The Strength of Street Knowledge
December 9, 2009
A breakdown of Jay-Z’s most misunderstood lyric from “Empire State of Mind.” I love reading cultural anthropology like this.
Handcrafted CSS
November 5, 2009
I’ve been cruising through a new book called “Handcrafted CSS” by Dan Cederholm, proprietor of SimpleBits. The book is concerned with all the new CSS3 and HTML5 coolness and how to implement that coolness into your own designs.
The big difference: This might be the first coding book I’ve read that stresses craftsmanship over simple how-to’s.
While there’s probably not a lot of new information to be found for seasoned designers (and especially for code ninjas), the thing that impresses me most is Dan’s explanations of thought process. He doesn’t simply lay these code snippets out and tell us to start using them. Instead he explains each tactic along with the best situations for success. He offers caveats on which browsers will allow these techniques. He reinforces a progressive mindset of rewarding forward-thinking browsers without affecting the experience of users who don’t (or often can’t) use those hip browsers. He even touches on how to explain to decision-makers that pixel-perfect uniformity across browsers is becoming passe; that embracing some loss of control in the name of better experiences is a better way forward.
I also like that he’s confined a book’s worth of coding techniques into 2 pages of tightly rendered HTML, reinforcing his mantra that simplicity and craftsmanship can be used to great effect in real-world design. He proves that it’s possible to employ every example in the book with subtlety and restraint that won’t overpower design.
So, depending on your level of familiarity with CSS, jQuery and HTML5, you may not be blown away by the actual code, but the thinking behind the code is a very good reason to pick up this book.
Portraits & Still Lifes: Autumn 2009
October 27, 2009
Some recent photography with the ol’ Canon dSLR + 50mm 1.4 lens (mostly).
Time in stop-motion
October 23, 2009
Very nice stop-motion work.
Flicker (dir: animator from Coraline using a canon rebel and a plank of wood) from The Anxious Animator on Vimeo.
Review of 15″ MacBook Pro (Mid 2009)
August 12, 2009
It’s been many years since I’ve needed a new machine, but the time has come. My PowerBook, the last generation of PowerPC machines produced by Apple, was finally showing its age. Many applications are starting to release as Intel-only rather than Universal (see Adobe). The upcoming version of OSX, Snow Leopard, is meant to optimize the operating system on Intel machines. Even surfing the web had become a painful process—the surest sign that a computer is taking its final useful breaths.
In short, the time had come. But the PowerBook served me well for many years, so I thought I might help a couple fence-sitters figure out what will happen when they upgrade to a brand spankin’ new Apple MacBook Pro laptop.
