(photo by heather)

I figured I should write the answer to this entry in case some fans of the TV show Mythbusters ever wonder what a small easter egg in the background of the show set means. For anyone typing the title of this post into Google, here’s your answer:

Adam Savage, the co-host of the show is obviously a geek and spends some time online each day between shooting scenes for the show. Among many popular blogs, he reads MetaFilter, which goes by the shorthand “MeFi” by its members. Most of his participation takes place on Ask MetaFilter, a question and answers area of the site. This is his profile on the site.

Early this year, he posted a question asking members of the site to suggest some myths they could test from the Old West. The show had already covered a bunch of standards in previous shows and Adam wasn’t too happy with the suggestions for new myths from his producers, so he asked on the site. There were over 200 answers, but these three made it onto the show:

• Can a horse pull the bars out of a jail cell window? What about a stick of dynamite? Can you blow a hole in the wall of the cell without killing the prisoner inside?
• Can you shoot a cowboy hat off somebody’s head?
• Are the Loan [sic] Ranger’s silver bullets any better than lead bullets?

Adam talks about how the myths were chosen and how they were filmed in a podcast interview I did with him a couple months after the original question. In it, he talks about how he wanted to thank the website by having some small “easter egg” mention of MetaFilter, Ask MeFi, or MeFi somewhere in the blueprint and credits at the end of that episode.

Turns out that instead of a temporary small mention on that one specific episode that aired this evening, it was done in masking tape on a door in the set’s background several episodes before and has since stuck around. Time will tell how long it lasts, but now you know what it means and why it’s there and thanks again Adam for the shoutout. Mythbusters continues to be my favorite show on TV due to the great simple science and geekiness displayed each week. Mythbusters is probably doing more to help steer kids into engineering and adults into DIY/hacking projects than anything else on TV today.

I recently came across a job posting by Avenue A Razorfish that blew my mind (you can see the original here … at least for a while).

In just one classified ad listing, I found this incredible list of requirement keywords for a single applicant:

information architecture
content strategy
transactional
informational
audience needs
creative concepts
business requirements
interactive experiences
user research
concept testing
usability testing
prototypes
transactional interfaces
taxonomies
metadata frameworks
and templates
collaborative environment
oral presentation
information architect
interaction designer
and… MS Word

Back in the late ’90s, job descriptions, resumés and USP’s (sorry) had been elevated to something of an art form with regard to buzzword density and superlatives. It seemed those days were gone. I was wrong.

They’re back.

Does anyone remember this Y2K classic?

eNormicom

I recently came across a job posting by Avenue A Razorfish that blew my mind (you can see the original here … at least for a while).

In just one classified ad listing, I found this incredible list of requirement keywords for a single applicant:

information architecture
content strategy
transactional
informational
audience needs
creative concepts
business requirements
interactive experiences
user research
concept testing
usability testing
prototypes
transactional interfaces
taxonomies
metadata frameworks
and templates
collaborative environment
oral presentation
information architect
interaction designer
and… MS Word

Back in the late ’90s, job descriptions, resumés and USP’s (sorry) had been elevated to something of an art form with regard to buzzword density and superlatives. It seemed those days were gone. I was wrong.

They’re back.

Does anyone remember this Y2K classic?

eNormicom

I recently came across a job posting by Avenue A Razorfish that blew my mind (you can see the original here ... at least for a while).

In just one classified ad listing, I found this incredible list of requirement keywords for a single applicant:

information architecture
content strategy
transactional
informational
audience needs
creative concepts
business requirements
interactive experiences
user research
concept testing
usability testing
prototypes
transactional interfaces
taxonomies
metadata frameworks
and templates
collaborative environment
oral presentation
information architect
interaction designer
and... MS Word

Back in the late '90s, job descriptions, resumés and USP's (sorry) had been elevated to something of an art form with regard to buzzword density and superlatives. It seemed those days were gone. I was wrong.

They're back.

Does anyone remember this Y2K classic?

eNormicom

If you’ve followed this site for a few years, you probably saw my old essays introducing Google’s Adsense to the blogging public and that time I said ads in RSS were a no-no. Today I wrote an extensive update on the same subject over on my new blog: How ads really work (superfans and noobs). I basically lay out everything I’ve learned from hosting ads for the past five years including some data from my own sites and those of several friends.

Leaflet designed for a client I work with regularly. I’m also doing a brochure for them - one pager. Originally started with them on a corporate brochure.

The image below is what the client gave to me - it’s a MS Word document.

the images below are the first drafts of what I came up with - a couple of versions.

The images below are of the brochure. [ The prints have been taken on my HP printer in office - not an offset printer. And the shots have been taken on my Nokia N72 - hence the grain. ]

The image below is of the PDF file that the client sent across to me.

The images below are of the design I came up with - again first draft, finalization subject to approval by client.

UPDATE : 23rd June. This is the final version of the leaflet and the brochure.

I’ve been spending a lot of time in Coda lately. Coda is Panic’s new all-in-one application for building and editing websites.

Web designers are pretty picky about their tools. When Coda came out, lots of people were critical because it didn’t have some of the features on which many of us depend daily. I absolutely understand that. Nobody wants to use a tool that is going to make you less efficient. CSSEdit, for instance, is hands-down the best CSS Editor on the market. And Textmate is a really powerful text editor with lots of bundles that save people tons of time and makes us all better programmers. It’s like the Photoshop of text editors.

But sometimes you don’t need Photoshop. Coda’s power lies in its apparent simplicity. Because Coda is an all-in-one application, I never have to switch applications when moving from editing an XHTML file, to tweaking a CSS file, previewing in the browser and then uploading said files. There’s zero mental overhead. You never leave the single Coda window.

Of course you can pull out the big guns if you want. Right click on any file in the file browser and choose “Open in Textmate” or CSSEdit or even open image files in Photoshop. Whatever you want. Handy. Coda is what brings it all together, taking a lot of the busy work out of web design.

Power Using With Coda

Lest you think Coda is actually just a simple application, I’ve been using Coda to some pretty powerful ends building a site with Expression Engine just this past week. Expression Engine gets a little flack about it’s template engine being entirely browser-based, but that is, in fact, not true. You can save any template as a file, which means Coda can get to it easily. It’s true! And then I found that awesome .htaccess trick that Derek mentioned on the Expression Engine blog. Using this, you can enjoy Coda’s live preview functionality when editing any template.

Nuggets of Joy

Sure, I could write more. There are plenty of fun and handy features I didn’t mention. And I’m sure there are a few things I haven’t discovered yet. That’s the mark of a well-designed application: It lets you get to work quickly without having to learn much, and then it slowly reveals itself to you over time, letting you discover features as you need them.

I fully understand that what Coda is doing isn’t new. Many of these features have shown up in applications in the past, but at no time have we seen it so elegantly done without all the junk clogging things up.

After releasing my latest wallpaper devkit I received a bunch of requests from people, asking me to do a tutorial on how to create rays of light with Adobe Photoshop. Well here we go…