Blog

  • Why Bloggers Love Handheld Computers

    Why Bloggers Love Handheld Computers

    While it may not be a handheld computer per se, this is the exact reason I bought a Sidekick.

    Oh Drew, you sure do have my number…

  • Graduation

    It looks like Flickr has finally managed to make it out of Beta!

    So does this mean they’ve gone 1.0? Nope. They moved on up to Gamma.

    *sigh* Those cheeky bastards…

  • Links for 2006-05-10

  • Why Is WordPress So Sexy?

    Psst… I fidgeted with the layout on Preshrunk.

    Actually, all I really did was find a really sexy WordPress template and tweaked it to my liking — but I’m pretty sure I’ll keep this design up for a while. At least until everyone and their brother starts using it on their own sites.

    When I showed the new layout to Matt, he remarked:

    Matt: WP templates out there are so good
    Matt: it seems stupid to custom design anything

    And you know what? I’m inclined to agree. I only spent half an hour switching up some colors in CSS and fixing a few grammatical errors in the post data at the bottom of the page before I considered it ready. To compare, when I launched the site using Blogger, I spent a few hours tweaking someone’s port of Kubrick to get it exactly the way I wanted it.

    Now I’m not trying to say that WordPress is easier to use — or even really any better — than Blogger is. Both of them have their shortcomings. But please don’t think that I’m knocking Blogger. I was a paid Blogger Pro user back in the day. And up until a several months ago, I thought I’d be using it forever. So needless to say, I have plenty of love and respect for them.

    What I think I’m getting at here tho is that the WordPress community has quite a few more passionate designers than the general Blogger community does under its belt. Sure, Google can afford to hire Zeldman, Cederholm and Shea — but they don’t even use Blogger to run their own sites. Can you even name one resource for Blogger templates other than the default ones that are provided for you? I know I can’t.

    The people who are releasing all of these beautiful WordPress templates on the other hand, actually manage to use the software on a pretty regular basis. They know how to hack their way around the extensive template available to get some pretty amazing results. Sure, the code may occasionally be a tad bit hellish to read thru when you need to do a quick tweak, but the designers are passionate about WordPress and really manages to show in their designs.

    Think about it… When was the last time you saw a Blogger design get ported over to WordPress? Yeah, I don’t seem to remember that happening either.

    Damn. I’m getting off on a rant here… Sorry about that. I could go on for a bit longer, but I’ll spare you all. Just go give the new Preshrunk a peek, okay? Cheers!

  • Links for 2006-05-02

  • What Just Happened?

    Hrm. That was weird.

    Some eight year old kid just walked by the window of the place that I’m at and threw me the goat while nodding at my Powerbook.

    Maybe he’s a fan of Preshrunk… ;) Although I’m sure if he was, he’d probably would have flipped me off for not posting more than two updates over as many weeks.

    I guess he must like Apple gear, then. *shrug* Fair enough.

  • Boredom

    It’s Saturday night and I’m laying on my bed, listening to The Velvet Underground on headphones, surfing thru a backlog of Exploding Dog and downloading an .avi of the Jack White Coke Ad.

    The room is lit only by a 5 year old Ikea desk lamp made from translucent black plastic and my Powerbook screen. Every so often, a text message from Sarah makes my Sidekick chirp in faux 8-bit harmony. I flip it open, fire off a response and go back to farting around on the internet.

    I need to find something substantial to do, before the boredom eats away too much of my brain. I could write a post for Preshrunk, but I’m suffering from some fierce writers block.

    Somebody save me, please.

  • Links for 2006-04-27

  • Mash Ups Go Mainstream

    Maybe it’s just me, but did anyone else find it a bit weird to hear Go Home Productions “Rapture Riders” on Alias tonight?

    I know it’s on Blondie’s “Sound and Vision” and everything, but I remember when I downloaded that track off his website well over a year ago. It’s just sort of a trip for me to hear a mash up that I’ve listened to a whole bunch on a TV show I used to watch obsessively.

    What’s next, Party Ben‘s “Boulevard of Broken Songs” making an appearance on Gilmore Girls?

    P.S. Unlike Sean, I was happy that the bomb in Will’s brain didn’t go off.

  • Delete Yourself! You Got No Chance To Win!

    Don’t you hate it when you go and do something stupid?

    I was planning on taking a few of the business card templates that I designed last week and releasing them. But as I poked around my hard drive, I realized that they’d gone awol. Turns out I’d deleted them when I went thru a fit of desktop cleanup on Monday.

    Guess it’s time to dust off that copy of FileSalvage

    Update: Well, FileSalvage was no help. *shrug* C’est la vie.