Category: Uncategorized

A former job allowed me to play outside of my standard work responsibilities for a while, namely letting me dabble in some graphic design. I spent a little time drawing and a hell of a lot of time drafting before moving into corporate America, so I loved branching out into a little more design-oriented on someone else’s dime.

Part of the fringe benefits of the work was the non-work doors it opened, specifically for a friend of mine. His band was in desperate need of a website update so I volunteered (I’m not going to link there since I don’t do the website anymore.) In the design phases of the site, I sent the band a demo sheet of a grouping of logos for their group. I basically tore through a six-pack and a couple evenings, music blaring, singing off-tune to get a few designs to a presentable stage. Below is a thumb of the result; click for a larger version.

I was pretty attached to a couple designs, neither of which they chose. I didn’t mind the one they picked, but it wasn’t my first choice and I didn’t think it fit their image as well, but who am I, their manager? Anyway, I put this up for a) pride and b) feedback. I’m not a designer, which should be obvious from a few of these. But I like the process of trying to visualize information, whatever that information is. Their information was music, which makes it that much more difficult. I know I missed the message on this one, but I’m not sure how I could have captured it.

I also miss having a reason to draw. I know I don’t need a reason, but it sure helps motivate you to bust out the sketch pad or fire up Freehand/Illustrator/Photoshop. Is that a plea for work?

Will you please, please, update the Install Font dialog box. Whatever control you have decided to maintain in the naviagtion pane is straight out of Windows 3.1 and is frustrating as hell to use, especially if, say, the font you want to install is on your desktop.

Thanks,
ryan

For practically all my life I’ve had trouble going to sleep. I’m not an insomniac…I just think a lot. I’ll lie in bed thinking about what I want to do tomorrow or what I should have done today or how much I love eating cold pizza or how absurdly messy my desk is….you get the idea.

I think I know this person. The rest of the linked post talks about strategies and tips for getting around the racing mind.

Tips for getting to sleep faster & sleeping better [via Lifehacker]

Flame me if you want, but today’s iteration of breast feeding mom asked to stop (courtesy of the Ann Arbor YMCA and resident/member Kelly Fuks) pushed me over the edge.

This is what drives me bat-effin crazy about Ann Arbor. Repeat after me: You are not special. You are not entitled to do whatever strikes you as “OK” whenever you feel like it. You know, like whipping a teat out because junior is hungry. I’m not saying don’t feed the kid, but maybe you could, oh I don’t know, walk 100 yards to somewhere secluded and knock that task off your list.

Someone please explain to me the thought process that justifies just popping a nip out to suckle your kid at any random place. You hear this crap all the time: it happens at the mall, at amusement parks, at restaurants. Who the hell do you think you are? An incredibly huge majority of the population manages to care for their children, perhaps even breast-feeding their young, without calling the papers or TV news. How is it that people like Ms. Fuks can’t?

Sorry for your case, lady, but you don’t have my support. The Y can tell you that you can’t do it because the light is harmful for your breast skin for all I care; keep it in your shirt. Either that, or stop breeding.

I just stumbled onto something (which I’m sure is well-known, just not by me). If you hold down Shift, then mouse over a link in Firefox, the link text and URL appear in an enlarge tooltip-ish window. Very cool accessibility tool (for visually impairments, anyway).

From Stupid Evil Bastard, we get an Easter egg in today’s Foxtrot strip.

For the lazy, the binary in the strip is 01011001010011110101010101001110010001010101001001000100. Relavent tool here. I bow to Les’ geekiness on this one. And Bill Amend’s.

I missed Family Guy last night (damn you WoW). I did, however, manage to catch the new episode of Battlestar Galactica on Saturday. So, of course, due to my proclivity for having everything backwards, I can get that episode of BSG through iTunes the day after it airs but I can’t get Family Guy at all. Fox, please pull you head out of… wherever you’re currently storing it… and get on board. Note: I don’t even have an iTunes with video (I have a 3G) and I still want to buy Family Guy. Getting this?

I would have posted this regardless of the last post, but, in another move that shows Yahoo “gets it”, they have acquired Webjay, a very cool social music playlist site (and excellent source of free, legal, MP3s). Expect much gnashing of teeth in the indie/emo/overly-committed music fan crowd (ala Flickr), and then, hopefully some cool investment from Yahoo (ala Konfabulator cum Yahoo Widget Engine).

BetaNews | Yahoo Buys Webjay Playlist Community

I needed the affirmation today. Apparently, I may have just won a contest, this one to be precise. The author of Yahoo! Hacks, Paul Bausch, asked “In what month/year did Yahoo! publicly launch their Search Web Services?”. Yahoo! dutifully searved up the answer via their Yahoo! Search blog as Feb 28, 2005. The prize is a copy of Paul’s book, which is getting great reviews on Amazon. Is it wrong that I’m geeking out over winning a book about hacking Yahoo!? (And can we drop that exclamation point, eh Yahoo?)

Edit: It’s true, I really am a winner!

I read this article twice looking for the joke, then realized there isn’t one.

…IRS advisers specializing in the arcane field of barter income recently offered the opinion that any trade of one virtual item for another–gold pieces for thick leather, uber drops for plat–could very well constitute a taxable, income-generating exchange according to the IRS’s rules on barter.

This is insane. Just because some people sell these things on eBay doesn’t mean that I should have to pay tax on a virtual item, given to me for free by a virtual character and sold (at below market value) to a virtual, non-playable character. I don’t buy or sell MMO items, why should I be taxed on them? And how exactly am I bartering with a virtual NPC? The NPC is not open to bartering; it’s programmed to give me the equivalent amount of coin for the item that the same code gave me for free. Isn’t that a gift?

But, government being how it is, it will take years and millions of tax dollars (in the form of salaries, trips, and meals for IRS staff) to find out that, in fact, it is not feasible to do this. Either that, or the questions in TaxCut are going to be hilariously sad. “Has your MMO character increased in experience level more than 10 levels? If so, please refer to page MMO-34 for a table that calculates the relative worth of the increase in level.”

Terra Nova: The Taxman Cometh?