http://alistapart.com/articles/survey2009

First and foremost, Refresh is a social group. No matter what you do for a living, it’s good to know people who do the same line of work. That type of interaction not only keeps people motivated, but it helps those people stay current with trends and best-practices. We plan to meet once a month to do just that.

Our hope is that Refresh will also become an educational hub. Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus in Germany “to create a new guild of craftsmen”. I believe we have an opportunity to do the same thing here in the South Carolina Midlands. Because the Web is a constantly evolving organism, there is often a gap between what is taught in universities and the skill-set required to excel in this field. By gathering local professionals to give presentations and share their expertise, we can all grow more knowledgeable and fill that educational gap.

Are you with me? Head over to the new Refresh Columbia website and let us know. We’re currently trying to gauge the initial interest and decide when and where to meet each month. For those of you who aren’t in South Carolina, I encourage you to check the Refreshing Cities website to see if there’s a refresh group where you live. If not, maybe you can get one started.

• Sam Brown announced that Sidepath is now FREE!
• Andy Budd began a not-to-be-missed series on Design Artefacts
• Rob Goodlatte and Dan Romero released their creative Twitter app: Strawpoll

Of course, there was a lot of other great posts, podcasts and articles this week, but in trying to keep away from the M$ bashing and ensuing flame-wars, I found a few good laughs in the recent Photo Basement post: 41 Hilarious Science Fair Experiments. As I scrolled, laughed, pointed, scrolled and laughed again, I couldn’t help but think how similarly nerdy and awkward I was myself at that age and remembered a particular science fair project I did back in my junior high days.

The title of my experiment was What are the odds of extracting a blue M&M from a “Fun Size” bag of M&Ms? I originally wanted to do a project about BBS games, but this was a much hotter topic in 1995 as the blue M&M had just been introduced. Somehow, my piddly, bean counting project won the 1st place prize in the math category; this could be because there were only 3 math experiments that year. It was also very well received by my classmates; mostly because I let them eat the candies they helped me count. And of course it was ground-breaking statistical research! While I never published a paper on my findings, I remember that there were way more brown M&Ms than any other color, and I managed to find this flattering image in an old box of photos.

A few interesting things to note in the photo above.

• It took longer to staple all those empty bags to my board than it did to plug my numbers into Excel.
• I designed that masthead for the “School Zone” section of our local newspaper as part of a design competition the previous year.
• Yes, that’s a genuine Ironman Triathalon watch on my arm there.
• See the check on the ribbon? I apparently won some money for getting 1st place. I’m not sure, but I probably used that extra moola to buy a hackey sack or some sweet Airwalks.
• Über. Nerd.

So, there. I’ve shared with you a little glimpse into my childhood. Does anybody else have any embarrassing childhood pictures to post?

After listening to part of the show, Ames jokingly said “You sound so serious.” Despite my austere demeanor, I had a great time geeking up the air waves with my thoughts on layout, color, texture, typography, and imagery. The entire interview was really just a quick rundown of the key points in each chapter of the book, but it gave me an opportunity to bring up some resources and trends that have developed since the book came out.

Toward the end of the interview, Paul said
The Principles of Beautiful Web Design is:

…a perfect book for a lot people that listen to this show if you are starting out in any form of design and don’t come from a design background.

I’m always happy to hear positive feedback like that about the book, especially from people like Paul who do so much to keep the masses up to date on the latest resources and trends in the industry.

Be sure to check out the show.

I don’t check my feeds on Tuesdays?

When I thought about this for a second, I realized that this really is an accurate graph of my average week. I come in on Monday feeling detached, so I tend to catch up on everyones blogs and get reacquainted with my current projects, but I never feel like I’ve gotten enough work done on Monday. This usually leads to a self-imposed sense of urgency by the end of the day Monday, which in turn leads to a distractionless, work-focused Tuesday. By Wednesday I’m feeling confident that I can meet all of the necessary deadlines and try to catch back up with the outside world. Thursday brings the realization that I overcompensated on Wednesday so I buckle back down and get a reasonable amount of work done while still taking enough personal time to stay connected. In an ideal world, every day would go like Thursday. It’s the perfect balance between productivity and social awareness…but then comes Friday. Friday tends to be the day everybody want to go out for lunch, or walk to Starbucks, or hang out talking about weekend plans. It’s a fun day in the office, but somehow I manage to read just as many feeds on Friday as I do on Monday. You can just imagine what that does for my productivity.

So what about you? If you use Google Reader, what does your trends screen say about your average week. Discover any interesting patterns? ]]> http://jasongraphix.com/journal/google-reader-confessions/feed/ 3 http://jasongraphix.com/journal/textmate-is-no-longer-evil/ http://jasongraphix.com/journal/textmate-is-no-longer-evil/#comments Thu, 02 Nov 2006 16:18:07 +0000 Jason Beaird http://beta.jasongraphix.com/journal/textmate-is-no-longer-evil/ Even if you’re not on a Mac and therefore don’t use TextMate, you probably read about its little Halloween theme on other blogs and saw examples of it in flickr. I noticed the festive Jack-O-Lantern icon after the software update on October 30th, but it wasn’t until I opened a folder of files on the 31st that I noticed the cobwebs. I thought it was a fun little way to celebrate what I see as a harmless, American, pop-culture holiday.

While it was fun on Halloween, yesterday I was ready to get my familiar purple icon back and headed over to the Macromates blog to find out when that would happen. It was fun reading the comments about the Halloween theme but there were some mixed opinions about it. Apparently some people were really upset:

“…I found this offensive and promptly removed the theme. Please understand I do not think it is offensive because I am some fanatical weirdo. But the roots of Halloween are in animal and human sacrifices as well as rape in the name if Satan. This is not just something that happened hundreds of years ago, this happens today in abundance; in the U.S. Canada and UK. If you don’t believe me ask a Satanist or wiccan or do your own research. Many religions have an issue with the practice of Halloween including Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Even many Atheists don’t like it because of the animal and human damage done every year in relation to this event. That said, it really wasn’t the above reasons that offended me most but it was the fact that it was just assumed that I accepted this holiday and wouldn’t get offended. I am sure you wouldn’t have a Chanukah or Nativity theme so you wouldn’t offend people. The Islamic holiday Ramadan happened recently but I never noticed TextMate having a green theme with a crescent moon. How disappointing.”

After reading through the comment thread I decided that I’d just be patient and wait for the next software update. I really didn’t want to get involved there. Well, this morning the update finally came. Here is the applicable lines from the release notes:

[2006-11-02: REVISION 1324]
[REMOVED] TextMate no longer pays tribute to human sacrifices, rape, nor does it show a picture of the God of the deaths in your dock — ticket 945BEB5D

That made me laugh. While I think the folks at Macromates stepped on a few toes when they decided to force a somewhat taboo holiday on their supporters, I think they handled the criticism wisely. What do you think? Should internationally popular websites and software applications try to do things like this to entertain people, or should they be emotionless and humor free?

I’ve blurred out the phone number, but if anybody is actually interested in purchasing this monster, lemme know and I’ll send you the number. Please don’t contact me about this. It sold shortly after I posted this back in 2006…

…and from the back. Being a Christian myself, I personally thought the Jesus fish and Skull hitch cover was, umm, classy.

This is the code I signed up under when I switched to dreamhost last July that gave me my first year of their L1 (Crazy Domain Insane) plan for only $.77/month. That amounts to one year of hosting and a domain registration/transfer for only $9.24. I figured that was only a one time deal, but I checked it out, and apparently they’ve re-activated it:

All you have to do is:

• Go to the signup page.
• Click the “L1: Crazy Domain Insane (20GB disk, 1TB bw, $9.95/month)” radio button.
• Click the Automatically bill me “once a year. (No set up fee!)” radio button. (You can change this preference from your account once you’re signed up.)
• Choose your domain option and fill out your info.
• Enter 777 in the “Promo Code or email of who referred you” box.
• Check the I agree to Dreamhost’s TOS and Anti-Spam policies checkbox.
• Click “Continue to secure payment…”

As I’ve said before, I’m very happy with dreamhost as my hosting provider. Although their referral program is great incentive to send people their way, I recommend them regardless. You just can’t beat their price and feature set…and at only $9.24 for a whole year, you might as well do it just to register a silly domain like monkeysmakemehappy.com. Did I mention they have ruby on rails installed? Perhaps monkeysmakemehappy.com would be an app to keep track of all my imaginary monkey friends…or not – they like to roam free.

New Camera: Casio EX-Z750

After much deliberation and in-store camera testing, Ames and I decided on and ordered a Casio EX-Z750. Finally, our picture taking withdrawal is over and we have a replacement for our old and busted Kodak CX4300.

New Website: amesnjas.com

I had been thinking and talking about redesigning amesnjas.com for some time now, but after breaking the fragile home-brew php/mysql content management app the site was running on, I had no choice. It took quite a few late nights and some serious php/mysql tomfoolery, but the site is looking and functioning better than ever.