Crown Graphic

As technology continues to march on, and information overloads us at all turns, I am reaching to the past. I am now awaiting delivery of a Graflex Crown Graphic camera…a camera made sometime in the '50s. It is a larger format, 4X5, camera that is capable of shooting medium format and Polaroid films as well.

I have never used a camera like this and am expecting a bit of a learning curve in order to get up to speed with this style of shooting. However, I am extremely excited to learn this manner of photography and incorporate it into my portfolio. I will recount issues here, as well as include shots in the plog. If you have any pointers, please feel free to pass them along to me.

D'Oh! Little gems in OS X

I am an id10t. This may be something that I had forgotten, but it is a cool little feature in OS X. When typing in an app if you use the key combination option + delete, it will erase whole words rather than letters. Again, not sure if I had known this and just never used it, but I have recently rediscovered this nice feature in my favorite (read only) operating system.

Gallery sites

There seems to be an explosion of gallery sites, specifically sites geared to highlighting great work with web-standards. The mother of all these sites, in my mind, would be CSS Zen Garden; this site more than any other has showcased what good design can do when coupled with web standards.

Web Creme
CSS Mania
CSS Remix
CSSTux
Style Gala

Now I am all for promoting good work, but with the sheer number of these sites, the amount of duplication of efforts has begun to show itself. Some offer rankings, while others are just blind links to the site with nothing more than a screenshot of the site. There are, however, a couple of sites that stand out and provide more than a simple gallery of the latest and greatest. CSS Globe is hoping to add more to the conversation, as is CSS Beauty.

I think many of these sites will either have to begin offering more to their visitors, or they will lose their relevance to the design community. Providing examples of well-designed sites with no discussion on why they may be good or relevant is incomplete. As a design community, there must be a place to discuss the merits of good design and the cause + effect relationship it may have had on the project(s).

It is like grade school, where we were admonished to show our work, so we may gain some credit even if the final answer was wrong. Design is a speculative business and what I consider a fine design may not be universally held. Discussion of defined merits of a design and how it may or may not succeed in the marketplace is invaluable as we move the design community forward in the ether that is web 2.0.

Election Day

On Election Day, like every other day, there will be over 1 billion people around the world living on less than $1 a day.  But unlike every other day, your vote can set in motion something that will change that.  

1 billion people around the world do not have access to clean water. As a result every 15 seconds, a child dies from a disease associated with this lack of access to safe drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygeine. What is your candidate prepared to do about this?

1 billion people are expected to die in this coming century from cigarettes. What is your candidate prepared to do about this?

1 billion people around the world are now considered overweight compared to the roughly 800 million who do not have enough to eat. Both extremes present problems for our country and our world. What is your candidate prepared to do about this?

1 billion people are purported to be online now, yet corporations want to control access to the internet. What is your candidate prepared to do about this?

1 billion people could be served by solar energy when today's generation reaches adulthood in 2020. What is your candidate prepared to do about this?

Your vote counts more than you think. Who you vote for will have an effect that reaches beyond our borders. Your vote lends your voice to the discussion to solve the problems of hunger, poverty, strife, war, AIDS...your vote is priceless.

Take your children to the poll with you to show them the importance of this civic responsibility we hold so dear.  Lead them today by your example for tomorrow they will lead us.