Mike Rundle's Weblog

Test Post

I don't really expect Typepad to work anymore, so I'm writing this test post to see if it even publishes.

BTW: Everything is now all restored, sayeth the Typepad leaders, but the permalink on my previous entry shows a 404 showed a 404 five minutes ago. Nice. Looks like all is restored..... I'll get you next time, Gadget!

Couple Interviews

If you want to know a little more about what I've been up to lately, I've actually given two interviews the past few weeks (and one more next week):

Ben asks about blogging and post-college entrepreneurship and David asks about 9rules business strategy and what differentiates us from other networks.

Next week David's publishing another interview with me where I talk about social interaction, blogging, and the two-way web. Good stuff!

SavedLinks.com For Sale!

View the Sitepoint Auction

I bought this domain a few years ago with the hope of creating a social bookmarking type of web service. Unfortunately I never found the time, and then del.icio.us came out! Oh well, time to sell it.

The starting price is $200, and the Buy It Now is set for $350, and if the auction goes over $800 I'll throw in my design services to put together a new SavedLinks.com logo for you! Cheap!

(BTW: If you want to buy it but don't feel like going through SitePoint, just send me an email: mike AT businesslogs DOT com.)

Update: It was sold for $350.

I'm Sick of the Political Bullshit

Alright, I've had just about enough of all this. No, I'm not talking about government-related politics .... I'm talking about political feuds and rivalries in our damn industry.

People refusing to work with someone else because of something that happened years ago, backstabbing at conferences, unintelligent blog posts which then force me to respond back and make you look like a damn fool (who shouldn't be allowed to do any work in the blog industry), and now emails sent to all corners of the web globe saying that the web application my buddy is making is a rip-off, when I know the truth.

The problem is that I know about everything. I'm always in the middle, hearing both sides, listening to everyone, and everybody just needs to grow up and get over their little personal issues. Yes, this is business, but we're in this industry as a whole and by sticking together everyone will benefit as a whole. Don't screw over friends, don't badmouth things that aren't out yet, don't judge a book by it's cover (or a website by it's domain name), don't be two-faced, and don't be an outright liar.

They sound easy to do, so why do I constantly hear about well-respected members of the web industry not doing them?

Grow up people. Everything that goes around, comes around. Karma's a bitch and she knows where you sleep.

Whew, I feel better now!

I Love My Sharpener

Roses are red
Violets are blue
My automatic pencil sharpener rocks
So go buy yourself one.

Sorry Garrett, I tried.

Quick Tips to Fix a CSS Bug

I thought I'd share some of the ways I deal with bugs in my layout, leave some comments about your own ways if you feel others will benefit.

1. Check the layout in Mac IE5. I don't care what anyone says about Mac IE5 being an inferior browser, it keeps me honest. The Tasman rendering engine is still one of the best out there, and more often than not, if your design breaks in this browser then there's probably an inconsistency in your code as opposed to it just "not looking correct". Safari is very forgiving about overlapping padding/margin spaces so if it looks good in Safari but is bonked in IE5, then tweak the code until it looks good in IE5 and that will probably fix your bugs with both browsers.

2. Add some borders. The most common CSS bug in my work is when a floated element is too wide (or not wide enough) and some content gets pushed down because of it. Most likely the problem is with the 1) width of the element, or 2) padding/margins of the element. In order to exactly identify what part of the box-model is the culprit, slap some border: 1px solid red; on elements to find out precisely where its boundaries lie. A useful tip for doing unordered list navigation is to put a border around both the list item and the display: block'd link in order to determine why things aren't looking right. Usually a one-line padding rule can fix/break your work.

3. Write tight code. Are you using both padding and margin on an element? Is it really needed? If one of those isn't needed, then add the values together and stick them in one or the other. The reason for doing this is twofold: it makes for tidier CSS and it is now 50% easier to track a layout bug.

4. Kill those margins. As you know, most block-level HTML elements have a default padding and margin associated with them. When designing paragraph styles, one of my favorite things to do is to slap margin: 0; on the p style and just use padding to work it. Now I don't have to worry about margin-collapse and can have better control.

I've been writing CSS for awhile now, so as I start to code I already know where browser bugs usually show up. I try to keep my XHTML as semantic and tight as possible, and my layout as uncomplicated as possible. I've written before about using background images to make complicated layouts easier and I still feel it's good practice to get into. Why rely on browsers to make your overlapping, floated, bordered, round-cornered boxes pixel perfect if you could use a background image to accomplish the same effect?

Just some thoughts. What are yours?

The Wonders of Video Chat

Courtesy my new iSight and my buddy Colin. I'm the smaller head with the blue steel look. Ain't technology great?

Portfolio Soft Launch, iPod shuffle Arrival

The first stage of my portfolio is live, and I expect to be rolling the rest of it out sometime Wednesday night after I come back from Seattle. As some of you might know, my phark.net domain name has been nearly blank for awhile after I moved all weblog postings over to TypePad, so it's been sitting there dormant in heightened anticipation :)

Right now, only the Web Interface section is up, but the rest will soon follow. It's been 100% certified in Safari, IE5 for Mac, Firefox (both platforms), but not IE6 for I don't have any Windows boxes laying around for testing. I've been told it looked a bit goofy in IE6, but I did some blind tweaking that may have cleared up any issues. Please let me know if it looks weird (a screenshot would rock!) and I'll jump on the wagon as soon as I get back from Seattle. And if you thought I'd rollout my portfolio without using hoverless current links or image replacement then you're just crazy!

I feel that many portfolio sites are overdesigned, where the design of the site overshadows — or is better than! — the work presented inside of it. I've iterated through at least 15 separate designs for my portfolio, and I think that this one works best and is flexible enough to allow many different types of content to be displayed. The logo and typeface at the top is set in Knockout from Jonathan Hoefler, a cool sans-serif that I'm pretty sure is used in Newsweek magazine; the lower-case 't' is a dead giveaway.

I got my iPod shuffle in the mail today, and it's even smaller than I thought it would be! The form factor is almost exactly the size of a cigarette lighter — with the USB cover on it is 1cm longer — but about 40% thinner. The box that it came in is approximately the same size as two CD jewel cases stacked on top of each other, and is really well-designed just like all Apple product packages. I think what I like most about the package is the triple-ligature 'ffl' in "shuffle" .... makes me all tingly inside :)

Another update... I added some things to the Web Interface and the Writing part. The rest will be uploaded soon. Check out this two-level tab navigation interface code that I randomly found on my web server last night! I think it was for some client work I did in Chicago but I can't remember, anywho, it works in Safari, Firefox, and IE5 for the Mac. I'm not holding my breath for IE6 though, but feel free to check it out, learn from it, and the usual fun stuff.

This is why I love the web, because faithful reader (and extraordinary, award-winning web designer) Marko from maratz.com volunteered to help me out in a pinch and do some CSS-debugging. You may not know of his name, but no doubt you've heard of his work, including one of the best web typography resources out there. Thanks Marko, you rock.

It's Seattle Time!

66% of the BusinessLogs team will be attending the Blog Business Summit in Seattle, with 50% of that two-person team presenting there. What that means is Matto and I will be basking in the warm glow of the Seattle sun while Paul stays at home in Tampa. Matthew is set to speak on Corporate Blogging, while I stand by the wayside and look forward to speaking at the next Blog Summit hopefully 6 months from now.

We're sponsors of the BBS conference, so we get some goodies that other firms may not have — a big advertisement stuck in the conference slideshow presentation, and a b/w PDF flyer to go in attendee's goody bags. Apart from the 4384 things I have to do this week (if you've seen my AIM away message lately you'd know what I mean) I got to design both these items. Check 'em out!

Slideshow Picture (300KB) and PDF Insert (70KB)

After I get back from the left coast on Wednesday, I will be high-tailing it to Virginia to meet with the fine folks at Fairfield Language Technologies (makers of the award-winning Rosetta Stone language learning software) for a job interview. I was contacted after they saw my post about full-time employment and am excited to finally meet with them face to face. Wish me luck everyone!

Over at our company's weblog, Matto and I will be moblogging the conference as much as we can so keep an eye out. Other than that, if you wanna chill while I'm in Seattle feel free to email me mike{at}businesslogs.com and hopefully we can get together. See ya on the flip side.

Thinksecret.com's Nick DePlume a Harvard Undergraduate

By now I'm sure all of you have heard that Apple Computer is suing Nick DePlume (aka Nick Ciarelli) because of rumors he posted on his site Think Secret in an effort to find the sources of all his great information. My take on the suit is that they have no business suing Nick, because he's not the one who broke any NDAs. Apple seems to be using the suit just to find out his sources, but it's unfounded anyway so I'm sure a court will throw it out.

After reading this article at Harvard's website, it divulges that Nick is actually only 19-years-old and is an undergraduate student there — he's been running Think Secret since he was 13! Good for him, and I hope all goes well for him in the lawsuit.