Well, the day is finally here. It’s shortly before 6am. I couldn’t sleep all that well. The hotel bed was … a little stiff. Regardless… I’m enjoying my stay in Atlanta thusfar, and I am really looking forward to attending An Event Apart.
The good part about waking up this early is … you never feel rushed :)
If AEA:Philadelphia is any indication, this should be one heck of a show. I’m sure there will be lots to read and view as the day goes along.
I figured I’d give mobile posting a try while I mess with WordPress. I’ve already noticed a few issues I’ll need to address, but they’re relatively minor.
I am still on track to launch this site on 5/1, along with the Spring 2006 CSS Reboot. But I am looking to push it live a little earlier without the final look in place, just so I can reestablish a presence, albeit a very small one, online. Make sure you sign up to receive updates via the signup form at cdharrison.com.
Dave Grenier just posted a great article on CSS Support within email clients and, more specifically, web email clients. What a fantastic resource… Considering that I am designing more and more emails for a few of our clients, this couldn’t come at a better time.
I’ll be making the two-hour trek to attend An Event Apart: Atlanta this Sunday. Originally I was going to drive up on Monday morning, seeing as Augusta is only 2 hours east of Atlanta. I decided it would be a good idea to head up a little early so I wouldn’t have to contend with rush-hour traffic on Monday morning, and so I would be well rested.
I can’t really convey how excited I am about attending this event. I’ll be able to meet the likes of Jeffrey Zeldman, Eric Meyer, Todd Dominey and Jason Santa Maria… and learn from their experiences. You just can’t put a price on that sort of thing.
Zeldman’s book Designing With Web Standards changed my way of working on the web. More specifically, it made me excited about web design again. When I read it, I was ready to give up design. I was ready to give up code. I was ready to move onto something else altogether. Thank God I read that book. It opened my eyes, and relit the spark within me to pursue design further.
Eric Meyer’s books on CSS are amazing, informative and insightful.
I am fascinated with the design skillz of Todd Dominey and Jason Santa Maria.
Couple that with the fact that I’ll be there with other geeks just as much into this stuff as I am… it’s going to be an awesome time.
If I have time, I plan on liveblogging the event… I’ll be snapping pics while there too… So stay posted, friends… Atlanta, here I come.
Scott V. reminded me that one of our programmers, Scott Parel, qualified for the BellSouth Classic. Kick some butt, Scott! We’re praying for ya.
Scott is a professional golfer on the Nationwide Tour, basically one step down from the PGA Tour. Well on Monday he played for one open spot in the BellSouth Classic and won it, by shooting a 67 and then winning a 3 man playoff; that is big stuff. Scott works with me at PowerServe when he is not on tour, so all of us guys in the office live out a professional sports fantasies through him. He has done this twice before, and each time it was the US Open, which is basically impossible but he did it anyway.
If you want to check in on how he is doing you can look at the BellSouth Classic leaderboard. If he finishes around the top 3 he might get an invite to the Masters, next week. How sweet would that be.
Meet Jesse, the American Boxer puppy my parents picked up over the weekend. She’s an adorable pup and has made me desire to get a Boxer even more… I made a deal with Kim that might aid me in this… If I lose 100 lbs, she’ll let me get one. Sounds like a plan to me…
Months of hard work have finally paid off – we launched the new MAU.com, just moments ago.
The site was an awesome undertaking. We had to convert several years worth of static content, and reorganize it in a logical way. We worked closely with MAU staff to ensure everything worked the way the organization needed for it to work. All of us at PowerServe really appreciate having the opportunity to work with MAU on this project. We hope you’ll check it out.
MAU, Inc. is one of the nation’s largest workforce solution providers. Based in Augusta with offices in Georgia, South Carolina and Illinois, MAU provides provides comprehensive and integrated workforce solutions for corporations and businesses.
PowerServe worked with MAU, Inc.’s marketing team to redesign MAU’s site to showcase what sets MAU apart from their competition. The new design is clean, simple and flexible. It was designed to compliment existing marketing materials, as well as to give MAU a more refined look on the web.
Our goals for this site were simple: make it easy to use; make it look more professional; make it more search engine friendly; make it more extensible.
To make it easier to use, we conducted a site audit of the pre-existing website, and organized content into a more logical structure. This helped us to “trim the fat” and remove a lot of older content no longer being utilized or that was no longer relevant.
To make it more professional, we developed a design that would compliment some of the print materials MAU had already been producing. We also wanted to design something that would compliment the MAU logo colors: blue and orange. We utilized SlideShowPro on a number of pages to give the site a more polished, dynamic feel.
To make the site more search-engine friendly, we recoded the entire site from scratch, utilizing web standards, and semantically sound markup. The reduction in code also helped the site to load faster. It is now more compatible with all mainstream web browsers, including Microsoft Internet Explorer 6, Mozilla Firefox 1.5 (Mac/PC) and Apple Safari 2.0.
To make the site more extensible, we utilized a new template structure to make it 1) easier to add new pages; 2) easier to manipulate the look and feel of all pages; and 3) easier to manage existing pages. Design changes take seconds versus the minutes and hours they once took.
This redesign project was a huge undertaking, but the final product was more than worth it.
Jason Fried’s like the Buddha of Web 2.0.
There, I said it.
I am amazed by the logic that comes out of 37Signals. It’s simple. It’s smart. It makes plain sense. It’s not revolutionary, but then again… in a sense it is.
Software should be simple. It shouldn’t force your users to figure out how to use it. It should just work. I’ve often thought about how we might apply this same logic to our own software. I think it’s easy to feel like you have to include this feature and that feature… but when it comes right down to it, your software doesn’t have to be all things to all people. Like JF said, “Great editors build great software.” Trim the fat. Remove the excess. Make your app work. Make it work well. Keep it simple.
After several attempts, I was able to migrate all of my posts through Blogger into WordPress. I wish I could say it was easy, because it wasn’t… and I wish I could say it went off without a hitch, because it didn’t.
Because the server I am on doesn’t have cURL enabled, I had a tough time migrating stuff. I tried setting up Blogger to generate an XML document with the full text of all of my posts, but it choked almost every time. I tried manual conversion – but that takes way too long. I finally was able to import my posts into WordPress.com, via its Blogger import (which uses cURL). I then saved the XML feed that contained all of my posts, and imported it into my WordPress install here on cdharrison.com. It timed out a couple of times because of the number of posts, but I was able to reinitiate the import and have it completely go through after a couple of attempts.
So, now here we are… all posts are online. Comments, well, are gone. Which is disappointing… but it’s something I can live with, given the flexibility I now have with WordPress. It was a sacrafice I was willing to make.
So, what’s next? A redesign, of course. A new design will be unveiled May 1, 2006 in conjunction with the Spring 2006 CSS Reboot.
Since yesterday afternoon, I’ve been freaking out because the office digital camera came up missing. I thought, perhaps, that I had simply misplaced it somewhere. I thoroughly checked my desk and my laptop bag – no dice. I went home, checked all of the usual locations that I tend to place items – no dice.
Fast forward to this morning… I’m looking everywhere in the office for the camera. I’m looking under my desk, under papers, in drawers, on shelves. It’s nowhere to be found. Then, the unthinkable happens… my personal camera is missing as well.
Coincidence? I dunno. Immediately, thoughts start racing through my head… ‘Am I this absent-minded that I have misplaced two cameras in such a short period of time?’, ‘Did someone steal them?’, ‘Did someone simply take them without asking?’ I start asking coworkers if they had seen either camera – no dice. They’re as astounded as I am. After a little bit of detective work, we determined that it’s highly likely that someone our office had been trying to help came into our office and took them.
Am I mad? Not any more. Am I disappointed? Yeah. It’s only ‘stuff’, and it can (and was) replaced.
After praying about it, I’ve discovered in myself, that I take for granted all that I have, and I leave it out in the open for all to see… That’s pretty much like inviting someone to permanently borrowsteal from you.