Hyperlinks
Link Log
Sunday, March 28, 2004
- The Passivator
- A bookmarklet that highlights adverbs and writing that could be in the passive voice. Given my predilection for weakly worded sentences this could be quite helpful. It has a number of caveats, but they could actually be useful as well. This bookmarklet is not compatible with Internet Explorer, but that's no big loss. (via Simon Wilson)
Saturday, March 27, 2004
- NakedText.com
- unless they're getting a bunch of money for the special requests doesn't look like these are business majors. It must be costing them more than $5-7 a shot when you factor in overhead, the time it takes to run the website, and how long it takes to write on each other, take a picture, wash up and dry for the next picture, and process the pictures. But if their parents paid for the camera and computers and, being students, they've got free time anyway, it's a really cool concept and should be taken advantage of while it's still cheap.
- Opera, IBM voice
- Just the other day I suggested that Cybil upgrade her grandfather's browser to Opera, even though I rarely use it or even test for it, because he's running at 800x600 on a large monitor and can't see it well enough to read. Opera is the only browser I know of with screen zoom, not just text zoom, and now on top of that it's getting a built in text reader. Combine the accessibility support with the moves it's making on the mobile browsing market I'm no longer so supprised at the rumor I heard that they are going public. Only concern now is that they may be like a 3rd party candidate in a two party system. I'll have to think about it, is promoting Opera like throwing your vote away to Nadar? Might it be idiologically the best option, but wind up being just like you'd voted for bush/gates. Or is promoting absolutely anybody other than MS the best thing to do?
Thursday, March 25, 2004
- Combining BookCrossing and Geocaching
- Two things that are on my "would like to do someday" list combined together, although I'd rather use a topo and maybe an altimeter instead of a GPS, seems like cheating somehow, though I guess they are finicky enough to be a challenge. Also of note to the web designers who read this, how cool is this link shortening technique? http://webpages.charter.net/---/caches.html. much sexier than using CSS overflow: hidden;
- 100 MOVIES THAT DESERVE MORE LOVE
- Gotta pull this up next time we're on Netflix.
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
- Design by Fire: The Great Photoshop CS Giveaway
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Anyone who knows the answer to even one of these questions already has Photoshop CS and probably knows the engineers personally. I'm intrigued to hear the answers, but I think the contest is too much of an insider thing and misses the benefit to the design community that it could have had.
I have been trying not to complain about things unless I have a positive suggestion as an alternative. Here's my idea: if the questions were more oriented towards design trivia or art history they might be better for the aspiring designer who hasn't been able to afford Photoshop, let alone the latest version.
The challenge in creating the quiz would then have been to find knowledge that isn't readily available via Google. The insider knowledge approach steps around that problem of the ready availability of information, but doesn't accomplish the greater good that having a people whose lives could really be changed by owning a copy of Photoshop researching information that whether they win or not would increase the knowledge of design within the web design community. And I'm not being bitter because I don't stand a chance, PS7 is serving me fine.
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
- The Broadmoor Online Reservations in oneScreen(TM)
- Polar opposite of inductive user interface. Wish it weren't in flash, or they'd at least picked crisper fonts. (via a Jeffrey Veen presentation)
Monday, March 22, 2004
- "Who cares what you think?"
- This one's been circulating for 3 years now I guess. Just leaves me hoping that we get some real debates this election that are engaging enough to not be fended off with canned responses written by mr. cunthair's speech writers.
Sunday, March 21, 2004
- Right Watch
- This little site with a CSS layout, my first, must have gone live at some point. It's hopefully not highly publicized as there are numerous typos in the copy and empty pages. The footer is jammed down below the fold (always below the fold, the nav has a height of 100%), and I'm not sure how I ever got it to pass bobby with a nav made up of a bunch of anchors one after another. Poking around on our server I see that the .css file was last modified on 10/20/2002, so I have a date for when I first started dabbling in CSS for layout. A year and a half. I was intentionally late to the game those days since my boss at the time used NS4 on her mac.
Saturday, March 20, 2004
- The Unofficial Nohands Gallery!
- I've been running a lot of google image searches lately to find animals to draw. This last search just turned up a picture that I recognized from a recent ala article. I followed it to the site it came from (which had moved) and found this whole phenominon of photoshop jobs using this kitten. Other end of the spectrum from the last photoshop jobs (pun not intended) link I pointed out.
- Videos (and websites) for Cats
- Karen, my dad's girlfriend, has these birdwatching videos that her cats love. I don't remember if they have a sound track though.
Friday, March 19, 2004
- Photoshoped Cumshots
- Warning! Read the title before you click on the link. Don't come all whining to me that I made you look at something gross. So Jennifer Garner's not at all happy with her situation, but Liv Tyler is just slighty melencholy. But I bet when the camera's away she's a demon in the sack. And for the doves' X-Files collection, Gillian Anderson.
- Application Archetypes
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For example, "Longhorn" enables Web sites to deliver smart clients that offer a degree of interactivity beyond what is normally possible in Web pages today.
Now I'm getting really concerned that MS is moving down the road of closing off its part of the internet, moving away from the standards of the web and encouraging proprietary applications by providing simple/stupid tools with which to build e-commerce applications that are specific to the OS, further leveraging their monopoly.
The solution is two-fold. Expand the market share of alternative browsers with a positive benifits oriented marketing campaign (the negative aspects of IE go without saying). The second part is to provide more resources for developers struggling with the web standards learning curve, and lead by example by not doing what fucking LockerGnome did and taking a step backwards towards crap front-end development practices.
- The Aesthetics of Revelation
- I like the way this guy thinks. Quality metaphors. Now I want to come up with better examples. Perhaps a dashboard on the gateway page of an app works. Show useful summary data up front, tantalize us with an overview of the raw data beneath. Doesn't get much geekier than that.
- <<< Guido Sterkendries >>>
- wildlife photography
- Yetisport 3 - Penguin Throw
- because abusing foolish animals is funny
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
- Dave Barry's Blog
- He's sindicated right, not just an east coast humor columnist? While this is purely a weblog deal, it does have a link to his column as well.
Tuesday, March 16, 2004
- Project Gutenburg Redesign Finalists
- Surprised that people voted for the Macromedia site look alike, doesn't really have anything unique going for it. Bright Corner is the one that's obviously going to win, being the most usable and nicely designed as well, and Minz Meyer is an awesome artist (zen garden 037), so it's no surprise he makes the finals, but the fact that it's a completely impractical design will see it lose in the end. Somebody suggested to move the search up a bit, then it might be better. It is an intriguing and unique design with potential for greatness given some UI tweaking.
Monday, March 15, 2004
- OK/Cancel
- Penny Arcade cameo.
- group hug // anonymous online confessions
- Ok, so everyone's probably seen this already since it won a SXSW award, but that's why I made this link log, so I could echo "have you seen this one yet" a month late when nobody cares. But now that I've echoed I can't confess anything that somebody might pin on me until some time has past. So this post is even less than worthless. So how about that OK/Cancel comic strip, pretty funny stuff, eh?
- "Five hundred dead soldiers support Bush-Cheney '04."
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"But not if you're gay!"
"One Dick, One Bush as God Intended"
"Don't Settle for the Lesser of Two Evils"
"I Wasn't Using Those Rights Anyway"
"Don't Switch Horses Mid Apocalypse"
"Don't switch gangs mid bang."
Sunday, March 14, 2004
- Avalanche Company: The 213 Things Skippy is No Longer Allowed to Do in the U.S. Army
- this one's for josher. what was your count before they sent you home?
- It's Richard Brautigan's birthday - poetry.about.com
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And for a taste of Brautigan himself, Nils T. Devine claims to have posted "the largest collection of Richard Brautigan poetry on the Web" -- at least until Brautigan's estate asks that the texts be taken down.
And it's true.
Saturday, March 13, 2004
- OkCupid - The False Messiah
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And I have NO matches, not in the greater Los Angeles area, not even in the world. Cybil got The Nymph, who I am supposed to pursue. The Nymph in turn is supposed to ALWAYS AVOID The False Messiah. Jen, Cybil's best friend from Hampshire from before we dated (who I used to have a crush on) got Peach, polar opposite of Nymph, but coincidentally are supposed to DREAD The False Messiah.
Clever quize actually, feeds you different questions based on previous answers. They slip registration information in with the quize so when you're done you're registered. When you log in you can imrove your matches (as if I had any) by answering more questions. There's a curve rating match accuracy that you initially move very quickly up to the 70% range quickly, but the curve starts leveling off so each question only gets you another 1%. The questions themselves are good. You answer it for yourself, then for your potiential match, and rate how important the answer would be. It's fun when it points out double standards in your beleifs. Like, I beleive X, but I would want her to believe Y.
There are any number of great and amusing questions, but the best one is this: "Are you ok with a potential match having a STD?" The only answer is click here, here being a link to match.com.
Friday, March 12, 2004
- Project Gutenberg Redesign
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So I guess you get 3 votes, here they are:
- Bright Corner - this one's all about usability, but subtle as well. What useit.com should be if Neilson would get his head out of his ass and learn a thing or two about information design.
- Geert De Deckere - subtle color and texture, but usable as well. If Bright Corner's wasn't just so damn usable this would be my first choice.
- Minz Meyer - mostly just enjoy the design of this one. I like it when a designer chooses a color theme and then uses multiple shades of the colors within that theme.
- Mathieu Sylvain - 'cause I'm a sucker for a theme, even if it is rough around the edges.
My first choice puts usability first, but does not fail to create a pleasing esthetic. Actually, the design fits the purpose of the site more closely than any of the others. My second choice strikes a balance between design and usability. My third choice I just like the design, the IA isn't any good. There is little of value and nothing of function within the top 400 pixels.
Thursday, March 11, 2004
- Flashback
- This is one for Mr. Jon, who I believe has been seeking a versioning system for personal use.
Tuesday, March 09, 2004
- Matchstick Rockets
- Quality fun! Small enough scale to play with in current cramped urban living conditions, but fun with fire. Might just have to use strick anywhere matches though *grin*. via inflight correction.
- Graphic of the Day: Road and exit numbering
- Edward Tufte starts off a discussion of road numbering systems. I'm so glad California is finally going to add exit numbers. Let's hope they use the intelligent system, relating the numbers to the distance between them, rather than just making them sequential. Right now, in So. Cal at least, the street signs are well designed (large and over the road), but named like shit, in that they have no numbers and most of the street names are in fucking Mexican (pardon my canadian french). BTW, I'll add cartographer to the list along with architect of fields I might have pursued if it weren't for the web.
Monday, March 08, 2004
- Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition
- Short on the heels of Dan Cederholm's book anouncement. I've been waiting for this one for a while, had to buy Cascading Style Sheets 2.0 Programmer's Reference to tide me over.
Sunday, March 07, 2004
- Web Standards Solutions: The Markup and Style Handbook
- Curious how much will be redundant if you've been following SimpleQuiz. Will probably wait until Amazon let's me look inside, or I see it in the store. Might be worth purchasing just to support writing in the web standards field.
Saturday, March 06, 2004
- Ghost Town
- Chernobyl photo journal. The haunting silent struck me the most. Can you imagine LA without noise? link via Simon Wilson.
Friday, March 05, 2004
- Hand Drawn Maps
- Just in case your wanderlust wasn't geared up already. link via kottle.
- Planning your future by Erin Malone
- I used to follow Erin's blog, Design Writings. It was nice to stumble accross an article by her at boxes and arrows. Here's a reminder to myself to answer these questions. I've been moving towards a few career goals, but articulating them in writing will help me to focus. These kind of things are hard these days when you never know if you'll be working two months from now, or who you may be working for, so the goals themselves need to be independant of current employer, even if the initial steps involve them. I think it's doable.
Thursday, March 04, 2004
- Wildlife Action Shots
- The best drawings I've done so far for the Wizard's Duel cards have been the ones with a lot of dynamic motion. These photos are all of animals in action, with pathetic right-click protection that Firefox simply ignores.
- Where / What Vision Systems and Visual Design
- An excellent way to point out to clients why their animated gif idea sucks.
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
- Animal pictures Archives
- Just hit a jackpot of animal pictures. Not that google image search hasn't been yeilding great results, it's just nice to be able to be able to browse. This is for my game Wizard's Duel, despite what some "furry" obsessed co-workers may think (Kelly).
