A couple of weeks ago I saw a segment on our regional news programme, BBC Look North, about how the future new Children’s Hospital within Newcastle’s RVI was looking for a new name and wanted the people of the North East to vote for it. There were three choices: The Great North Children’s Hospital, The Greenhouse Children’s Hospital and Northern Lights Children’s Hospital. We were able to do this by logging on and voting here, aswell as view the logos and hear a pitch by three North East celebrities on why we should vote for the name they have stood by.

I didn’t need to listen to any of the pitches, the choice was easy: The Great North Children’s Hospital. Seeing the logo confirmed it for me…

That name and logo just says everything that a name and logo should say. It’s simple: Newcastle upon Tyne is the Great North, obviously, but most of all I think it will appeal to kids as it’s got a fun element to it with the rainbow of colours and the cute eyes over/within some of the lettering. The voting was pretty close all along with The Great North pretty much head to head with Northern Lights. The Greenhouse was only ever stuck on 2%, bless it, and although not a fan of the name at all I can see why that was put out there as the hospital is going to be green and round.

The winner was announced this evening at 6.30pm - The Great North Children’s Hospital Well done to my fellow Geordie’s for having good taste

I love seeing simple logos like this that don’t need any further explanation…unlike London 2012. If only the British public were given a chance to vote on that….

I’m guessing that there are a lot of Mac OS X Leopard users visiting Fruit Bytes and you may even have a WordPress blog of your own. How cool would it be to have a Leopard style WP Admin Panel to replace the default one which is, well, a little bit bland and boring shall we say? Enter Leopard Admin.

It’s the easiest thing to get up and running. Simply download the plugin, upload to your /wp-contents/plugins/ folder in your WordPress installation, activate and voila, a sexy new look to your Admin Panel that will make you want to spend more time blogging, which has got to be a good thing.

Thanks to @chris24 for tweeting this.

Many years ago when I was a PC user I used to have a graphics tablet that I would use for touching up photos and doing intricate graphics work. Since switching to Macs I have pretty much used the Mighty Mouse for this kind of work. Most of the time I will be using three quarters of the desk to draw around an object on the screen. If I’m using the lasso tool then there’s no way I can lift off the left click to reposition the mouse - I simply have to keep going, even having to move my pot of pens so I can scroll across! I have been doing this over the past few weeks but have realised enough is enough. Let’s make life easier.

So after much looking, today I went for the Wacom Bamboo Graphics Tablet. This will give me far greater control and precision than I get currently with my mouse. The first ten minutes or so using the pen was very strange - it felt quite unnatural. But, after a while it started to feel second nature and I have been using it for the past hour or so. Whether I will use the pen to replace my mouse completely is something I just can’t say right now - I’ll give myself a little while longer with it.

One of the first things I did after setting things up was to open up Pixelmator and draw around an object on a photo to see how the lasso tool felt with the pen compared to the mouse. Big thumbs up there. Drawing and painting around objects also feels natural and I’m quite able to do this on a small A6 size pad instead of using half my physical desk! Yesterday, prior to buying the graphics tablet, I drew around an object in a photo with my mouse and had to keep going over certain areas with the lasso tool to touch up the bits I missed. The look I was going for was this…

A few people have asked how I did this. It was created in Pixelmator by simply drawing around the fire engine with the lasso tool then going to Edit > Inverse, then Image > Desaturate. Done Must admit I am quite pleased with this as it’s the first time I’ve done it…and the red looks even more vibrant against the black and white background.

Apart from the Wacom Bamboo graphics tablet being very functional, it looks great aswell - even the unboxing was pleasant with quite a nice design and layout! There’s only one other company that puts as much thought into the packaging as they do the hardware itself…wonder who that could be… The tablet itself is a lovely classy black with blue lights on the express keys and a touch ring which enables you to zoom in and out of an image. I’m really looking forward to getting to grips with this in future for graphics work, touching up photos or even simply signing my name…

Last June I received an invite to try out Skitch by Plasq. It wasn’t long before I was hooked on it, randomly creating sketches such as this one…

There’s a bunch more here.

Because I’ve been playing with this for a while I’ve wrongly assumed that everyone on the tubes already knows about this fantastic app. Skitch is now public beta (Mac) so you can grab a download without an invite, here. So, what does it do? This from the Skitch site…

• Snap a website
• Capture a chat moment
• Screenshot an application
• iSight snap your bad hair day
• Quickly sketch an idea
• Tap into your iPhoto Library
• Re-open images from your Skitch History
• Annotate with circles and gorgeous arrows
• Add text that always stands out
• Scribble and jot… it’s automatically smoothed
• Re-size and crop by simply dragging a corner
• Drag the file to wherever you like, no need to save
• Return to what you were doing — in seconds — not minutes!

You can also upload your creations in one-click via the Skitch interface so you can put it directly on Skitch.com, Flickr, .Mac account or your own webspace. If all that wasn’t enough you can now post your creations to Twitter via your Skitch.com page *and* e-mail pictures via your iPhone, Blackberry, Gmail, Hotmail, Apple Mail, Outlook, Entourage and more, using MailDrop.

Another of Plasq’s creations that I am currently using with a 30-day trial is Comic Life. This is available for Mac and PC. It’s a very cool app to quickly create comic strips, picture albums and basically as much as your imagination will let you. You can check out this little creation of mine. I think it’s likely I will purchase it after the trial as I can think of many occasions that this will be very useful.

One of my most favourite things to do on Flickr is to be nosey and look around some of the great home offices and set-ups that people post in JustSetups. I just love the whole uniqueness of people’s workspace - their wall colour, desk position and of course all the things they surround themselves with. I like to see the really minimal set-ups aswell as the ones which draw your eyes to lots of interesting things. Every time I take a photo of my home office, which my followers will probably say is very often, I make sure I add it to JustSetups aswell as a few other ones out there.

For me my home office surroundings is very important - it needs to be as this is where I earn my living. One of the main reasons I bought an iMac rather than a portable Apple notebook as my main machine was the fact that I wouldn’t be straying very far from my office when being my most creative. I have tried working and concentrating in other rooms in the house, but getting comfortable and avoiding distractions has been difficult. The home office is my little cocoon where I can shut myself away, be noisy with music and get on with work. And it’s always nice to be able to close the door on the room when I’ve had enough. I have a PowerBook now and it’s always quite tempting to drag that off to bed with me for a final late-night web lurk, but I try not to do that too often.

I came across a site a few weeks ago that posts photos of famous company offices. I was particularly impressed with the Twitter HQ. And here’s an updated shot. Look at all those sexy Macs under one roof I always thought they’d have a pretty cool set-up as they’re a pretty cool company, but I found it really inspirational. As soon as I saw that it made me want to overhaul my workspace. We have a spare room slash guest room which is much larger than the room I use as my office. It’s about double the size, perhaps even larger. I was really in the mood to swap rooms as long as the double bed in there could fit in this room. I did some measuring up and it would *just* fit. I was working out some plans and decor such as painting the walls ‘milky coffee’, thinking about a really cool circular desk in the middle of the floor with my two iMac’s and PowerBook on. Then have some nice IKEA shelving around the place and there’d still be ample room for a little bright pink or green sofa for people to chill on.

My interior design brain was in full force until I spent a little time wandering into the guest room to do some measuring up. It just didn’t feel right. It’s located on the same side of the house as my home office, but the sun doesn’t seem to shine so bright in there (oddly, I know) meaning it’s pretty damn cold…and I would miss being closer to this view. The Japanese Cherry Blossom tree always blooms in mid-April for a few weeks and it’s lovely to see from the office window. I tried to imagine what the room would be like when it’s all decorated but I just couldn’t…which is quite unusual for me. So, I’ve decided to stay put for now. It’s nice and cosy in here - plenty of room for me to do what I want. I’m creative in here and apart from the bedroom this is probably the only other room in the house that I spend more time in, so it must be doing something right.

Are you particular about where you do your work, if working from home? Does your surroundings play a part in your productiveness?