Truth is stranger than fiction.
A former NFL player is now making a living as a WordPress theme developer. I doubt that this means the NFL is holding a spot for me in the future, but still quite an amazing story. I think this just shows that dreams come in all shapes and sizes and that hard work pays better than talent.
After seeing this (.::: thePaperNut :::.), I feel like I wish I were a paper nut too!
Monsieur Hoefler shares a wonderful find from the Library of Congress. It is a feast of period type from a bunch of WPA posters.
This video on YouTube is an enjoyable interview with Dieter Rams. Watch and learn.
Design should not dominate people. It should help people.
1. Good design is innovative.
2. Good design makes a product useful.
3. Good design is aesthetic.
4. Good design makes a product understandable.
5. Good design is unobtrusive.
6. Good design is honest.
7. Good design is long lasting.
8. Good design is thorough down to the last detail.
9. Good design is environmentally friendly.
10 Good design is as little design as possible.
Apple just released Safari 5. Among the exciting enhancements of this version, Apple is now providing a way for developers to extend Safari’s capabilities with plugins, bars and contextual menu items. People have been doing this for years using SIMBL and other black magic that lies beyond my comprehension.
Getting started is a bit tricky but once going it is very easy. You first have to become a Safari Extension Developer. This is a new level of Apple Developer. Registration is free. Once that is completed you have to generate a security certficate for yourself using a combination of Keychain and good luck. The instructions are available to Safari Extension developers once they register. Again, this costs nothing except a little bit of pain to jump through the hoops of getting a security certificate generated for yourself.
Enabling extensions is a bit wonky now too. First you have to enable the ‘Develop’ menu in the advanced tab of Safari preferences. Then from the Develop menu you have to check ‘Enable  Extensions’. Once this is done, the magic ‘Show Extension Builder’ menu item is available.
The best way to go from here is to grab someone else’s extension and use it as your learning point. And despite this being newly available, there are lots of extensions starting to float around. The best way to find what you need is to visit http://safariextensions.tumblr.com. The list is growing quickly.
I grabbed Amazon’s search bar because I knew I was going to be making a search bar too. I opened the file and unzipped it. Using the little ‘+’ at the bottom of the Extension Builder, I added this new directory by clicking on ‘Add Extension’. After that it was just like building and designing a web page. CSS gave me perfect control of the interface. I repurposed code from our site. Done. It took longer to become an Extension Developer than it did to build an extension.
Although Apple is really late to the extension game, I’m glad they made it. By opening up their browser to extension builders, they provide tremendous power to an already prolific community of developers. Let the good times roll.
My employer purchased a couple of the new Apple iPads for testing. I got to use it as my own for the better part of a week. Here are my thoughts on the device.
Overall, it is really nice. It is really solid to hold, it’s well built. The glossy screen is a pleasure to interact with. My children took to it immediately. Even my Mom, who is a sworn computer atheist and who has never had an email address, sat down and used it for 20 minutes. While I’m not convinced that we’ve seen the future of computing, I think we’re getting a very good peek.
The first day I had it I didn’t have a keyboard to go with it. After experimenting with iPad virtual keyboard I’m still not sure how I feel about it. I’ve owned an iPhone since November 2007 and, after the initial learning curve, I’ve come to love it’s virtual keyboard. I’m not there yet with the iPad. Perhaps with time and patience I could get there, but who knows.
There is one thing I am sure of—I wish the iPad virtual keyboard gave feedback on what you typed. The iPhone’s virtual keyboard pops up an enlarged version of the key you are typing so you can see what you just covered with your finger. The iPad keyboard doesn’t provide that affordance and I miss it. If it did that, maybe it would be easier for me to adopt. Ironically, if you use an iPhone app on an iPad and it requires typing, you get the little iPhone keyboard complete with Pop-up Keys.
The second day I had the iPad, my boss dropped off a docking keyboard to try. Then the fun began! I enjoyed using my fingers to navigate around and then using the keyboard to type. My hand kept trying to find a mouse after I finished typing. I also kept trying to use the keyboard to command+tab my way between open applications. Old habits die hard. The keyboard has some handy iPad specific keys—home, sleep, and slideshow mode (where it shows pictures from your photo albums on screen).
Of course, being able to type without being able to print is a bit of a pain. Especially since the version of Pages on my desktop machine isn’t compatible with the Pages on the iPad—I would have to upgrade my desktop software. Google’s Cloud Printing might solve this one day. Or Apple’s own wi-fi solution could fill the gap. By they way, laying it face down on a copier doesn’t work either—I can’t explain why but the paper just comes out black! In any case, it would be nice to print from the device without having to transfer documents back to the desktop. One good note: there is no save button, it’s always automatically saved!
Keynote was a little bit different experience. Because Keynote is a landscape only app, I couldn’t use the docking keyboard with it. After going through the built-in tutorial, I was able to make a decent presentation. I didn’t really enjoy it but who likes making presentation slides? The iPad did connect quickly and easily to a projector. Unfortunately, the projected image isn’t mirrored on the iPad screen. Usually a speaker faces the audience but that would be impossible with this arrangement.
iBooks. It works. Bookmarking, last place saved, shelves, store—all very nice. Highlighting is good. Would be nice if you could add notes. My complaint is that I can’t sync the book and last read location with my iPhone or other device. I understand this is coming but Amazon can already do this. I think the iPad beats Amazon’s Kindle but not Amazon’s Kindle software.
Video is incredibly enjoyable. Crisp, bright and fast. Landscape mode feels like the best mobile movie watching device ever. Great for road trips with the kids—if you can get the movie you want. I’m hoping Hulu produces an iPad app. Great opportunity for other film content producers to market their materials.
Like video, the audio experience makes this feel like a media enjoyment device. Flicking through albums is a delight. The audio is good quality. I was unable to connect anything except iPhone headphones to the device. But I don’t know much about audio connectors or audio in general for that matter.
The maps are amazingly fast and responsive. Pinching and zooming moved quickly and naturally. It was very impressive. With GPS this would be the most amazing GPS device ever.
Skype. Flawless. Works as advertised. Apparently Apple in-ear buds that include a mic are compatible with the iPad.
Labyrinth Lite. Really fun game and rich graphics and interaction. Again, this game makes it feel like this device is built for entertainment.
Battery life is incredible! This device really could replace a laptop when traveling—especially with a bluetooth or docking keyboard and Apple case. Much lighter, more flexible.
I believe Steve Jobs has given us a peek at the future of computing. This device leaves some major problems unsolved but opens the door to great possibilities. With improvements to input interaction, book syncing and printing options this device could replace a large percentage of the desktop and laptop machines around the world.
I am currently reading “How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer“, by Debbie Millman. I came across the book in Jason Santa Marie’s list of recommended reading.
In it, I found this beautiful gem: Paula Scher describing her creative process:
It’s a little difficult to say what I do first. I don’t do anything in any particular order. There’s a certain amount of intuitive thinking that goes into everything. It’s so hard to describe how things happen intuitively. I can describe it as a computer and a slot machine. I have a pile of stuff in my brain, a pile of stuff from all the books I’ve read and all the movies I’ve seen. Every piece of artwork I’ve ever looked at. Every conversation that’s inspired me, every piece of street art I’ve seen along the way. Anything I’ve purchased, rejected, loved, hated. It’s all in there. It’s all on one side of the brain.
And on the other side of the brain is a specific brief that comes from my understanding of the project and says, okay, this solution is made up of A, B,C. and D. And if you pull the handle on the slot machine they sort of run around in a circle, and what you hope is that those three cherries line up, and the cash comes out.
In respone to this Debbie Millman asks, “When you’re thinking chis way, is it something you’re doing alone, or with a lot of other people?”
I could be doing it right now. I’m doing it right here. My day is very packed, and it’s filled with many interruptions. I’m thinking about the brief while I’m in an open space with tons of people, in the office, with telephones. my staff, while gossiping with my partners, while thinking about what’s going on in the world, during whatever’s going on
at that moment—plus the brief.I am conscious of resolving the brief, but I don’t think about it too hard. I allow the subconscious part my brain to work. That’s the accumulation of my whole life. That is what’s going on in the other side of my brain, trying to align with this very logical brief.
And I’m allowing that to flow freely, so that the cherries can line up in the slot machine. I don’t know when that’s going to happen. I’ve had periods of time when the cherries never line up, and that’s scary, because then you have to rely on tricks you already have up your sleeve—the tricks in your knowledge from other jobs. And very often you rely on this.
But mostly what you want to do is invent. And to invent, you have to take the odd and the strange combination of the years of knowledge and experience on one side of the brain, and on the other side, the necessity for the brief to make sense. And you’re drawing from that knowledge to make an analogy and to find a way to solve a problem, to find a means of moving forward—in a new way—things you’ve already done.
When you succeed, it’s fantastic. It doesn’t always happen. But every so often, you take a bunch of stuff from one side of your head, and a very logical list of stuff from the other side, and through that osmosis you’re finding a new way to look at a problem and resolve a situation.
This is the best explanation of the creative process I’ve ever read.
John Dilworth’s artwork has everything I love. Geometry, Math, Design, Art, Golden Section, Patterns, History and Good Taste. I’m green with envy. I wish I was that good.
Fortunately, I don’t have to be that good – I can now buy John Dilworth’s artwork.
The Harold B. Lee Library recently started streaming music to one section of the library.One of the questions we’ve gotten since providing this service is, “Where can I see a list what is playing?”. I figured it was somehow possible and a friend helped me figure out how.
We use iTunes to stream the music to the ‘Music Area’ (clever name) of the library. Last.fm, through their ‘Scrobbling’ software, provides access to an RSS feed of your latest tracks. Here’s my recent tracks feed. (Insert your last.fm user name in the url to get your own feed.) Once I installed the Last.fm application on the remote computer, our feed started working instantly. That was step 1.
Step 2 was to get that feed published on a library page for easy advertising. Thankfully, jQuery has a plugin called jFeed. It does what you think – parses the RSS XML so you can output it as HTML – tada! That was relatively easy – they even provide a method to overcome cross-domain scripting woes. Step 2, Check!
Wait! The timestamps are 6 hours off! What?! I don’t know why this happens but I’m not the only one. But I assume that the 6 hour difference is consistent and create a fix thusly:
var timestr = Date.parse(item.updated);
var newtimestr = timestr - 21600; //subtracting 6 hours (in seconds)
var timeago = jQuery.timeago(new Date (newtimestr)); //this is explained in the next paragraph
Everything is now working fine and I could have left well enough alone, but I didn’t. The feed was displaying, the links back to last.fm were working, everything was special. However, I didn’t like the format of the datestamping: Tue, 19 May 2009 22:50:43 +0000. This is the standard date format for RSS publishing. And it is a great format – for computers. However, I wanted to display it in a human friendly way.
Enter timeago. Timeago is a jQuery plugin that does magic – it takes the loverly, aforementioned GMT timestamp and turns it into this: 7 minutes ago. That’s a lot more human friendly. And since I have more humans than computers as friends, I went with that option.
Obviously, this would have been easier for some to do in PHP. And it probably would have made more sense. Maybe someday I’ll do that.
I am excited about the future of the internet. It’s done amazing things in it’s short lifespan and the future is looking even brighter.
One of the bright spots in that future is the semantic web. At this point, the best thing I can do for you is share a video to explain it. Here’s my favorite:
The Semantic Web, In English from james levy.
So what is my contribution to this illustrious future? A WordPress theme, of course!
We’ve been using Microformats at the Harold B. Lee library for a couple of years. Recently, we even built a Ubiquity script to make use of that valuable markup. At Web Directions North, I met Manu Sporny, an advocate of RDFa, another flavor of semantic markup for the web. That meeting led to the opportunity to design and build a skin for the RDFa blog.
Since, RDFa and the semantic web is about the future, I built a lot of forward looking functionality into the design. I built a 9 column, fluid grid. I’ve been enamored with the work of that unstoppable robot ninja, Ethan Marcotte. He recently blogged and otherwise published on max-width fluid grids. I think these are brilliant. They provide the readability of fixed-width with the flexibility of fluid width. If you shrink the browser width, the design accommodates accordingly. Increasing or decreasing the font size further illustrates it’s flexibility.
There are other forward-looking details. I’ve included drop shadow on the RDFa text (visible in Safari). I’m using css columns in the footer (sorry IE users). I’m using @font-face with the lovely Museo Sans for titles and other details. I used these features, not to slight certain browser users. I generally try to accommodate as many browsers as possible (I do work for a library!). But for this site, I wanted to push the edges. I wanted to be thinking about the future – that’s where the value of the semantic web lies. We don’t get immediate returns on our investment in semantics; those returns come down the road as we continue to build for the future. The design of this site, in small ways, will improve as browsers adopt new standards.
Now, if I could only take the time to design a decent theme for my own site…