/* design. development. village life */

iCal default date

2008-05-16T19:12:00.001Z

So who decides this? its my wedding day - how cool is that?

2008-03-18T00:25:00.004Z

I just wanted to pass a shout out to the people at village foundry ... for their most excellent design and customer care. Their tag phrase is pretty great too ... "Our dollar is weak but our types are strong!"

vote again!!

2008-03-14T01:39:00.004Z

i know it just seems like we are voting all the time ... still this will be good practice for November. Thanks :) Again this is M's design. I am not such a cat person, but i still things its pretty cool.

Vote For It!

2008-02-29T04:28:00.005Z

Beer at lunch time

2008-02-24T15:28:00.007Z

This to me is one thing I really miss about living in Europe. Its not that I'm a lush or a slacker. For me its something that describes the way of life there. By contrast here people drink Vitamin water, a sugar fortified water. I'd take a Mahou anyday.

iPod touch

2008-02-14T02:32:00.003Z

8mb of gadget. I "won" by making an idiot of myself in front of my company colleagues. Oh but it was worth it. I think.

I'm a bit tired

2008-01-31T01:06:00.001Z

of the nyc subway. today on my way home, a large man fell out of his seat. Refusing help with a series of liquored-grunts, everyone quickly decided he wasn't really so decent, so he rolled on the floor a bit until he managed to pull himself up. Any sympathy he may have earned was immediately lost as he opened his trousers, and to the shock of the the woman and two children in front of him started to take a piss. everyone bolted to the other end of the subway car ... he wasn't dangerous, but i guess people were worried about piss on their shoes, not to mention the presumably still exposed penis (i wasnt looking). i moved too. The next stop, new people got in, completely oblivious to what the wet stuff on the floor was, you felt bad seeing them struggle to not step on it (unknown substances in the subway, never getting the benefit of the doubt). The pisser was still there, comfortably taking up two seats in what seemed a half empty train. I suppose he had a decent ride home, assuming of course he has a home.

FOWD

2007-11-10T12:43:00.000Z

Went to the Future of Web Design conference here in NYC last week. Highlights for me were Ryan Singer (37 Signals) on usability, Jonathan Snook (Snook.ca) on Ajax, Jina Bolton (Jinabolton.com) on CSS3 and Jeffrey Kalmikoff (skinnyCorp) talking about community centered design. Its great to hear people I really hold out as my web heros talking about what they do best. Jina's enthusiasm was infectious and I am so absolutely jazzed about CSS3! Ryan gave a great presentation on form design, something so simple ... that so easily gets bogged down in confusion."Emphasize what's important and de-emphasize what's not" ... simple really right?! Snook's was interesting just cause Ajax and web apps are interesting to me. Again Ryan Singer's words were echoing: "If you have to explain it its not obvious" (I hope that was Ryan!). Jeff Kalmikoff did a really energetic presentation on his story with Threadless, which I think has to be fascinating to so many people, as community centered design becomes the web experience. I loved his story about his mother sending him emails to "jkalmikoff@hotmale.com" I remembered when I got my first hotmail account back when they were the ONLY one providing free email addresses and long before they were Microsoft, I always felt embarrassed saying that address over the phone, so much so that I would be very quick to spell it out just so there could be NO room for confusion. So if Jeff had been English he probably never would have had that problem!
So now its time to go to Threadless and buy a t-shirt.

Summit Street, Brooklyn

2007-09-28T01:39:00.000Z

found an apartment. Harder than I thought, it turns out that Brooklyn is not as "dog-friendly" as the dog parks or tree-lined streets would lead you to believe. Anyway Leo finally found a comfortable and cozy 3rd floor walk up. Move-in next week.

need to change my title

2007-09-12T18:39:00.000Z

So I have accepted a full-time gig in NYC, so thats the end of this lark! hard enough without a full-time job to keep this up to date, harder still with one. So back to the big city ... there isnt much I will miss about the village, other than the tranquil evenings, almost consistently blue skies and the excellent cheese. Though, most of all I will miss the space .. as once again, we will cram 2 grown-up lives, and one little one into a wee-2-bedroom.

Sneakers v. Tennis Shoes

2007-07-17T20:52:00.000Z

What do you wear at the gym? Informative time wasting! Check them all at Dialect Survey.
Thanks to SVN for the link.

the wisdom of 37signals

2007-07-12T21:45:00.000Z

Biz types often want to focus on features that sell upfront and short-term profits instead of usability (often only valued after the sale) and long-term relationships. They want to "make their numbers" for this quarter instead of thinking about what's going to win them a customer for life. I guess our culture kinda validates this thinking by emphasizing shallow glitz instead of actual substance. — Matt Linderman, 37signals

Read it all here.

inspired by iGoogle

2007-07-11T10:45:00.000Z

I decided to add an image to my top banner. So far I have created summer. /* big deal */ But next the fun and games begin as I need to figure out how to dynamically swap the image based on the season, or better yet current weather.

My Google AdSense

2007-07-10T14:57:00.001Z

"Find Potato Info, Fast & Easy"

Because you need that potato info fast!! :)

The Bare Necessities (Dutch)

2007-07-10T13:27:00.001Z

YouTube removed the English version of this Jungle Book song for copyright reasons ... then followed a moment of panic as Olivia asks for it practically by name. Fortunately, the same copyright laws don't apply to the Dutch language version. Olivia didn't seem to notice the difference. Arguably is better in Dutch ... you be the judge. :)

la torre run1

2007-06-19T16:36:00.000Z

My little 2.5K run I did the other day. Neat tool. Though you have an option to measure your distance in "metric" or "english"? What is that? Since when do all English people use miles .... Or do they ... Bueller ?

London 2012 (if you haven't heard enough)

2007-06-18T09:23:00.001Z

I liked what Nat at simple and loveable says on the incredibly awful London 2012 logo.

Especially their comments on the branding website, which I guess they handed off to the intern (and not the design intern who would know better!).

Happy Birthday Dad!

2007-05-30T17:37:00.000Z

My parents have a neat little cottage to rent out in Provence, this is their website: http://www.naturistgiteprovence.com/

Wind

2007-05-28T13:10:00.000Z

When it is excessively windy (as happens frequently here in the terra alta) my DSL goes in and out. The phone box (that is the box with all the cables) is outside my daughter's window, firmly fixed to the concrete wall. Rain i could understand .. but wind ? The phone works fine which further confuses the issue. Either way its making me crazy and reminding me of my total addiction to 24/7 connectivity.

Apple's Photobooth

2007-05-25T09:11:00.000Z

I love this little utility that comes with my apple. Olivia, my daughter, loves it too, and sits cheerfully on my lap and waves to herself. Sometimes she is watching the Jungle Book, sometimes she is listening and watching an obscure Catalan band, Conxita, on YouTube. Perhaps its because Catalan sounds so "sing-song" ... the song, not for kids, translates as "dog music" ... I don't get the rest.

In progress ...

2007-05-24T21:58:00.000Z

I managed to adapt a template inside Blogger so that it works for my site. I am still working some of the style elements, but it almost there. I started with Douglas Bowman's Minima design, which as its name suggest is nice and minimal. I copied out the provided template code, and then moved over the blogger tags into my own blank template, tweeked the css so it worked for my site, and then pasted back into the edit template box. Not too labor intensive for someone who wants to just learn this stuff, and doesnt have her whole site revolving around the blog.

The Web Design Survey, 2007

2007-05-04T15:33:00.000Z

Today in Madrid

2007-05-01T16:06:00.000Z

We are taking a short break from village tranquility and starting slowing with Madrid before we head to NYC for a couple of weeks. Today is May 1 and a holiday in Spain. El día del trabajo, Spanish Labor day, is very unlike the American Labor day though in that nothing is open. So no shopping, no BBQs (cos its like 50 degrees today), and no baseball! so unless you are connected to the World Wide Web you can't do much.