I noticed a strange discrepancy between Google Chrome and Safari on my Mac the other day.

As you can see from the screenshots to the right, there is a noticeable shift in the hue of the same logo, on the same website, on the same monitor (My Macbook Air 11"). Chrome is on the left, Safari is the right. (I checked Firefox and it renders colours similar to Safari.)

Apparently, the issue is that Chrome doesn't recognise colour profiles, either monitor profiles or the profiles embedded in the images. The RGB values of the files remain the same, but how they are displayed on the monitor is Chrome's interpretation of the colours.

I had started using Chrome for web design and development recently. This colour issue throws a spanner in the works, as I will always be doubting what I am seeing in my browser. This issue has been reported on the Chromium forums years ago, so I assume we'll never see a fix.

Safari and Firefox render colours (to my eye) almost identically, which is also very close to what I see in Photoshop before saving for the web.

I think I'll be using Safari for the foreseeable future.

I received a nice new 11" Macbook Air a couple of weeks ago, to replace my 15" Macbook Pro. I cannot say enough positive things about the switch. The Air is an amazing piece of computer.

The defining form factor of the machine (aside from the air-thin profile) is the screen size, and just before it arrived I had a pang of anxiety: would the screen be too ridiculously small? Would it be unusable? It arrived and, thankfully, this was not the case.

The 11" screen has a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels and I find this most noticeable in the height- you need to scroll a bit more on websites and in documents. Other than that though, the width is perfect for most uses.The screen also has less glare than the Macbook Pro, meaning that on sunny days I don't have the eyes cut out of my head.

I got the 128gb capacity with 8gb of RAM and it is super quick. Startup is 15 seconds and the whole system seems sharp. I've been using Textmate, Illustrator CS5 and Photoshop CS5, concurrently and without a hassle, for the last couple of weeks.

I think, for me, it's probably the best laptop I've ever owned. I had a couple of 12" iBooks before and I found their size to be really good, but they were a really heavy machine. My 15" Macbook Pro was a decent weight, but physically huge.

The Macbook Air is as light as a feather and has a tiny footprint. If you need a portable computer, I can not recommend it enough.

I love architecture and interior design and I love to see great examples of both. Aside from the many websites that I subscribe to, I also watch a lot of Grand Designs, a Channel 4 programme about unusual house builds.

Five or six years ago, I saw an episode about The Big White House in Sussex. It struck a chord with me because if I was going to design and build a house, it'd be just like this. The episode is currently unavailable online so I pulled some screengrabs of the finished house from the copy of the programme that I have.

It's not necessarily the whole design of the house that appeals to me, more the concept of creating a house which is defined by the contents. Almost like designing a website content-first.

Also- who wouldn't like to live beside the seaside?

I was at Stu Curry's SASS talk at Refresh Dublin tonight. I've been using SASS for a few months now, for the work I'm doing with Storyful, and I find it a really nice addition to CSS.

SASS adds extra functionality to CSS, such as variables, partials (similar to Includes) and other nice stuff. You should really check out this tutorial for more. We use it with a Ruby on Rails app, so I don't have to worry about making it work (although my understanding is that it's quite easy to get going), I just get to use it. Variables are my favourite part, especially for setting colours for use throughout the site. Partials are also very useful too.

Having someone explain the use of something is a lot different to reading a tutorial. I learned quite a few things about SASS and picked up some nice tips which I'll probably start use tomorrow.

Other than the Apple from Cupertino, my favourite apple has to be a Pink Lady. Thankfully, the quest for my preferred apple is made easier by some brilliant branding.

The Pink Lady apple is really a variety of apple called a Cripps Pink, which is a hybrid of a Lady Williams apple and a Golden Delicious apple. According to Wikipedia the Pink Lady is "owned and licensed by the Department of Agriculture and Food, Western Australia (DAFWA), which has Plant Breeders' Rights in multiple countries".

Cultivated by thousands of producers, Pink Lady apples have to meet stringent specifications, before they can carry the Pink Lady brand. Therefore, whenever you go to buy an apple, keep an eye out for the Pink Lady sticker and you can be assured of a delicious apple, that is both tart and crisp.

Although the execution of the logotype is really nice, the real brilliance is in the consistency of the product and branding across the world. It's the Coca-Cola of apples.

Also, if you're a fan of Pink Lady apples, the Jazz Apple is also another excellent apple, of a much more recent splicing.