I tend to write quite a lot, but I Tweet a lot more. I love my blog, but sometimes I do, I’ll admit, get lazy.

I’ve been on Twitter two years tomorrow (expect a post) but this is why I love blogging:

• Blogs expand on important ideas, on Twitter the message takes a back seat to the medium.
• Blogs give context, a Tweet out of context is a dangerous thing!
• You can meter response/popularity of a blog post better than a Tweet.
• Blogs are (more) permanent, tweets get buried/lost pretty quickly.
• Feedback is admittedly slower with a blog, but more in-depth.
• Blogs are editable, updatable and collaborative. Tweets are deleted or superseded, blog posts are updated and discussed.
• A blog is your space, you share Twitter with people like Charlie Sheen…
• Tweets are disposable, a good blog post takes time, effort and craft.
• With a blog you can concentrate on how good your message is, on Twitter you just concentrate on getting it said in 140 characters.

Twitter is an excellent medium, and one to which I owe a lot, but for me Twitter supports this blog. If you write, join #ideasofmarch and let’s start a blog revival.

Join in

Join in, it’s simple!

• Write a post called Ideas of March.
• List some of the reasons you like blogs.
• Pledge to blog more the rest of the month.
• Share your thoughts on Twitter with the #ideasofmarch hashtag.

I have followed iA fervently for as long as I’ve known about them. They are, to me, a beacon of what is good about this industry; they’re an inspirational agency and one that I love. So, when I heard that they were working on an iPad app I was immediately interested. They’d set the bar pretty high with their other work, but I had equally high hopes and expectations.

Anyway, the day the app went on sale I bought it. At £2.99 it’s relatively pricey in app terms, but (as I tend to do more often than not) I reasoned that £3 is less than one pint, so actually pretty reasonable.

I fired it up and saw pretty much nothing, which I guess is the point, but I did feel a little ‘Oh, anti-climax…’ I tinkered with it for a few minutes, idly typing nothings, deleting them, then typing some more. It was pretty mediocre. Or so I thought…

As I’d only been typing dummy text I’d not really used it properly, or to its full potential. I didn’t see the point, nor did I reap the benefits. That evening, lying in bed, I reached for my iPad and started drafting an article. That’s when it hit me. Writer is awesome!

When you start using it properly you realise that its stark UI and outward lack of features is a wealth of features in itself. Writer makes writing so easy, and it honestly seems to come more naturally. It’s a genuine breath of fresh air for anyone who is used to writing on a computer.

I hate word processors with a passion. They’re horrible, horrible things. On this basis I tend(ed) to draft any articles in my text-editor, Notepad++. It strips out all the stuff I don’t need and leaves just me, the canvas and the letters. Oh and all those icons in the UI. And the nastily long line-length. And the awkward look of code-sized type as prose…

Writer is so amazingly simple, and that’s why it annoys me. How can something so simple be so fantastic?! It just doesn’t make sense! I paid almost-a-beer for something that does nothing! Yet it allows me to do everything. I get a little shocked, too, every time I use Writer; I get shocked that each time I open it up I am met with the same sparse interface, and yet the removal of nigh on everything allows me to do whatever I want. It clears the mind and allows the text to just spill onto the ‘page’.

Since buying Writer I have written up every CSS Wizardry article in it. Right now, as I type this, I’m slouched in my chair, listening to music, sipping a beer and just writing. Writer is the perfect app for the iPad. It’s using something very comfortable and ergonomic on something very comfortable and ergonomic. Genius.

I’ve always said that there are fewer things more complex than making something more simple, yet iA have nailed it. This idea is so simple yet so well executed that I get the oh so familiar ‘why didn’t I think of that?!’, and this is what annoys me. A huge well-done to Oliver et al. Writer is a masterpiece.

So, if you have an iPad and write a blog, articles, short stories or anything, do yourself a favour and buy Writer—see if it pisses you off too ;)

Many hands make light work

There are lots of contradictions in sayings and phrases. Like this one, if many hands do make light work, then how does this next one work?

Too many cooks spoil the broth

A stitch in time…

While the cat is away…

Absence makes the heart grow fonder vs. time is a great healer

This one is another glaring contradiction, so I decided to combine the two into one poster.

Out of sight, out of mind

Two wrongs don’t make a right

This one doesn’t really follow the code paradigm, but I thought I’d include it anyway.

Got any more that would work in this way? Leave any suggestions in the comments.

Also, I do realise that, programmatically, not all of these posters make perfect sense. For example, $cooks > 'enough' doesn’t really work in a programming sense… It’s just a bit of fun!

“I need to get an old ass banger.”

So, is that ‘old-ass banger’, or ‘old ass-banger’? You decide ;)