Archive for October, 2009

Fun with Adobe Illustrator

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

For years now, I’ve wanted to sit down and work with Adobe Illustrator.  I’ve always been proficient in Adobe Photoshop, but I wanted to learn to create my own graphics instead of just modifying existing images.  Recently, I finally sat down and took the time to learn Adobe Illustrator.

I started this learning process months ago in a day long Level 1 training class.  I was a bit apprehensive when I walked into the class and saw I was the only one signed up.  In the end, it was an advantage since we were able to work through Level 1 & Level 2 materials during the time period.

Last week, I finally decided to sit down on my own and work within Adobe Illustrator.  I found a handful of excellent tutorials that I used to learn more techniques inside the program.  Below are some of the final products and links to the tutorials.

Flashdrive

Tutorial: How to Create a Realistic Pendrive in Adobe Illustrator

Flashdrive

Gearbox

Tutorial: How to Create a Gearbox Settings Icon Using Simple Shapes

Gears Icon

Compass

Tutorial: How to Create a Golden, Vector Compass in Illustrator

Compass Icon

Overall, I’m really impressed with Adobe Illustrator and the flexibility of vector graphics.  This is definitely the Adobe Suite application I’m going to spend the most time mastering.  It’s flexible enough to create everything from wireframes to mockups to site logos and graphics.  Plus, the ability to resize vector images without any loss of quality makes the final graphics incredibly flexible.

Posted in Graphics | No Comments »

Best 10 Year Runs in Music History

Sunday, October 11th, 2009

I decided to look at the top 10 year runs in music history and rank the top 5. I looked at both solo artists and bands and tried to take the best 10 year runs of their careers. For most major artists, I’m familiar with their work, but I also relied on All Music as a reference.  I tried to give weight to both quantity and quality along with popularity and influence.

5.)  Neil Young ( 1969 – 1979 )

This period marks the first 10 years of Neil Young’s solo career.  The highlights include Everybody Knows this is Nowhere, After the Goldrush, On the Beach, Tonight’s the Night and Harvest.  This also includes the live albums Rust Never Sleeps & Live Rust.  Outside of a brief resurgence in the late 80s-early 90s, I think this decade includes all of the essential Neil Young albums.

4.) Bob Dylan ( 1962 – 1972 )

This is also marks the first 10 years of an artist’s career.  This includes most of Dylan’s major releases, such as The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, Highway 61 & Blonde on Blonde.  One could argue that you could change this to 65 – 75 and include Blood on the Tracks & Basement Tapes, but then you are missing his 63-64 work.  Either way, Dylan belongs on this list.

3.) The Rolling Stones ( 1964 – 1974 )

Once again, this represents the beginning of The Rolling Stones’ career.  This includes Between the Buttons, Aftermath, Let it Bleed, Sticky Fingers, Beggars Banquet & Exile on Main Street.  Much like Neil Young, I think this 10 years encompasses everything you need to listen to from The Rolling Stones.  They produced a ton of records in this 10 year span.

2.) Bruce Springsteen ( 1973 – 1983 )

This is the first, and only, entry that doesn’t span into the 1960s.  I went with The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle thru Nebraska.  One could argue that you could start with Born to Run and go thru Born in the USA, but I prefer The Wild.  There are only 5 albums (1 double album) released in this decade, but they are all top notch 5 star masterpieces.   If you pushed it to best 15 year runs, I suspect Springsteen would vault to the top spot on this list.

1.) The Beatles ( 1963 – 1970 )

This might be a little unfair, because it only spans 7 years, but I don’t care.  They were a band from 1960 – 1970, so I think it should still count.  Either way, it doesn’t matter since they have the best discography of all time, they just crammed it in 7 years.

Honorable Mention: The Who ( 1965 – 1975 )

Is there anyone I missed?  Leave any suggestions or thoughts in the comments.

Posted in Music | 8 Comments »

Brett Favre vs Aaron Rodgers thru 20 Career Starts

Monday, October 5th, 2009

Unfortunately, Brett Favre and the Vikings won round 1 against Aaron Rodgers and the Packers. I’m very disappointed by the loss, but I still feel extremely confident that Ted Thompson made the right decision a few years ago when he picked Aaron Rodgers over Brett Favre.

So, I thought I would compare Favre and Rodgers thru their first 20 career starts.

Brett Favre

1992 – 1993

406 Completions
645 Attempts
63.3% Completion Percentage

4356 Passing Yards
27 Touchdowns
21 Interceptions

86.0 QB Rating

Aaron Rodgers

2008 – 2009

418 Completions
663 Attempts
63.5% Completion Percentage

5136 Passing Yards
34 Touchdowns
14 Interceptions

96.5 QB Rating

Once again, I feel pretty confident that Ted Thompson made the right move.

Posted in NFL | 25 Comments »

Parking Fail

Saturday, October 3rd, 2009

I just witnessed some insane parking fail.  Normally I’d just twitter this, but I need well more than 140 characters to explain what I just witnessed.  So, this is my best attempt to explain it, but I have a feeling I might need to create some images to truly describe everything.

First, the set up.  My neighbors have a one car garage that never has a car in it; they always park in their driveway or on the street.  Today, it looked like they are having a cookout.  They had an empty garage with two cars (one behind the other) parked in the driveway.  On the street, there was one car parked to the right of the driveway and another to the left of the driveway.

A car pulled up that was full of occupants.  They decided to park in front of the driveway, blocking both of the cars in, and left their hazard lights on.  This was what drew my attention to the entire situation.  There was plenty of street parking available, so why not pull up 15 feet and park there?

Four minutes later, two different individuals came out of the house.  One was the owner of one of the cars in the driveway and needed the car with the hazard lights on to move so they could leave.  One of them jumped in the car with the hazard lights and attempted to move it out of the way.  In the process of doing this, they backed into one of the cars that was parked on the street.

After the parked-in car was able to leave, the previously illegally parked car decided to park in the driveway.  The problem is they didn’t pull up all the way, so the backend of the car was still blocking the sidewalk.  Less than a minute later, the original driver of that car came out and moved it on the street, in a legal parking spot.

So, in the span of 5 minutes, this car parked three different times by two different drivers.  Two of the parking jobs were illegal and there was a minor fender bender in the process.   After all of this, the car ended up parking in a location that was available from the very beginning.

Posted in Personal | 5 Comments »

Thoughts on Typekit

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

Yesterday, I was lucky enough to receive an invite to try out Typekit. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, Typekit is a service that allows web designers and developers to use other licensed fonts on their website. If you aren’t familiar with web design, then this doesn’t seem like much of a big deal, but it really opens up a lot of typography possibilities.

Historically, there are only a handful of fonts that are universally installed and supported on PC, Mac & Linux. The majority of the text you read online is either in Arial, Verdana or Times New Roman. Now, that doesn’t mean someone can’t create a fancy header with unique typography via an image. The trouble with this is it’s an image, not text, so it’s not accessible by search engines.  Recently, there have been various other methods, such as sIFR, that can convert text into a different font using Flash.

With newer browsers, designers can use CSS to link to fonts and the viewer downloads the font and the page displays the correct typography.   The issue with this is the licensing and copyright of these fonts.  Luckily, Typekit exists to solve this dilemma.

With Typekit, I’m able to place some Javascript in my page and call in a font that I’ve selected from Typekit’s library.  Essentially, Typekit is a marketplace between the web designer and the creators of the font.  I’m able to use different fonts on my website, and the work of the font foundries is protected.

So, how does it work?  With my trial account, I’m able to go in and choose 2 fonts for 1 website.  I then go into my site’s CSS and update it with the fonts I chose.  I updated my main header along with the post header.  With the free trial, I am required to have the badge you see on the bottom right of the page.  Now, there is the option to upgrade to different premium accounts that do not require the badge and allow for more websites, fonts and bandwidth.  These range from $24.99 to $249.99 a year.

How about support?  Typekit will work fine in any browser that supports @font-face which includes Firefox 3.5+, Internet Explorer 6+ and Safari 3.1 and higher.  If someone is using an older browser, then it loads a web-safe font.  This means that accessibility is not an issue with Typekit.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with Typekit.  I’ll probably stick with the Trial for now, but I can see myself upgrading to the $24.99 account down the road.  If you are interested in Typekit, let me know and I can send an invite your way.  For more information, I also suggest viewing Chris Coyier’s Typekit video.

Personally, I’m really excited about the possibilities of Typekit.

Posted in Web/Design | No Comments »