Juliana Hatfield writes about her experience working on My So-Called Life, and the song-writing process. My favorite part is her thoughts on how constraint fosters creativity:
Having rules or limitations can be very liberating just as having total freedom to do whatever you want, however you want, can be sort of paralyzing. It’s hard to know […]

Kottke posted a link yesterday to photos of people just before and just after they died. It reminded me of a documentary I watched the other night from PBS’ P.O.V. series called A Family Undertaking, about the growing home funeral movement.
After the civil war, American funerals moved out of the home and largely into […]

Since I’ve been absent for so long I thought I’d post a nice surprise for those of you who still subscribe; an April mix.
Blah blah yes I know about Muxtaping, but you can only make one 12 song mix.
Album artwork is included in the download, enjoy.

Shout Out Louds - South America
Au Revoir Simone […]

Due to last week’s blizzard the CWSA’s first purely social event had to be postponed and is rescheduled for today. A note to all you foodies, Bier Markt/Bar Cento chef Jonathan Sawyer will be appearing on Iron Chef America tomorrow night on Michael Symon’s team. If you’d like to have the best burger in town, […]

After watching Alien Saturday afternoon Alana and I decided 80s and early 90s action classics are sorely missing from our DVD library. We decided to brave The Exchange last night (and I do mean brave, the last few times we were there employees had to oust rowdy/violent clientele) and see what we could find.
We […]

This Saturday, March 7th the CWSA would like to present:
The First Semi-Annual Convocation of the Benevolent & Protective Order of Markup
Are you interested in CSS? Want to geek out? This is an opportunity to meet and socialize with the Cleveland Web Standards Association, as well as drink beer and eat some of the best food […]

Chicago may ban small plastic bags because they are often used for drugs. I wonder what implications this will have for businesses selling body jewelry. Illinois has always been notoriously unsympathetic to the body mod industry, only recently taking the legal tattoo age down from 21 to 18. According to the article:
…one reasonably should know […]

Microsoft has released a beta of Internet Explorer 8.0
Internet Explorer 8.0 is a shift from previous versions in that it focuses heavily on complying with Web standards.
Isn’t that what they said last time? Support for HTML5 but not XHTML2- sounds like they just forced the industry’s hand.

I was in Agile training for two days last week while simultaneously kicking caffeine. Suffice to say I was desperate for something to keep myself awake, and some semblance of focused. So I started doodling. Some of the doodles are actual notes (see “pearprogramming”) most are random.

I’ve never had healthy habits, but until recently they never seemed to be a problem; when I was younger I took for granted how active my job really was. I was surprised to find when I got my first post-college “real” (desk) job how the calories started to pile on. For a while now I’ve […]

The past two weeks have been incredibly busy. In addition to assimilating to the new job, I’ve been swamped with freelance and work for my class. Alana also started a new job, at Evolved in Columbus, probably the most reputable tattoo studio in the state. We’ve had a lot of work getting everything ready for […]

@bdielman have you seen Symphony CMS? Don’t know if it’s right for us, but worth a look. http://21degrees.com.au/products/symphony/ #
There is a very good reason you shouldn’t use one giant 120k background image instead of slicing up your PSD, besides making me cranky. #
Was able to make student’s project IE6 friendly in 3 steps. #

The first tattoo of this episode is a crane on a girl’s ribcage. As Kat’s applying the stencil some dude Corey’s tattooing is ogling her and making rude comments. If this ever happened to me when I was getting tattooed, I would never come back. If I were the artist working on a client who […]

Met a gentleman named Spider Sex last night. He was wearing a 3 piece suit from the thrift store, which he allegedly washed for two hours. #
At Panera it is possible to ruin a peanutbutter and jelly sandwich. #
Apparently Tom Jones’ chest hair is insured for almost $7million. #

Last night’s CWSA planning meeting was a great success. We’ve had a lot of new faces, some of them traveled pretty far to attend. Some topics discussed last night:

Trying to advance standards in the local web and business communities without being the CSS gestapo.
Involving other industries in our group. (Maybe we can find a lawyer […]

thought demonstrating liquid & fixed CSS layouts would take fill hour lecture time. It did not. 30 minutes, for future reference. D’oh. #
has a lot of reading to catch up on this week. #
Agh the iPhone is 16gb now. The official Apple early adopter cry: "If only I had waited!" #
if you’re not on LinkedIn […]

Some of Alana’s Derek Hess tattoos have made their way onto his site.
Though I’m not a fan of Derek Hess’ work, Alana really enjoys tattooing his designs since the style and line work are drastically different than typical tattoo art.

Symphony CMS. Symphony is a pretty nice looking, free web publishing system powered by XML and XSLT. I can’t wait until I have some free time to try it out.
IDSA Mideast Conference ‘08 (Columbus, OH)
Art + Science, the Mideast District Conference in Columbus, Ohio will explore the dichotomy of art and science, the […]

Finally got a long overdue haircut, feeling significantly less shabby. Not looking forward to conquering Monday. #
Putting out fires, which could’ve been averted had someone organized their PSD and named layers. #
Alana is in Columbus and just bought me the new Black Mountain and Dead Meadow records (yes vinyl) awesome! #
Opening a PDF with Acrobat […]

Home from CWSA meetup. It’s so refreshing to geek out sometimes it’s hard to leave! #

Things have been kind of quiet on this blog, as the speed of my life seems to have doubled. I just came home from vacation, and will be starting a new job at Progressive Insurance.
I’m sad to leave my coworkers behind; it’s not often one gets to work with such a talented and knowledgeable […]

Isn’t Friday supposed to be the least stressful day of the week? #
is about to reluctantly take on a Flash project. Moral conflict abounds. #
@antiheroine your site’s hiccuping when I comment She is bland. Never could put my finger on it before. Sometimes bland is right. #
@nathansmith the idea of an all Flash site […]

realizing Lost isn’t quite the same on TV as it is on DVD. Watching 3 episodes at a time FTW! #
Cheeseburger meeting disengage! #
@bcullen if you want a good laugh, see the Progressive online application. #

@pstinnett mind if I ask how much that’s setting you back? #
Wants to know who from The Deck is actually using Microsoft Expression Suite on purpose? #
At best putting prosciutto and pea pizza on the menu but actually having seafood pizza is poor usability. At worst, a cruel cruel joke. #
@bridgetstewart it’s because getting a […]

The theme of the episode is Kat’s dramatized self-intervention. She gets wasted, says something to upset her boyfriend and decides to stop drinking. Hmm, probably a good idea since her party antics got her fired from Miami Ink, and it appears she doesn’t have much involvement managing her own shop. The last thing I ever […]

really wishes people would stop using Myspace as their primary means to contact me so I could get rid of it once and for all. #
wishing I could call bullshit on people who have bunk LinkedIn job titles and descriptions. #
Stayed out too late, but feeling refreshed none the less. #
feeling the post-lunch food coma. […]

Wishing I would have gone to bed earlier. #
Finds it funny that several of my students chose Godaddy.com for their examples of bad UI. #
@antiheroine digging around the tag "inspiration" on del.icio.us or looking for design examples on Flickr. #

We had a really good and much needed trip, though I think next time I’d prefer to drive rather than fly. Priceline doesn’t honor your seat selections, so Alana and I were seated apart on most of our flights. Someone was nice enough to switch with us on our last flight so we could sit […]

is home from vacation and suspecting it will be months before I see the sun again. #
Realized twitter posts in my feed are mucking up the CWSA feed. Anyone know how to exclude a category from your RSS feed in Wordpress? #
@msjen agreed. My girlfriend has AT&T and can get a signal just fine in […]

@aoirthoir @bridgetstewart can’t get to my email but Mondays aren’t good for me I have class. Friday actually works best. #
@brilliantcrank enjoying a Gloria y Cubana at this very moment. #
is at mall. Because you know I couldn’t go to one of these back at home. #