links for 2010-02-18
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An interesting perspective. Dunno what I think about it yet — "A Wall Streeter buys the life insurance policies of individuals with terminal illnesses, packages them into securities, and profits when the underlying collateral dies. In his most recent movie, Michael Moore documented the practice of taking out "peasant insurance" on employees. Now we learn that firms continue to carry life insurance on former employees, hoping they will die untimely deaths so that the firm can collect."
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By design, the Act had three primary purposes: Rescue, Recovery and Reinvestment. The enclosed report reviews our progress in each of these three areas. Almost 20 million Americans have gotten extended unemployment benefits thanks to the Act, and over 95 percent of working families have had their taxes cut. Jobs have been created thanks to tens of thousands of projects now underway nationwide. And the groundwork for the economy of the next century is being put in place as we invest in high speed rail, health technology, broadband, a smarter electrical grid, clean cars and batteries, and renewable energy.
links for 2010-02-02
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Awesome.
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Idaho Baptist group tried to smuggle 33 kids out of Haiti through the Dominican Republic. Some of the children knew their parents were alive, and just hadn't been reunited with them yet.
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Our local Indiana Family Institute tried to introduce legislation like this back in the early 1990s (they disavow all knowledge of it now – but I have copies of the bill.) Not surprised that its still on their agenda, but I am surprised they're talking openly about it.
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This one of my favorite counter-protests to the WBC – silly signs that make about as much sense as theirs. Apparently it was effective – they called off another protest later than evening.
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sadly, I don't know how to crochet yet.
links for 2010-01-30
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Wow – that's better than the Mayor's rinky-dink shrimp bet. Way to raise the stakes, IMA.
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I cannot WAIT to see the video of this.
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Gay marriage opponents reveal that they don't just want to ban gay marriage, but also straight marriages that don't produce children, divorce, single-parent families, and any combination of relationships that don't produce children.
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Lock him up and throw away the key.
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Lots of very cool trends. Unfortunately I won't get to do many of them at work, but I'll have to experiment with some of them on my own sites.
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They still have open spots for Pop-Tarts, but they're telling the gay dating service that all the ad spots are filled. BS.
Knitting and Design and Flow
It struck me on the way in to work this morning that the reason I love knitting so much is because it’s design in almost pure form. With web design, there are so many hurdles you have to jump through to get your design into a working state – css attributes to learn, scripting languages to inhale, content management systems to navigate, coding issues, browser inconsistencies, bugs, communication, frustration, office politics and ridiculousness; the pure visual design work (the part I love) is only about 15% of what I get to do, and the rest is just necessary evil.
Knitting, on the other hand, is just pure design elements: space, line, color, texture, shape, form, value – all right in your hands to sculpt at will with nothing in between you and the finished work – blissful flow.
I feel the same when with photography much of the time as well — just me and a camera and vision in my head captured.
links for 2010-01-16
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A yarn swift from tinker toys. That rocks.
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Sweet – I'm in the middle of redesigning one, so this is quite a dandy help.
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Who wants to be my first guest?
Andy Clarke Can Make You a CSS Zen Master
http://www.peachpit.com – Want to become a CSS zen master? Andy Clarke, author of “Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web Design,” will explain how you can do just that in this video.
links for 2008-04-24
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Very cool – Crayon names and their corresponding hex colors for web design. Now I can make stuff with Burnt Sienna.
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1989 Mass killing of women by a man who hated feminists.
SXSWi 2008 post game analysis
I made it home from Austin last night rather late and went to work this morning. Unlike the trip out, the flight home was rather uneventful. Thank goodness. We didn’t get our luggage until late Saturday night, so I basically had two nights without my CPAP machine, which the Airlines had told me to pack in my checked luggage, then tried to yell at me about putting in my checked luggage when we were leaving Dallas.
The two days without it really screwed me up. The whole trip was rather chaotic, actually, and frustrating, but I think I got some good information in all. I have half an overview written of panels I liked and what I thought was interesting; I’ll work on that more tomorrow. Tonight, I’m just trying to settle in and relax.
SXSW Interactive 2008
I’m getting final stuff prepped to take off for SXSW Interactive 2008 in Austin, Texas tomorrow. I’m going with three of my design team co-workers; one from here in Indianapolis and two from Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.
We’re staying in the Courtyard Marriott right next to the Austin Convention Center, so we’re in the heart of everything, which is pretty keen.
I went to the city-county building this morning and voted absentee for Carson for the special election next week, since I won’t be back until late Tuesday.
Attending this event last year was a huge learning experience for me when it came to site design work on the job. Over the last year I’ve had the chance to create some designs that I’m really happy with based on some design principles that I learned last year, so I’m excited to be able to go again and see what new things I pick up.
