Our advanced systems detected you're trying to access porcupine colors by an old and deprecated browser like Internet Explorer 7 or even 6! This website uses some technologies which can't be detected from such an outdated software.
I am talking about the moments you’re working hard for a client or yourself, time is running out, you want to go to bed and you suddenly find a long awaited solution to a certain problem. Then you have two choices: to move on or to search for an even better solution.
To follow the second option feels clumsy but it is sometimes better to take the clumsy road.
In design this might be finding an even better color comb, in development a piece of code which is more secure and faster, in writing a clearer piece of text for your client. I think similar things rule all professions.
The effort to provide the best work (whatever it may be) was always great for me. Through this tiring but fulfilling experience I had the chance to see new things concerning my work, things I would never meet otherwise. Even better: when you expand your limits you change your way of thinking. By time you need to do it more often.
All in all this makes the difference between a professional and someone who just has a job. Consequently, this is what you pay. I remember me, back during the old ages, wondering why two companies required totally different money for the same service. It took me years to realize that quality made the difference and it took me even more time to define quality.
It is often not easy to define quality. For a dish served in a restaurant quality is measured by taste, the way it looks and smells, how you feel after you eat it etc. In Web design quality has to do with harmony, how easily one finds content, how easily she communicates with the website, how accessible it is etc. It takes a trained eye to consider all these options. A typical user senses quality but he can’t signify it. Most of the times if you feel all right in a website is enough to consider it good enough.
I have learned to appreciate real professionals by the time I started to act as one of them. It is not as easy as it sounds. I recognized this race, I admired it and now I want every single piece of my work to have an essence of professionalism. There always going to be a lot who are better than you but it’s OK with me. At least there’s always a target ahead.
No, I am not writing this post to show off. I am writing it to remind myself not to give up the next time I meet a problem which can’t be solved.
I was waiting for Leopard with anxiety and I was expecting what was very good to become even better. I couldn’t focus on any specific feature since I am pretty new to this game. All in all, the new operating system did my life easier but I wasn’t impressed.
The good part
I decided to have a clean installation of Leopard. After backing up, the new operating system deleted every single file. Half an hour later I had a new system. The whole procedure was pretty fast and easy. If you are about to jump to the Leopard train do have a clean installation. That’s my advice.
Everything works better than before. All applications require less CPU and less memory. I can’t explain this magic and I don’t care to. There must be some kind of magic though.
Stacks is a good enhancement. It lets you create shortcuts of files and folders in one place. This way you can have access to practically anything with just one click. At the same time you keep your desktop clean and tidy (I can’t have my desktop nothing but empty). Stacks is great for people who use a lot of tiny folders, files and applications all the time. It can be life saving in cases of hurrying. I use it from the very first day and I find it very useful.
Spaces is what I like most in Leopard. With spaces you can create virtual rooms and run specific applications in specific rooms. For example, when I use Coda, Photoshop and InDesign I don’t want to be distracted by let’s say Mail. At the same time I don’t want to close Mail. So I created a space dedicated to all development applications and a second one for all the other. This way I have reduced working time and most of all I remain concentrated to what I need to do each time.
Wanna back up your system easily in no time? Try Time Machine. It only requires an external hard disc. Of course it lets you back up only what you want to. Just like everything else in MacOS Time Machine works intuitively so you only need to think what you are going to save not how.
The not so good part
I was expecting a more beautiful environment. Having my Dock and my menus semitransparent is something I don’t like. It doesn’t have to do with personal taste, it has to do with communication and usage. For example I can’t see which applications are running since the tiny triangle underneath an icon has been replaced by an obscured dot. This not good design.
I am all for the protection of the environment and the recycled paper but I also want my folders to be seen clearly. Apple, by leaving behind the shiny look (only for the folders though), is politically correct but it confuses us. I want back the beautiful old icons which helped Apple become so famous for its interface design. Who ‘s going to bring them back for us?
To conclude, Leopard is even easier to work with but not better designed. I think in the future Apple will work on the design part and will produce a better interface. At least this is what I am hoping…
Open Coffee is “a standard point of open periodical informal meetings among businessmen, investors or anyone who cares”. It sounds more serious than it is so I would paraphrase the definition to “open periodical informal meetings among people who care about startups”.
2nd Open Coffee in Thessaloniki, Greece was certainly more fruitful than the 1st one. There were many more people and there were some presentations too. Among them was mine too. It was about how to start from scratch and develop real web activities. In order to survive you need to work more than ever before, do a lot of different things you never imagined and never miss your target: provide top class services.
I have this presentation in .pdf format but unfortunately is all in Greek so I don’t think you could use it. So I won’t upload it here. In case someone knows Greek he can jump to the Greek version of the website and grab the file.
Open Coffee is certainly a good activity. We should try to spread the news and talk about it because I suspect many people have no idea about it. What I would like to see in the future are more sophisticated practices during startups, ways to find clients and to run business. Obviously each one of us has different experiences which are great and need to be shared.
Anyone who drives in a city knows well how difficult it can be. Traffic jams, double parked cars, people who believe they own the roads and most of all the ones who aimlessly toot the horn can make me leave the car in the middle of the road and go away. I don’t do it because I care for my car.
Well, the previous paragraph isn’t quite accurate, since the first thing that comes to my mind is to rush and smack them. However, I know no violent solution is a real solution actually. That’s why I discovered the horn solution.
Imagine a car where each time you toot the horn the sound of it has the same intensity out and inside of it. Do you think it’s unbearable? I don’t.
When exactly someone needs to use his horn? When he’s to avoid an accident or car crash. Each time I needed to use my horn there was so heat around that I never heard the sound of it. If the sound of the horn was to be heard inside of the car as well there would be no problem at all.
Tell me another case where a driver toots it: when he sees the green light and the first of the row hasn’t started yet, when he teases a girl who walks beside his car, when he plays around with his new shiny thing, when he’s waiting for his spouse to come to the car and she ‘s still at the dressing room etc. In these cases it would be really good to hear this piercing sound each time he places his hand onto the wheel and pushes it.
Thanks to this simple idea our lives would have been a bit better.
From the moment you earn your living by designing websites, working for a client is just another job. You ‘ve got to perform well, not to exceed budged and given time, cover all requirements etc. This has nothing to do with the innocent ages where you designed for fun, without pressure and limits.
When you create your own website things are a bit different. Again there are things you ‘ve got to do and things you want to achieve, but there ‘s also a relieving kind of freedom. The kind that lets you create without borders sometimes. You can practically do whatever you want since it’s going to affect only you. However your website is still your home and you want the very best for it.
In reality, designing for you never ends. You might have defined your logo or the colors but at the same time you can change e.g. the layout the way you change. This website is above all a field of experiments. Some of them work out well, some others fail. Still I am pretty sure that no customer would like me to make the same experiments at his website.
All this is nothing but an evolving procedure which makes me better as a designer/developer/writer and my personal evolution is mirrored at my website by time. It takes a lot of time to realize that you actually need for example to create a 10px left margin for your text (not 5 or 15 - just 10). When you do it the result is harmonious, you look back at it and wonder why you discovered it so late.
The flip side of this coin is when you create something and you see it works at once. “It took you just one week to get it done. How dare you want me to pay you X for one week’s work?” You ‘re wrong pal. It took me years. Every single day I see your design pass in front my eyes and I try to figure out a decent solution. I spent a lot of hours to find out whether this particular blue goes well with this particular green and now I know.
The closer a designer stands to a customer the more probable is to come up with a good solution. Design never ends actually. There is only a moment when a version is mature enough and reflects the needs and personality of a particular customer. It is important for the designer to discover this moment. The future makes people change and they should expect the same for their websites. It’s a law of the nature.
It would be perfect if I could bring down the walls of my home and redesign the interior, build new walls, paint them with new colors and add some windows in the end. But I can’t. Fortunately, I can do it in my own website.
Some time ago one of the most important Web designers, Derek Powazek, talked about his secret: a bitter moment concerning his wife’s abortion. Heather, his wife, did the same. Powazek justified his expose as a way to “a way to exert some control over a chaotic universe”.
Of course such secrets are common things in Web communities, among people who go out and talk anonymously. That’s another story anyway.
From the moment I first read this post until now one thing is certain: I can’t judge this action. I many times tried to put myself in his shoes and I always failed. Once or twice I might got closer to the moments when you select to talk like this as an effort to leave bad things behind. I know I couldn’t do the same easily.
Other people do the same thing during a TV show. Do you think it’s different? I do. Because Derek and Heather did it the way they wanted to. Not while being torturing by spotlights, cruel hosts and all the other secret TV laws. The more I think over it the more I believe that exposing your life with dignity gives you power to go on.
Usually a million thoughts come along with such events but it is impossible for me to add just one more. I can only wish them the best.
I knew where I wanted to go but I didn’t know how. So I got lost.
The whole trip should last no more than 3 hours but it finally took me 6. I was running out of fuel. But in the end it was fun.
Towns and villages
As the cheerless towns pass my window
I can see a washed out moon through the fog
Then a voice inside my head breaks the analog
Dazzling lights
And the whole damn place goes crazy twice
and it’s once for the devil and once for Christ
but the Boss don’t like these dizzy heights
we’re busted in the blinding lights
Nobody on the road
Ohh, can’t anybody see
We’ve got a war to fight
Never found our way
Regardless of what they say
It was late and cold outside
Light up, light up
As if you have a choice
Even if you cannot hear my voice
I’ll be right beside you dear
And finally…
Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you
The soundtrack
Lazarus - Porcupine Tree
Closing time - L. Cohen
Roads - Portishead
Run - Snow Patrol
Fix you - Coldplay
If you want to be taken seriously, be serious with yourself.
I don’t disagree. Not at all. The real question is what makes you earnest. Our every day life is full of fallacies which make us want to behave as adults should. Unfortunately, most people confuse earnestness with a fake tendency of looking earnest.
I am really curious to learn how people who dress formally day by day feel. Do they really like their appearance? Would they exchange their ties with a cool t-shirt?
There are plenty of ways which can fool us and make us behave like “mature people” should: our dress style, the magazines we read, the hardware in our kitchen, our shampoo are some of them.
I always believed this is not the serious part of life. What makes one earnest is the particular way he takes his very happy and his very sad moments in his life, the way he treats people, his professionalism etc.
People who try to look earnest without being so are people who hide things consciously or not. People who can do bad things at bad times. The worst events of human history were triggered by people who looked serious.
Don’t get me wrong, I do like people who follow their own style, no matter what. There are people who are born to follow a business dress code and they look great in it. This is not what I am trying to say.
What I really want to say is that as long as it regards me, I need to take myself not so seriously sometimes. If some people believe that this makes immature then I am. I can’t do anything to convince them. It’s OK.
In the first photo there is Pluto from Eurodisney in Paris. When I went there I missed my chance to take a photo of my own. So I borrowed one from KatmaiAD in Flickr.
In the second photo there is one of my new t-shirts. I bought it from cottyn recently. Isn’t it very serious? (The guy in the photo isn’t me of course.)
Stacks is a good enhancement. It lets you create shortcuts of files and folders in one place. This way you can have access to practically anything with just one click. At the same time you keep your desktop clean and tidy (I can’t have my desktop nothing but empty). Stacks is great for people who use a lot of tiny folders, files and applications all the time. It can be life saving in cases of hurrying. I use it from the very first day and I find it very useful.
Spaces is what I like most in Leopard. With spaces you can create virtual rooms and run specific applications in specific rooms. For example, when I use Coda, Photoshop and InDesign I don’t want to be distracted by let’s say Mail. At the same time I don’t want to close Mail. So I created a space dedicated to all development applications and a second one for all the other. This way I have reduced working time and most of all I remain concentrated to what I need to do each time.
Wanna back up your system easily in no time? Try Time Machine. It only requires an external hard disc. Of course it lets you back up only what you want to. Just like everything else in MacOS Time Machine works intuitively so you only need to think what you are going to save not how.
I was expecting a more beautiful environment. Having my Dock and my menus semitransparent is something I don’t like. It doesn’t have to do with personal taste, it has to do with communication and usage. For example I can’t see which applications are running since the tiny triangle underneath an icon has been replaced by an obscured dot. This not good design.
I am all for the protection of the environment and the recycled paper but I also want my folders to be seen clearly. Apple, by leaving behind the shiny look (only for the folders though), is politically correct but it confuses us. I want back the beautiful old icons which helped Apple become so famous for its interface design. Who ‘s going to bring them back for us?
I always believed this is not the serious part of life. What makes one earnest is the particular way he takes his very happy and his very sad moments in his life, the way he treats people, his professionalism etc.