Almost there...

After more than four months of looking at code like this:

_____________ {* $Id: select_currency.tpl 3746 2007-08-27 08:24:25Z zeke $ *} {if $currencies && !$hide_currencies} {if $settings.Addons.seo == 'Y'} {assign var="qstring" value=$seo_url.page|fn_query_remove:'currency'|replace:'&':'&'} {assign var="qaction" value="&sl='+this.value"} {if !$qstring|strpos:'?'}{assign var="qstring" value="$qstring?"}{/if} {else} {assign var="qprefix" value="$index_script?"} {assign var="qstring" value=$QUERY_STRING|fn_query_remove:'currency'|replace:'&':'&'} {/if} {foreach from=$currencies item=currency} {$currency.description} ({$currency.symbol}) {/foreach} {/if}

______________ and sending off pleading questions daily to the rather, er, well rather Russian support team at CS-Cart (what do I mean by rather Russian? Well, for starters they sometimes forget themselves and tell you you're an idiot. And you can see that they find it a real strain to use "please" and "thank-you" sufficiently for a Western-culture customer. Which reminds me of the redoubtable Vassilisa who once quietly asked Alex to have a word with me and ask me not to say "Please" every time I asked her to do something. "It's making me nervous, Alex," she explained.)...

...I am nearly there with the shop. I think. Unless I discover something else that needs changing. Now all we have to do is check every one of the 200 or so products (some with ten options and half a dozen pictures - OMG, what are we doing?) and do about a million test orders in various currencies. Then find out how to set up the "membership" for "Friends of Baba Studio" (okay, okay, but it's NICE) so that it only kicks in under certain criteria. Then make sure that the same happens for wholesale. Then try to prevent the inventory from insisting on believing that everything is sold out (not helpful, really not helpful).

I will say this - this is the most GORGEOUSLY well put together piece of code. I am not much of a coder - wild understatement - but I do love neat, clean, modular code when I see it.

However, the user-interface design leaves a little more to be desired, so mostly that's what I've been working on. How DO you explain to a Russian support team that not everyone will know that "None" in the currency box means that-you-have-not-chosen-an-alternative-option-so-will-get-the-default-currency-which-happens-in-this-case-to-be-Euro. As I said, er, Please (whoops) can we just say "Euro" instead of "None"? Call me whacky.

At moments like this I remember that my main profession over the years (with some other pretty odd ones thrown in along the way) was being a user-interface designer. Deep down, I am really enjoying setting up this shop. My precious.

Our Strength messenger bag

I'm running off to shop - and yes, it is 9.45 on a Sunday night but well, needs must as we've run out of cat food.But here is just a very quick one - the "Strength" bag with a plethora of lions. I think this is our best selling bag - or maybe it's neck-and-neck with Alice.Oh, by the way, the jacket is an original 19th century one in perfect condition. It's designed to be worn over a bustle - utterly wonderful and all hand stitched (and if you madly want to buy it tell me quickly and I'll ask the selling price as on Tuesday it will go back to the shop we borrowed it from - I WISH I could find an excuse to buy it myself):

This was the little guy who also took part in the photography session. Completely unafraid - I suppose he's used to people.

The Gothic bags

This photo is by Alex. Modelled by Aida, hair and make-up by Eva (whose surname I need to find and post - eek) Eva is now about to begin work for Mac in Prague, so if you get a chance to go to the Mac shop ask her to do a make-over for you, she's fantastic and LOADS of fun - and speaks perfect English as she lived in England for years. Aida looks beautiful in these photos - I hope the bags do too! This photo is by Alex. Soon I'll post the images by the photographer we've been working with - Simon Chang.

The Gothic bags

This photo is by Alex. Modelled by Aida, hair and make-up by Eva (whose surname I need to find and post - eek) Eva is now about to begin work for Mac in Prague, so if you get a chance to go to the Mac shop ask her to do a make-over for you, she's fantastic and LOADS of fun - and speaks perfect English as she lived in England for years.Aida looks beautiful in these photos - I hope the bags do too! This photo is by Alex. Soon I'll post the images by the photographer we've been working with - Simon Chang.

Design again

A nice day of wondering less about theory (though be warned, I really am going to come back to that one as there are all sorts of things I'm working out in my own mind) and more about DOING design. Aida is now helping us out part-time (long, long story about Vassa - basically she is alright thank GOD, but has been through a large operation due to an emergency situation and has gone home to Ukraine, probably permanently). Today we decided to pull out the new silks from India and take a couple of hours to consider new shapes and ideas. Good fun - and I think we came up with some beautiful possibities. Not once did "Modernism" and its discontents even enter my head. Like all the best design sessions we did some of it in a newish cafe that's opened. Wonderful fresh salad. Fabulous genuinely made-on-the-premises cakes. Great coffee. Perfect for getting ideas going. One day I want to talk here about the link between good design and good baking ("OMG - just get ON with the bags" is probably what you're thinking). Anyway, here is a taste (no pun intended) of the new silks. They are actually simply amazing in person - the new silks are wonderful and there is no way we can even begin to capture the way they change colour in the light. Maybe this some impression, though it still doesn't get the sense of the way the colours respond to movement: Front: and back: So - we finished the afternoon by meeting with Romana and asked her to try out some sample patterns (she's a brilliant pattern maker) and also hand-dye some cream silk brocade into a soft "tea" colour - and did some asymmetric things with copper, black and gold/black brocade. The overall plan is some black and white, sepia and cream and soft indigo (imagine a denim coloured silk) and cream fairytale drawings. Watch this space - in about a month I think. Tomorrow... the fashion shoot team reassembles and we all go off to Vysehrad cemetery: to shoot the Gothic scenes. In which Aida (who when not designing things is a part-time professional model) stars. I love doing these fashion shoots - the last one was utterly exhausting and hugely good fun.

Okay, a week of talking about design

I'm in one of those moods where I want to think about design as a practise and a professional (most readers of this blog will stop reading at this point I would guess, but try to bear with me please). I've been reading Natalia Ilyin's Chasing the Perfect "Thoughts on Modernist Design in Our Time". So I'll start with a long quote. Here is Ilyin's account of going to visit an up and coming New York furniture designer - with a view to a job doing his PR: He started talking about why he had stared the company and about a $10,000 black-walnut side table he was just producing and about what he thought design was and this sort of thing, and he really was a very charming guy, and at some point we went to the all-white laminated kitchen tucked around a corner and he made me a nice Illy espresso. I was just standing there, mentally calculating the price of his trousers and of his black cashmere mock-turtle and adding it to what his cost per foot must have been, including escalations, when he suddenly said, "I had a customer come to me the other day and ask me to design a sofa." "Oh?" I said. "Well, you know. I just laughed. Just laughed!" Here he chuckled in a dry sort of way, so I chuckled dryly, too, having no idea what was so damn funny about designing a sofa. "So you don't design sofas?" I asked, in a leading sort of way. The designer looked at me and let out a low moan. He leaned heavily against the wall near the espresso machine. His trousers creaked mournfully. "People sit on sofas," he said.