Category Archives: News

Things, Goings On, and Stuff I write

Christopher Lee

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I just became aware that Christopher Lee, now known for Lord of the Rings’ White Wizard turn Nasty Guy, and Star Wars Episode II bad guy was actually ‘The Mummy’ in 1958! This guy has been doing movies for a long time!

That’s quite a career and if my career lasts that long I’m not going to be developing web sites in 40 years because the web will be the past, but maybe I’ll be designing ties. And I suspect that blogs will be, um, part of stories I tell my grand-kids.

“When I was your age we used to have this thing called the Internet.”

“Yeah, yeah Grandpa, we’ve heard that story before. Come play Virtual Wolfenstein 4D.”

High of…

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So tomorrow it’s supposed to be 23 degrees. Hope, that would be warm. Actually, the forecast is for it to be a high of 3 degrees. A low of -6. Of course all of that is Fahrenheit. Which reminds me of a Ray Bradbury book in which these guys are all driving around in beetles and then they’re burning books and then this one gal is watching TV and then the alarm goes off and the coffee maker turns on and then the toast pops out of the toaster oven and then you discover that it wasn’t a dream, everyone’s dead but the automation keeps going. Or something like that.

The Blend

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I predict that 2005 will contain more blending as is already obvious by some cutting edge designers as linked to below (though the designs may change if you’re reading this from the archives – email me if things have changed when you’re reading this and linking through).

Your Total Site – blends the shadow down into what could be any length content – good design choice because you get to lose your concern over how long the article is, or the length of columns.

Firewheel Design – a small blend is employed near the menu to help visually draw your eyes from the menu into the content of the page. Also, a hatched blend is employed where the lovely background pattern runs into the orange gradient.

Silver Point – This site really grabbed me and I think it may be one of my favorites of the year. I really liked the rounded corners with the padded dotted outline for the mission statement.

The thing about the blend is that it is so subtle, but effective at drawing your eyes past distinct elements without killing the distinction of the elements that are blending. It’s smart design and something I hope to employ in the next rendition of this site.

A Funny Little Email

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I got an email from a friend this morning that started like this:

Randy-
I really have to tell you how I found your website. I heard a story on the radio this morning about man-breasts. I have to admit that this morning I searched for man breasts, and I found your website…

It went on to ask questions about my family and such but it does crack me up the way the internet can bring people together… for the freakiest reasons 🙂

Can I get Two?

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If you look closely at the picture of the display on this page you’ll notice several things: it’s kind of dark and hard to see what’s going on. The other thing you’ll note is that the display is three (3) ‘monitors’ wide. This is the bombdest display and I’d seen pictures of it somewhere else and then lost track of them. So, here it is, the coolest display I’ve seen for a computer. Imagine playing a first person game where you’re surrounded completely without a break for multi-monitor games.

On a business level, think about having Word, Excel and FireFox open at the same time (if you think I was actually going to say Internet Explorer you must be crazy), all within view and being able to drag and drop between applications even easier than you can with multiple monitors.

Thirdly, think about how expensive it would be to buy this. It makes the Mac wide displays look small.

Technology Vs. the Lawyers

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So the music industry is slowly warming to digital content distribution (MP3’s, WMA’s, and “live” concerts with Ashlee Simpson). However, the Movie industry is now cycling in about 5 or more years late. They’ve got their lawyers out en force working on suing the peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. What is so amazing is that companies like Microsoft have developed digital rights management software and Tivo uses some similar controls to limit what or how things can be recorded. However, people can get things recorded digitally all sorts of other ways. Limiting the P2P networks seems to be short sighted and it really isn’t going to stop them. Sharers will jump to other networks or other methods.

This kind of reminds me of the Boston Tea Party: the colonists didn’t like getting caught for smuggling – and when the Brits closed in, they went off and of course you know what happened next: they polluted the ocean and the environmentalists in Britain revolted to let the United States get formed to help save the fish.

I don’t know where I was going with that, but there you go!

Bye-Bye, Baby

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So today I sent in my Nikon camera to the factory to be fixed. The speed flash stopped working so I had to send it in for repair. I took it down to my local FedEx-Kinko’s where they’re reportedly going to ship it. I paid extra big money to have it wrapped carefully, shipped in a box 6 times it’s size full of peanuts and carried by ballerinas on their tip-toes. I also paid to have the guy behind the counter breathe as well as talk to other customers. In fact, the whole experience felt like FedEx was billing me for my time in their store. There’s something magical about that extreme form of capitalism called ‘Shipping – Copying – Printing.’ It makes you feel like a useless slave bound to their rules. Therefore, I’m going to start RandyEx where I’ll ship copies of your printings for 3000X profit and become independently wealthy after only 7 weeks on my new diet plan.

I hope my camera comes back OK.

The Tree

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Yesterday I went and collected the yearly tree due to the help of my brother (in Christ) Craig. He’s got a long car with the ability to throw things on the roof so he kindly hauled the branches and bough to our apartment. Unfortunately the diameter of the tree was greater than the (crappy) hoop that came with our tree stand. So I had to cut, whack and hack at the bottom of the tree to get it into the hoop. In the end: we’ve got a tree, but 90 degrees is not quite the angle it’s at. Maybe I can talk Craig into firing up his saw to make some wood bits for me to balance the stand out because the tree is not moving in that ring.

You see, Craig has got a miter saw. It’s slick and I watched him use it with (friendly) envy. It’s quite the saw and I think that when we get a house next year we’ll have to buy one shortly after so that I can cut random pieces of wood with great precision. Enough of Craig’s great saw.

Abby will be joining us in tree decoration shortly and I expect that to be quite, um, intersting 🙂 I’ll post pictures later.