I will be changing this website dramatically during the summer, after I graduate. The purpose of this site was to help me score some web design jobs to help put me through college. That isn’t my focus anymore, and my website should change to reflect that. I’m more interested now in applying my creative writing education in print and through new media. This website will be redesigned, rebranded, and relaunched accordingly. There will be twice weekly blog posts and an extensive portfolio of original content. Until then, I have to focus on finishing school. I’ll see you all this summer.

Note: This has been cross-posted from one of my other blogs. Yes, I have another blog. No, you can’t see it. It’s private.

If Facebook wants my identity, it’s going to need to make some changes.

OpenID

Have you noticed that a lot of websites are giving users the option of logging in with Facebook Connect? In fact, I just implemented this feature when I switched from Intense Debate to Disqus (for the laymen, these are comment systems). It looks like Facebook is trying to become OpenID. I would much rather Facebook just adopted OpenID instead.

The Feeds Don’t Feed

Facebook seems to be gravitating towards lifestreaming. I have a problem with that. I don’t need Facebook to be a lifestreaming platform because I already have a lifestreaming platform—namely FriendFeed—and unlike Facebook, it plays well with others. Friendfeed works with the feeds that each of my services (YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, et al.) already generate, and from them it creates a new, universal feed (the eponymous “friend feed”). Facebook is simply becoming a redundant service that lacks the oh so necessary RSS or Atom feeds. In other words, there is my entire interconnected internet presence, and then there is a separate Facebook presence, and Facebook keeps these worlds apart. That is a very dated and frustrating way of doing things.

Okay, okay. I don’t really want Facebook to back off from lifestreaming. I want Facebook to get it right by giving me custom feeds I can use with other services like FriendFeed and Twitter. Facebook does generate a feed from status updates, but it’s absurdly hard to find, and it keeps moving it around.

Facebook the Identity Manager?

Facebook also seems on its way to becoming an identity manager like DandyID or People Pond. It’s not doing the job of identity hub quite yet, but I think it’s positioning itself for it. I think this would be a brilliant move. Consider the following: (1) Facebook basically owns social networking right now; (2) social networking is currently moving toward openness and compatibility between individual networks, leading to a standard network of networks and a universal identity (this is where OpenID comes in); (3) Facebook could beat DandyID and People Pond together in a fist fight with one hand tied behind its back. Yes, Facebook and DandyID are doing different things right now. But not for long. Keep an eye on social networking’s horizon and you’ll see what I mean.

Several months ago I read some words online saying that, with two hours of practice every day for ten years, we can master virtually any skill. Sure, it’s really just a contemporary rewording of the old-as-dirt axiom “practice makes perfect.” But its definite numbers (two hours, ten years) make it seem more concrete, and thus more attainable. Since then, I’ve been trying to decide what I would devote that much of my life to. Fiction writing? Freerunning?

If you’ve been around me at all since I read this, I’ve probably asked you this question: What would you choose to master with two hours every day for ten years? Here’s a bigger question I keep asking myself: why am I not doing this yet? Maybe I just want to be semi-competent at too many things to focus so much time on any one of them. In the words of the great Robert A. Heinlein, “Specialization is for insects.”

A brief update

• I recently found myself some consistent employment working evenings at a candy shop. It’s a lot of fun; (almost) everyone who comes in is happy, because, you know, they’re in a candy shop.
• This weekend I will be moving into my new apartment with three new room mates, one of which is a very old friend of mine, as well as a Modeus Designs collaborrator. The new place will be much closer to campus, and will have a higher bathroom-to-occupant ratio.
• As I was planning out my classes for this quarter, I discovered I wasn’t as finished with my religious studies minor as I thought. I still need to take one more class. Luckily, I should still be able to graduate on time in the Spring. Good thing I double-checked! I’m actually happy about this, because I really wanted to take another religion class this year.
• I’ve been playing with wikis lately. I set up two of my own, and have been learning a lot about how to work them. Now I feel I have something new to add to my resume.

ChaCha

I had a brief stint as a ChaCha Guide, which means answering questions for money. The compensation for entry-level guides is $0.15 a question. I made about $10.00 total. In my admittedly limited experience, it would be difficult to earn minimum wage ($8.07 in Washington state, which is rather high) while striving for quality answers. However, it’s pretty easy work, and often an enjoyable way to pass the time. I learned a lot of odd facts, and I actually got paid on many occasions to tell Chuck Norris jokes. I will probably pick it up again later. All things considered, I think it’s a good, legal way to earn a little cash on the side.

Google Chrome

Google Chrome, Google’s new web browser, is off to a promising start. I’ve been using it all day, and I’m actually really impressed.

• No extensions (yet)

The above counts as at least 20 cons for me, because I’m a pretty big add-on user. That’s right—while Firefox is made great from its fantastic add-on development community, Google Chrome is lacking extensions altogether. For now. TechCrunch reports that Google plans to make it extendable in the future, though. It’s a solid browser, but I’m going to need some extensions before I completely switch. I may use it for casual browsing for now, though.

Netflix

I got Netflix in July. I’m sold. It’s well priced and convenient, and the growing library of videos available to watch online (including the entire original Battlestar Galactica series, Ghost in the Shell, and the first two seasons of Showtime’s Weeds) makes it superb. I have some 200 DVDs in my queue right now, making it the most comprehensive and user-friendly “movies to watch” list I’ve made to date. Plus now when people talk about movies they think I need to watch right now, I can say “I’ll add it to my Netflix queue,” which ends the evangelism much quicker than “I’ll have to rent it some time.”

I wanted to share these videos about memes from TED.com with everyone. I think they speak for themselves, so I don’t want to say a lot about them right now. I would love to hear some thoughts and reactions from readers; this is pretty engaging stuff, I think.

AnimationArchive.org has a must-see entry on Boris Artzybasheff’s art book As I See, specifically the chapter called “Diablerie.” When you visit the page, be sure to read his highly poetic introduction to the chapter.

Artzybasheff was a brilliant Ukranian-born commercial artist who experimented with anthropomorphism and surreal design. “Diablerie” is filled with surreal, often grotesque WWII-inspired political cartoons.
For more information, here’s a biography on Artzybasheff, and here’s smattering of his work.

Since I’m always up for learning a new word (and sharing it), Dictionary.com defines “diablerie” as:

1. Sorcery; black magic; witchcraft.
2. Representation of devils or demons in words or pictures.
3. Mischievous conduct; deviltry.

Apt.

My favorite pieces on the page are The Headless Horseman, Radio Propaganda, and The Triumph of Wit.

Found via BoingBoing.

Photographer Balakov, in his own words, “[takes] quite a lot of Lego pictures.” Perhaps you saw his work, Raising the flag on Iwo Jima and Monk on Fire, on Smashing a few days ago. If you check out his flickr photostream, you’ll find a lot more Lego recreations of historical photographs (and a bunch of Lego Star Wars stuff). Photographs I especially recommend that weren’t in the Smashing article are Moon Landing, Lunch Atop a Skyscraper, Bigfoot, and my personal favorite, Tiananmen Square.

It brings a big smile to my face to see childhood (i.e. Legos) invading adulthood (i.e. historical photography) like this. I grew up with Legos, so my reaction has a lot of nostalgia mixed in with the appreciation. (I also have a huge tub of Legos in my closet, which I still bust out every once in a while. Shh.)

This does bring to mind the imminent potential for online Lego-action historical reenactment role-playing—a notion which is at once startling and intriguing.

Update: I just discovered that OpenCulture, one of my favorite blogs, wrote an entry on June 10th about Balakov’s Lego recreations as well. Balakov is surely enjoying his fifteen minutes of fame—and rightly so!

This article by Mark Rosenfelder (creator of Zompist.com) has been bouncing around in my head for the past month. I finally articulated a response as I was scanning Slashdot and Wired, and noticed what I was doing. Learning about a new scientific advancement is like a shot of creative adrenaline. I hear about the new X, and I immediately start thinking of the next generation or new applications.

Here’s the heart of my response to Rosenfelder’s article. Once you start trying to play the scientist by figuring out exactly how some cool gadget would work in the real world, you usually run into a wall. And understandably so; the present is plagued by the apparently impossible. But, historically, human beings are pretty good at figuring out how to do new things, and the most conservative visions of the future often fall short. Naysayers who proclaim “we’ll never be able to do X” face exponentially increasing odds of being proven wrong as time passes. If it’s in the future, who’s to say what’s impossible?

Many hard sci-fi writers would do it differently, but I say go ahead and give your space rangers laser swords. Don’t strain yourself by trying to figure out how it works—that’s the scientist’s job. Writers can afford to keep their heads in the clouds.

Ask the CSS Guy has an interesting post about using pure CSS to create one pixel notched corners. Now, I realize there’s a good reason for people to use straight code whenever possible in place of images; for starters, code loads much quicker than pixels in any situation where the two can be used to achieve the same result. But this one-pixel method for creating rounded corners—while pure code—violates my personal code philosophy.

When CSS was created and design tags in HTML became taboo, the idea was that the HTML would be clean and focused on information. With the aforementioned method, you’re mucking up your HTML with embedded design tags that, really, shouldn’t be there at all.

I don’t fault the CSS Guy for sharing this method. It certainly is interesting. But it’s just another example of using bad code when an image, really, is a better tool for the job. Trying to create rounded corners without images seems to be a recent trend among web designers. All the methods I’ve seen aside from the (currently) widely unsupported “corner” attribute sacrifice code beauty. (Some methods even use—yuck!—JavaScript.) When did it become more important to avoid images, even where images are suited best, than to write good, clean code?

Any artist will agree: inspiration comes from everything. Here are a few things that have inspired me recently.

Images

FFFFound.com is a nifty image bookmarking site. There is always some crazy cool stuff on display there. Among my favorite finds on FFFOUND! are these retro-future pieces.

Some of my favorite sources of inspiration are surreal paintings. When viewing a surreal piece, your brain is forced to perform the creative act of making sense of the image. ZuzaFun.com has some surreal works of Jacek Yerka online that perfectly demonstrate what I’m talking about. View them, and pay attention to how you respond to what you’re viewing.

Concept art, almost by its very nature, is terribly inspiring.

• ConceptArt.org
• Links to awesome concept artists and their galleries
  
• Guild Wars: Nightfall concept art
• Misc. video game art galleries

Tweets

Twistori, a beautifully designed social experiment based on Twitter, is fun to watch for about five minutes. Luckily, that’s usually as long as it takes to find a spark. What’s killer about Twistori is that there’s really no telling what you’ll read, but there is enough text whizzing by for you to catch something interesting.

Twitscoop, another nifty Twitter-based site, helps answer the question “what’s hot on Twitter right now?”

Music Videos

1. Pretty much everything by Michel Gondry.
2. This site is a Last.FM and YouTube mashup to help you find awesome music videos.
3. Smashing Magazine has an awesome collection of 29 Brilliant Music Videos.