Dec
16th
Fri
16th
Dec
14th
Wed
14th
Designing with the Swiss Miss Grid
So I’m going to be moderating this panel, titled “Should Web Designers Know Code?” - I know, provocative title - at tonight’s Refresh Pittsburgh meeting.
First of all, if you’re in Pittsburgh, I encourage you to come to this meetup.
It’s at 6:45 PM at Smith Bros agency, right next to PNC Park. You can read all the details here: http://www.refreshpittsburgh.org/2011/12/designers-code-discussion/
If you’re not in Pittsburgh, or you’re not going to attend because you have a very important meeting with your chaotic sock drawer this evening and you just can’t reschedule, follow along on Twitter. Jason Head (@gjhead) usually pumps out a live stream of tweets during Refresh meetings, and I’ll urge him not to lapse tonight. So follow along.
Finally, if you’re good at coming up with hashtags for things like this, please invent one and help me disseminate it before 6:30 PM EST. All I can think of is horrible portmanteaux. I need serious help.
True story.
Dec
13th
Tue
13th
Oh, man, finally. Because you would not believe how pissed I get that I can’t fold my goddamn shoes in half and zip them shut when I’m not wearing them. It’s a huge pain in my ass, and you’d think that any supposedly civilized society would have solved that problem before two thousand fucking eleven. But there’s no point dwelling on the past, is there. This shoe finally exists, right here in the present, and that’s what really matters. The present, and its folding zippable shoes.
I Work For The Internet
True story.
Dec
12th
Mon
12th
When Is a Rhetorical Question the Right Choice For a Headline?
Everyone needs outlets, right? One of the secret benefits of my line of work is that it can be surprisingly entertaining. To myself. Cheekier wireframes don’t generally make their way into clients’ hands. I kind of think that’s a shame. Wireframes also don’t really show all that well on dribbble and places like that, and information architecture isn’t particularly interesting to most people at holiday parties. And, sweet lord, have you ever tried explaining “User Experience Design” to your aunt from Waxahachie? I have, and I can tell you, she ain’t buying it. She likes the ham, thank you very much, because she made it, and could you please pass the dish her way? But no thanks on the stack of lies you’re dishing out about what you do for a living and how it is - swear to god - a real job with meaning and value in the world.
It’s not like people are tripping one another to move to Waxachie, you know.
Dec
5th
Mon
5th
Jack Barnes is in a relationship with Name Changed To Protect the She’d Better Be Innocent.
—
Welp, there’s something new. Thanks, Facebook! Because, swear on my grandma’s grave, I don’t think I was going to hear about this from a more credible source.
At tuck-in time tonight, I quietly showed him the status on my phone and said, “So, I saw this today,” and I waited. He had already been smiling, but he smiled even more as I spoke. My heart melted.
“I didn’t Like it, because I didn’t know if it might embarrass you… but, would it?”
He shook his head no and I rubbed his shoulder and let him watch as I tapped the “Like” icon on my screen.
He smiled even wider and rolled over a tiny bit. Like turning away, sort of, but making sure to expose more of his back for me to rub. An invitation to please keep loving him like my kid, even as he pushes away.
Dec
4th
Sun
4th
Spirituality
I’ve been paying attention to what spirits I really like and don’t like, for about a year and a half now. That makes me what’s known as a serious novice, and it’s high time I start mistakenly feeling like I’ve got something of this to share with the world. Therefore let me tell you about the four spirits of this Christmas.
Around the holidays, a lot of people start wondering what they should keep in their liquor cabinets because that seems to be what holidays do to a lot of people. Well, make sure you have the basics - like demerara syrup, a few kinds of bitters, and a few citrus fruits - and then welcome these can’t-miss recommendations into your life of fulfillment and happiness, today.
Junipero
Gin. Anchor brewing company makes it. It cost me about 34 bucks for a fifth, and I had to jump through a few small hoops to get it at my local liquor store. If I wanted to drive across town, I could have had it with less hassle, but I like the way “hassle” looks in print, so I figure I kind of owe it one. You know? As for the gin, it’s really dazzlingly good. Let me paint you a picture: There is an x-y axis. The x measures pleasantness of flavor, and the y measures distinctiveness. In the bottom-right, Bombay Sapphire and Tangueray just kind of chill out. In the bottom-left, show me the Beefeater. Top-left, it’s that fistful of cashews in liquid form, otherwise known as Bluecoat. But in the top-right, you’re got two gems of gins. Tangueray 10 and Junipero. Of these, Junipero is my preference - not because of the somewhat milder taste or whatever people say when they’re describing flavors with words, but because of the snootier association it allows me to feel with the Anchor Brewing Company’s very cool side project distillery. The only way I can imagine a better gin is if I act like I know everything, but that still doesn’t work.
★★★★★
Boyd & Blair
ONE: British sounding name. Sophisticated.
TWO: Locally made from locally grown potatoes.
THREE: Website comprised entirely of dorky videos.
FOUR: Great packaging, including corked bottles.
FIVE: Holy shit, that’s good vodka!
★★★★★
Old Overholt
Here’s the thing about Rye Whiskey: By the time you drink enough to appreciate a good Rye’s incomparable smoothness, your tastebuds are so deep into their twilight years that you’ve long since been reduced to lying about your preference for Wild Turkey Rye over Jim Beam Rye. And while you can probably tell that Ri makes you less stabby than does Beam, the thought of paying $45 for a fifth of rye when you can get it for 18 probably rubs you wrong anyhow, so Beam it is. Well, stop that. Stop it right now. Pony up an extra buck and drink like a jazz star. And get off my lawn. Or at least don’t pee all over it. Seriously, it burns the grass.
★★★★★
Buffalo Trace
So you’re a Bulliet drinker. That’s alright. I really liked that Coldplay song, “Clocks,” when I first heard it on the radio. Every now and then I’m still happy to hear it. It’s got spunk, you know, in a way. At least it’s inoffensive. Thing is, it makes me wonder why I don’t just put on some old U2 album and call up high school girlfriends and steer the conversation to just how happy are they in their marriage after all these years and seriously could you rate it on a scale from 1 to 10 because I have a spreadsheet open here and that would really help make this less time-consuming. Point is this: You’re going to keep mixing Old Fashioneds for every friend who comes over. Serve ‘em Buffalo Trace and put on some U2, and save your Woodford Reserve for when your parents visit.
★★★★★
See how easy that is? Just four things to write down and then go buy, and I don’t even get a kickback or put ads on my site or anything, in order to get yourself and your loved onces into the Christmas spirit.
Matt,
If I could hug your ass from here, I would. Okay, your whole self. Because I have a hunch that we both embrace the in-between times as life’s actual fabric, as the current the wires were made for. Weird, hell yeah, because that’s what metamorphosis is like. And while I don’t know exactly what’s going on over there tonight, I do know how in-between times feel, and how they manage to transform themselves from predator to honored guest, once recognized.
Lots of love,
Geoff
The Sauce
I’m making the kids their first Eggs Benedict this morning. Alex is about the age I was when I was first introduced to this little corner of culinary heaven, and realizing that reminded me of my first Eggs Benedict.
My family was in New Orleans or Galveston, what’s the difference really, staying at a hotel with high-hung, slow-turning ceiling fans in the lobby. White Doric columns to the sky. Majestic.
I had been eating cereal and scrambled eggs for breakfast, so far in life. That’s what I ate. Two scrambled eggs, on wheat toast with butter, salted and peppered to kingdom come. A bowl of corn flakes in milk, buried like pharaohs under a quarter cup of sugar. This was a good life. My dad lived a good life, too, though, and he ordered Eggs Benedict and I asked him what he’d just said because it sounded like an egg’s pet saint and I’m visual so I thought that was hilarious.
“It’s poached eggs and ham, on an English muffin, covered in haulin’ day sauce,” he said, “and I think you’d love it.”
“What’s haulin’ day sauce,” I asked.
“Holland A’s sauce, Geoff,” he corrected me, “with an ‘s’ sound at the end.”
“Oh. What’s it made of?”
“Lots and lots of butter, mostly, and I think you’d really love it. You can try mine when it gets here, if you want to,” he offered.
And I did. I tried it, and loved it, and I even got permission to order a second breakfast that morning just so I could have my own Eggs Benedict and leave my dad’s Eggs Benedict alone.
A few weeks later, one weekend morning, I decided I wanted to make Eggs Benedict at home, so I turned to my mom’s The Joy of Cooking to learn how to make the sauce. Imagine my surprise when it turned out the sauce was called Hollandaise, and had absolutely nothing to do with Dutch baseball.
That’s when I realized my dad really wasn’t much into sports.
