“To those who would tear the world down: We will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security: We support you. And to all those who have wondered if America’s beacon still burns as bright: Tonight, we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope.”

— Barack Obama
Nov. 4, 2008

“Hi, I’m a Mac.”

First up: my costume. I normally don’t dress up for Halloween, but after my coworker, Justin Boeckman told me what he was going to do I could not resist. Mostly because, if you know me you know this is not at all out of character. Justin totally carried this one, perfectly imitating John Hodgman’s PC character from the Apple commercials.

Costumes

Next up: pictures of the kids’ costumes. In the photos are Grace, Brett, Brett’s friend Brayson, and Grace’s friends Ashley, Allee, and Alyssa.

Puppies

And not to be left out, Holly dressed up the dogs and took them on the first leg of the evening.

Pumpkins

Finally, we have the pumpkins. Grace used a pretty cool set of Mr. Potato Head style pieces to decorate hers. No mess!. Brett went with traditional carving for his best Jack-o-lantern yet. And me, I tried a new technique I’ve been curious about. Instead of just cutting holes, I carved the meat of the pumpkin for a more sculptural feel. It didn’t come out quite as nicely as I might have wanted, but I learned a lot for next year, and it was good enough to win the pumpkin contest at work!

Enjoy the pics and have a great Halloween!

Jason’s ideas about business are fresh and almost too obvious (as I believe the best ideas are). His thoughts about how to run a business, productivity, and creativity are often at the front of my mind as I work and refine my own work/life balance.

Similarly, with non-viewable attachments (such as the ZIP archives in my example) GMail offers a “Download all attachments” link. This packages all of the files into a single ZIP archive and downloads them all at once. What is more, GMail manages to intelligently name the new ZIP file based on its contents. Really smart!

Beached from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

The product was created by HP as an answer to Walmart’s design challenge, challenge which asked electronics manufacturers to produce a product that would reduce environmental impact. HP’s solution won the top prize in reducing 97% of the typical waste from laptop packaging. It really is a shame that more products don’t ship in similar “packages”. How many things, especially electronics, do we buy and then buy a bag, cover, or other protection for? I’d love to see this trickle into other products. When did we become a nation that needs everything we buy to hermetically sealed?

Javascript and AJAX-style effects are everywhere on the web, but thanks to a new batch of easy-to-use libraries, sophisticated animation effects can be used by designers with no programming or Flash needed. Tailored to the accomplished designer with limited programming skills, this session intends to practically show how to tap into the power of “write less, do more” Javascript libraries. This is a practical, how-to session that will benefit a wide-range of designers.

It’s something I’ve wanted to present for awhile now. Many designers have jumped into XHTML and CSS but think that they need to be a “programmer” to use JavaScript. Many of these libraries are very accessible and even geared toward designers who lack programming skills. The session will focus on showing designers how easy it is to incorporate sophisticated visual effects into their website designs.

I’ve not previously attended Tulsa TechFest but I’m looking forward to the event. Hope to see some of you there.

Today, Holly and I celebrate 13 years of marriage. It is hard to believe that we’ve been married so long. I feel like even now we’re still discovering things about each other and learning what makes the other tick. I hardly feel old enough to have a 13 year old marriage and a 11 year old son.

But what I have learned about marriage is how great life can be when you have a partner who is your biggest fan, your best friend, and your favorite person to spend time with. Even when “life” is winning she’s there to give me strength. Heck, she’s lived with me for 13 years — clearly she is a saint-like figure.

So Holly, thank you for being with me. I can’t wait to see what the next 13 years holds for us.

All I know right now is that I want to do all of it better. Everything better. Better, better.

I don’t know how else to say it: Merlin Mann inspires the living shit out of me. His recent post, Better, incapsulates so much of my feelings about the web, my passions, and why I do what I do. He is right in so many ways; it is all about getting better.

Getting better is what drives me. I pray to be better daily. I am in a constant state of analysis — always trying to figure out what it is I’m doing, seeing, experiencing, making, building watching, drawing, listening to, whatever… and how it can be better.

Getting better is fucking hard. I can do a good job. I can make my client/boss/wife/kids happy, but it can always be better. And not everyone wants to be better. You wife doesn’t want to hear that dinner could be better. Your kids don’t care to hear that obviously their grades could be better. Your boss doesn’t want to know that his decisions could be better. But I won’t stop trying.

Merlin’s post is all about the bullshit that we can all easily fall into when we let others tell us what is important and feel the need to do everything. If you ever read anything I share, read this.

And when you’re done, read the brilliant getting started page on 43folders. And when you’re done reading that, go make something. Something fucking awesome.

“We are the music makers, and We are the dreamers of dreams.”

Willy Wonka, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory