Well, since I first opened “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” on my twenty-ninth birthday I’ve been reading non-stop.

Five years and hundreds of books later, I’m still as engrossed in the worlds and stories only found in books. However, I find myself with hundreds of books in my personal library and likewise hundreds of pounds of paper and words weighing me down.

A while back I took my music library digital and effectively cut a couple hundred pounds of belongings out of my life. Since then I’ve toyed with the idea of going digital with my movie library and my books.

For Christmas, my wife Amy made the book decision for me, and I have to say I’m really glad she did.

She gave me an Amazon Kindle.

First Impressions

The packaging for Kindle is impressive and very Applesque. Clean, straight forward, easy to open and locate the device.

Kindle comes in a book shaped white box with some nice typography artwork, it opens like a book and holds the device in one side and the power supply and abridged owner’s manual (read: pamphlet) in the other side. Additionally it comes with a nice leather “book” cover to store the device in when not in use. Overall, unboxing the Kindle was a pleasant experience.

My Kindle came fully powered, I turned it on and it was good to go, the full owner’s manual is available as your first book. The screen is crisp and easy to read from.

Getting Books

Unfortunately, unlike CDs and DVDs you cannot “import” books you already own onto the Kindle, it requires repurchasing any books you want to read on the Kindle.

I bought two new books; Dean Koontz’ “Your Heart Belongs To Me” and John Green’s “Paper Towns”. I purchased them via Kindle’s built in store and I did so on Christmas Morning.

The purchase went well, it uses your existing amazon account and credit card, so it’s truly one click purchasing.

Unfortunately, I never got the books, they were supposed to download within a minute to my Kindle. I waited three hours, logged into Amazon and clicked the send to Kindle button and waited another twenty minutes.

Nothing.

So I downloaded the books to my computer and transferred them to kindle with the supplied USB cable, this process took seconds, both books now snugly on the Kindle.

Something I found a little annoying is that there is a small/short delay in typing and display. I attribute this to the slower Ink rendering process and not a flaw with the software, but it can be a bit slow to begin a search in comparison to my laptop which has digital rendering.

I have not attempted to purchase another book, but I’m assuming the delay of download was due to it being Christmas morning and the Kindle being this years big thing (thanks Oprah).

Reading on Kindle

For me this is the single greatest joy of owning Kindle.

It’s easy to read, the screen doesn’t have any glare. I experienced no eye strain for extended reading sessions. Kindle weighs very little so as opposed to it’s heavy hard cover cousins, Kindle is easy to hold with one hand for long periods.

Kindle has convenient buttons for turning pages, literally one click of the thumb and the page is turned, which eliminates the potential of losing track of your reading, as sometimes found with traditional page turning systems.

There are no spines to ruin, no creases to read into, just flat pages.

You can change text size very easily, which means every book has the same font and font size. No more books with impossibly small text crammed onto small pages!

The screen is rendered with real ink that has been given an electric charge and instructions on where to live for the currently displayed page.

It’s very impressive. Unfortunately this does cause some minor ghosting when using a menu or looking up a word on a page, as the screen doesn’t refresh for menus, and there is some residual ink left behind from each menu. This is all cleared once you turn the page however, so it’s not a persistent problem, nor does it hinder reading at all, just something my overly critical eye caught.

The screen is easy to read in all situations that any paper and ink content delivery system would be. In the sun, in reading light—all good. In the dark you will need a lamp just as you would with a paper book.

Conclusion?

The Amazon Kindle is an amazing device, I cannot imagine reading a traditional book now that I’ve experienced Kindle. I’m even considering repurchasing all my favorite books digitally and then lessening my physical load that much more.

I’ve found a new way to love my stories. I’d recommend the Kindle to anyone and everyone.

We are building web-sites with too much emphasis on visually pleasing ourselves, our clients and the potential surfer/user(s). We are ignoring content almost entirely.

There are an enormous pile of reasons (read: excuses) for this crazy workflow. We are all guilty of at least one or more at any given time. The copy/content is not available at the time of the design phase, no one knows what the content will be, you started strong got bored and just towed the line to get it off your calendar resulting in boring content placement and design, etc… and so on.

We should be solving the problem that is the presentation of content, not the placement of content within the presentation.

Wireframes, let alone design comprehensive dummies should not begin without a full content document. And I’m not talking about a vague notion of content and where it might go. I’m talking about a document that outlines final copy and contextual images and their importance.

I’m talking about examples of typical blog/news posts. I’m talking about a document that says we want this form, with this functionality, and this is what will happen if the form is filled in wrong, and here’s what happens when it is good to go, and here’s what happens after the submission, etc… and so on.

We need to see the problem in it’s entirety prior to trying to solve it. We cannot do our jobs to the best of our ability when we don’t know the problem we are solving.

Let’s stop spending so much time trying to please clients & users visually in the beginning and start figuring out how to please clients & users long term and with lasting solutions that are at once visually stunning and attentive to the needs and flow of the content.

Web-sites are content.

I’m tired of wanting or more often needing to buy something online and being forced to jump through a series of tiny hoops of the “on-fire” variety only to be told that I made a mistake somewhere along the way, yet said mistake is a guarded secret and up to me to guess where it was made and repair it before I can move forward and finish my purchase. I’m likely already pissed off from the process and fit to leave.

Perhaps I have less patience for this ridiculous circus than your average consumer, because I’m a web developer and know it’s possible to make a form simple and easy to use. A form that can tell me, the user, exactly what I did wrong and even give advice on how to fix it. A form that looks nice and functions better.

I have yet to experience an online shopping system that made me feel good about my purchase, let alone left me smiling and wanting to buy more. Even Amazon falls short, sure they get close, but they certainly have issues and they are clearly not sharing their knowledge or experience with other online retailers.

There has got to be a better way, a better process, a better checkout experience.

I’m not going to just gripe about it. I’m going to solve this problem.

I’m not a fan of “Inbox Zero” or “E-mail Bankruptcy” or “Getting Things Done“. I feel they all add an extra unnecessary step/series of steps to the end goal of accomplishing things. Maybe, I’m too old school, or too efficient at multi-tasking but the idea of writing a list of things to do before actually doing those things causes my brain to start doing increasingly dangerous stunts without a stunt coordinator.

I want to introduce you to a new name for a concept I’ve been using forever, I call it.

Procrastination Zero.

It’s the simplest plan of all time, it has a single rule and it works. I’ve been utilizing it for seven years now—albeit without a fancy name.

The Rule: When something needs to be done, do it.

“Well Jim.” You say, “That sounds too easy to be true, I can’t just do things as they come up. I’m a busy person!!”

I know. Me too. Always. Yet, for some inexplicable reason doing things when they come up always keeps me ahead of the curve. Crazy-talk I know!

How does this work?

As I said earlier. You just do things as they come up. Simple. You don’t write things down, you don’t put things off until tomorrow. You just do them. Right away.

But I don’t have all the info/stuff I need to finish the task!

Which means you don’t have a task then. Isn’t that odd? Basically if someone tells you about something they need done, but they can’t get you all the info/stuff to do it until Wednesday, then you have not been assigned/given a task at all. And it can wait until Wednesday when the task is actually available to do, but do it as soon as it’s ready to go.

Wait! I don’t have time to do things as they come up, I’m swamped.

Right… Two things are happening here. One; You’re a liar and probably a dirty procrastinator as well (only slightly kidding). Two; You’re honest, but also have a problem saying no. Which is why you’ve accepted more tasks than you can actually accomplish (I still do this with personal projects, sorry Brad and Greg).

To solve this problem, simply stop lying and procrastinating. Or in the second more probable use case, start saying no. Firmly but, politely. It’s real easy, the work still needs to get done, it’ll just be more graciously distributed, easing your mind and work load quite a lot.

But I have 1000 e-mails from the last month in my Inbox.

Really? You sure? Try using a junk filter. If in the very uncommon case that you are buried in legitimate e-mails, try answering them as they come in. You’re not required to write a novel or even a novella for e-mail communications. The point is to be fast, if your correspondents need to wait a week or longer to hear back from you they’d have been better off using traditional mail.

The average e-mail can be answered in less than 30 seconds, and 3 sentences. Anything that takes more thought or a longer response should have the following reply sent; “Hi Name, Let’s schedule a phone call to discuss this. When is good for you?”

Phone calls can cover a lot of info in a short period, plus a real voice and tone go a long way to squashing time-wasting miscommunications. Is the other party too busy for a phone call? Link them to this article, they need it.

So that’s it. Start today!

Procrastination Zero! Guess what you’re done!

1.) Pay on time. Always.

This is not optional. If you don’t have enough money to cover the full budget of the project, don’t get me started on the project. I’m a freelancer, which means I live off what I make. I can’t wait 30 days to get paid for work completed and there is no reason I should have to. Paying on time is respectful and should be a top priority.

2.) Make my requests as important as your own.

If you ask me to complete something by a certain date, you need to cooperate to help me make that happen. If I ask for a specific asset, get it to me yesterday.

I know you’re busy, so am I. Busy working on your request and about a million others. If you can’t fulfill my request today, then let me know. A one-line email is enough. And always be understanding of my new found inability to fill your original request.

Additionally, don’t disappear for six months, then show up one day and ask me why development has stopped and the project isn’t completed. This actually happened once.

3.) Know what you want, before you ask for it.

Seriously, don’t hire me to make something that’s description is “I’ll know when I see it”. I don’t have time for that, and neither do you. You don’t need a one-hundred page project brief, but you do need to know what styles and ideas you like/dislike and what the overall project is going to entail in general.

4.) Remember, you hired me.

I’m a professional, and I have an expertise that you sought out. Don’t try to do my job for me. It’s disrespectful and a huge time waster for both of us. This is pretty much common sense, but happens a lot.

5.) Be loyal.

If I do a good job, use me again. If I keep doing a good job, keep using me. If you feel I’m too expensive lets talk about it, don’t hire someone else then say I’m too expensive, ’cause for a loyal client I’ll always drop or discount my price, it’s a perk of being loyal. Try it out, you’ll like it.

I’m tired of hearing: “Hey man, you should have known _blank_ would happen, it is the ‘web’ after all.”

Initially, I thought maybe this topic didn’t belong on TAO, but the more I think about it, this is exactly where it belongs. It concerns the internet and that is exactly the place our industry calls home, so ultimately it’s about our home.

When I visit a friend’s home I treat them with respect and kindness. I just do it. It’s not an option to do otherwise. It’s not my home, and therefore It’s a privilege to be there, not my right. Treating them with anything other than pure undiluted respect is blasphemy.

Likewise, when I invite someone to my home I expect the treatment returned in kind.

This idea translates directly to the web. There is no acceptable reason for pretending to be someone other than yourself in every aspect of your life. The Internet is an extension of your “real” life, not another/different life.

The Internet is not a free-for-all playground where you can assume any persona you like, saying and doing whatever you want. Yes, I know it’s possible and yes, I know people do it all the time. That, my friends is exactly why I wrote this.

As a human being it hurts to know that other human beings treat each other in such terrible ways online and off, but it happens. Constantly.

That doesn’t make it alright. Which brings us back to the web, where it is also not OK.

I believe, treating others with kindness, is a non-optional social convention and there is no acceptable excuse to do otherwise. None.

—me via twitter

So next time you log into an anonymous web account to lay down some hurt on an unsuspecting n00b, remember you’re just perpetuating the myth that anything goes online.

Which is my cue to pull on my boots and grab my shovel.

Every CMS I’ve ever used—which is everyone of them—makes assumptions about how you will use the system. Some even go so far as to force you to use certain language, structure or presentation for building a web-site with their system. I don’t like to be told what to do, or how to do it. And that is exactly what these systems are doing.

To me, this is the major drawback to using a pre-built CMS; having to adapt to someone else’s idea of work flow or web-site construction.

How can we solve this problem?

Simple, stop making assumptions about how an end user will use the system.

For instance, just because I like to use HTML to write templates doesn’t mean another person might not prefer XSLT or some sort of PHP hybrid.

A CMS shouldn’t be trying to guess at how I want to structure content, or how I want to present that content. A CMS should just give me a place to store and manage my content with a few tools to help me build out the front end like a flexible loop and easy access to data variables for use in templates.

In a perfect CMS, we wouldn’t have anything in the database except the raw content and it’s meta data. No templates, no settings or configuration.

Templates should always be flat file based and stored on the server, never in the database.

Settings and configuration files have zero business being stored in a database, it only causes problems. They should be stored as flat files on the server, better if they are secured in some way. A MySQL query to grab configuration settings that boil down to a simple string or a yes/no scenario is unnecessary overhead.

I’m sure there is a flaw or two in my opinion, but that is the beauty of opinions, they don’t have to be right.

This year, I chose to redesign The Artistic Outlaw, and it happened to correspond in a timely manner with May 1st. Thus, my participation with the Standards Reboot.

If you are reading this in your feed reader, click through and check out the new TAO.

If you are seeing this for the first time, I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

I really wanted to try and break free of my current personal trend with earth tones and muted colors. I think I burst out of that box quite flamboyantly. It feels nice to know that I can design outside my comfort zone and produce something I really, really like love to look at.

I’ve got a couple of new posts coming up, but I’m not going to promise super increased activity here. I tend to only blog when I have something real to say. And It will stay that way for now.

However, I hope when I do publish an article it’ll mean more to you, because it’s thought out and meaningful.

Thanks for visiting I really appreciate any and all patronage.

When using vmware fusion for MSIE testing on Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard through a MAMP based localhost. WordPress sites acts weird and won’t let you view sites on the localhost through MSIE.

The cause and solution of this issue is the following;

On the mac, with a MAMP based localhost, sites can be accessed via a url similar to:

http://localhost/~sites/

Whereas the same localhost setup viewed through vmware fusion using MSIE has to be accessed via a url like this:

http://mac's-ip(127.0.0.1)/~sites/

This causes a problem for WordPress based builds, because WordPress stores the full absolute URL to the install in it’s MySQL database in the table wp_options there are two rows that store the URL you need to change. They are siteurl and home. Just modify them and change the localhost bit of the URL to your mac’s localhost IP address.

Now WordPress will work fine through both vmware fusion’s MSIE install and your own mac browsers, because the mac doesn’t care if you use localhost or the IP to access your localhost sites.

Now you’re cooking with gas my friends.

I’m baffled by this.

Why in the world would anybody automatically link to someone they don’t know? Is it the misconception that it supplies instant blog cred? Do these blog owners think their blog will explode if it contains a link to a well known blog? Or is this just fandom run rampant?

I would never link to anyone I didn’t know. It seems to me that most of these blog roll “regulars” would ignore any requests to return the favor in kind, and probably don’t even know your blog exists, so what is the point with wasting valuable ad/content space with a list of links of already over linked blogs belonging to people whom don’t even appreciate the link back?

When did Blog Rolls stop being a list of actual friends that blog and instead become a list of the biggest names in blogging and web development you can think of?

Enlighten me.