Redesign Preview 2
As promised, here are a few screenshots of the new phark interface:
Whatayathink?
As promised, here are a few screenshots of the new phark interface:
Whatayathink?
If you know me, then you know that I am a perfectionist when it comes to my web designs.
If not... then now you know.
My problem is that I'll start designing something for about a month, then see something that looks cooler, let it inspire me, and then I'm back to the drawing board. This is why it is so hard for me to redesign phark and then stick with it for more than a few months.
BTW: Please disregard phark.net's current design, I slapped it together really quick, didn't take the time to fix all the CSS bugs, and only have the blog part working because of crazy finals (this past spring) and other stuff that I was working on.
Before I leave from work today (less than tres horas from now), I will be posting an alpha screenshot from the new phark.net that is scheduled for a late September launch date.
Please feel free to give me any and all comments you may have, because I love knowing that people actually read my entries :)
Fajalar, you've got good design sense, hook me up wit' some insight!
If you want a place to chat about CSS and answer people's questions, look no further.
CSS Forum is probably my favorite website right now, and I'm a very frequent poster under the name "DJSdotcom".
So read up, and become part of the community!
Uh oh, here it goes again. Tabs being implemented in CSS.
Before you flip the channel, just listen to my ponderances. Up to now (unless I'm grossly misinformed), most designers who put out their version of cool CSS tabs (found here, here, and here) have only been designing for on/off state tabs... I mean either a tab section is selected, or its not.
I'm working on a web interface right now where there needs to be three tab states: current, "could be chosen because you have access", and "can't be chosen yet, because you haven't gotten there".
What do you think they should be? The current one the darkest, and then a lighter progression afterwards?
In case you haven't heard, there has been a lot of talk recently about the latest Metallica fan-screwing endevour:
Metallica sues Canadian band over E to F chord progression
It seems odd that only just recently this was proved to be a hoax. I guess people hate Metallica enough to think that any kind of stupid lawsuit bearing their name is real ;)
So after my 12 hour hike back to Upstate NY, I realized my left arm (from being out the window the whole time), is starting to look like a lobster.
A healthy "screw you" goes to the guy who invented the sun.
At approximately 10pm tonight, central time, I will begin the trek back to my beloved New York State.
Driving from Rochester to Batavia, IL isn't so bad. Leaving after class ending late on a Wednesday night (last Spring quarter) sucks a little bit though. After leaving my four-hour Usability Testing class, I'd hop in my car (already packed, BTW), and drive off to nearest I-90 onramp, hoping to catch a good song on the radio.
I'd fill up my tank at around mile 15 on my journey — the rest stop that is right after Exit 46 on the New York State Thruway, Westbound. From there, it was a mere 45 minutes to the beginning of Buffalo, and after that, an hour and 15 minutes more to land me on the NY/PA line.
Three and a half hours after I started, I'd arrive at the outskirts of Cleveland, ready to merge with I-80 traffic. If you, or someone you love has driven through Cleveland, ask them about the dual 90-degree turns set directly into the 10 lane highway ;)
Ohio... then Indiana... then CHICAGO. The boring states blur together, and then you somehow arrive in civilization shortly before Portage, IN when I have to get out of my "driving zone" and realize that I have to start paying attention to highway markers.
Tonight, however, will be a different story. I'm driving Eastbound, an even worse journey because of how bad driving through Pennsylvania sucks. At the end of my journey, I want to be stimulated and excited to arrive at my destination, and all PA does is make we want to fly through there and finally get to NYS.
Instead of driving into Rochester, I have to keep on truckin' for another two full hours to reach Utica, and by then, I'll be dead tired.
Driving at night is fun though, because contrary to popular belief, time goes by faster than it would if you were driving during the day. With nothing to look at I usually zone out and somehow arrive mentally in NY.
At work today, I was asked to "briefly" explain to a client why we designed a web transactional system the way we did.
We made it operate and appear like an installation guide, or a wizard. So this stepped the user through a complicated process, one section and page at a time.
Our client, on the other hand, didn't understand why we didn't just chunk all the information up on the same page, and throw a fat submit button on the bottom for good measure. They obviously weren't thinking about the users.
So, as directed by senior management, I was to quote specific usability essays and books written by "experts in the field of human factors".
I, ofcourse, quoted Nielsen's "Web Usability" book and some of his "Ten Usability Heuristics" while explaining how a linear process is more efficient and user-friendly than a big junk pile of information.
I think it will make our client happy.
This morning, while driving back to Skokie from a client meeting downtown, I took the scenic route up Michigan Avenue till it hit Lake Shore Drive.
With the wind in my hair, the city on the left, and the lake on the right, I felt so very at home that I almost forgot that its actually 650 miles away.
Quote of the day:
"I intercepted her Alf fan package" -Jane
Congratulations goes to Ben Curtis, the 2003 Open Champion.
He beat out a charging Vijay Singh, Thomas Bjorn, Sergio Garcia, and ofcourse, Tiger Woods to win the coveted Claret Jug today at approximately 2pm central time.
Don't know who Ben Curtis is? Don't worry, most of the world doesn't either. He has never been in the Top 10 in ANY professional tour event, and has played the Hooters Tour the past two years after he graduated college.
He's a hometown boy from Ohio, and in his early twenties, has already taken part in the most important event of his life.
Ben was in the lead after the 3rd round at Royal St. Georges Golf Club, and after Tiger scorched the field with a round in the mid-sixties, Tiger was in the hunt on the fourth day of competition. The front round was almost non-eventful with Ben and Tiger exchanging birdies and pars, all the while fending off the likes of Bjorn and Singh at every pass.
The back nine was an exciting one, with Tiger three to four strokes back of Curtis and Bjorn the whole afternoon. Finally, right after a string of bogies from Ben (likely coming from the pressure of competition), Thomas Bjorn was in position to finally take the lead away from the young midwesterner.
In the pot bunker, right of the green on 16, Thomas needed 3 shots to leave the sand and finished the whole with a horrid double-bogey. This brought the whole field to its knees, with everyone sitting par or better thinking they now had a chance at the Jug.
But Tiger missed a pivotal par putt on 14 that would have vaulted him into a tie for the lead. With Tiger falling and Bjorn dropping, Ben Curtis stepped up the 18th and ripped a tee shot that would prove enough to hold off the field and win it all.
If you, or anyone you know is part of an independent or indie band that wants to get noticed, in the Fall I am starting a new web project which will be a showcase of underground bands with hopes to get them some attention.
Please respond via comment to this entry, and I'll put you in the already vastly growing list of bands we'll be highlighting. When production starts, we'll be contacting you about some stuff.
Sound good?
The reason that yesterday was void of an entry was because I am dying from conjunctivitis, better known as pink eye.
On the Fourth of July (only a few weeks ago), I was at my girlfriend's family's party out in rural Batavia and I happened to get something in my eye. It simply felt like an eyelash or the like, so I tried rubbing it out.
That didn't work.
So I tried putting water in eye and washing it out... that made it worse.
About 20 minutes after I first noticed something in my eye, my entire eye and eyelids swelled up and hurt with the pain of a thousand suns. I went to the ER because stupid midwestern physicians don't accept my "too good for them" East coast med insurance. They gave me some antibiotic eyedrops, and they worked really well.
And then Tuesday night, after being almost 100% through with the pink eye, it felt like I had something in my eye again. Turns out, the exact same thing happened as before, and my eye swelled up really badly with the itching and everything else.
So without me being at work yesterday, I found it difficult to blog on a seldom-working dialup connection back on the homefront.
In case anyone missed it, on BusinessWeek's website there was a very interesting article on the future of cryptography.
By harnessing the total randomness of sub-atomic particle movement (Brownian Motion) one can now generate truly truly truly random numbers of an infinitesimal size.
With numbers such as these, they can be entered into encryption algorithms for super high strength encryption.
Yesterday, in the vast space between Skokie and the N. Farnsworth exit on I-88, I saw two extremely expensive cars.
On my lunch break, I drove over to Jewel to pick up some fruit cocktail (tropical fruit cocktail, I might add), and upon finding no empty spaces close to the entrance, I doubled-back to the farther end of the lot searching for some emptiness. While driving up the isle, I passed a minivan and then saw a black coupé so low to the ground it could fit in between my legs.
I was pretty sure I knew what it was from the back, but I checked the interior just to make sure. Sure enough, it was a brand new, Maserati Coupé Cambiocorsa. And it had the F1-style paddle shifting on the wheel with the fly ass interior that only Maserati cars have.
On the way home (at approximately 6:45pm crazy central time) I saw a purple Ferrari driving Eastbound on I-88. Now, this wasn't any *ordinary* 360 Modena or something like that... this one happened to be the new 575M Maranello... you know... the 12 cylinder one with the trunk in the back.
Also, it seems as though I see more Mercedes S500s than I do Honda Civic coupe's... now what's up with that?
Rolling North on Michigan Avenue yesterday afternoon, just two blocks South of the new Apple store, someone turned into the lane next to me that I recognized.
In a Silver 2003 BMW X5, Derek Jeter drove right past me... close enough for me to fling a sack of ballpark peanuts right into his lap.
Ofcourse my girlfriend didn't believe me... I mean I told her the weekend before that I saw Emmit Smith rolling in his ML55 in approximately the same area...
But this morning on B96, Eddie and Joe Bo's morning show, they were talking about how Derek Jeter and Jason Giambe were spotted in Excalibur nightclub last night, and how they were in town for the All-Star game and such.
So the facts are: Derek Jeter is in town for the All-Star game, he was at a Chicago nightclub less than 5 blocks from the Apple Store last night, and he was spotted flossin' his X5 on Chicago's equiv of 5th Ave. in the City.
Who da man? I da man.
I have discovered the greatest lunch known to man, and it just happens to be right down the street from my work:
Thong Thai Restaurant
What you should order is the #1 Lunch Special (Basil Chicken). Eat it, and be happy the rest of your life... its seriously that good.
Its located near the 6000 block of W. Touhy Avenue in Skokie, IL. I'm not sure of the exact address, but its almost directly across from the leaning tower of Pisa replica.
Was there any question? Tiger Woods just won the Western Open in Northern Illinois. I was there, and I saw Tiger standing just a few feet in front of me putting prior to his round.
It was great to finally meet (see) my idol.
