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∞ Mortar Men

2009-07-01T07:43:11-05:00

Something I'm very proud of just went live on the iTunes App Store. Go download it, play it, review it, tell your friends and countrymen. (link opens iTunes)

¶ Heavy Music

2009-05-29T14:42:01-05:00

I was looking at my horribly, terribly neglected Facebook profile the other day, checking to see if I needed to update any of my info, and I noticed something that has caused an annoying amount of confusion in my life. From the “Favorite Music” category of my profile:

“Either very heavy or very soft music. Plus some other stuff in between.”

This has been the summary of my musical tastes for a very long time. I’ve tried often to word it differently or find a more succinct phrase, but always wind up reverting to something very similar to this descriptor.

The afore mentioned confusion usually stems from the use of the word heavy. The word soft is relatively self-explanitory, as or at least it seems to be when I talk about it with co-workers and acquaintances, but heavy seems to miss the mark as an accurate descriptor of the music I enjoy most. Still, I can’t find something more suitable. If I said I enjoy metal, you might assume I enjoy Metallica or Korn, which I don’t (as neither of them are what I call metal). If I said I enjoy hardcore many of you would wrongly suppose I enjoy a sub-genre of either rap or techno which goes by the same name.

Ok, let me take a moment to talk about that last point. For whatever reason, it seems like 95% of the people in my industry (the web, namely) listen to some variety techno or rap, be they designers or developers. I’ve asked a few of my co-workers (who fall into this pattern almost to a man) about this, and their response usually involves something to do with “good working music” or “background music”. I totally understand the concept and the need for good background music while you’re working. Focusing the mind, getting into a groove, finding a rhythm, etc. Music helps, but not if it’s a distraction. I understand that. I guess my problem is that my musical flavor of choice for this sort of thing is just, well, different from the norm.

Some Completely Unnecessary Background

Right, so back to the whole heavy thing. I grew up in a conservative Christian home, and as such, I listened to a lot of conservative Christian music growing up. When I was 13, I heard ska for the first time. Christian ska. I was floored. It was fun, it was upbeat, it HAD a beat, and it was mildly irreverent, compared to my usual fair. As with many kids growing up in similar backgrounds, ska lead me to punk, which had a harder, rougher edge, and a great deal more irreverence. Punk eventually lead me to rapcore (think Linkin Park, Korn, or P.O.D.), which introduced me to the breakdown (Not sure what a breakdown is? Keep reading).

It was about this time (15 or 16) that I went to my first concert, and became a part of what we in the Metro-Atlanta area eventually came to call “The Scene”. It was at this first concert (Squad Five-O, Luti-Kriss, Cool Hand Luke, and Project 86) that I was introduced to both hardcore and screamo. This was also the first time I saw a proper mosh pit. I’m not talking about a ska/punk/techno mosh pit, where every pushes and shoves. This was a hardcore mosh pit, where kids do spin kicks and roundhouses, narrowly missing each other’s faces by inches. A mosh pit of a very particular brand of brotherly love that requires you to either fully participate, or be kicked in the face. Repeatedly. I never got in a pit. Not my thing. Loved watching it though.

Over the next few years, I became deeply involved in the scene, and a particular concert venue near my house, called the Greenhouse. They had one or two concerts there every weekend, featuring local and travelling bands alike, ranging from the most emo of emo, to the most intense kind of metal. At one point, for a period of about six months, I found myself running the Greenhouse, and I almost accidentally let a band called Bliss Tap burn it down (there was some incredible fire-spitting going on). It was awesome.

I need to take a second here to point something out. Something that might make a few of you look at me askance from now on, but I’m cool with that. As I said before, I grew up in a conservative Christian household. I still hold to those beliefs, though I (and my family) have loosened up a great deal since then. I would hardly call myself conservative in the traditional sense. Politically, yes, still a conservative, but not in the way that comes to your mind when you hear “conservative Christian”. I’m not one to tow the Trinity-Broadcasting-700-Club line, for example, and I never really was (though I may have dressed like it). That’s a whole other conversation, but it bears pointing out, because, as it turns out, all of the music I was listening to at this point in my story was, despite the pyrotechnics and often-bone-breaking moshing, Christian music. It also bears pointing out that a large majority of the Christian community completely disagreed with us on that point.

Fast-forward a few years, and a few failed attempts at being in bands, to present day. During that time, I married a girl from the scene, got some tattoos, and stretched my ear piercings to half-inch guages. My musical tastes, unlike those of many of my scene kid peers, have not changed. I don’t go to many shows any more, but I keep up with all the old bands that made it big, and new bands as well. I have a shared iTunes library that no one in my office will connect to, aside from one IT guy.

The MixTape

So, I say all that to introduce something new I’m trying to do. Remember MuxTape? Scratch that, I just discovered it’s still around. Remember what MuxTape used to be? Well today, thanks to the folks behind OpenTape, you can put something similar together on your own site (at your own risk). Thus, I present to you, my MixTape. It’s more than likely that you are not going to enjoy any of the music on my tape (unless you’re J. Christopher — hey buddy), but I’m OK with that. It’s an important part of my life, and I’d like to share it with those not fortunate enough to have heard some of it.

So here’s the artist list (two songs per artist, artist name links to iTunes):
EDIT: To clear up some confusion, this is an explanation of the artists in THE MIXTAPE, not the mixtape itself. CLICK HERE TO LISTEN.

Underoath
More on the poppy side of hardcore, Underoath mixes screaming and singing in a mainstream fashion that, for whatever reason, I just can’t get enough of. I’ve been a fan of them since their earlier heavy metal days. They just get better and better.
MeWithoutYou
MeWithoutYou is a departure from my usual hardcore fair. I’d still call them “heavy” but they lean more towards post-punk with a bit of poetry mixed in. They used to perform all of their shows in brown sport coats, vests, and slacks. The lyrics of “Gentlemen” are some of the best I’ve ever heard.
Norma Jean
Norma Jean started in semi-rural Douglasville, Georgia, about 45 minutes out from Atlanta. They started out as Luti-kriss, and soon changed their name due to the rising popularity of a local rapper of a similar name. The first of these songs features their original vocalist, Josh Scoggin, the best screamer I’ve ever heard, as well as a cameo by Aaron, the lead singer of MeWithoutYou.
Beloved
Beloved is easily in my top 5 favorite bands of all time. Based out of North Carolina, they played in Atlanta almost every weekend back in the day. They disbanded after only a few years, but produced 2 full-length albums and an EP in that time. Since disbanding, most of them have gone on to join other bands, including Advent, Classic Case, and Dead Poetic.
Hopesfall
Hopesfall has gone through a lot of changes over the last several years. I’ve only ever really been a fan of their “No Wings to Speak of” EP, which these two songs come from. Ranging from high energy to soft and melodic, I can listen to this four track album on repeat for hours on end.
Emery
Emery is absolutely spectacular. I defy you to think otherwise. Ranging from the melodic harmonies that their two vocalists (who sound shockingly similar) bring to their ballady slow songs, to the energy of their keyboardist/screamer. Also, the best live performance I’ve ever seen.
August Burns Red
August Burns Red is relatively new to me. I’ve seen their shirts on many an upstart teenager over the last couple of years. They’re a little more on the fast side than I usually enjoy, but enjoy I do. Their drummer is insane, and their guitarists are highly technical and skilled.

∞ Diary of an App Store Reviewer

2009-05-29T08:33:43-05:00

Gruber takes a humorous jab at Apple's broken App review process. If you haven't heard about the problems around the process, this provides a decent overview of the issue.

∞ New Yorker cover drawn on iPhone

2009-05-27T08:27:35-05:00

Here's a first for you. This week's cover of the New Yorker was painted using the Brushes iPhone app. I saw some video of this app at work a few months ago. Really amazing.

∞ Top 10 Programming Fonts

2009-05-25T09:05:44-05:00

In a geek-out for the ages, Dan lists his top 10 programming fonts. Personally, I've been using Courier for years and have never had a problem with it. May play with Inconsolata, though.

∞ PPK’s Mobile Tests

2009-05-25T08:59:47-05:00

PPK recently released some of the results of his tests of various mobile browsers. The most detailed compatibility tables and lists I've seen to date. A must read.

∞ Stop Being Broken

2009-05-23T14:51:15-05:00

A video blog aiming to fix annoying problems in the world. Stop carrying empty coffee cups on TV, stop receiving mail notifications during presentations, etc. Good stuff.

∞ Glyphish

2009-05-23T11:13:57-05:00

Glyphish offers some very nice simple icons and resources for iPhone developers. Perfect for all your UITabBarController needs. (via prettify*)

∞ Leihu v50.0

2009-05-13T06:50:25-05:00

My friend James has redesigned his blog, leihu.com, for the 50th time. Aside from being gorgeous, there's a nifty little easter egg in there for anyone who remembers Contra.

¶ Commitment

2009-05-12T14:55:50-05:00

Let’s have a little talk about commitment. I’ve been pondering it lately. I don’t take commitment lightly. Just ask my wife, when I decide I’m going to do something, I fully plan on trying to do it. I mean it. Once I’ve set my sights on a goal, there is nothing in this world that will keep me from trying reasonably hard to give it my best shot. It’s true. I fully plan on putting forth my best effort at trying my darnedest to complete any task I commit myself to.

Ok, enough hyperbole. In all seriousness, I’m terrible at commitment. Absolutely terrible.

I often buy small, black, spiral-bound, college-ruled notebooks. Now, when I say “often”, you need to understand, I’m being really, really vague. It’s like a three-named assassin’s compulsion to buy Catcher in the Rye. They’re usually around $5.00, give or take a dime. How very analog of me. How very lo-fi. I buy the notebooks with the best possible intentions of writing many great profundities and nuggets of truth in them. Or maybe just to take notes in meetings. Or keep to-do lists. Or, hell, perhaps just to doodle in them. The last one I bought was purchased in December of ‘08. I’ve written approximately six pages in the book, half of which were the start of this article, written the night I brought the book home.

I started this blog. Every once in a while, I redesign it, as a monument to myself of my renewed commitment to actually use it. Redesigns are like shedding stale skin, with the belief that by changing the blog, something in my own life will change. I’ll have more time, more interest, more things to say. Best possible intentions. Great profundities. Et cetera, et cetera. I started the blog about three years ago. I’ve written (and kept) just over a dozen articles of varying length and value. The topics of said articles range from things like cats, podcasts, and spousal arguments. Great profundities, indeed.

Let’s take a step back and look at this whole commitment thing from another angle. Most of my friends will tell you I’m fairly decent at committing. That’s because I’m really GOOD at SOME types of commitments, particularly when others are involved. What I suck at, is making commitments to myself.

Take 90% of the RPG-style video games I’ve invested time in over the last 20 years, for example. Your classic, top-down, action-adventure or turn-based role playing games of the Zelda, Final Fantasy, Chronotrigger variety are my bread and butter. I’ve always loved them. But those suckers take a lot of time to complete, and I must say I’m mildly embarrassed to admit that I’ve never played a Final Fantasy game through to the end, save the first one. I can count on my two hands the number of RPGs I’ve played to the bitter end. Actually, I barely start using the other hand when I do. It’s like 6. My inability to finish RPGs and my love of the genre are at such conflict, I’ve often picked up a game to play a second time, only to stop short yet again (Neverwinter Nights, I’m looking at you).

Beyond RPGs, take the Megaman series. I’m a huge, huge fan. I’ve played every single installment (there are over 25) of the Blue Bomber (even the crappy Pokémon rip-offs), but I’ve only ever finished two of them (II & IV).

Now, as a contrast, let’s look at the last few video games I HAVE managed to finish. Three Castlevanias, a couple of Metroids, a Contra remix, and Mass Effect. What do those have in common? Why am I capable of seeing those through to the end? It’s not because they’re in any way more compelling than your classic RPGs. Just look at Mass Effect, for goodness’ sake. Less story-line there than the latest Jason Statham movie. What these games have in common, really, is the fact that they can be beaten in less than 5 hours (Contra in less than 15 minutes). You can stretch them out to last weeks, yes, but if you wanted to, you could wrap up any one of those in the time it takes to suffer through the latest, um, Jason Statham movie.

So, there’s my problem. I bite off more than I can chew, over-committing to myself, and I end up never getting off the blocks on things, no matter how fired up I am about them. Well, I can’t really do anything concrete to battle that tendency with any immediate pay off, so, I’ll just publish this article and get back to work with a new sense of self-realization and annoyance. That’s a great way to start the day.

Anyway, with this article comes a refresh to my site’s design (Incidentally breaking a commitment I made not to redesign my site for a year. Go me). Over the next few weeks I’m going to be turning this into more of a tumblog than a blog. Hopefully by publishing small, easy to manage bursts rather than the longwinded variety that is my current fare, I’ll be a little more regular and a little better disciplined about the whole owning-a-blog thing.

∞ Awkward Family Photos

2009-05-12T08:54:33-05:00

Something in the Fail Blog, Engrish vein. Awkward Family Photos attempts to "spread the awkwardness" that is family photos. Some of these are too good to be true.

¶ iPhone App vs. Web App

2009-03-17T15:43:12-05:00

Since the iTunes AppStore’s launch last July, many companies have been creating iPhone Apps to match some or all functionality of already existing web apps. The purpose is relatively obvious: By creating a standalone application, they’re able to leverage the iPhone’s slew of features and functionality to improve the user experience and, in some cases, bring that experience to a new level by going mobile for the first time (a la Facebook). Some companies are doing this ridiculously well (again, Facebook). Others, however, are kind of missing the point.

NetNewsWire Mobile

Here’s a great example. As I’ve mentioned before, I use NetNewsWire for all my RSS/Newsreading needs. One of the features I dig about NNW is that it syncs with NewsGator, so I can check out my feeds from any browser, and everything stays synchronized. Some of you, probably those of you reading this in Google Reader, are wondering why I would use an app at all, if synchronization is important. Being a huge fan of web apps, I’d tend to agree with you. However, NetNewsWire offer’s an experience that I really couldn’t get out of a website. Site-based keyboard shortcuts are iffy at best in a browser, and I loves me some mouse-less newsreading. NetNewsWire has done exactly what they should do with such a desktop application: they’ve leveraged the capabilities of the device (the desktop in this case) to improve and build on the web-based experience.

So there’s this NetNewsWire app for the iPhone. Launched with the AppStore back in July. Instant download. At first, it was everything I ever wanted out of a newsreader on my iPhone. I didn’t often have need to use it, really, but knowing that it was always there helped me sleep a little better each night. Then Christmas happened, and I stopped checking my newsfeeds while I did the whole family thing. Near the beginning of January, I found I had need to kill some time waiting for a haircut. Opened up the trusty NetNewsWire iPhone app… And waited. I waited, and waited some more, while all the newsfeeds I had neglected to read over the last couple of weeks downloaded. To be fair, it was something like 800+ news items from 190+ subscriptions, downloading over T-Mobile’s EDGE network (yeah, unlocked iPhone, keep up). After around ten minutes, I gave up and played Wurdle. Wurdle is awesome.

NetNewsWire Mobile vs. NewsGator

It’s completely arguable that I shouldn’t expect so much out of an iPhone app, particularly over an EDGE connection. Completely arguable, except for one thing: The NewsGator iPhone site. After my disheartening experience waiting for all my precious newsfeeds to download, I was determined to find a better way. So, I hopped into Safari and headed on down to http://m.newsgator.com.

Here’s the kicker: NewsGator iPhone and NetNewsWire are virtually identical in design, function, and feature. There are very few, very subtle differences between the two, and most of those are aesthetic. But there is one huge, blindingly obvious difference between the two. NewsGator displays my feed items in seconds flat, where NNW takes minutes. Tens of minutes. By serving up web pages rather than trying to download the entire content of 800+ articles to an iPhone on an EDGE network, NewsGator iPhone edition cuts the wait to a fraction.

Granted, NetNewsWire allows you to read your feeds on the go, and any info it downloads is still available when there isn’t a connection. I get that. But really, honestly, how often are you in a place that has literally no signal? If that’s the case, you probably don’t have time to read news articles, as it’s very likely you’re being chased by hillbillies deformed by years of exposure to nuclear waste. Also, once Apple gets all the kinks worked out of their iPhone-data-push-3rd-party-notification-whatever framework for developers, I’m sure NNW will be more useful by an order of magnitude, as passive data collecting might be possible, and you can be just that much more up-to-date on who Jeff Croft has pissed off today.

At any rate, the current incarnation of the NetNewsWire iPhone app is a perfect example of an app that didn’t need to be made. It offers the exact same features and functionality of it’s web-based sibling, an almost identical design and layout, and suffers from ridiculous loading times that just aren’t necessary.

Another Direction: Bank of America

Bank of America launched their Mobile Banking iPhone app on Dec 28^th, 2008. As a long-time customer of Bank of America, I was relatively hopeful—though highly skeptical—about the quality of the app. BoA has never really suited me or my finances, and has really only been my bank for so long because I don’t want to go through the frustration of switching to something better. Anyway, the app turns out to be a standalone “single-serving” web browser pointed to the iPhone version of the BoA account management site. That’s it. The only difference between downloading that app and hitting up http://bankofamerica.com/mobile is the lack of browser chrome in the app.

So is this another webapp-to-iPhone-app failure, like NetNewsWire? Or is it simply a cheap-and-dirty method to make iPhone users aware of BoA’s mobile offerings. Or, perhaps more likely, was BoA simply unaware of Mobile Safari’s ability to add a bookmark’s icon on the user’s homescreen? In any case, by skipping the app and pointing users straight to the mobile experience they’ve already set up (and set up relatively well), BoA bypasses the pitfalls of creating a not-so-impressive experience on a device that demands better. Granted, the experience isn’t very impressive as it stands, but it’s not worse than the mobile site, and that something.

So, What?

The point is, if you have a useful app or webapp that you’d like to port to the iPhone, there’s a really good chance we all want you to as well. But don’t make an app just for the sake of making it available. If your product can’t easily and obviously take advantage of what the iPhone — as a device, not just a mobile web browser — brings to the table, maybe you should rethink building the app at all.

∞ I Need Some Quick Help

2009-02-17T14:28:49-05:00

In my switch to EE, I'm afraid my subscribers may have been lost. If you've been subscribed for over a month, this appears in your reader, please email me and set my mind at ease! Thanks.

∞ OMGIF

2009-02-17T07:42:53-05:00

From Stephen Gose, the author of the Ampersand Blog, comes OMGIF, a blog devoted to animated GIFs. I don't really know what else to say to that. Instant subscription.

∞ How Dan Might Deal with IE6

2009-02-17T07:34:33-05:00

I've been toying with the idea of dropping all CSS support for IE6. I currently don't test it, but this article from Dan has me seriously considering it.

∞ Real Life Multitouch

2009-02-17T07:27:56-05:00

I get so much freaking enjoyment out of the Ironic Sans blog. I'm sure this joke has been made before, but it certainly made my chuckle. Good show.

∞ Eric Meyer on Selector Blocks

2009-02-17T07:25:56-05:00

I can honestly say that I've had this exact thought process several times in the last two weeks. I hate lengthy selectors. I'm just selfish that way.

¶ ExpressionEngine, My New Hotness

2009-02-16T21:26:14-05:00

For the last couple of months, I’ve been in the process of switching the back-end of this site over from Wordpress to ExpressionEngine. It would have been done a lot sooner, but I used the conversion as an ~~excuse~~ opportunity to tweak a couple of things here and there around the site. I changed the way articles were listed, I fully embraced the serif, I switched from Em-based heights to Pixels, just to name a few. Small changes, but time-consuming nonetheless. I shudder to think how long a few of the more nuanced changes I made would have taken if I had at attempted them in Wordpress.

That’s a good jumping-off point to explain the reasoning behind the switch. I gave ExpressionEngine a shot on the recommendation of my good friend James, and also because I noticed that it’s what all the cool kids are using these days. Once I had it installed and played with it over a weekend, I started to see just exactly why it suited my needs better than Wordpress ever could. Let me start by saying that Wordpress is a very powerful and well-made application. It’s been around for a long time, and has come a long way. It does it’s job very well. To coin an analogy (or is it a simile?), WP is like a philips-head screwdriver. A beautiful, incredibly well-constructed screwdriver, made of solid gold, and encrusted with diamonds. It has a nice rubber grip that never slips and allows you to maneuver easily. EE, on the other hand, being that it has one foot in the CMS realm, is a much more modest, yet more powerful tool, which can be used to make screwdrivers. Screwdrivers of any kind or fashion. Flat-head, philips-head, torx, even hex-socket screwdrivers. It’s a screwdriver factory, and you’re in control.

If you use Wordpress, and your experience has been like mine, you can probably argue that WP can be made to do these things, too. You simply need to know how to make it jump through the right hoops. WP comes with a robust set of features and a powerful theming engine. That engine, however, comes with a lot of predefined functions and constructs (“The Loop” for example). If you want to do anything that deviates from those predefined patterns, you’re going to have to enlist the use of a 3rd-party plugin (of which there are literally thousands) or create your own hack (of which there are literally thousands). This is a lot to ask for many people, especially the more front-end-centric folks.

ExpressionEngine doesn’t jump through “hoops”. It just does what you want it to do, and it does it like you’d expect it to. It accomplishes this by way of a ridiculously intuitive yet powerful templating language. Yes, it has it’s own language, but it’s going to be ok, I promise. The EE language is made specifically for templating, unlike PHP which is much broader and more generalized. After a couple of hours working with it, EE’s syntax starts to feel like an extension of HTML. If you’re a front-end developer, you’ll feel right at home in no time.

Here’s a really simple (perhaps even over-simple) example of how ExpressionEngine’s code compares to the PHP used to theme Wordpress. Let’s take the example of a category link list, in it’s most basic form.

A basic category list in Wordpress:

<ul> <?php wp_list_categories(); ?> </ul>

In ExpressionEngine Tags:

<ul> {exp:weblog:categories weblog=“weblog” style=“linear”} <li><a href=”{path='weblog/index'}”>{category_name}</a></li> {/exp:weblog:categories} </ul>

That’s probably not the kind of example you were expecting, as the Wordpress version of the code is obviously shorter and easier to write. But that’s exactly what makes ExpressionEngine so great. Things like that aren’t left to the software to take care of. EE doesn’t construct the list based on a series of arguments in a function call. It allows you to construct the HTML yourself.

Let’s say you needed to do something a little more complex. Let’s say, for example, you needed to add a unique, name-based class to each li element.

Here’s the Wordpress code:

<ul> <?php $categories = get_categories(); foreach ($categories as $cat) { $li = '<li class="'.$cat->category_nicename.'">'; $li .= '<a href="/category/'.$cat->category_nicename.'">'; $li .= $cat->cat_name; $li .= '</a></li>'; echo $li; } ?> </ul>

And here’s the ExpressionEngine version:

<ul> {exp:weblog:categories style=“linear”} <li class=”{category_url_title}”><a href=”{path='weblog/index'}”>{category_name}</a></li> {/exp:weblog:categories} </ul>

So, yeah… Hopefully you can see my point. Wordpress makes some things easy, but when you try to do something slightly different, it becomes a ridiculous pain. ExpressionEngine doesn’t make as many assumptions about what you want to do with it. And everybody knows, when you make an assumption, you make an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and… ‘mption’.

Another thing that ExpressionEngine does better than Wordpress is documentation. I was able to get a firm grasp of EE within hours using the docs. It’s a fantastically pleasant experience, especially compared to the chore of trying to find anything in the Wordpress Codex.

There are a very few things I’m going to miss about Wordpress. One of them is the authoring environment, but it has to be noted that I’m referring to the authoring interface of WP 2.5-6. The 2.7 interface was a huge disappointment to me. I think they’re moving away from what Zeldman was talking about here:

To the extent that a content management system can, WordPress thinks like a writer. The workflow is intuitive enough not to trip me up when I’m halfway into an idea. It stays out of my way, giving me only the tools I need, and only when I need them.
Jeffrey Zeldman

The ExpressionEngine authoring interface is a no-nonesense affair, straight to the point and sans training wheels. It’s missing many of the amenities that I’ve become acquainted with over the last few years, plus some more recent additions to Wordpress (like the Auto-Save feature, which would have been helpful when writing this article, as this is round two of the effort). But the simplicity of EE’s approach far outweighs the recent failings (at least in my mind) of the WP interface.

The other thing that’s a little weird about ExpressionEngine is the fact that all templates are stored on the database. This means that all template editing takes place from within the EE Admin, in a textarea. There is an option to save each template as a file on the server, but this method has some minor syncing issues and feels clunky. There are a couple of Firefox plugins that allow you to use your favorite text editor, including It’s All Text!, which allows you to open the contents of any textarea as a text file and then automatically sync the contents on save, and Tabinta, which allows you to insert tabs in any textarea for well indented code.

Bottom line. If you use Wordpress, give ExpressionEngine a try. Toy with it for a weekend. Use it for a small, low-profile project. Pick something that took you hours or days to accomplish with WP, and find out how long it takes to reproduce in EE. Go for it. You’re going to love it.

∞ Pardon My Dust

2009-02-15T19:37:33-05:00

I just rebuilt my site with Expression Engine, and my feeds got a little... Affected. Very sorry if you received a sudden torrent of updates. Should be calm now.

∞ Randall’s TED Talk

2009-02-09T06:30:44-05:00

This XKCD made me laugh particularly hard, not just because it's funny, but because it's SO TRUE. Not that I use emoticons... No, never...