Web Sites for Artists at the Quinlan

I’m putting together a class for the Quinlan Visual Arts Center in Gainesville towards the end of this month. I’ll be focusing on web site development by more traditional means. I think a critical step often forgotten by developers is wire framing and white boarding. Web sites are visual, so you should attack them visually… Continue reading Web Sites for Artists at the Quinlan

Evil in Nature

The Ampulex compressa, a wasp with a nasty hunting habit, has a particularly devious plan in store for cockroaches. I’m not fond of roaches either, but I’ve never thought to conduct bizarre Frankenstein experiments with them. I’ve read at Boing Boing and The Loom at Corante now about the fascinating insect. The female wasp seeks… Continue reading Evil in Nature

Free Chapel Presents The Story of Christmas

My wife, a good friend of ours, and I were hired to perform for Free Chapel’s production of The Christmas Story in Gainesville this past weekend. The show was probably astounding, though I’ve haven’t seen it yet. It works out that way for those of us that are actually in the play. Getting it together… Continue reading Free Chapel Presents The Story of Christmas

Pod People

Yesterday, Amy and I spent the whole day doing Chewbacca pictures for the upcoming DragonCon art show. I think this year’s project is going to be really great! Earlier in the morning, I had a doctor’s appointment to attend to. While I was there, I took the opportunity to ask April, the lady I usually… Continue reading Pod People

Technorati to be Assimilated

Niall Kennedy’s blog spoke recently of a rumor regarding Technorati’s sale ‘to a large search company.’ The thought is interesting enough, though not as extraordinary as you might think. The ‘large search company’ would most likely be Google or Yahoo – in that order. Yahoo is certainly trying position itself in the industry as the… Continue reading Technorati to be Assimilated

Konfabulator – Yahoo! Widgets

The Konfabulator tool was recommended to me by a coworker recently. He noticed that I used the Desktop Sidebar, a Longhorn-looking (Windows Vista) desktop component. To be honest, I was speculative of the Konfabulator’s ability to replace the Desktop Sidebar, both by its name and the source of information (he’s not a Windows guy, so… Continue reading Konfabulator – Yahoo! Widgets

The Dark Side of eBay

eBay marketers are potentially some of the seediest, unethical types out there. There are good deals to be found, sure. But there are also traps and deceptions around every corner. In this example, someone is using familiar practices to improve the sales of their product. I searched for “Jornada 720” and found this item: The… Continue reading The Dark Side of eBay

Simple, Instrumented, Bullet-Proof

I had an “all-hands” meeting today at CheckFree in which we discussed our division’s strengths and weaknesses. One of the things I gleaned from this was that there is a desire by upper management for solutions to be simple, instrumented, and bullet-proof when they’re handed off. This rings true in many people’s minds, I think.… Continue reading Simple, Instrumented, Bullet-Proof

Conversational

Here’s an odd sort-of conversation I had with Sean this morning. I don’t suppose it’s that odd, but it does exemplify our relationship in an odd way. Olaf says: Why is it that www.microsoft.com/iis still goes to the product page for Windows 2000? They just announced the Windows 2000 end-of-life forthcoming. SeanW says: good question… Continue reading Conversational

Coming Home

My Internet access has been limited to my grandmother’s dial-up AOL account since I arrived in Pensacola Beach this past Saturday. I did make it out to a semi-local Taco Bell once for some high-speed wireless access. That was a good refresher, but my time was very limited. So limited, in fact, that I conducted… Continue reading Coming Home