Photoshop your fridge
This magnets shaped and printed like the Photoshop user interface would make a great Christmas gift 
Too bad it’s currently out of stock.
December 3rd, 2009
in Personal
December 2nd, 2009
in Web design
Useful reads
Paul Irish has a nice blog post about the various ways of using @font-face. He promotes this to be the best @font-face declaration and it’s the same one I’m using:
@font-face {
font-family: 'Graublau Web';
src: url('GraublauWeb.eot');
src: local('Graublau Web Regular'), local('Graublau Web'),
url('GraublauWeb.otf') format('opentype');
}
Andy Budd talks about the state of web design education. I personally share his opinions and I think the best way of learning web design is by learning on your own.
I think one of the biggest problems stems from the faculty members themselves. In the early days people didn’t know what to do with web courses so gave them to the departments that resembled them best; computer science, graphic design, library sciences or HCI. Each department bought their own spin and their own set of prejudices and pre-conceptions. If you want to teach front end development, don’t give the course to a Java developer. Similarly, if you want to teach web design, don’t run the course out of the graphic design department. They may share similar DNA, but the differences are a lot stronger than they may first appear.
Read the rest of the article on Andy’s blog
November 24th, 2009
in Personal
There’s no shame in self promotion
I don’t think there is such thing as shameless self promotion. It’s a part of doing business. You have to believe in your product and you have to advertise it as much as you can without getting annoying. If you don’t believe in yourself, nobody will.
There’s also a gain in promoting the work of others. As Zeldman puts it:
But direct self-promotion is ineffective and will go unnoticed unless it is backed by a more indirect (and more valuable) form of marketing: namely, sharing information and promoting others.
Is your Twitter feed mostly about your own work, or do you mainly link to interesting work by others? Link blogs with occasional opinions (or occasional techniques, or both) get read. The more you find and promote other people’s good work, the more in-the-know and “expert” you are perceived to be—and the more you (or your brand, if you must) are liked.
Read Zeldman’s article about self promotion.
November 23rd, 2009
in Usability
Restroom usability problem
Yesterday I went with some friends to a Buffalo Wild Wings for well, some wings. After having some Blue Moons I had to use the restroom which had the configuration depicted in the figure above. Since someone was using the urinal no.3 I went to number 3. You need your space, you know:)
What I didn’t predict was that the guy will finish and will come to wash his hands. The sink was a few inches away from me. It was awkward.
Someone didn’t put too much thought when designing that restroom. You need to think of all the possible situations when designing something. And that goes for web design too.
November 21st, 2009
in Personal
Fredo & Pid’jin. Two evil pigeons – one world to end
Fredo and Pid’jin is a romanian webcomic that I’ve been following for some time. They’re two evil pigeons planning to end the world. Awesome stuff!
November 19th, 2009
in Personal
Mexican coke culture
During college I probably only drank Pepsi. I’m not talking about drinking Pepsi vs. Coke, I’m talking about drinking 2 liters of Pepsi every day. It’s insane but I am now proud to say that I managed to overcome that addiction:)
My wife is a Coke drinker and while I wish she would drink water instead I can definitely understand the pleasure of having an ice cold Coke.
A while ago we discovered that Costco was selling Mexican Coke. We first bought it because of the glass bottles – they look way cooler than cans. Then we discovered it was made with real sugar, not high fructose corn syrup.
That lasted until our last trip to costco when we found out that they discontinued all Coke products. What?
I guess that means no more Mexican coke for a while.
While writing this blog post today I found that there is a culture surrounding this Holy Grail of Coke. Here’s an article in the NY Times