2010 has been the most successful year yet for my business, BeeDragon Web Services. I have been getting a lot of work from other web developers and designers. It is very exciting getting to work with talented people who do similar work. When each person combines their unique skills, we make each other’s work shine. …
Way too many things. Last month was the first month I haven’t posted here since July 2005. Probably wouldn’t have even noticed except for the missing link on the Archives page. Very busy with work. I am enjoying my projects, but wish I was working on them when there wasn’t so much else going on. …
I have been very distracted lately! Too many things going on and I can not focus on any of them. Luckily, I have had no problem focusing on distractions. I would like to give recognition to the distractions that have proven to be most entertaining in the ‘First (and possibly last) Annual Distraction Awards’.
More info and lyrics @ Molly.
Today I am 43 and having an awesome birthday. Last night K took me to see Fiddler on the Roof with Harvey Fierstein at the Golden Gate Theater in SF. It was awesome! I think it is possible that he was born to play Tevye. Perfect. I was really wishing my family was there too. …
Writing on the iPhone. Hard to breathe. Shaky. Strangely okay besides that. Sometimes writing helps. Been very busy lately. All Drupal all the time. Besides from the insane learning curve and non-intuitive UI, I am in awe of its power and flexibility. After more than 15 hours of video tutorials and reading tons of docs, …
Ok, not really a million things, but it sure feels like it lately. Luckily, my new combination of meds seems to be working and it a lot easier to do things than it was not long ago. There are a few bad effects too, but so far, I think more good than bad. It is …
Welcome to my world…
Me and K spent the past week in Baltimore and Florida and had a great time. We want to move to Baltimore, but we can’t. It sucks. We decided we wanted to move a few weeks before the economy crashed. Things looked pretty good for us then. Now we are stuck here for what could …
Thru-you is a video series created by Israeli recording artist, Kutiman (aka Ophir Kutiel) by doing an extensive YouTube search for clips of people playing music and mixing them into a single jam. In Thru-you – 08 – About, he explains the process.
Thru-you – 01 – Mother of all Funk Chords:
I checked out a bunch of his other videos and they are really amazing. Kutiman plays a multitude of musical instruments, including keyboards, drums, guitar, percussion, and bass. His music has been described as “urban psychedelic funk” and sometimes showcases his friends and favorite musicians from the scene in Tel Aviv.
Thanks to Ed for the tip!
18,000 couples are facing potential forcible divorce due to the legal briefs filed by Ken Starr and the Prop 8 Legal Defense Fund on December 19, 2008 defending the constitutionality of Prop 8 and seeking to nullify the 18,000 same-sex marriages conducted between May and November of 2008.
Courage Campaign asked people to respond by sending personal pictures with a very simple message:
“Don’t Divorce Us”
Over 350,000 people have signed this letter telling the state Supreme Court to invalidate Prop 8, reject Ken Starr’s case, and let loving, committed couples marry.
We, the undersigned, share President Barack Obama’s view that for too long, issues of LGBT rights have been exploited by those seeking to divide us. It’s time to move beyond polarization and live up to our founding promise of equality by treating all our citizens with dignity and respect.
Yet, on December 19, 2008, Ken Starr and the Prop 8 Legal Defense Fund filed legal briefs defending the constitutionality of Prop 8 and seeking to nullify the marriages of 18,000 devoted same-sex couples solemnized before Prop 8 passed.
The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in this case on March 5, with a decision expected within 90 days.
We, the undersigned, ask that the Court enforce the equality promised to each of us by our constitution and invalidate Prop 8. So doing will protect all loving, committed couples in California — including the 18,000 who said “I do” last year — and prevent the initiative process from being a tool for stripping vulnerable minorities of precious constitutional rights.
As Americans who believe in the rule of law and fundamental civil rights, we know that Ken Starr and the Prop 8 Legal Defense Fund’s shameful attempt to nullify equal protection and all these bonded unions will be condemned in the eyes of history. We know that, ultimately, love will prevail, no matter how hard they try to fight it.
Sincerely,
371,155 people have signed this letter*.
* Updated: 7:55 p.m. PT, Wednesday, March 4
In President Obama’s first weekly address, he focuses on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan.
This video is just one part of the brand new, beautifully designed and implemented whitehouse.gov website. If you have not visited the site yet, I recommend checking it out. Aside from being an inspirational website from a web developer’s point of view, it contains a great deal of interesting information.
There is educational information about how the different branches of government work, pages explaining what items on the adminstration agenda are about, current news and updates, and lots of historical information about the white house and the former presidents and first ladies who have lived in it.
Thanks to Anna for the link 🙂
Great video by Brandon Walker!
Stumbled across this while reading about browsers at molly.com. I am not completely sure if it will appeal as much to the non-web designer/developer crowd as it did to me.
By Poetic Prophet – SEO Rapper (aka Chuck Lewis)
Lyrics:
Your site design is the first thing people see
it should be reflective of you and the industry
easy to look at with a nice navigation
when you can’t find what you want it causes frustration
a clear Call to action to increase the temptation
use appealing graphics they create motivation
if you have animation
use with moderation
cause search engines can’t index the information
display the logos of all your associations
highlight your contact info that’s an obligation
create a clean design you can use some decoration
but to try to prevent any client hesitation
every page that they click should provide and explanation
should be easy to understand like having a conversation
when you design the style go ahead and use your imagination
but make sure you use correct color combinations
do some investigation, look at other organizations
but don’t duplicate or you might face a litigation
design done, congratulations but it’s time to start construction
follow these instructions when you move into production
your photoshop functions then slice that design
do your layout with divs make sure that it’s aligned
please don’t use tables even though they work fine
when it come to indexing they give searches a hard time
make it easy for the spiders to crawl what you provide
remove font type, font color and font size
no background colors, keep your coding real neat
tag your look and feel on a separate style sheet
better results with xml and css
now you making progress, a lil closer to success
describe your doctype so the browser can relate
make sure you do it great or it won’t validate
check in all browsers, I do it directly
gotta make sure that it renders correctly
some use IE, some others use Flock
some use AOL, I use Firefox
title everything including links and images
don’t use italics, use emphasis
don’t use bold, please use strong
if you use bold that’s old and wrong
when you use CSS, you page will load quicker
client satisfied like they eating on a snicker
they stuck on your page like you made it with a sticker
and then they convert now that’s the real kicker
make you a lil richer, your site a lil slicker
design and code right man I hope you get the picture
what I’m telling you is true man it should be a scripture
if it’s built right you’ll be the pick of the litter
everyone will want to follow you like twitter
competition will get bitter and you’ll shine like glitter
if you trying to grow your company will get bigger
design and code right man can you get with it
All star cast! Queers! John C. Reilly, Margaret Cho, Neil Patrick Harris, Maya Rudolf, Jack Black! Song, dance, props!
“Never underestimate the power of a musical”
–Lori B, editor-in-chief, LBnuke
Credits:
Conceived and Written by Marc Shaiman.
Directed and Staged by Adam Shankman
Produced by Adam Shankman, Marc Shaiman and Mike Farah
Edited by Bradly Schulz and Drew Antzis
Cast (in order of appearance):
California Gays and The People That Love Them
Jordan Ballard
Margaret Cho
Barrett Foa
J.B. Ghuman
John Hill
Andy Richter
Maya Rudolph
Rashad Naylor
Nicole Parker
Proposition 8’ers and The People That Follow Them:
Prop 8 Leader – John C. Reilly
Prop 8 Leader’s #1 Wife – Allison Janney
Prop 8 Leader’s #2 Wife – Kathy Najimy Riffing
Prop 8’er – Jenifer Lewis
A Preacher – Craig Robinson
Scary Catholic School Girls From Hell – Rashida Jones, Lake Bell, Sarah Chalke
The Frightened Villagers – Katharine “Kooks” Leonard, Seth Morris, Denise “Esi!” Piane, Lucian Piane, Richard Read, Seth Redford, Quinton Strack, Tate Taylor, Brunson Green
Jesus Christ – Jack Black
A Very Smart Fellow – Neil Patrick Harris
Piano Player – Marc “Marc” Shaiman
Thanks to K and Estelle for the link!
Today I found FFFFOUND! FFFFOUND! is an invitation-only web image-bookmarking service that also dynamically suggests other images that may be of interest to the user based on their tastes and interests. It was hard to get away from it even long enough to post this. Image credit: Design You Trust There were a few things that made …
They are coming for us all…
I finally got around to watching this. Pretty amazing. 6 minutes and 29 seconds well spent! Thanks to Keith Olbermann and to all the folks who have been spreading this video around.
Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.
I spent way more time wordling yesterday than I care to admit here. It was kind of mesmerizing. I made one by entering the main LBnuke URL and a bunch by entering the feed URL. The ones with “Things” as the big word is from the feed and contains words from a broader search than the one with “Time” as the big word. I liked how changing the colors and layouts affected which words stood out the most when viewing the images. Of course the largest ones always stood out the most, but color brightness and word orientation made a big difference in some cases too. There is a gallery at the Wordle site containing images from other people’s wordles. I found the ones from the presidential and vice presidential debates pretty interesting. All images in this gallery were created at Wordle.net.
Found this on the internet via a craigslist link from K. Cracked me up. Sometimes you just have to laugh.
