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This year's minnebar (or Barcamp Minnesota) is going to be great. In addition to a session from your's truly about doing more with small teams and a panel discussion about the practice of "design coding" or designers who also do their own CSS/XHTML and sometimes more, there will be a greater emphasis on design and creative tech at this year's event. I want to make a concerted effort to get more people who are on the visually creative side of things into the mix. If you are one of them and want to present, lead a session, or just come and participate, please sign up on the wiki site for this outstanding free (un)conference.
Who: You! Everyone is welcome, and the event is free. Add your name to the list below.
When: Saturday May 10th, 2008 starting at 8:30am. Registration begins at 8:00 please come early.
Where: Coffman Union at the University of Minnesota Campus (Minneapolis)
Address 300 Washington Ave. S.E. Minneapolis, MN 55455-0110
Parking: There is metered and street parking around and also several large ramps.
Also, its not too late to whip out a t-shirt design for the event (but it almost is). Download a zip file with the Illustrator template. Just send it my way.
I could spend a lot of time trying to figure out what songs are being referenced by the charts at the Song Chart Flickr group pool. Now so can you. The image at right is my simple submission. Some are much harder to figure out. Most are much more clever.
Mark Coleran has the type of job designers dream about. He designs those futuristic, highly implausible interfaces for computers in movies.
MinneDemo is upon us again - this Thursday night at O'Gara's! Come check out the latest in software craziness from local designers and developers and enjoy some food and a few beers compliments of our great sponsors: Electric Pulp, ipHouse, Kinetic Data, New Counsel, and Split Rock Partners. Don't forget to RSVP. All the Refactr guys will be there, too. Ask Scott about robots.
Part of me is disturbed by this* and part of me thinks it is just about the coolest thing I have seen**.
* Should we really be able to so easily change the data of a photo?
** Hell. yes!
[via swissmiss]
There are plenty of iPhone reviews out there. This is not another. This post is just an observation as to why the iPhone is so different and inspires such goodwill from those who use it. It is simple really, but Apple has taken tasks that on most (all?) other phones are cumbersome, non-intuitive, and often just plain crappy and made them a joy. I am not really over stating this, the iPhone is really fun to use. Browsing the web is not reminiscent of the "real" real web, it IS the real web (ok a web without Flash - for now). Google maps works just like Google maps should. Email is great, not some crippled version, and the phone, despite what some have said, is very nice too. Almost all the interfaces are easy to use and it is easy to know where to go and what to do to make things happen. My previous Windows Mobile phone and my Palm PDA phone before that, took a while to master and it was only because I learned their backwards way of doing things was I able to manage on those devices.
This should serve as yet another lesson from Apple that design matters. Make interfaces (both physical and virtual) that are fun and intuitive and people will enjoy using them and tell their friends.
A couple other observations - No wonder there is a 10% restocking fee if you return an iPhone. With the amount of plastic they use - wrapping everything multiple times in their way. It would take a while to wrap all that stuff back up, I imagine. And what is up with the industrial glue used on the bags they put the phones in when you buy them. Not sure if it is the same at Apple stores but at the at&t store the clerk put the phone in this bag and then pulled away a strip between the two insides and the bag sealed up tight - had to use keys to rip a hole in the bag to open it. When we asked him about it, he said Apple was making them do that. Think different, I guess.
By our count nearly 350 geeks and "geeks at heart" converged on the Railroader building in downtown Saint Paul this past Saturday and I think most everyone has been very positive about the result. I believe that number (or any number over 300) would make minnēbar the largest barcamp outside of India (Barcamp Bangalore 3 - just a couple weeks ago - drew over 500 people!). I know that barcamps are supposed to be about local community and ours was no exception, but it was still nice (and a little amazing) that we had quite a few people drive or fly in from New York (at least 2), South Dakota (at least 2), Wisconsin (6 or more), and Chicago (at least 1). Knowing that this event is worth someone's Saturday is one things, but also worth a six hour drive, or several hundred dollar plane ticket? That is awesome.
I am very happy with the way the event turned out. I think the sessions, by and large, were first-rate. The special guests such as William Gurstelle and his excitement for making things that go Whoosh, Boom, Splat as well as the Scout Robots from the University of Minnesota gave a nice real-life tech component to the day. Of course David Heinemeier Hansson was a highlight as he was his usual witty and charming self. I have had lunch with him before (at Etech last year) and have seen him present, but he seemed even better in this setting. All his answers came very freely and he didn't really seem to struggle with any of the questions. I am sure he had been asked about such things time and time again. Even so, I thought Jamie Thingelstad did a very good job with his side of the interview, as well.
I was very worried that the size of the crowds would really take away from the intimacy and sense of participation that is crucial to barcamps, but I don't think these fears turned out to be warranted. Plenty of people talked between sessions or headed off to an "ad hoc session room" to discuss this or that and the sessions (with a few exceptions) never got too full. I still believe that the 50 minute session length is good. It is not so much that it can get too detailed so people really have to know their stuff. I spoke with Shourya Sarcar, one of the planners of barcamp Bangalore, and he said that one of the differences between the Minnesota and Bangalore barcamps was that their sessions are 30 minutes and that they "vote with their feet" meaning they leave a session if it is no good, or not what they had hoped. Minnesota "nice" retards that practice a bit, but there was still some wandering between sessions.
Continue reading "minnēbar remembered"With a lot of help from Dan Grigsby I finally have the venue for minnēbar ‘07 nailed down. The site is downtown Saint Paul in the Lowertown area. The "Railroader Building" as it is called is the site of the event - actually a vacant, 2-level office space that will pretty much let us have our way with it.
I am very excited, for this year's event (its on the 21st of April) and is the all-day variety of the (now) year long series of (un)events. For those of you who were not there last May, minnēbar is Minnesota's very own Barcamp and is free to anyone who is interested in participating in discussions about the web, technology, design, etc.
Add your name to the wiki to participate (you get food, drink, and a shirt too!).
The Java Developer's Journal has published the results of it's end-of-year poll of various Internet technology players which makes for some good reading. Here are a couple I found interesting:
Jason Bell, Editorial Board Member, Java Developer's Journal:
Incremental mainstream adoption of Ruby on Rails It's going to happen, isn't it? Keep an eye out for Sun's offering of JRuby. Whether this is the death of other open source scripting languages like Groovy remains to be seen. Ruby has been a wake-up call and has now drawn the line dividing serious scripting languages from "hobby" languages (ones that wouldn't see enterprise adoption). For me, my job just got a whole lot easier, a whole lot quicker.
David Heinemeier Hansson, Creator of (Ruby on) Rails:
2007 will be the year where LAMPers finally decide to stop being neutral about the WS-* mess and pick the side of REST: the next wave of Web APIs will stop supplying both a SOAP and REST API and just go with the latter.
Gary Cornell, Founder & Publisher, Apress:
-IE 7 will have a fast adoption curve and so Firefox will cease gaining market share.
-The AJAX bandwagon will gain even more speed.
-Ruby's momentum will slow down as Python and PHP frameworks to combat Rails grow in popularity.
-The open-sourcing of Java will have no effect whatsoever on Java's slow decline in favor of dynamic languages (Ruby, Python) and C#.
-Apple will no longer gain market share for its desktops and will stabilize at its current meaningless level.
-Ultra lightweight notebooks based on flash memory with instant on/off will start coming out in large numbers.
I agree that so-called dynamic languages and frameworks will make big gains in '07 but feel pretty optimistic about the prospects for non Ruby on Rails flavors too. Groovy and Grails is primed to be pretty big and while I don't think it will overtake RoR in the next year, there are significant advantages that make the prospects for Groovy and its framework Grails to become very mainstream, look very good.
From a press release on the new book: The Definitive Guide to Grails:
Ruby on Rails is hot, but it seems that more recent noise from the Java community has been focused on Groovy and its framework, Grails. Taking inspiration from innovative frameworks like Ruby on Rails, or the likes of Django or TurboGears, Grails makes simple things simpler, harder things possible, and brings back the fun of creating web applications. Continuing to affirm the hype, Guillaume Laforge and Dierk König, remark "Grails definitely has an ambitious name for being the Holy Grail all application developers have sought so far. But more than a mere ambition, Grails fulfills its promises by letting you be more productive than you could have ever thought possible."The Grails Framework is an open source, lightweight, agile Web development framework that leverages Groovy, an open source, lightweight, agile and dynamic Java-based scripting language, and complements Java web development. Grails is the ideal framework for developing in the web tier for Java developers and exemplifies the power of the Groovy language and its APIs.
I for one believe that there are too many Java developers out there (their community still dwarfs the next largest one) that are very interested in lightweight frameworks and rapid development but are not too keen on "throwing out" years of experience with the most popular language out here. Groovy in combination with the Grails framework offers the best of both of these worlds and I think people are just waiting for someone to really take up and champion Grails as David Heinemeier Hansson and 37signals have done for Rails.
If you are new to Groovy or Grails, this interview with Groovy project manager Guillaume Laforge is a good primer for learning about Groovy and Grails and where it stands in its current development.
We are just two weeks away from the Twin Cities' best platform for launching a new idea and getting feedback from others in the local web/software development and design communities. Dan and Luke have done a great job in getting these quarterly DemoCamps going. They really serve to build a lot of excitement and solidify the community between the larger MinneBar events.
So get out to the wonderful Acadia Cafe* and interact with some geeks showing off their goods at MinneDemo on Monday December 11th.
* Hats off to Dan and Luke. Great work on getting this venue as it has a cafe area and a nice theater for the demos and will certainly work better than the summer event.
...the website of the same name is actually quite good. I am rather enjoying reading Modern Life is Rubbish. Their Web Typography Cheat Sheet and a rundown on current trends in blog technology and more style are great. and I just like the way the site looks (well except for the huge Google ad in the middle of the page). The site offers some fresh takes on stuff we have been posting about for years with many new insights. Bloody good show, Stuart!
I have to say a few words about the nice but, perhaps misused Hemingway Theme for Wordpress among other blogging applications. The growing popularity of this theme cannot be questioned (there are nearly 440,000 results for "Powered by Hemingway".)
I believe that the layout for individual post pages using this theme is very nice. There is a very good delineation between post, post meta info, and comments while still allowing the comments to flow like a conversation from the original post. The site meta info and additional links at the bottom also works on this page type (assuming that this information doesn't get out of hand). Where this theme tends to break down is its implementation for blog homepages. People can (and have) debate about the merits of fewer or more blog posts per page and I could be persuaded either way depending upon the context and type (and frequency) of the posts, however, what is not argued as often is the convention of having chronological blog posts appearing above and below each other.
In the Hemingway theme homepage template, the most often seen configuration is to have the last 2 posts appear next to each other at the top, with links to earlier posts down below, often mixed in with other content to the point where it is difficult to determine where to go next for more "content". In addition to this shortcoming, the other problem with Hemingway is that, if abused, the footer section at the bottom of each page with "about" text, and recent post listings, becomes unwieldy and ugly. Not to pick on a couple friends but the theme that seems to work so well for post pages, breaks down on home pages as shown to varying degrees.
The designer, Kyle Neath knows this and takes care to only show samples that are neat and clean. Minimal meta data and navigation in these screenshots maintain clarity and make finding what you need in the footer, much easier.
I never like to criticize without suggestions and positive feedback and so here is some:
Nobody has taken me up on the offer of an "Alt Text Prize Pack"* and helped me to fix the dis-play of the accordion menu on the home page among others. I mentioned it in this post. Basically, the post explorer menu, is using part of the Script.acul.us/Prototype javascript library and should work just fine - I just can't figure it out why it isn't. Anyone see anything glaring in my CSS or the source of the page (that last link is Firefox only; IE users should just view source via normal methods) that I should fix?
Also I hope you have noticed less spelling errors lately as I have taken to using the built-in spellcheck that comes with the Google toolbar.
* Contents of the prize pack have not yet been determined but there will at least be an Alt Text t-shirt and a few other things.
This graphicical representation of where U.S. tax monies go is rendered in Flash and available in poster-sized prints. It is very nice and represents a lot of work. The larger the circle on the image, the larger the percentage of the budget is spent on that thing. My only complaint would be that some of the iconography seems to clutter it up and make it difficult to quickly see what you are looking at.
To that end, I really like the simplified view that he has created that addresses this very problem to some extent.
I would be remiss if I didn't post a followup to the successful MinneDemo event put on last week by Luke Francl and Dan Grigsby. Aside from being a victim of that success (the room soon got to be too small for the burgeoning crownd) I think things went off really well and the way has been paved for future demo events to keep the community engaged between the larger MinneBar events (mark your calendars for the 2007 event to be held sometime in April). Here is a followup and here's another followup of MinneDemo and here are some photos from the event.
An old post at Slashdot resurfaced, for whatever reason, and caused quite a stir about how non-compliant (with CSS standards) Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 browser will be. People can split hairs about this or that relating to IE7's standards compliance but when it comes down to it, it either will be or won't be.
In a good conversation with Chris Wilson, Group Program Manager of the Internet Explorer Platform team at Microsoft, Richard MacManus at ZDNet asks some pointed questions about IE7's plans for CSS compliance and gets some honest answers.
The bits about standards compliance versus backward compatibility were interested, and there are suggestions that the IE7 team is prioritizing standards compliance ahead of backwards compatibility. I also thought Wilson's characterization of many (most) of IE's user base as 'non-enthusiast users' was dead on (and funny).
I think backwards compatibility has always been a big challenge for us and certainly today it's a huge challenge. Particularly for IE, as we have a lot of what I'd term 'non-enthusiast users' - my mother is always my canonical example here. And for my mother, if I automatically upgrade her machine [its IE browser] and suddenly one of her sites breaks or looks a little funny, she's going to be upset about that. On the other hand if she were to install an alternative browser, and it looks different in that browser - she could probably understand why that would happen, because it's a completely different product.
More at Chris Wilson's blog.
[Source: Slashdot]
Luke Francl and Dan Grigsby have done a great job in putting together a follow-up event that plays off the success of minnebar and the strength of the Minneapolis / Saint Paul web and software communities. I think that minnedemo will be a huge success and can hopefully be replicated a couple times a year to show of some great work people are doing and to keep the momentum going in between annual minnbar events.
At the minnēbar conference in May I presented a session titled Agile Design (slides) and a great discussion ensued. The talk centered around the concepts and ideas of the Agile Method, but, you guessed it, as it related to information and visual design. I have had a great opportunity in my current role to help to define and evolve our process and practices surrounding software design and development. I love the team I work with and hope to continue breaking new ground with them.
I also wanted to post a bit about some ongoing and upcoming projects I am involved in so you know what I have been up to and what to expect.
First, I am planning to launch a new site with some peers of mine that will be focused on the agile method and particularly how it pertains to the development of "web 2.0" apps. You might think of it as a Signal vs. Noise type blog with less of a marketing spin.
I am also helping to plan OpenBar for the fall of 2006. OpenBar will pick up where minnēbar left off but its entire focus will be on open source software, using open source in your business, and is aimed at developing, enriching, and bringing together Minnesota's large but disjointed open source community.
I also have a Minnesota blog aggregation site brewing slowly, but my decision to write in Ruby and on the Rails framework (as my first foray into such technologies) is retarding my progress. Hopefully, I will post more on this soon.
Lastly, this site is on the verge of another facelift. I really like the new visual design a lot, but am more excited by some of the ways the new site will be organized as well as some of the additional features and content I will be adding. Not sure when this will happen, but I am hoping for a June launch.
The new improvements made to the Flickr UI are great and well worth the wait. When you go, what you won't see are drastic changes to colors or brand, nor should you. What you will see are subtle enhancements (except for maybe the more radical improvement of the Organizr) that shouldn't confuse veteran users too much and should allow for new users to more quickly utilize many of the more powerful features of this great social photo sharing application.
Here is a small set of screenshots and discussion of the changes.
I have put the new Google Calendar app through its paces and like many people, have found many things to like (invite features are looking good. I think evite is in trouble and Skobee is likely DOA) and some to dislike (still very buggy with refreshing itself after certain actions and there are some issues with duplicating entries for the same shared event). The purpose of this post, however, isn't really about those things. It isn't really even about Google Calendar. It is about what's next for Google and the glimpse they have given us within this new application.
It is obvious that they will soon integrate their calendar and mail apps. My thought is, though, that they will not stop there. I think the time is ripe for them to unleash their first version of an integrate office style suite containing search, mail, calendaring, and word processing. I mocked up some screens as to what I think it may look like when it comes, posted them as a Flickr set and added notes to them as well. Here are some thumbnails:
With 90 participants as of about 5 minutes ago, minnēbar is really gaining momentum. Now I fear the venue will not be able to accommodate this mass of geeks, hipster designers, and open-sourcers all in one place. I think all this pre-conference excitement will really boil over to some great discussions at the conference. I hope everyone can check their "Minnesota Nice" (aka introversion) at the door and really participate.
The idea for a Fall event has already surfaced, this time with a focus on open source and open solutions: OpenBar. I will keep people updated on the event status and will post a review and such after the event. But with less than one month to go, I just hope I don't have to turn anyone away.
Let's find a place that can accommodate 200 next year. Any ideas?
I had the good fortune to accidentally sit down to lunch at a table with David Heinemeier Hansson of 37Signals and lead developer of Ruby on Rails and Rich Kilmer of RubyForge who had begun a discussion of the things you might expect, Ruby, Rails, AJAX, and the like. Then Phil Windley (who has some excellent posts about a couple tutorials here at eTech) and Rohit Khare of CommerceNet Labs added to the mix some discussion of microfomats, JavaScript, and some ideas that definitely push the envelope of what those things have traditionally done such as, mini-ml and some JavScript talk during which I was treading water so it wouldn't go over my head. Finally, fellow Minnesotan, Dan Grigsby of SiteGoFaster infused some more energy into the ruby on rails discussion as it eventually turned to a preview of David Heinemeier Hansson's tutorial about how with Rails 1.1 (coming this weekend?) you can create great AJAX apps without writing a single line of JavaScript.
Just finished up a two day conference in San Diego on Strategic E-HR - yeah that's what I said. It was better than it sounded. Really. I am going to stick around for next week's Emerging Technologies conference from O'Reilly and so I have some time to kill in between. What better way to spend some time than taking photos around town. Check them out at Flickr.
In a move that surely indicates boredom and a disregard for original thought, area blogger, Ben Edwards, blatantly rips off the new CNN International style. The style change could also have been said to have influences from Magnetbox.com and adhesive label tape. News at 11.
Just completing a couple days in Chicago meeting with users of the products I help create. It has been very useful and I have enjoyed my time here, despite being wiped by travel and "glad-handing". I am going to suggest to the “higher-ups” at my company that we hold online product-specific user sessions a couple times a year to solicit direct, actionable (I do have a business degree) feedback that we can use when defining and designing new products and features. Another clear theme I heard was a desire to have software tat is simple. Perhaps 37Signals is on to something; of course they are. Maybe I should look Jason and the boys up while I am in town. Simple, Powerful, Accurate. It may not make for a particularly original idea for developing software products but it is most assuredly what I will be looking for on each screen of future development work.
I must admit that the new design of Alt Text is a bit limiting to me, especially, when considering the way I want to post. I am trying to figure out some ways to get around it, but right now Alt Text just isn't set up for the type of linking to interesting things that I have been doing lately. Of course, I knew this while I was designing and implementing the new design but I thought that I would just expand on a link here and there and turn them into real (single) posts (rather than in bunches). Then a strange thing happened. I wanted to post more often than once per day, introducing yet another drawback of this design...it is harder to browse backwards through entries, as well. I am going to make it easier on the archive pages and so on, but I need to figure out a more global solution, and soon.
Here are some posts I have been holding back on because I wanted to have at least 3-5 for aesthetics:
More to come certainly, but I just wanted to mention the highlight of my SXSW experience was the 2nd discussion "panel" I attended: How to Make Big Things Happen With Small Teams. Basically it was all about the insights Jason Fried of 37signals gained from his experience building products and running a small company. Almost everything he said is directly applicable to the situation at my company with our product development team.
We use the agile method but we have been struggling for ways to really integrate the interface design and concept development into the process. Jason’s insights will help. Now I have to organize my thoughts on this and review his slides (PDF) once again. It figures that the panel I thought was the most helpful was also the one I took the least notes in.
My main take away will be to really attempt to stay away from verbal specifications in favor of visual ones. All too often, as Jason points out, written specifications are only created for the sake of creating them or in an attempt to cover our asses later. Every CEO and Director of Marketing I have ever dealt with doesn’t ever really “get it” until they can click on the links and see the site or product working. Why not start with that?
Recently, I have actually been pushing for a bit more documentation because I currently lack an intimate understanding of how our products are used. I was hoping by fleshing out the system on paper as part of user story creation I would gain this understanding. This has helped some, but it has also slowed our process down to a crawl and the only thing it is really doing is making me less timid to start designs. Maybe I should just jump in and be willing to make mistakes? I am beginning to think an approach that begins with visual design and prototyping with a greater number of revision cycles is the way to go.
To poorly paraphrase Jason:
I hope to continue my evaluation in greater detail soon but for now here are some others' thoughts:
Subtraction review (a bit more in-depth).
Related:
Overall I think the NY Times does a good job on its critique of the Bush and Kerry bumper stickers and branding, however I must take exception to a couple points they make:
1. There is no mention of the idea that by adding the text "A Stronger America" may counter-balance some of the other assertions that the font treatments etc convey a weaker stance.
2. I disagree that the flag represented on the Bush sticker is superior to the Kerry flag. Neither are great but the Bush flag isn't even the real U.S. flag as it distorts the star portion to run the entire height of the flag.
3. Lastly, perhaps I am looking for the Kerry stickers more, but I feel the Kerry stickers with the serif font are easier to read from a distance - an important point unless we want everyone to tailgate in order to read the messages.
The "W" sticker that resembles the travel stickers you see on cars that have been to Europe are particularly effective as they stand out amidst the clutter of regular rectangle bumper stickers. I just need to find me some clear stickers with a red line through them.
Cam has posted an in-depth evolution of his work on the Wes Clark brand identity.
I cannot believe that Northwest Airlines is rebranding themselves (or have been for several month I guess) - complete with a new bullshit logo! I have held up NWA's logo for years as an example of elegant simplicity. It says so much in such a small space; you have the N or W depending upon how you look at it and then the little arrow pointing, as if on a compass, in the North West direction. Beautiful. Now what they currently have is just horrendous.
A comparison:
... I'm just saying that the new G5 looks damn cool. I don't really care about whatever speed Apple boasts about. Apple computers are always going to be slower than my PC 6 months after they release their latest and greatest. But who cares - Apple is about design, and the design of the G5 (especially the inner workings of the case) are so sweet. I want one just for its simple beauty.
I was pretty excited when I saw "User experience differences between Windows and OS X" listed in the remaindered links section on Kottke.org. I am very interested in this topic and in interface design in general so it seemed like a good read. Unfortunately what I found was a generally biased account of the Mac OSX and the Windows 98/2000 (5+ years old) operating systems. Even if it did target Windows XP (which incidentally incorporated many of the advantages the article claims OSX has sole ownership of: clean layouts, high quality color icons, context sensitive toolbars and menu items) the piece was written like one of so many switch ads and not in an objective manner as I was hoping.
Some Requisitioned LinksTM from Kottke.org: Rounded Corners in CSS and Usabilty Myths, Debunked.
While I am on the topic of links and Kottke.org I should commend him in always thinking of the little things that make his site so good to visit. By first creating his "Remaindered Links" list and then moving it over into its own permanent home, Jason has create a slick way to provide much more "content" without the need to comment on each and every link. There are plenty of things I would like to post about or point people to, but I either a) don't have time or b) cannot think of anything that is insightful/hasn't been said before on that topic. These little links and tidbits then tend to just get lost in a seas of draft posts destined to never see the light of page. Kudos Jason - you keep doing the thinking and we'll keep using it.
Probably not, but if benchmark tests such as the ones outlined in The Great Render Race at Adobe.com are any indication, then PCs could be the better machines for designers. (I know this is slightly old news) I am sure many people have noticed the way fast PCs perform better with Photoshop, et. al. but I still felt compelled to present this info in light of all the recent switching going on.
Whatever it is, there is just something about movies. To celebrate movies I thought I would share with you some sites that I particularly enjoy who s focus is the motion picture:
Internet Movie Database
A great resource for anything you would like to know about any movie.
Ain t It Cool News
Rumors and conjecture about all things theatrical.
Projector Booth
A great site I just found where I actually agree with most of the reviews.
Epinions
Tons of reviews on, not only movies, but just about anything.
Mr. Showbiz
Great info about current movies and box office info.
Moviefone
Showtimes and much more. A great site to find where your favorite movie is playing.
BargainFlix
You can t forget a place to buy all the films you love. This site lets you search for the best price on the DVD s you re looking for across many sites.
Aberratum is now Aberro. Its the root of the Latin word aberratum and it is much easier to spell/rememeber. Its got a new purpose, some new features, and new sections too (or coming soon) Browse around. Not much here yet but there soon will be. (doesn't everyone say that?)
I hope you return here often as I will be ranting and raving about the web mostly with some other stuff thrown in, and you will have a chance to rant and rave too in the "rants" section soon to be launched.
I am still building the list of links at the left. There are many sights I want to add that I haven't had time to. If you have any suggestions please let me know.
Thanks for stopping. Enjoy.
New design at redcouch. Now with content! (barely)
I am tired of using 216 colors, and looking at the world through a 600 x 400 pixel box. I am tired of dithering and aliasing, and verdana. I am bored by the "web-culture" out there, and of clients choosing the worst designs.
I am soo over this site and all my sites and all my friends' sites
I am tired of ranting and I know I feel like this every once and a while.
I need something to fall in love with again. I need to work outside of the industry for a while. I need to get time for my own thoughts and ideas to grow and evolve. I need the kick in the ass to really learn the programs I used often. I need inspiration to take that first damn art class.
I need to quit my bitching.
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