— Noel CowardWork is more fun than fun.
Thirty minutes of pure wisdom. (via Shaun Inman)
Not until today did I realize why I felt such a mysterious and immediate connection.
Apple would never do this, because they’re much too classy, but perhaps there’s a market for an Official Mac OS X Trash Can™.
For the best experience, view it on a Mac with a WebKit browser (Safari or Chrome). For a terrible experience, view it with Windows XP. It turns out cutting-edge web font technology doesn’t look great in a nine-year-old operating system, and hopefully I can still find a way to fix that.
The list of recent web standards developments that made this a joy to make include: Typekit (fonts used are Proxima Nova and Museo Slab), RGBA, WebKit animation, CSS gradients, and HTML5.
I really had fun with this one, and thanks to all of these new CSS tricks I only had to open Photoshop to prepare the images. It has never been a better time to be a web designer.
Seriously, you guys. Feeds are great. They completely changed how I experience the web, how I live. In the time before feeds, I would individually visit all of my favorite sites in hopes that something new would be up, and the most frequent outcome was disappointment. Poor, poor younger self. Why aren’t feeds more popular?
There is the inconceivable possibility that feeds might not be for everyone. But I think another part of the issue here is that hardly anyone makes an effort to explain how feeds work. No one is individually at fault for this, but as a result, the only people who know the glory of feeds are the inquisitive types who seek out an explanation.
For example, if you navigate to a feed with Google Chrome, you’ll see something like the following screen.
Eek! No, no, no. I understand that Chrome doesn’t have native feed support like the other browsers, and that’s completely understandable. But this is the worst thing you could do here, short of showing a blank screen or crashing the browser. Code should never be exposed to the user unless they explicitly ask for it. After being suddenly confronted with this eerie robot-speak a few times, I wouldn’t blame people if they swore off feeds altogether.
It’s especially curious because this is Google’s browser, and they also happen to have what is easily the most popular feed client, Google Reader (not to mention the fact that Google Reader’s home page does a great job explaining how things work). This is clearly a lost opportunity to get more people started with Reader. Here’s a quick mockup of an idea I had.
Nurture those users.
Note: I don’t mean to exclusively pick on Google here, because Safari and Firefox both have native support for feeds and neither of them make an effort to explain anything either. Chrome’s implementation is just what sparked this particular rant. Internet Explorer 8 is the only one that offers any sort of introduction, so, kudos to them.
— Kiko VillaseñorYou need to go be around artists. And you need to do art every day.
It’s vital to establish some rituals—automatic but decisive patterns of behavior—at the beginning of the creative process, when you are most at peril of turning back, chickening out, giving up, or going the wrong way.
When it’s time to work, I grab my coffee cup, venture out of my apartment, and walk across the street to Peet’s for a small cup of black coffee. When I return to my desk with my favorite beverage in hand, I’m ready to begin.
I’ve hacked my brain, essentially. I love coffee, but I never drink it when I’m not working on something. As a result, my brain associates work with delicious coffee, and I look forward to work.
I’ve already moved in and started off with a piece on my recent move to freelance and a couple quotes. My RSS feed, if you’re subscribed to it, conveniently remains at the same address. You should start getting the new Tumblr posts with no action required. (I knew there had to be a good reason for using Feedburner.)
Rather than expound on writing tools or my reasons for switching, I’ll keep this brief: I want to write. I don’t want to administer writing software.
I’d considered it for a long time, and it took me a while to get past the fear, uncertainty, and doubt. I didn’t know any freelancers, so I didn’t have anyone to talk to about it. I didn’t know if I’d be able to find enough work to pay the bills. I didn’t know how I would set up a business for myself, and I sure wasn’t looking forward to doing my taxes. I imagine most people never get beyond this point.
I noticed that just about all the people in my field who I respect and who make great things are independent, or were at some point. And it was just something that came up in my thoughts more and more. Certain things that I would hear or read would resonate with me in a way that they usually wouldn’t. One was a really touching interview with Jonathan Coulton that I previously quoted. And another was “Freelance to Agency,” a SxSW presentation where Jeffrey Zeldman, Kristina Halvorson, Whitney Hess, and Roger Black discussed when to go freelance. Here’s a quote from Roger Black:
If you were going to do this anyway, then it’s really good to do it on your own, because a boss is only going to get in your way. […] If you start with a small website that you can completely control, then you have the beginning of a list of links that you can give people and put on your blog, and say “this is what I’m doing.”
This is the thing. This really opened my eyes, along with the rest of the presentation, which is all gold. Thank you, Roger. And it’s completely true: my work on the VidSF website, where I have complete control of the front end, is easily the piece of work I’m most proud of.
The last bit of encouragement that I needed came from spending some time at PariSoMa, a coworking space in the SoMa district of San Francisco. If you’re not familiar with coworking, it’s when independent contractors get out of their lonely home offices or coffee shops and work together in a shared office with other independents. You get out of the apartment, you get the camaraderie that you would have in a more traditional office job, and you get to meet a lot of smart, like-minded people.
For anyone considering freelance, I highly recommend finding a nearby coworking space like PariSoMa, and instead of working on a personal project at your apartment or a coffee shop, just drop by and work there for an afternoon. It takes a lot of the mystery out of freelancing, and I’ve met a few of my current clients there.
Knock on wood and famous last words and all, but I’m not worried about finding work. Everyone who sells something needs a website, and the ones who already have a website want to make it better. Web designers and developers are like accountants and lawyers now; everyone needs us.
Freelancing is as scary as it is exciting. But all of the best things in life are like that.
— Joshua BlankenshipThe problem is, no one owes me anything. No one owes me a microphone or a platform. No one owes me their ears, their eyes, their time. Those things are valuable, each assaulted on a daily basis by an almost inescapable culture clamoring for our attention. They’re not automatic. Not owed. Not entitled. Not easy. You might have a microphone, but that doesn’t mean you have anything to say, or that anyone will listen.
— Scott Hansen (via Daring Fireball)Like everything you think you want in life, it’s a double-edged sword. I can honestly say that I prefer this situation, but there are big things I miss about working in a real office with other people. The camaraderie, the fact that you actually have to get up in the morning and go somewhere, the routine… Those are all things I miss. But I don’t miss being told what to do and I sure as hell don’t miss that feeling that I’m working every day contributing to someone else’s business instead of putting everything into my own.
