Archives for 2007
Shake Up Your iPhone Snowglobe
Check it out! Justin and Nathan built an iPhone Snowglobe for me. Now anywhere you go, you can shake up a little holiday spirit. Note: this site will not work if you shake up and drop your laptop. Trust me on this.
Understanding LINQ
LINQ is an acronym for Language-Integrated Query and a new feature in v3.5 of the .Net Framework from Microsoft. This new version of Microsoft .Net reached RTM status a couple of weeks ago — this framework is chock full of brilliant things I can use to improve my efficiency and effectiveness on daily tasks here [...]
An Open Letter to the Joker Who Controls the Office Thermostat
Dear Pop Artists, I’m not sure who’s doing it, but I do NOT appreciate your little joke. Turning up the thermostat a few degrees may seem like innocuous ribbing to you, but it’s not. I sit right by the vent, and you know it. Why, I got home last night and had lost 3 inches off [...]
Slushy the Puddle Man
Oh man. This winter weather is getting me down. Nothing but rain. I see kids making puddle angels and having mudball fights just a week before the big holiday, and it wears on me. I’m a snow man! I need sugar-frosted trees, not applesauce in the streets. But after that crazy snow and ice storm last [...]
Dear ClementDesign Mocha Master Coffee Maker
I think you’re a good person, but I can’t be with you. I have to break up. Sure 2007 was a fun year, galloping around the estate with that thick scent of delicious coffee in our hair and eager for the new dawn of a dark roast. We had some good times. The Techni Vorm label [...]
I Am More Than 3 Oz. of Water, and I Vote
As an Arctic-American, I’m used to certain amount of staring when I travel. But I think this last business trip was perhaps the worst it’s ever been. So, you know how at security you’re only allowed 3 oz. of liquid? Right, well, I feel a little nervous while I’m getting the wand (I ALWAYS get the [...]
Ridiculous Winter Fashions
Apparently, non-snowmen need to find ways to stay warm. If you know anyone like this, and hate them but yet feel obligated to get them some sort of back-handed gift, perhaps consider this Beard Cap.
Making a Snowman: A Few Tips from Frosty
Winter’s just around the corner, so it seemed a good time to talk about a few do’s and do not’s when it comes to making a snowman. Three simple steps. That’s all you need. 1: Use good, fresh snow. Can’t you roll your snowman in fresh snow? What’s this? Mud? And what’s stuck to my side [...]
Life After the Mid-Summer Meltdown
Things lately were getting a little tough back in July. My therapist said maybe it was just seasonal affective disorder. All the sun. The heat. The long days and short nights. For three weeks in July, I think it didn’t get below 75 degrees. I worked remotely on my laptop from the freezer for all [...]
The Email Standards Project
In 1998, Jeffrey Zeldman co-founded the Web Standards Project to fight for better support of web standards from the browser manufacturers and web developers. It was a success, if for no other reason than it provided a flag to rally behind. This year, the Email Standards Project was founded to rally support for web standards in [...]
To Microsite or Not to Microsite
I often have calls with potential clients and they say, “We’d like to create a Microsite”. After asking several questions about the purpose it becomes clear that they are really looking for a new section or a few new pages added to the existing website. It seems that microsite has become sort of a meaningless [...]
Pop Art is Hiring
Pop Art is currently hiring for several positions, including an account director, a .NET web developer, and most important to me, a front-end web developer. If you’re interested in any of those positions, feel free to apply. Now, allow me to wax poetic about the front-end developer position for a moment. If you’ve read my manifesto [...]
Good Web Designers are like Good Newspaper Designers
“The experienced web designer, like the talented newspaper art director, accepts that many projects she works on will have headers and columns and footers. Her job is not to whine about emerging commonalities but to use them to create pages that are distinctive, natural, brand-appropriate, subtly memorable, and quietly but unmistakably engaging.” – Jeffrey Zeldman, Understanding [...]
Duplicate Work is a Bug
“You’ll sometimes hear people joke that good programmers are ‘lazy’, and what this means is simply that good programmers tend to see duplicated work as a bug, and try to fix it.” – James Bennett, discussing CSS frameworks
PHP Connection to an MS SQL Server Instance
With no success I spent several hours a couple weeks ago attempting to get PHP 5.2.4 on a Windows Apache web server to talk to an MS SQL 2005 Server that was installed as an instance on a server running an older version of MS SQL. I was able to connect to the default instance [...]
Portland Food Donation Cornucopia
So Fred Meyer’s got this coupon where you get a free, frozen turkey when you buy $100 worth of groceries. And we ALWAYS spend $100 on groceries, especially the weekend before Thanksgiving. But we don’t actually need a turkey, right? Nor do we have room in our tiny freezer. But a free turkey is a free [...]
A Few Dumb Questions
“I’d rather answer a few dumb questions than put up with a few dumb assumptions.” – Aaron Cannon, in reply to a question about whether he tires of people asking him about his blindness
When Stock Art Attacks
This magazine cover is a perfect example of why you should always have someone else review any art decisions you make. There are several things in this illustration that don’t make any sense… The kid on the left, I assume, is supposed to represent current, cutting-edge technology — hence, the Web 2.0 shirt — so why [...]
I Was A Baker
“I was a baker. You can’t just turn up the oven and expect to take the bread out sooner.” – Eric Danielson, NorthTemple.com QA lead, commenting on the futility of trying to rush some kinds of development.
Thinking about ROI
In my experiences as a software developer, its fairly normal to hear comments like the following: That’s too many hours They don’t have the budget I’m not paid enough I had the good fortune of attending a Portland XP Users Group presentation a few weeks ago by James Shore. He got off on a slight tangent [...]
Double Hop Disaster
I was working with a web service client that talked to SharePoint this week. I wrote a quick Silverlight app that extracted a list of tasks out of a SharePoint list. I love how simple this is to tap into: http://sharepoint.yourcompany.com/_vti_bin/lists.asmx The previous URL will show the path to one of the web services provided out-of-the-box by [...]
Flash ExternalInterface in ASP.NET Applications
Update 11/27/2007 We do quite a bit of Flash video integrated into ASP.NET web applications. For video library application, the best solution from a usability perspective is to use JavaScript to control the flash player. There are some issues that keep popping up with the Flash Player, SwfObject, ExternalInterface, and ASP.NET that we needed to document [...]
Things I learned about Steve Sandstrom Last Night
Steve Sandstrom likes “verbena” scented things. Steve Sandstrom also enjoys the smell of his wife’s neck. Steve Sandstrom is married. Steve Sandstrom became a vegan 8 months ago. Steve Sandstrom likes marionberry pie. Steve Sandstrom has a child who was conceived accidentally. Steve Sandstrom is fond of people who are fond of large belt buckles. Steve Sandstrom deserves his PAF lifetime achievement [...]
The Danger of the Em Dash
When I write, I use em dashes. A lot. At one point in my career, my creative director returned an article to me in which I’d used an em dash in EVERY SINGLE PARAGRAPH of a 700-word article. Clearly, I had a problem. Em dashes (or the long dash, like this: — ) are remarkable little devices [...]
