Today is the two year birthday of this blog, at least in it’s current form. I registered justinharter.com in September of 2002, meaning this site has been a blog, personal dumping ground or advertising platform my early business endeavors for almost eight years. I’ve been developing websites a little longer than that for almost a decade.
Now, I feel old.
I make a small pot of tea each morning and each morning I inspect the tea for just the right amount of everything. I want it to be brown and tea-colored, but I want it to glow when I hold it up to the light. More importantly, I don’t want any flaky tea-bits floating around in my glass. That’s where everything falls short and it makes me mad. I want “clear” tea (and ice cubes, but I never get those). Anything else just sucks.
I went to get the mail earlier and the sidewalk was covered in ice and practically unusable, forcing me to walk in the snow and getting a bunch of ugly footprints in the snow. That ticked me off because I can’t salt the sidewalk because it’ll just slowly eat it alive. I’d rather have ice on my sidewalk for a few days than a cracked sidewalk for who knows how long. That sucks.
I come inside to sit at my desk and I’m reminded that I can’t find a desk lamp that I like. So, I just don’t have one. I want something tall, but thin, and I want it to have a lightbulb that’s bright but allows me to look at the lamp and not go blind. The last lamp I had was nice, except that I couldn’t glance on the left side of my desk because the bulb was just too bright to look directly at. That sucks.
I want an L-shaped desk, but I want one that has a narrow left side so I can sit it next to my window and I can look outside without having a lot of distance between me and the desk. But, no one makes one I like, so I don’t have one. That sucks.
I sit on the couch at night and feel bad that I’m always sitting in the middle of the couch. It’s going to wear out that section of the couch, but I don’t want to sit in any other spot. I don’t even know why I have a couch. It sucks.
When I cook, the stove has knobs I can never figure out. I’ve been using electric stoves all my life and I still have to stop and think about which burner I want to heat up. The design sucks. I like my George Foreman grill because it doesn’t have any other setting except “ON”. I leave the knob turned all the way up because I don’t know what the difference is between “low” and “hi”. Is that a difference of 1o degrees or 100? I don’t know and it sucks.
I go to bed at night and loathe the fact that I don’t have a good rug in there. I want a rug that I can lay under the bed, but I don’t want the bed’s legs to sit on the rug because it’ll ruin the rug with big imprints and holes in no time at all. I want a rug that sits out on each side of the bed just enough to look good, but not be touching the bed. No one makes those and that sucks.
I wake up the next morning and repeat the process.
Nothing works all the time the way I want or expect it to. My iPhone never has a charge, my car is one “uh-oh” away from not starting for unknown reasons and every appliance in my house is one click, snap, charge or surge away from being useless. I live in constant fear of things breaking and letting me down.
There are three things in life that I admire: loyalty, cleanliness and timeliness. Three characteristics nearly impossible to find in anything by themselves, let alone all together.
I’ve learned a lot lately since becoming a full-time web shop owner with Justify Studios. But, I did some homework before I came to the conclusion of quitting my old job with the Court.
One of the things I did manage to forsee is that working a solid 8 hour day is stupid. I’ve always thought the idea of working a set timeframe for some days and not others was stupid anyway. Work doesn’t always happen at 2:12 PM. I’ll work when work needs to be done for as long as I can do so in a healthy way. The result is that my clients get a better product and I get to live my life.
For anyone thinking about doing your own business, don’t assume you can work 8 billable hours a day. Instead, do this:
Figure out how much money you need to make in a given month to cover all the necessary bills. Then add 40% to cover the extra taxes. Lastly, figure out how many hours you need to bill for to make up that amount. For me at my rate, it comes out to 32 billable hours a month, or about an hour a day. Now you have a goal.
Good work, if you can get it.
Could you imagine what it must be like to have a former or current sitting President or Vice President call you to ask that you modify something you’ve done?
Last summer, I received a phone call from Michael, a designer from mgmtdesign in Brooklyn, New York. After the initial how-do-you-do’s, he explained that they were designing a new book for Al Gore, Our Choice, the sequel to An Inconvenient Truth.…They had chosen Brioni, one of our typefaces, for the body text.“And this is why I am calling now”, said Michael, his voice dropping a level. “You see, Al is really involved with the project and we spend a lot of time working together in the publisher’s office. When he was reviewing the proofs, he had a comment about the typeface.”I took a deep breath and asked what the comment was.“Basically, he wants you to change the numeral one.”“Interesting”, I said. “And how did he come to this conclusion?”“Well, in the book there’re a lot of examples of scientific nomenclature and this particular numeral one is causing confusion when it’s combined with capitals.”Brioni is a book typeface and comes with old style figures. Because of the fairly low x-height, the numeral one looks like a Roman one, like a shorter version of a capital letter I. It looks very elegant, but when combined into acronyms, it could be confusing.
I reckon when Al Gore calls, you get right on that project.
I’m posting this in hopes that someone, someday will Google it and have an answer for me in the comments. Because I don’t.
I’m trying to find an article that details how I can use my iMac as my primary machine, and my MacBook Air as the secondary display. Frankly, it’d be silly to go the other way because my iMac has much more power than the MacBook Air.
All of my machines use the Mini Display port. Haven’t found nary a thing online about the idea. Evidently, I’m the first to have it.
Just FYI, if you had the old RSS feed tucked away in your feed reader, note that the feed URL has changed:
Extreme web makeover
Forty-eight hours. Three websites. One great cause.
INDIANAPOLIS – JANUARY 11, 2010 – The Indiana University School of Informatics at IUPUI and RefreshIndy, a local organization of web designers, developers and graphic artists, are bringing together the best professional and student talent in Indianapolis to develop three websites for three local non-profit organizations within 48 hours. This non-stop event begins at 6:00 p.m. on Friday, January 15 at the Informatics and Communication Technology Complex on the IUPUI campus. The date coincides with the University’s annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service encouraging students, faculty and staff to give back to the greater Indianapolis community.
Indianapolis web professionals will lead teams of student volunteers from the School’s informatics and media arts and science programs throughout this unique service learning opportunity. “This is a fun and challenging way for our students to learn from some of the top professionals in the city while also giving their time and energy to a greater cause,” said Mark McCreary, Assistant Dean for Student Services at the IU School of Informatics at IUPUI. Professionals donating their services to the cause include creative talent from Justify Studios, Squish Design, Web Easy Media and Cassis Design.
Non-profit organizations were identified by the IUPUI Solution Center and chosen based on a demonstrated need for a new or enhanced website, as well as their future ability to maintain that website. “It’s important that these websites be easily sustainable given non-profit’s often limited resources,” explained Justin Harter of RefreshIndy. “Our goal is to simply help strengthen these organizations’ online identities so they can better serve our community.”
Non-profits selected to receive redesigned websites include the following local organizations: Talbot House, a residential care facility for adult male recovering from alcoholism and substance abuse; Progress House, a recovery center for alcohol and/or drug dependent men; and My Sister’s Place, a service providing transitional support and resources for formerly incarcerated and at-risk women and their families.
“The impact of this is huge,” said Carol Wellman, Director of My Sister’s Place. “I developed our website myself using a book, so receiving this type of expert assistance is invaluable. It helps us increase visibility and communication with the women, families and organizations who need our services.”
To learn more about this event, please visit www.refreshindy.com/48hours.html.
About IU School of Informatics at IUPUI:
The Indiana University School of Informatics was established in 2000 as one of the first schools in the nation dedicated to education and research in informatics. Informatics is the study and application of information technology to the arts and sciences, and the resulting impact on organizations, individuals and society as a whole. The School offers an array of B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. programs. The IU School of Informatics is located on the campus of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. For additional information, please visit www.informatics.iupui.edu.
Contact:
Stephen McKinney,
Communications Manager
(317) 278–9208
smmckinn@iupui.edu
Justin Harter,
RefreshIndy
(317) 225-8169
refreshindy@gmail.com
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Ha — you dirty thing. You thought I meant that other thing. I really meant that my Dock was bigger.
Mine has looked like this for a week. I am not exaggerating. Someday I’ll get to close something:
Update: This keeps showing up sporadically for me. If you like, here’s the direct link:
There aren’t many things that really make me catch myself smiling. This did:
I’m a big fan of Pixar’s films. The amount of work, effort and planning that goes into their films is truly astonishing and it shows in big ways. I’m reminded of the scene in UP where the mail arrives and the old man goes to pick it up off the floor. Pixar’s animators spent numerous meetings just discussing which direction the mail should have been held (right-side-up or upside-down) and how the stamp should have been affixed to the outer-most envelope. All for a scene that had about 3 seconds of viewing time.