Archive for May, 2004

Vacation Preparation Step #1: Digital Music

Monday, May 31st, 2004

I thought computers were going to save us time and that digital music held the promise that we could bring our collections with us anywhere. How come I waste so much time sitting in front of my computer playing with digital music. (And who would have ever thought that you could play with music?)

Via k10k.net, but it doesn’t suck

Monday, May 31st, 2004

This site is beautiful, and even though I found it via k10k.net, it does not contain any of the following:

  • Text so small that it would be hard to read even if it wasn’t put on a non-contrasting background.
  • Iframes, iframes, iframes!
  • Pixel art.
  • A freakish attachment to the use of pixelated fonts.
  • Unintuitive navigation icons.

Disclaimer: Yes, k10k contains all of these. Yes, I think k10k sucks. Big time. (There, I said it. Whew!) And yes, I know Scrivs has told us not to bust on the designs of web sites (only the content is open for opinion, apparently) in public.

k10k just deserves it too much. I’ve seen way too many people gush over and link to (but only to the home page) the unusable, unreadable, unbookmarkable, cacophony of iframes that somehow has been passed off to the world as the pinnacle of web design. Honestly, k10k is a case study waiting to happen.

I’m not maintaining that the designers behind k10k are talentless. Certainly, they have more design skills than this techie. Please don’t think I am maintaining I have more skillz than they. I’m sure their billz are much better paid than mine.

They just didn’t really turn it on for their own site. In fact, I think they must have designed the site during lent, having given up sound judgment. Moreover, they undoubtedly have an eye for great design. How else would I have been blessed with the five minutes I spent at the Arne Maynard Garden site?

Update: Sorry, Paul. I didn’t mean to add to your frustration on the issue of critiques of web design. Indeed, I liked and agreed with what you had to say, and admittedly took your words out of context to make an exciting link. :-) I, too, blame my lack of communication skills and the impossibilities of getting sarcasm across in writing. These blogs can be dangerous things in the hands of us amateurs, huh?

I am, I am, I am SpammerMan!

Monday, May 31st, 2004

Look no further! I’ve found both your new CMO and Head Copywriter! See how he knows to use spam to get the word out AND has the the skills to wield powerful similes in order drive it home. With “super-class” work, you can’t go wrong!

Don’t forget to “press” on his links if you want to contact him.

Why not?!

Why not have an animated live logo, which like a magnet will attract the eyes of your website’s visitors? A logo which will directly express the the nature of your business.

No matter what your tastes, marketing goals, budget, and deadlines are - our talented and experienced design team will assist you to create a special visual identity for your company. We write screenplays, design custom artwork, create special visual and sound effects, mix and create the music.

We make super-class animated flash logos!

http://www.akuz.org/9567.asp

Check out samples of our work.

Best regards,
Jack Bruston
http://www.akuz.org/9567.asp

_____________________________________________________
Press here to remove your address from this list: http://www.akuz.org/out.html
_____________________________________________________

Erickson Barnett Publications

Tuesday, May 25th, 2004

I am testing out a new way of linking to pop-ups and how this affects getting these popped-up pages listed/indexed in Google. The test page is the Erickson Barnett Publications page. We’ll see what happens.

Dead Phish

Tuesday, May 25th, 2004

Last Friday night, I got together with Mike, Page and Fish to talk openly about the strong feelings I’ve been having that Phish has run its course and that we should end it now while it’s still on a high note. Once we started talking, it quickly became apparent that the other guys’ feelings, while not all the same as mine, were similar in many ways — most importantly, that we all love and respect Phish and the Phish audience far too much to stand by and allow it to drag on beyond the point of vibrancy and health. We don’t want to become caricatures of ourselves, or worse yet, a nostalgia act. By the end of the meeting, we realized that after almost twenty-one years together we were faced with the opportunity to graciously step away in unison, as a group, united in our friendship and our feelings of gratitude.

So Coventry will be the final Phish show. We are proud and thrilled that it will be in our home state of Vermont. We’re also excited for the June and August shows, our last tour together. For the sake of clarity, I should say that this is not like the hiatus, which was our last attempt to revitalize ourselves. We’re done. It’s been an amazing and incredible journey. We thank you all for the love and support that you’ve shown us.

— Trey Anastasio

Holy fucking shit!

Happy Birthday, Daniela

Thursday, May 20th, 2004

Happy thirty-frphreth birthday to my beautiful bride.

Sorry for not calling first thing this morning.

Sma.

Why I love Comcast

Thursday, May 20th, 2004

Let me tell you why I love Comcast, because I know you were all clamoring to know.

Sometime last night our cable TV went out completely. Nothing but static.

No fear. I called Comcast, and after some brief troubleshooting, I had an appointment with a technician for 9-11am the next morning. My guy showed up at just before 10am and my cable was back up and running less than an hour later.

The last time my DSL went out it took me two weeks to get it going again.

Shudder.

Why I love DSL

Thursday, May 20th, 2004

Let me tell you why I love having DSL as opposed to cable, since I know you were all clamoring to know.

Sometime last night our cable TV went out completely. Nothing but static.

No fear. I popped into my office and surfed the web for my news and entertainment.

If I was on cable internet, I’d be forced to read a book or something equally banal.

Shudder.

Just the facts for the folks at Six Apart

Wednesday, May 19th, 2004

Q: How do you use MT 3?

A: One blog. One author. Completely personal. The free version suits me just fine. Thank you.

Blogger region?

Wednesday, May 19th, 2004

Couldn’t figure out how to get comment registration working since I upgraded from Moveable Type 2.64 to the fancynew 3.0 release (still can’t, by the way). So, figuring TypePad would be using the latest version of the MT software (which is inaccurate, as they use entirely separate systems, I think), I went over there to check out some blogs that had comment registration enabled.

My mouse wound up over a link to “Buttermilk and Molasses,” so I clicked over to the site. As coincidence would have it, the author was from Richmond, Virginia, my hometown.

That’s incredible.

The likelihood of a person happening upon a blog written by someone from their hometown has to be remarkably small. In fact, if there are an estimated 10 billion web sites on the internet, it’s likely you would be underestimating the odds with the phrase “one in a million.”

Hi, Richmond. Fancy meetin’ you here.

Erickson Barnett hires new Art Director, Dave Kammerdeiner

Tuesday, May 18th, 2004

The marketing agency who generously hired me almost six years ago, Erickson Barnett, recently hired a new Art Director, Dave Kammerdeiner, to head up our creative department.

I can’t wait to see what the creative team pumps out with this new burst of talent.

Farewell, Grandma

Tuesday, May 11th, 2004

We buried my grandmother in Arlington National Cemetery today. Somewhat anti-climactic, to be honest.

It was filmed by a crew from National Geographic doing a piece on the cemetery. It will air the day before Veteran’s Day on PBS. Check your local listings.

Farewell, Grandma. I love you.

Baseball sucks

Tuesday, May 11th, 2004

ESPN.com really needs to include an “I don’t give a damn” option on all their polls, especially baseball-related ones.

espn_poll.gif

Blogger.com gets CSS-ified

Monday, May 10th, 2004

Figured it would be on-topic to post that blogger.com has gone the way of standards and pure CSS - and with the help of Doug Bowman and Adaptive Path no less.

The look is great (although I can’t dig on the physics-challenging double drop shadows either, Kottke). The code is clean (but formatted horribly). And the page even has a “big banana” ala Seth Godin (sort of).

Nice work, despite the parentheses.