One of my favorite songs, sung by one of my favorite artists.
Feist, live, “Nothin’ in the World Can Stop Me Worryin’ ‘Bout That Girl” – The Kinks
Archive for January, 2009
Friday Randomness 1/30/2009
Friday, January 30th, 2009It’s a Special Holiday
Monday, January 19th, 2009http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.
It’s not Christmas nor the Fourth of July, but today is pretty important too. Without people with the conviction that Martin Luther King, Jr. had, how good could the world ever be?
Friday Randomness 1/16/2009
Friday, January 16th, 2009Today, I want to share one of my favorite cover songs of all time.
Devo, Satisfaction (I Can’t Get Me No)
But Mommy, I Want the Most Diggs Ever
Thursday, January 15th, 2009I wonder what it would take to get the most diggs, ever.
For those who don’t know, www.digg.com is a social news sharing site, that allows people to “digg” a story. The more diggs, the higher the story ranks, thereby increasing the visibility of it to the world. Well, the world of digg users anyway.
For some, getting digg numbers is like scaling up Mount Everest. The higher they get, the happier they are. For others, they like the interactivity of social sites or for those that write content, the idea of people reading their blog posts or news articles is just plain nice.
So, what would it take to be the most digged (dugg? dugged?) article on digg? Would it be a well-written piece on global warming? Would it be a sensational tabloid-style picture about the latest celebrity caught doing something insane? Would it be an account of something great that happened?
I am really curious to know what the collective unconscious of digg users is. It might also be fun to do a few tests to see what happens with a variety of digg posts. How would people be swayed to digg one story vs. another? How might different tools allow the digg count to grow even more?
For the sake of argument, maybe this article should get the most diggs ever. Ya know, just as a test 
I don’t Love Apple, but I now want an iPhone
Wednesday, January 14th, 2009I don’t love Apple? Sorry, no. I don’t hate them either. I have a very big case of indifference to companies like Apple and Google. Why? Because people “love” them so much that it kind of creeps me out.
My friends and colleagues seem to have what I would consider an infatuation with these companies. It’s like you would catch them making out in a closet at a high school party. I just don’t get it.
“Truth or Dare?”
“Dare!”
“OK, make out with Google in the hall closet”
Sure, Apple makes a great interface. They are forward thinkers and Steve Jobs is great. But they are also a large company seriously embedded in themselves. They don’t open much and I like companies that do. It’s just my prerogative.
Sure, Google makes a great search result. They snap up the brightest of the bright and have a clear vision. But they are also a massively large company that does whatever the heck they want. They gather, hold onto and do what they feel necessary with personal information, copyrighted information and more.
But all of that doesn’t make me hate either one of them. It just means I can’t love them. It’s hard to love a company, especially one who’s main motive is profit. Give me an open source organization, or a charity, or even a huge for-profit company that does not pretend to be saintly, and I can have better than average feelings for them.
For example, I really like Chipotle. I like their stand on cruelty to animals and additives in their food. Today I found out that there is an iPhone application for Chipotle (not in the US yet for all features, but I can dream). This is the teeter point for me to get an iPhone.
When someone asks how I love my Apple iPhone, I will just point to my Chipotle App.
Norma Rae, Eat Your Heart Out. The Web Designers Shall Rise Up!
Tuesday, January 13th, 2009Banding together is tough. What is the common ground that attracts one person to the next professionally? Is it necessary to pull together in order to form a more perfect union of web designers?
I think the answer may be “yes”.
My company works with many other companies, as well as off-the-street clients. We have been through many ups and downs, professionally, financially and have been without focus as a business. As part two of my new years resolution, I am decidedly focused on myself professionally, as well as the direction of my web design agency.
Over the past few years, I have paid close attention to the cost and time associated with creating a good website. I have listened to my peers regarding the use of web standards. I have come to understand that accessibility is essential to developing a website worth a darn.
We develop a number of websites for other web design companies each year, sometimes because they are too busy or more often than not, they need an accessible and web-standard site created. Don’t get me wrong, we love the work. But if every web designer \ web design agency took a stand to create sites that are web standard, accessible and utilize techniques that are good for a site’s long-term growth, then I feel that the world of web design may be a better place.
What if there was an organization that allowed web designers \ developers \ agencies the ability to take an oath of sorts? The oath would be simple - create sites using web-standards, do not exclude those that have impairments and to be fair to our clients.
I know, touchy-feely. At first glance, I would agree. But I feel that we might be able to commit to something in order to be better at what we do and to serve the public. As web professionals, we are in a way public servants (once again, touchy-feely. Don’t hate me.). We don’t shovel snow, dig ditches, fight fires, arrest evil people nor put band-aids on wounds. We do however help disseminate useful information, help businesses grow and allow people to do things from their couches that were never before possible.
In return for this oath, I hope that the members would get something tangible. We need pricing standards (some web designers probably make less than minimum wage if you add up the amount of hours vs. the cost of a site), health-care, vision-care, colleagues to rely upon and whatever else it might end up being.
Just a thought.
My Operating System has Fallen and it Can’t Get Up
Monday, January 12th, 2009This is not an article about Windows vs. Macs. I’ve participated in said debate for over a decade now. It makes my head hurt.
This is an article about making applications that work.
My operating system is broken. I am not going to say which variety it may be, just that it does not work. When I say that it does not work, I mean that it crashes constantly, it reboots randomly and is generally more flaky than a breakfast cereal.
We have come a long way in terms of development skills, interoperability and customer satisfaction. Well, I thought we had anyway.
An OS is nothing more than a very large application, which allows other applications to run inside of it. When the OS fails, the applications that run inside of it are worthless. Being embedded in technology for years, I generally know how to troubleshoot and fix most things on a computer.
From now on, I have decided not to waste time fixing something that should just work.
From now on, if my applications do not work, I will move on. I will find ones that do. This goes for websites, applications, operating systems and anything else that I decide to lump into this category. I don’t mean that every time there is a hiccup, I will jump ship. I want to be practical as well.
Creating an application and website with forward compatibility is possible with good planning, out of the box thinking and a commitment to quality. I need to make sure that the work my web company creates follows this credo as well. We have certainly made less-then-awesome sites when budgets were tight in the past. I feel that we need to move away from these types of projects as they may do more harm than good - if not for the client’s needs, but for my own mental stability.
I Need to Sleep More and be a Jerk Less
Saturday, January 10th, 2009As a web designer, I often work nights. This is to the detriment of everyone around me.
When I say ‘nights’, I mean that I often work another full shift after 8 PM. Honestly, this is insanity. I have inadvertently setup the expectation with my clients that I essentially work 24 hours a day. I will get emails in the middle of the night with to-do’s for the next day. I can wake up after a few hours of sleep and I can have 25 emails that need tending to.
I have never, in my entire life, made a new years resolution. But this year, I have a number of them. The first one on the list is to sleep and start treating my web design agency as a normal business, that works normal hours.
I will always work a bit at night or whenever the creative or developmental juices start flowing. But I will no longer go to sleep at 3 AM, only to wake up at 6 AM. I have slept under twenty hours within seven days recently.
I’ve done this before in my life and I have found it very difficult to stop. Without knowing it, one enters sort of a manic state. The need to keep working is quite intense. It’s almost as if I have become a work-junkie. My wife jokes that I am going crazy - but it is only a half-joke.
My clients will be in for a change, this is for sure. My hope is that I will also be in for a change for the better. I hope that I am nicer to my family and friends. I hope that I can create more practical deadlines and meet them. I hope that everything is more manageable, realistic and most of all - that I am less of a jerk.
Before I get Yelled at…
Friday, January 9th, 2009…yes, I am using an off the shelf theme at the moment. Being a designer, it makes me cringe that I haven’t finished the design yet. But it sure is nice of people to make their themes available! I like this one for now. It’s fun. A new theme - more Keith-friendly will be coming soon. Thx.
Are We Teaching Our Children to Have no Imaginations?
Friday, January 9th, 2009I have a daughter, just about two years old, and I often wonder about everyday things that may impact her future. I don’t mean if she will get a good job or anything of that nature. I hope that who she becomes is someone with an imagination. The world needs creative thinkers. Without outside-the-box thinking, the world will stop moving in the right direction.
I was driving behind a mini-van this morning. In the back seat of their vehicle, an animated kid’s movie was playing. At that point in time, there was a beautiful (although it made for slow travel) snowfall happening. There was plenty to look at outside the window. I remember as a kid, looking out the window during a snowstorm and being entranced at it’s beauty and potential. I could not get outside fast enough to throw a snowball at my brother. I could imaging packing a snowball in my mittens, hiding around the corner of the house and letting it fly at my brother’s head. Not only would he throw one right in my face, he would usually punch me. But it was still great. I can imagine it now like it were yesterday.
But allowing \ forcing kids to be chronically focused on a show that they have seen over and over must be stifling that imagination. Now, there is the argument that an animated show is filled with creativity. That is true. But not allowing the world to enter the lives of our children must be doing harm. Harm in a way that is hard to quantify, but still very real.
If we don’t allow our kids boredom, their minds will never wander. If imagination is not learned at a young age, I don’t think it will ever truly enter one’s life. Being bored, having nothing to do, being stuck inside when it’s raining, etc. are important parts of being creative. Without those moments we are never forced to have tea-parties nor build cities with plastic building blocks.
We are not abusing our children by teaching them to focus on the world. So they might whine or cry a bit at first. So what. We are told that having a TV screen in our back seat is essential to keeping the kids quiet on road trips. Over time, we believe what we are told, and we buy products. This is the cycle of consumerism.
I am all for commerce. We need it to survive. But we need to be focused on the bigger picture. I feel that with each passing day, we get farther away from big-picture ideology, which is so essential to our long-term stability and happiness.