terrill.ca

Something to be proud of

I've gotta be proud of the site to keep it going. While the old site was decent it mostly grew organically. Every once in a while I would tweak the stylesheet a lil' bit to fit something in. Generally it was boring for me to write with and that led to low post numbers.

The next refresh had to be good. It had to be grid based, serif dominated, rely very little on images, and have as few vertical lines as possible. Here's how I did it

Grids are powerful

Look no further than this excellent slide deck Khoi Vinh presented on a grid based redesign of the Yahoo homepage. Grids are incredible and totally worth it. The new found sense of structured flexibility has been really inspiring and it's still the first week.

Four 10em columns with 1em gutters Two 21em columns with 1em gutter between

The power of word shape

I was tempted by Small Caps when writing the short css definitions for post titles. I use them on my resume to good effect and it would have been nice to carry that over here.

Humans have a strong ability to compute meaning from words based on their shape. Stripping words of their ascenders and descenders can really hinder the ability to skim-read. While it would be nice if people read my site with that much care, it is highly unlikely.

Illustrating the ambiguous word shape created by small caps

Keeping things light weight

It's no secret that I enjoy illustrating my blog posts with pictures. The content can be complex but the package is preferably simplistic (think Coke can).

When people think grid they think Excel, or maybe Xs & Os if they're a little younger. Vertical lines aren't necessary to support that concept though. The article text can form at least one strong vertical line implicitly (as I've done here). The others just fall out from whitespace and text justification.

Comments and bug reports are welcome. PS: comments are still chunked into one paragraph so beware!

Moshe Safdie on life

Moshe Safdie is an architect with a dazzling portfolio. There is self narrated TED talk from 2002 which details some of his really interesting projects. He ends the talk with a particularly deep poem, which is transcribed below.

He who seeks truth shall find beauty
He who seeks beauty shall find vanity

He who seeks order shall find gratification
He who seeks gratification shall be disappointed

He who considers himself a servant of his fellow beings shall find the joy of self expression
He who seeks self expression shall fall into the pit of arrogance

Arrogance is incompatible with nature
Through nature the nature of the universe and the nature of man we shall seek truth
If we seek truth we shall find beauty

-Moshe Safdie

Writers deserve appreciation. People who are talented with words get little recognition in todays society. He expressed a way of living in that poem that is pretty dear to me, and in a way I certainly could not emulate. Particularly moving for me is the part regarding order and gratification. That is something our culture as a whole really lacks.

PS: Microsoft is said to be announcing something big at this year's TED conference. Lots of cool projects have been demoed at TED in the past. How I wish I could attend!

Then and Now No. 2 &ndash Coca Cola

The new Coke can won my heart. Its sheer uncompromised simplicity stole me from Pepsi. It didn't help that Pepsi decided to go the opposite way, making their can weird and complicated. Yuck, can't drink that.

I saved this picture from a blog about a week ago, but I can't remember the source. Apologies to the creator

If Pepsi brings back their 70s style we might have a real dilemma on our hands

Firefox > IE. Still.

TechCrunch has an article about some woes with the new Firefox 3 Beta. Then I read the comments. Who in their right mind switches back to IE6 or 7? Have they forgotten how far we've come, and how hard we've fought to get here?

The only reason I'm not running Beta 3 is that I make websites and they need to work on the current Ff.

Fast Company sounds attractive

The self description of Fast Company is quite attractive. Straight to business.

First off, here’s what it’s not: It’s not a pure social network. . . . You go to Facebook or MySpace and find the friends and co-workers you already know. The real world gets reproduced virtually. Maybe you meet a friend of a friend.

We’re not that.

We’re an entirely new community of people brought together because we want to share ideas about business. We like business. We think it’s important. Work gives more meaning to our lives. We believe business profoundly helps define our culture.

Two very big problems

1. Google. Every time I think of joining into a conversation online I can't because I know GOOG is going to index it and when I apply to co-op jobs everyone will get to read all about it. If I can't be openly critical, half the attractiveness fades quickly.
2. My Employer. Whoever that may be. Coincidentally this point is also number two in the three taboos of blogging. The topic I'd be most inclined to talk about on Fast Company is mobile software. That's also the topic most forbidden.

Without being critical and talking phones, I can't much contribute.

Who pulled the plug?

Can whoever unplugged UWaterloo please plug it back in? I have an OS assigment due in an hour and would like to submit. - 10:50am Wed Feb 6, 2008

You never really notice how cool computers are until they don't work. We're back in business - 11:12am Wed Feb 6, 2008

Law of course website availability

Interest in course website approaches infinity as availability approaches zero.

As availability is restored, interest may return to its normal level (almost zero) unreasonably quickly.