There is an old story I tell to describe a common engineering project that goes wrong. The Setup A customer wanted us to build a content management system for them. They insisted we use Linux/Perl instead of Windows/Cold Fusion. We had never used Linux/Perl before, but one of our employees said, “I can do it,…
Liquid Canvas is the closest thing I have seen yet to my dream of a SuperDiv. The SuperDiv is a DIV that I can apply styles like: Rounded Corners Shadows/Glows Fades Transparencies Of course, there are details on each on of those. The Liquid Canvas demo is really good. I am going to download it…
I love when things are designed well. Recently, I had my teeth cleaned. I don’t go to the dentist enough, but when I do, I usually get all serious about my teeth for a few months. I was in the drug store looking for floss and spent about 10 minutes staring at the selection. It…
I had never heard of Tilt-Shift Photography before. This smashing magazine article on it is fascinating. It’s all optical illusions using focus/blur. I love it. Check out the time-lapse stuff at the bottom. It blows my mind. How awesome is it that you can trick the mind with just some fancy equipment? I love how…
I don’t have the opportunity to use plugins as much as I would like. Today, I stumbled upon one that I think has excellent UX. It is the jQuery LightBox. Keyboard shortcuts, nice fade transitions, great usability for next/back and pleasant titles. If I were using a lightbox plugin, I think this is the one…
I just finished reading the very short (100 pages) book called Don’t think of an Elephant by George Lakoff. I thought it was excellent and highly recomend it. I want to try it out. Proposition 8 passed in California, unfortunately. It banned Marriage for Gay/Lesbian couples. It defined marriage as a union between a man…
Remember in Back to the Future when Doc fed his car garbage and it turned it into energy? It was called Mr. Fusion. I thought, “What a great idea! Trun garbage into energy!” Well, they were pretty smart, I guess. Today I heard news about a laser at Lawrence Livermore Labs that can create unlimited…
This one is inspired from a picture I saw with a shadow on the bottom. The shadow doesn’t go all the way up, so I don’t have to worry about repeating background images. It was a little bit of a pain but it worked out in the end. I should probably swap the PNG files…
Hmm, I seemed to have broken my wordpress editor. It started with me trying to install the plugin to make the comments allow rich text editing. This threw an error about some lang function not being there. The forums weren’t that helpful, but one said to upgrade TinyMCE. So I gave that a try. Well,…
The sandbox is pretty easy to work with. I haven’t checked it in IE6, but things seem to be going smoothly. I decided a “cloud” motif. The truth is, I am not much of a graphic designer. I know what looks good, but I can’t produce my own stuff very easily. Clouds allow me to…
I actually just broke my wordpress with some theme that went haywire. Well, I guess it’s about time I made my own theme anyway. I am starting with the sandbox. I will be editing and upgrading this theme over time. First thing is clearly jQuery. Let’s get that bad boy in their right now.
I just upgraded to WordPress 2.7 beta 2. It was confusing at first because I had a plagin that hid the tree on the left. It’s an interesting upgrade so far. Some things seem better for me, and some things just rub me the wrong way. It’s just a beta, so I am not terribly…
Yay for Barack Obama! The first Hawaian in the White House. I am extremely pleased. Did you know I predicted Biden would go for president in 2008. I predicted it in 2004!!! Who is the man?! Yet, lots of other things did not go so well. That horrible woman Bachmann won who said that Obama…
Last year, I complained about too many California propositions and initiatives. Clearly, no one was paying any attention. There are a dozen new initiatives tomorrow. The answer to most of them is “I don’t know!” How am I supposed to know if the legislation will work? So this year, I am making a stand and…