selfstasis

I would recommend browsing through The Big Noob. It has to be by the far one of the best designed blogs I’ve come across which highly demonstrates the skills of the design group. The MassHole title refers to the article written by Brad Smith. After spending three Thanksgiving holidays with my fiancee’s family at Havover, Mass, I definitely agree to the whole MassHole definition.

Masschusetts drivers, next to Ohio, have to be the worst drivers I’ve encountered. Good luck on the on ramps. Set horns to stun. On a lighter note, Dunkin Donuts anyone? If you get lost, do not panic! Do not reference road names, restaurants, gas stations, and for the LOVE OF GOD do not use directions by locals. However, keep track of the DD shops and malls - you’ll eventually find your way back just through those alone.

Looks like IE will officially die on Decemember 31st. RIP IE, you sucked big time - stale, pooor ui, poor all around. What the hell were your developers thinking? More power to Firefox and Safari!

Excerpt from Austin Fath, CTO.

10:33 am Clearspring Headquarters

We didn’t end up leaving the office until after my motivation for the gym had dwindled (2am) so I just got home and slept. Good old sammy tried to wake me up at 8:00, but my subconscious and conscious brains came to a rare accord that any waking wouldn’t occur before 9. As is the norm now, Hooman was aware of the struggle but feigned ignorance and continued to sleep until after I had showered dressed and kicked in his door. He skipped the showering part so I had to skip the breakfast part of the morning to try to get to work on time. Needless to say, all I could think about on our scenic drive in was how good it would be to finish off the cookies (the gooey cinnamon raison ones) for breakfast. But as I started to stuff my face with cookies and read the morning RSS feeds, I had a startling revelation. There could be donuts left in the hostess box, hiding ever so stealthily under the red hostess stripe, invisible to the larger doniverous predators that roams the office. i finished my current cookie, careful to catch all the crumbs in my left hand so I could suck them up after the cookie, and went with steve to investigate the hostess container (steve had just arrived as he too had slept in). Was it fate karma, divine intervention? Had I been lucky or cunningly lazy?

Well at this point in my life I didn’t ponder long. There were 2 donuts nestled in the side of the box carefully concealed in white powdered camouflage. They looked so calm, and so peaceful, that I had to have a bite immediately. Everything was falling into place, the day was obviously blessed. It was then that I realized that these peaceful creatures were not all that they seemed, that perhaps I had been too complacent. Yes the donut was real. Yes it was covered in blessed sugary fur. But these donuts were more then that, they were survivors. They survived by hiding and adapting to the harsh overnight office environment when the space heaters are off. They were in fact extremely dry. I was nearly desiccated with a single bite. But no, I wasn’t to be denied, their powdered protection wouldn’t keep me away. I took the donut to the microwave with a folded brawny towel to protect it from the mosaic of previous creature remains at the bottom of the microwave. I will clean that … sometime later. Donut was loaded and the quick 30 second button pushed. I then noticed a distinctly not donut smell from somewhere in the kitchen. voicing my concern to steve, he decided to take out the garbage. The trap was sprung. Lurking deep in the bowls of the garbage bag was some new form of life based on stag chili, tuna, and clam chowder remains of unknown freshness dates. I fought the beast only long enough to open a window and dive out of the room while steve tied and exited the bag. Brave man, I hope I see him again. I gave the room 20 seconds to clear before going back for the donut. I was amazed. The room smelled not only safe, but really wholesome. Like something was cooking, or in this case on fire. The dial on the microwave has been broken for sometime so someone must have already hit the quick cook button and left more time on the clock to cook the donut. All the sugar had melted and pooled under the donut where it then charred and smoked.

I left for quiznos. The other donut remains safe in the hostess box.

A morning in the life of CTO,
- Austin

It would be interesting if I could grow a goatee. I’ve always tried but failed miserably. Damn these asian genes! Below are the many instances of what I look like or at least what I would like to picture myself going through different phases. Phase 1: clean cut, freshly shaven stubbles, and gelled. Phase 2: no sleep for days, and i don’t know what else maybe feeling a little crazy. Phase 3: +25 years but still sporting the baby face (I can’t help it - those genes remember), and hopefully *maybe*, a goatee. Phase 4: No haircut for one month, facial hair after 3 weeks (sad, yes), and if I had continued wearing eyeglasses.

I once hated Apple computers and OS 9 > OS X. Sure it was nice to look at but to me it never made sense in terms of personal computing. It was slow. To me, multitasking was a joke especially when speed was the determining factor. The OS seemed comical and this whole “easy” OS turned me off. Being a die hard windows fan, I made the computer do what I wanted it to do, and if it crashed then I screwed up something not the other way around, well 95% of the time. Somehow I was more intune with my PC - software and hardware.

Somehow my skepticism grew into acceptance. OS X and Macs are powerful machines. Maybe at some point, I’ve been working with windows for so long I’ve gotten tired of it. Building my own PCs brings joy then thinking of what OS to install, Linux or Windows, suddenly brings on suicidal tendencies. Linux is powerful not saying anything bad about it, I actually enjoy that too.

Well I finally broke down and bought a Mac Mini last March. I haven’t regretted making the purchase. It’s still fairly slow, but I’m enjoying it. Why I didn’t in college is a quandary. Maybe it was tending to whining college students that turned me off aaayee Berner?

Now that I’m on the Apple wagon, I have to wait another year before making a Power Mac and(or) a Titanium (my dream) purchase. I’ve discussed this with Austin about how it doesn’t make sense to purchase a Mac now. Even though it is so tempting!!! With the transition to x86 architecture along with the software it would be foolish to purchase now. Any current Mac purchased would be obsolete by the end of 2007 - mid 2008. Hopefully by the last half of 2006, Yonah will be incorporated in the Titaniums — oooo, dual core. Oh how sweeet it is! My dreams thwarted for now but as soon as Apple catches up with the whole x86 transition, I’ll forged new ones.

I’m appauled at how site designs get blown back to the Ice Age for the sake of community advancement. Specifically, I’m talking about the Franklin community site - www.franklinpennsylvania.us.

You want to know how much that site cost? At the beginning of the project, the site cost $60,000 of a $100,000 projected budget plan by CIN. Most of the money came from PA tax payers through grants and private contributions within the Franklin community. Who is the CIN? CIN stands for Community Informatics Network, a company from New Castle, Pa. C.I.N. in itself describes the emerging principles and practices of communication of information to the community. In a nutshell, a community PORTAL. Whoooopie Dooo DA. From last I heard, CIN was able to receive all of all $100,000 from the state and the community for the development of two main websites - one for the community and the other for city government. Community Informatics is a well studied and researched topic. It seems sound. However for a community portal to thrive constant feedback from it’s end users must exist. In Franklin’s site only one or two people post the majority of the events, and most of those events are not accessed through the input of the community. So what happens? Information becomes stale and months old. “Community” becomes pointless.

So what’s my beef? Part of it is above. Personally I think it’s a sham. This company came from outside of the community with “expertise” in this space. Which is fine, but the design SUCKS. Let’s dissect this site apart. Content from post, blogs, forums to 99% of the site is managed by an open source solution, the Drupal CMS. Drupal is a fairly good cms for community portals however limited in module selections. Implementation of a design is straight-forward however limited in module position to left or right. But even with these limitations a more viable design template can be implemented than that piece of garbarge they currently have online.

Sorry WebSchuur, I’m not impressed. I think you can do way better. Design is everywhere, implemented right, it looks good - it feels good. Implemented half assed - design kills.

YES, it is boring. I made that apparently clear in my about, but oh well.