewed a new piece by architect Carmody Groarke from the Wallpaper* Handmade exhibition.

12,000 Stitches by Carmody Groarke (from creativereview.co.uk)

It seems spikey (that’s the technical term) architecture is currently somewhat en-vogue. The always inspiring Thomas Heatherwick has revealed UK Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo. If only I had enough pennies to fly over and see it.