posted by DL Byron on October 31, 2005
Our favorite holiday, here at Textura Design, is halloween and this year, like every year, the festivities started with a neighborhood parade. That same motley crew, including dead rock star, corpse bride, bride of Frankenstein, big-hand, tigger, skeletor, and cute bug will get their tricks and treats tonight.
For the past 3 years, I’ve handed out candy with the help of a slightly scary puppet named Hugo. This year, sadly, the neighborhood is getting older and Hugo was deemed to be “too babyish.” Ok, then, the big guns will come out with a seriously scary guy handing out candy.
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posted by DL Byron on October 30, 2005
I follow bicycle racing closely, up on most current events, and was surprised at the Tour’s diss of Armstrong. Velonews summarizes the controversy and the rifts the diss has created. Cyclingnews reports on the end “ok a very long chapter” and Lance’s response.
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posted by DL Byron on October 29, 2005
I heard on the news that at Coffee Fest a super-caffeinated brew will debut that’s packing the caffeine of 5 cups. That’s right, 5 cups in one. Hooah!
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posted by DL Byron on October 27, 2005
This email just came into a mailing list I’m on for freelancers:
Project:
Seattle’s first pole dancing fitness classes are about to begin and I need an attorney to write up the contract between the dance teacher and the facility renting the space for pole classes. We’ll offer in exchange either private exotic dance and pole lessons OR free classes. Or if you are a male attorney, you can donate your contract services and earn the free classes to give as a gift to a woman of your choice.
That’s the best-ever freelance mailing list post: the Stripper/Dancer/Barter economy at work.
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posted by DL Byron on October 27, 2005
There’s a crispness in the air, that the worm is turning, we’ve got Harriet E. Miers going down, Rove indictments expected, Demon Eyes for Condi Rice, and Snakes on a Plane!
As Nick at Blogebrity noted, Ana Marie Cox must be pissing her pants and SNL writers have the makings of a perfect comedy skit.
And, I can just imagine a production artist at USA Today thinking, Demon Eyes for your beeeeeatch!
Snakes on a Plane, man!
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posted by DL Byron on October 27, 2005
I’ll be at the Business Blogging 101 Seminar this Saturday talking about blog design and blogging engines. On Sunday, I’ll walk the Coffee Fest show floor and talk to vendors about Clip-n-Seal.
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posted by DL Byron on October 26, 2005
May you live in interesting times is an inaugural festival of creative technology that includes the 22 artist’s work, various venues, and one big party.
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posted by DL Byron on October 26, 2005
Lenn sent me macTV Show #51 — MS History 2005. When you haven’t seen the Monkey Boy dance in a while, it’s damn funny. Includes lots of other funny clips.
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posted by DL Byron on October 24, 2005
Last weekend was quintessential Seattle weather in October. Stunningly beautiful one day and rain the next. I welcome the rain, it cleans the air, the city, and signals that Fall has arrived. The Fall is the time of year when I spend hours of my weekends riding the city, the suburbs, and country. When you ride in Seattle, you’ll need a rain bike and the proper gear.
My rain bike is a custom Davidson — it’s a touring/road bike with long-pull brakes and eyelets for mounting fenders and clearance. The frame material is titanium, for all-day riding comfort and the geometry is relaxed.
My weather gear is a mixture of Windtex from various vendors, Windstopper, and microclimate liners from Craft. I wear 3 levels on my body
and knickers or tights with pads. Gloves, booties, and a cap are essential as well. I use Windstopper gloves with a liner inside. On really wet days, I’ll bring extra gloves and change them 1/2 way through the ride. For my feet, I’ll wear normal socks, with a light lycra cover and a Windtex bootie. However, I’m trying a new bootie from Sugoi that’s “a fleece lined rubberized laminate that keeps water out and heat in.” I tested the booties this weekend and they’re very well made, kept my feet dry and combine my two-layer bootie method into one. I think they’re too hot for warmer days, but Sugoi obviously has product designers on staff that ride in the rain. I wear a Windstopper cycling cap with a bill, ear flaps, and fleece lining. The bill keeps the water out of my eyes, and when it’s even colder or I get chilled, I flip the ear flaps down and stay warmer. Little changes like covering ears, or changing gloves can make an enormous difference, when I’m in the May Valley, it’s pouring, and I’ve still got 2.5 hours to ride.
The reason Windtex/Windstopper works in Seattle, is that you’re going to soak through eventually (sometimes in minutes), no matter what, so you want to block the wind and stay warm. While you’d think that Gore-Tex would work well, it doesn’t because it’s too hot. And that’s the main problem you face in wet weather: staying warm, but not hot and sweaty. Windstopper from Gore-Tex works the same as Windtex, it’s great for gloves and hats, but still too hot for body wear and too thick to be used in jackets. Windtex is a light, stretchy heat-regulating membrane that repels wind and water.
Note that a 3-layer system will fail if you’re not moving and burning calories to stay warm. Stopping in the rain is always dangerous in the winter. It usually doesn’t get that cold in Seattle, but you’ll start shivering within minutes of stopping to fix a flat or for coffee.
When it’s colder, I’ll add a set of arm warmers and Smartwool socks. Another tip is to make sure you’re eating and drinking. It’s easy to forget to eat when it’s cold. You don’t want to bonk in wet weather because that makes for one miserable ride.
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posted by DL Byron on October 20, 2005
For a month or more I kept hearing this haunting song on KCRW that sounds like the Talking Heads, from the 70s, David Byrne at his quirkiest, but it’s not. I finally caught the playlist and it’s Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. The song is Lost and Found.
You look like David bowie
But you’ve nothing new to show me
Start another fire
and watch it slowly die
Nice.
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posted by DL Byron on October 20, 2005
When I was busting out the new site, I couldn’t decide which banner to use, Scott was at a badminton tournament, and I found a old comp where he had created 9 different versions of the banner. So, I just put them all up there with a random image plugin and that was that. During the week, as I’ve been pinging friends to ask them to check the site, they’ve all been down with the randomness. Ok, then, that’ll go for a while.
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posted by DL Byron on October 19, 2005
A coffee break with Chris Brownrigg today to discuss Boeing’s blogs, pugs, and localhosting blogs. A halloween party was also discussed, as well as that girl with the blue shoes in the Mercury car commercial.
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posted by DL Byron on October 18, 2005
When I had to rapidly redesign and redo this site, I decided to publish it entirely as a blog. We’ve been online for 8 years, with many changes, designs, all about art for a while and who knows what’s next. For now, going into our 9th year, the new vibe is blog.
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posted by DL Byron on October 17, 2005
So, I spend all weekend working on the site, worrying about this and that, updating, reloading, DNS, all that goes into a site, compressed into a few panicked hours. I finally reach Scott with an exasperated, “dude, the site, look, is it ok?” And he responds with photos of his Team Badminton weekend and how his team is known for “serving up a smackdown.” Nice!
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posted by DL Byron on October 16, 2005
Wasn’t exactly planning on spending the day dealing with hosts, back ups, redirecting and rebuilding blogs. While I was at it, I started a redesign that hasn’t quite settled yet, but it’s here. The site is in DNS limbo at Dreamhosts until the full switch propagates. Cheers to backing up and Movable Type’s import/export feature.
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posted by DL Byron on October 13, 2005
Later this month, on October 29th, I'll speak about blog design at the Business Blogging 101 Seminar. Steve Broback, Molly E. Holzschlag, Robert Scoble, and Buzz Bruggeman will join me and we'll cover, "everything you need to know to get blogging now." The cost is $195.00 and you can register now.
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posted by DL Byron on October 12, 2005
During a dinner cruise around the waters of Montreal, the table chatter eventually went into the gutter and one of the woman said, "the Montreal girls are all about the sexy . . . with the dark mascara and cleavage." The table agreed and I said, "yes and they are the best singers in the world," which was a reference to the Celine Dion parody on Saturday Night Live. Chuckle, chuckle and then we got drenched in a downpour I haven't seen since New York City. Yes it rains a lot in Seattle, but not the sudden, the skies have opened, type of rain.
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posted by DL Byron on October 08, 2005
In what turned out to be the first Internet ad I’ve ever intentionally clicked, I landed on the Parliament Funkadelic — One Nation Under A Groove film site on PBS.
Put a glide in your stride and a dip in your hip,
And come on up to the Mothership
I’ll tune into that and light the roof on fire.
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posted by DL Byron on October 04, 2005
View any of the Gap sites in Safari or any Apple browser for that matter and watch the bizarro loop happen. If you switch your user agent to force the site to think you're MSIE 6.0, you get in, though the layout is broken. This is the site that has been lauded in the tech press for coding some break-though, all-in-one page, e-commerce thingy. Their engine works great, if you can like get to it. The dangers of browser detection, redirection, and just plain stupid development have been discussed ad-nauseam for as long as I can remember. And this comes just when you'd think Standards-based design was making gains, as discussed on Robert's Talk.
Most interesting, is when the site launched a few weeks ago, you could get in, it worked OK, and it uses Standards-based design techniques. My guess is that the developers noticed, "hey this code is broken on Opera or whatever, " we've got to detect and redirect them away to another site with less of the million dollar code we just wrote. As flawed as that logic is, you don't actually go to another less Web 2.0, superfantastic site, but instead a loop of nothingness. Even worse is that dreaded, "your browser is not supported page," which is where the loop is probably trying to send you.
Part of what I lecture about at the Blog Business Summit is how Standards are built into blogging and the difference that makes to bloggers because they don't have to think about it; instead, just worry about all the content you're going to write. Standards matters now, more than ever, because of all the convergent/divergent devices that people are using to browse the web. There's absolutely no good reason to lock your code into one platform or browser. You can learn more about Standards and browsers at WaSP, A List Apart, and an An Event Apart.
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posted by DL Byron on October 04, 2005
I've been researching Montreal before our trip, checking out Cannabis Culture (on the when in Rome tip) and found this hilarious product review on the Vegapipe, including a rating sytem for the best vegetable pipe. Nice!
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posted by DL Byron on October 03, 2005
There's no better book-writing weather than rain and I'll be Montreal later this week, with a forecast of rain everyday! When I get back next week, more book writing, and focusing on the Business Blogging 101 Seminar on the 29th.
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