Archive for February, 2009

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Album Cover Art Game

Friday, February 27th, 2009
Biskupice

Apparently, this album cover art game has been popular on Facebook and Flickr. I’ve posted the rules below:

  1. Go to “Wikipedia” and Hit “random” or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random. The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
  2. Go to “Random quotations” or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3.  The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.
  3. Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days” or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days. Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
  4. Use photoshop or similar to put it all together.

I tried this out and created the image above using the following random items:

  • Biskupice, Wroclaw County
  • So if it seems that some of what I’ll have to say in the pages to come doesn’t reflect the mellowing of age, that’s only because I’ve never found that life and memories respond to time the way that tobacco does.
    Caleb Carr, ‘The Angel of Darkness’, 1997
  • The End is the Beginning is the End

Posted in Web/Design | No Comments »

Why do I love Twitter?

Thursday, February 26th, 2009

I’ve been a member of Twitter for nearly a year, but in the last month I’ve become a huge fan of Twitter. In fact, it’s probably my favorite web 2.0 social network.  I’ve even installed Twhirl, so I can instantly be alerted on my desktop whenever someone I follow posts. Below are a few of the reasons I enjoy Twitter so much.

Explanation

First, a brief explanation.  Twitter is a social network that allows people to post small, 140 character limit, posts.  People decide to follow your posts, just as you decide to follow others.  It’s like a hybrid between instant messaging and blogging.
Twitter

Integration

A few months ago, I started integrating Twitter with Facebook.  Any of my “tweets” would instantly update my Facebook status.  Once I launched this website, I installed a Twitter widget that instantly posted my last 5 tweets.  Now, I can twitter from my iPhone, and it will update my Facebook status and show up on rmlumley.com as well.

Documenting Events

I went to Boston last spring and I twittered the entire weekend.  It become a joke with the friends I was with, but I know some of my friends enjoyed following along.  A few weeks ago I twittered the Flip-Cup tournament I was in, so my followers could see our rise to the championship (and my subsequent fall of sobriety).  I was even able to quickly upload pictures from the event.

Similar Interests

Facebook is great for interacting and keeping in touch with friends, but Twitter is great for interacting with people with similar interests.  For example, I follow a lot of Web Designers and bloggers.  It’s interesting and even educational to see the links, tips and frustrations they post about.  I also will do a search on Twitter for something that I’m currently interested in, and add people who are also twittering about it.  For example, when I started reading Animal Man, I added people who were also talking about it.

Interaction

Using the Animal Man example above, I now have twittered back and forth to other comic book fans regarding that book.  I’ve also received a few recommendations from some of them.  Some celebrities have started using Twitter and a few are worth following, like Shaq.

Pride

I’d be lying if I said otherwise, but a certain amount of pride occurs whenenver someone new follows you.  I only have 34 followers, but I still was pretty happy each time I received an email telling me I have a new follower.  A handful of them are people I know in real life, but most are complete strangers.

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New idea: Iconolike

Tuesday, February 24th, 2009
Iconolike

So, this is partially inspired by the way flickr displays thumbnails.  I decided I’d take images of things that I like, and create small 72×72 pixel images.  I decided to combine 25 of them in random order into one image.  I’m dubbing it an “iconolike”.  Anyways, this is my first attempt.   I might expand on it, or do one every month or so, so people can get a quick snapshot into what I’m into.  This one is very general.

Note: During this process, I realized I need a real image editor at home.

Posted in Graphics | 10 Comments »

Comic Book Roundup

Sunday, February 22nd, 2009

I’ve been reading a lot of comic books lately, so I thought I’d post what I’ve read recently and my thoughts on each so far.

The Walking Dead
I’m thru the first 51 issues and I absolutely love it.  The Walking Dead follows a group of survivors during a zombie apocalypse scenario.  While the premise is simple, the characters are memorable and the storyline brings up a lot of social issues.  Also, the writer, Robert Kirkman, isn’t afraid of killing off any of the characters.  This is probably my favorite ongoing series.

Ex Machina
I was already a fan of Brian K. Vaughan’s Y: The Last Man, so I decided to start reading his Ex Machina run.  Ex Machina takes place in a post-9/11 New York where The Great Machine helped prevent the 2nd tower from being hit.  The Great Machine is a super hero who has the ability to “talk” to machines.  The Great Machine reveals his identity as Mitchell Hundred and proceeds to run for Mayor of New York City.  He wins the election and that’s where this series picks up.  I’m thru 29 issues of Ex Machina and I actually like it better than Y: The Last Man so far.

Fables
Fables, by Bill Willingham, is a series that looks at famous characters from fairy tales and shows them all living in the same environment.  They are forced out of their homelands by the adversary and form a community in New York City called Fabletown.  While they live in the real world, the rest of the world isn’t aware that fables are living amongst them.  

There are some great moments in this series, such as the revealing of who the Adversary is and the arcs with Bigby, Boy Blue & Flycatcher are great.  I’m currently 69 issues into this series. 

Daredevil
I’ve read most of the Frank Miller run on Daredevil.  I read both volumes of Visionaries (#158-191), Born Again, Love & War and The Man Without Fear.  It’s interesting to see Frank Miller grow during the Visionaries run, but Born Again is probably his best work.  The truth is, everything here is great,  I think Love & War is really underrated.  

I also read Jeph Loeb’s Daredevil: Yellow, which is also good.  I still prefer Miller’s The Man Without Fear as an origin story.  I plan on starting the Daredevil reboot soon, since he’s my favorite super hero character.

Animal Man
I’m currently two volumes into Grant Morrison’s Animal Man run.  I can’t comment too much on this since I still have one volume left, but there are some really great issues in this series.  The most obvious being The Coyote Gospel.  This series looks a lot at animal rights and the relationship between creator and their creations.  It’s all very interesting and is a worthwhile read.

Next up to read:

  • The Sandman – Neil Gaiman
  • Batman: Year One – Frank Miller
  • Batman: The Long Halloween – Jeph Loeb
  • Batman: The Killing Joke – Alan Moore
  • Batman: Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth – Grant Morrison

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CSS/Design Book Reviews

Saturday, February 21st, 2009

I picked up a few Sitepoint books during their 5 PDFs for the price of 1 sale last week.  I finished reading two of them this week, so here are my reviews for The Principles of Beautiful Web Design and Everything You Know About CSS is Wrong!

Principles of Web DesignOf these two books, I enjoyed The Principles of Beautiful Web Design the most.  It’s separated into sections on Layout and Composition, Color, Texture, Typography & Imagery.  Obviously these aren’t as in depth as an entire book on each section, but it serves as a great introduction for each principle.  Along with general tips and theories on each section, the book also follows along with a real life example.  This really helps to see the principles in practice.  With that said, the author is careful not to say that their method is the only way, but does give a lot of advice on how to organize the creation of a website.  I also learned that there are a few principles that I need to work on, mainly Typography & Texture.  This book is highly recommended since it’s good for a straight read thru, but also worth keeping on the shelf for reference.

Everything You Know About CSS is Wrong! looks at the future of web design.  The major event coming up that brings about this discussion is the release of Internet Explorer 8.  With Internet Explorer 8, all of the major browsers will support table styles.  With table styles, grid layouts will be a lot easier to create.  This is the genesis for the title of the book.  While I’m excited about the future possibilities of CSS and the death of IE6 (and to a lesser extent, IE7), this book  holds most of it’s value in the first read through.  I doubt I’ll go back to this for reference.  Once IE8 does come out, there will still be a long time that I’ll be using floats and positioning until IE7 is finally phased out (even if it’s with two different stylesheets).  Either way, this was still an interesting read and has me thinking about the future of CSS and Grid Design.

Posted in CSS | No Comments »

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