Hello, world
I make things for the cyber and the hoomans.
But, is it free?
The culture of software creators only wanting free software has caused me to rant at more than one place of employment. I can’t tell you how many times I run into app creators that, when being told about an app, immediately ask me “Is it free?” They literally won’t get an app if it costs money.
Animated knots by Grog
This site is a fantastic resource. Every once in a while, I need to know how to tie a better knot than the 2 types I know. I liked how the site is set up, so I purchased their app to support them — less than a cup of coffee.
Getting travel time to actually work in Calendar
As a distributed worker, I’ve had the hardest time getting travel time to work on my Mac and my iPhone in Calendar forever. I often find myself in this scenario:
My Presentation from PHXDW 2017
I meant to post this like, 6 months ago but life happened . Lots of work. An in-lab sleep study. Hospital visits. A trip to Disneyland with my wife and my kids. Well, that part was fun!
Thinking About Disfluency
When something becomes hard to think about people transfer the discomfort of the thought to the object of their thinking.
Derek Thompson, Hit Makers
BLACK LIVES MATTER
I’m really struggling for words right now. The only words that really count are that Black Lives Matter.
Keyboard shortcut to show hidden files in macOS!
Oh man. Why did I ever mess around running terminal commands to show and hide hidden files? Just open the Finder, and hit Shift + Command + Period to show and hide hidden files. Seriously excited about this.
Joel Califa
My newest designer man-crush is on Joel Califa. What a fantastic site. Don’t forget to push the button. The glorious, glassy button.
Guy on a Buffalo
Codebase update
For a long time, my site was built using Bootstrap (1 or 2, can’t remember) and Jekyll/Github Pages. Well, I finally got around to overhauling my codebase to lean things up – and switched to Foundation!
Brand colors don’t need to be your UI palette
A lot of people think that the interface for their product needs to use the same colors as their brand. In reality, the color palette used for a brand (logo, etc) has different goals from a UI, and being forced to use the same palette can be limiting and have unintended consequences.
Filtering ideas and inspiration
I was listening to a conversation (eavesdropping) about inspiration and thought to myself, “Does inspiration happen more frequently when you’re not as experienced at your craft because it’s easy to have lots of bad ideas?” Then, as you grow in experience and craft, inspiration happens less frequently – not because you’re having less ideas, or a decrease in inspiration, but because your brain is less receptive to bad ideas. It filters through the cruft more efficiently and rejects the bad ideas before you’ve had a chance to even register them.
Fighting Flies
I’m always turned off by the way some MMA fighters gloat over their opponents when they get a submission, TKO, or KO. I always think “Have some humility and respect for your opponent!”
Designers don't (just) make things pretty
In some ways, this post is definitely a rant. It’s about being frustrated by (what seems like) an industry-wide misperception. As a designer, but my job isn’t to make things pretty. My job is to make sure users are delighted by the product, app, or website that I’ve worked on. It’s to make software that’s humanly relatable.