Small & Simple Thoughts

Engaged Couple Find Photo Showing They Crossed Paths as Toddlers.

Just read a great article on how to slow life down a little:

Begin by giving yourself permission to slow down. This may seem like a no brainer, but many people believe they don’t have permission to slow down. You do.

Read the rest here.

Just discovered the wonderful textutil command on the Mac OS X command line. I needed to convert a batch of TXT files to RTF. (I am switching to Notational Velocity with SimpleNote.) Instead of opening each one in TextEdit and saving as RTF, I simply put them all in a directory and typed this:

textutil -convert rtf *.*

Done and done.

I thoroughly enjoyed my education at BYU. I had some great mentors that helped me become a success as a designer. I enjoyed my education at BYU I became an employee here. Working here has been as much a blessing as being a student here.

Each year employees are asked to donate to the Annual Fund – a resource for students who need assistance paying tuition. In return for my contribution, I got the following hand-written, personal note from a student who benefits from the Annual Fund.

I’m glad to know my small effort makes a difference. I enjoyed my opportunity to receive an education here and am glad to help provide that opportunity to others.

A month ago, Elder Christofferson came to our Stake Conference to organize a new Stake Presidency. While here, he challenged the priesthood leaders to write out the plan of salvation in our own words in a single page. Below is my effort – let me know your thoughts:

Before we were born, we lived as spirit sons and daughters of God, our Father. He desired us to become as he is: full of glory and eternal life. By his Son, Jesus Christ, he made the earth, where we could gain bodies and prove our faithfulness in order to gain all that the Father has.

God created Adam and Eve first in the Garde n of Eden. They had a veil drawn over the minds so they would not remember their former life. This gave them and us the opportunity to choose good over evil. Satan was allowed to tempt Adam and Eve.

God commanded Adam and Eve to not partake of the fruit of Knowledge of good and evil and to multiply and replenish the earth. Satan tempted Adam and Eve to partake of the fruit. Eve partook. Adam followed Eve so they could keep the second commandment.

Because of their actions, Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden into the lone and dreary world. Adam and Eve no longer enjoyed the presence of God. Because of sin they could not remain in God’s presence. Without a way to become clean from their sins, Adam and Eve could never return to live with God.

God provided a Savior to atone for the sins of mankind. Jesus Christ came in the meridian of time. He suffered the sins of all mankind so that we can repent and be made clean. His atonement pays the price for Adam and Eve’s transgression and provides a way for all of us to return to the presence of God. If we repent, we can live with Heavenly Father and receive all that he has. Jesus Christ is the only name that brings us redemption and salvation.

The last Sunday of the year was, as expected, rather quiet. Meetings didn’t start until 7:00AM. Only a handful of appointments after church. Got home at 1:30. Had a nap and spent some time with the Morrils and Mom. A very nice day.

Art loaned me a beginning guitar book with cd. He also tuned the guitar for me again. It sounds much better now. My fingers are still very numb but that won’t go away unless I keep practicing. Still enjoying it very much.

I was using Daniel Parker’s ‘Open in TextMate’ service built on Waffle Software’s ‘ThisService‘ on Leopard. Unfortunately, upon upgrade to Snow Leopard it no longer worked. Apple touted new functionality in Automator and the Service menu as part of Snow Leopard’s myriad enhancements so I checked into building my own ‘Open in TextMate’ service.

It was dead simple.

Here’s the screenshot of the workflow:

For my tens and tens of adoring fans, please download, unzip and  install the OpenInTextMate archive. (By ‘install’ I mean drop the contained file in ~/Library/Services/.) Once installed, you can assign it a shortcut key from the Keyboard preference pane.

Note: My testing wasn’t thorough, but it appears this service does not work on Leopard.

Beating Anorexia

This man took anorexia out back and beat it with a stick.

I disagree with Cameron on both of his points.

First, doctype. I use XHTML because it is standardized – lowercase tags, consistently self-closing tags, etc.

Further, HTML5 does add more semantic meaning, yes. But this does not mean the div with a semantic class = meaningless. On the contrary, even <video> can be made more semantic thusly, <video class="documentary">, just like XHTML. Really, this is the strength of HTML. Whatever your flavor DOCTYPE, it can be extended by classes. This is it’s beautiful strength and flexibility. Because of it’s lack of inherent meaning, the designer can imbue it with their own meaning. Isn’t it a small miracle that technology like RDFa and microformats can be built into simple HTML with only the attributes that HTML comes with? And that with those technologies, a veritable world of connected data is possible? Yes, it is a miracle. HTML 5 is not such a huge advancement.

Richard made a good response to Cameron’s argument on px measurements for type. But I think there is even more. For me, building a site with ems, despite the periodic necessity of minor calculations, is an act of truth in the medium. Using ems, each part of the design has a relationship to the whole. The design is beautiful when each part has a relationship to the whole. And when that beauty has it’s roots in the math beneath the design, it approaches the beauty found in nature. A px is a bludgeon to force your taste on the design. The em is a friend, it counsels the design and takes advice from it.

“I made this my rule: When the Lord commands, do it.” ~ Joseph Smith: http://tr.im/mAqF