I’ve had it! I bought Need for Speed Carbon the day it arrived in stores. I ran out after work handed over my hard earned cash and ran home to install it. It was fun, and I loved it. Sounds great. But the game crashes all the time. (more…)
Category: bad design
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Forget Gasoline…What about Plastic?
One of the often overlooked problems with our dwindling oil future is plastic. As we continue to burn oil in our engines we are using a valuable resource that could be used for durable plastic goods. When the oil runs out, or becomes extremely rare and expensive, how will we manufacture plastics? We rely heavily on plastics for all our products; electronics, transportation, medical technologies, construction, and housing. There are few things today that do not rely on plastics and polymers.
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Adobe Captivate V2 and V3 Review
Getting back to design and development topics I thought it would be valuable to offer my insight on this product. Being a courseware developer over the last 11 years or so, I’ve worked with a lot of tools. For most courses developing in either HTML, or Flash or a combination of both is my preferred method. It offers a vast amount of control and creativity. These methods do require a higher level of skill in web development, animation, and scripting but the results are well worth the cost. On the other hand Adobe Captivate offers some flexibility and a relatively easy learning curve for developers, and instructional designers and can result in a very professional result. Here’s my take the good, the bad, and the ugly.
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How to buy a bicycle
As a follow up to the article on cheap carbon frames I wanted to make a few additional points about bicycle quality that are less specific than one frame material. To begin, I think that everyone should ride bicycles. Bicycles provide low impact healthy exercise that is fun for all ages, and even more fun to do as a group. To get started you need to have a bicycle. If you already have one, or need to get one, here are some simple rules to follow when looking for a good bike.
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Silly Lawyer, what are you thinking?
According to John W. Dozier, Jr., the “Super Lawyer”, viewing his site’s HTML source, as in, “right-click – view page source” is illegal. They are trying to claim that viewing their page source is a copyright violation. Additionally they have an End User License Agreement, EULA prohibiting this behavior, as well as forbidding links to their site.Now the interesting thing is that the code for the home page, as an example, is really poorly built. They still use tables for layout, and the JavaScript is embedded in the header. Worse still they are an internet law firm.
There are a few things that strike me as ludicrous from a developer’s standpoint. (more…)
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Everyone can do their part
Finally an excuse to rant about an environmental issue. Blog Action Day has asked that bloggers around the world call attention to the global issue that affects everyone, the environment. Here’s the details:
Publish a post on their blog which relates to an issue of their own choice pertaining to the environment.For example: A blog about money might write about how to save around the home by using environmentally friendly ideas. Similarly a blog about politics might examine what weight environmental policy holds in the political arena.So here’s my take on what designers everywhere can do to help. (more…)
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Why re-invent the wheel
Companies need to check to see if there’s already a solution before solving problems. The new wheel is Tabblo, a slick web based technology for internet users to print blogs, images on flickr, and other web sites. Whoo-hoo now I can print web pages… Hmmm I don’t remember not being able to print web pages before. Well here’s the story. (more…)
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Updates..for everything!
Here it is, my site design is fractured and disjointed. I admit it. I added the blog capability, and started a gallery portion, and then never integrated everything together. Shame on me. So now that I have a lull in the storm of projects that were on my plate I am going to start working on tying everything together.
I’m still debating the gallery though…Maybe someone has a suggestion. I could use the gallery I started to set up. Or Flickr, which I already use. Or build something in Flash. Or… See it’s a problem too many choices.
Lastly I’m excited because I get to ride in Santa Cruz tomorrow! I’m planning on hitting the hills going towards the summit of Highway 9. It’s a mixed blessing, as I haven’t done much climbing in the last few years so this may be a very painful day in, and out, of the saddle.
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Damn the Standards…Full speed ahead!
I was browsing through some sports coverage and ran across this link. It’s an amazing (read: bad) site that ignores all the standard rules of engagement in web design and development. (more…)
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Click to Activate Flash Still an Issue?
It’s amazing to me that sites that rely on Flash for their main navigation have not taken the steps to eliminate the “Click to activate and use this control” messages from their sites. If you haven’t seen this message before you must be avoiding flash sites. To recap: Eolas has a patent dispute with Microsoft, forcing them to make activeX controls require users to click the “control” before they can interact with it. Annoying to say the least. If you want to read more go here. Needless to say this article was inspired because of the staggering number of sites I’ve run across in the last month that have not incorporated the JavaScript solutions that are available. Here are the favorites:
If you own, or manage a site that uses Flash as a navigation element, fix this, please. Better yet…use CSS navigation instead. As much as I like Flash, does it have to be used for everything?