Designing for you.

I recently decided to redesign this blog. (At the time of this posting, you can obviously see that it is not finished yet as the design of this site has not changed.)  I am a self-proclaimed PHP expert, I know CSS and HTML pretty well, and I dabble in Photoshop.  One thing I lack though, is creative vision.  I am by no means a designer.  I know the code and the tools, but I am not artistic.  Give me a mockup to work with, and I can code it, but beyond that I’m pretty useless. The initial re-design of the blog, which I spent about 30 man-hours on, came out looking very generic: Header, content, widget column.  I really wanted something unique, and bold.  Something not too overbearing but still very easy to use.  I was unable to come up with anything myself.  The first redesign was basically centered around […]

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Making a bad situation worse

Why do people have a tendency to sulk?  Have you ever been really mad at someone, and just held a grudge? Too stubborn to back down when you know you were wrong?  Have problems apologizing? Purposely use body language to let your girlfriend know you are pissed off at her, but never actually say anything about it? Roommates having a party you don’t feel like participating in, and instead of just sucking it up and having fun, you isolate yourself from the group?  I hate all of these things, and yet, I also do them on a regular basis, but why? I really don’t know, to be honest.  If i did, I would probably be a much happier person.  Sometimes it is easier to just stomp off in a 5-year-old huff then it is to just accept a situation for what it is.  I have always been semi anti-social, not really in a bad […]

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I shall name my first born son “Violence”

Seriously.  What is with the way people name their children these days?  Is the desire to be unique in some way so great that a name like Mike, Christopher, or John just not good enough?  Take a look at some of the craziest names celebrities have given their children quoting this article, I have taken my favorites since I don’t think all of them were that crazy. Princess Tiaamii (Jordan / Peter Andre) Audio Science (Shannyn Sossamon) Camera (Arthur Ashe) Fifi Trixibell (Bob Geldof and Paula Yates) Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily (Paula Yates and Michael Hutchence) Kal-El Coppola (Nicholas Cage – Kal-El is Supermans birth name) Lark Song (Mia Farrow) Moon Unit (Frank Zappa) Dweezil (Frank Zappa) Ahmet Emuukah Rodan (Frank Zappa) Diva Thin Muffin Pigeen (Frank Zappa) Sage Moonblood (Sylvester Stallone) So apparently this trend amongst celebrities has begun to trickle down into average homes.  This is the reason […]

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Managing your online identity

For a long time I thought a lot about my online identity.  By this I don’t mean “What do people think of me online” or “Could I become a victim of identity theft”, but more “How visible am I on the internet”.  I thought a lot about it mostly because I didn’t want people to be able to google my name and find out a whole lot about me.  I wanted to be invisible and anonymous on the internet.  I have heard so many stories about bosses googling their employees, potential employers googling their candidates, girlfriends googling their boyfriends, etc.   Search engines make it possible for employers to scour all manner of digital dirt to vet employees. Online profile company Ziggs.com CEO Tim DeMello fired an intern after he discovered that on the intern’s Facebook profile he divulged that while at Ziggs he would “spend most of my days […]

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Science is Racist

Today on Howard Stern I heard a news update which is apparently about a week old, but it was new to me. It centers in on the topic of ultra racial sensitivity.  A Dallas Commissioner during a meeting regarding ticket collections said: It sounds like Central Collections has become a black hole. Obviously this was intended to imply that their ticket collections system was comparable to a black hole where things which enter it, never escape.  I do not know much about the Dallas municipalities and their issues with ticket collections but when seeing this statement, no matter what the context, I do not see any semblance of racism. However, commissioner John Wiley Price felt that this sort of language was unacceptable, and racist. (You can view the original video of the conversation here.)  This is all fine and good, I suppose he is entitled to his stance that a black hole is a […]

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