Stumbled upon Andy Council’s portfolio today where I saw this…

The title is Scrapzilla, appropriately enough. He has other similar pieces like Rail Rooster and Junk Robot.

Andy has lots of other intricate illustrations in his complete portfolio. It blows my mind how someone can think up something like this.

(via DesignFlavr)

Adobe released it’s Air product today making it official and peeling off the cliche` beta title. Adobe Air allows developers to build desktop applications using web technologies like HTML for structure, CSS for presentation, and JavaScript for behavior. Flash and Flex, Adobe’s own web technologies, are also rolled up in the mix. Professional authoring tools like Flash CS3 and Dreamweaver CS3 saw updates today to allow development within the popular tools. Aptana also offers a free plugin for their open-source development tool Aptana Studio.

I have been playing with Air apps for the last couple of months while the product was still in beta. There are a lot of clever applications that are more like widgets then conventional full-blown desktop programs. For example, the Adobe sample app PixelPerfect was a simple ruler overlay letting you measure anything on your screen. This little tool comes in handy for web development where there aren’t any rulers on the side or measuring tools like in Photoshop. Powerhouse auction site eBay created their own Air app that banishes the concept of refreshing the page so bidders can watch their auctions in real time. But perhaps the biggest crowd of Air apps belongs to Twitter clients. Thwirl, Spaz, Tweetr, and Snitter are just a handful.

I thought John Ballinger had let his Twitter client, Tweetr, go to pasture without an update since the end of November. With each new Air beta release more functionality would break edging me towards Jonathan Snook’s Snitter. But alas, Tweetr is alive again with version 3.0 launching today to coincide with the official Air release. I’m happy as a clam to have my favorite Twitter client back and to see so many great ideas that have seemingly sprung out of Air.

Here is a funny video from Matthew Vescovo of instructoart.com. If it seems slightly familiar, Matthew did several station ID’s for MTV like The Life & Death of Bling Bling and Gay. Straight.

Even though their are loads of more powerful laptops out there, the tried and true PowerBook can still be a nerds best friend. I’m running the slowest of the slow 867Mhz 12″ PowerBook. This is the bottom rung of supported hardware for Apple’s latest operating system, Leopard. But I keep chugging away on it. In fact I write most of my blog posts on this machine while out in the living-room after work. Below are a few things you can do to get the most out of your second hand machine.

Max out the RAM

RAM prices are always in a constant free fall until you reach the point where the particular type your machine takes is officially classified as an antique. But for the most part upgrading your RAM is the best bang for the buck. Check out Crucial.com which can help you figure out what type of RAM you need as well as how much it will take to max out your system.

Upgrade Firefox to 3.0

Most of my computer use happens within a browser. Firefox 2 has been a particularly frustrating release filled with memory leaks and sporadic crashes. I found it particularly unstable on Macs, both Intel and PowerPC systems. Firefox 3 is a completely different story with much quicker startups and a more responsive interface. Surfing sites on my pokey PowerBook is a joy once again and not a chore like it used to be. Note: As of this posting Firefox 3 is in beta (See the changes). You have nothing to lose by trying it out and I have been running it for a couple of weeks without a hitch.

Install SideTrack

Those newer MacBooks and the Air have such a snazzy trackpad that lets you use all sorts of finger gestures to manipulate your windows. PowerBook users can use SideTrack to get at least some of that functionality. The biggest improvement is the ability to use the edges of the trackpad to scroll horizontally and vertically as well as assigning actions to corner taps. The software is fully functional and free with an occasional nag screen or you can purchase the full version for just $15.

Further Tweaking

If you really want to squeeze out every little drop of available performance then you will need to tweak some settings. First set your desktop background to a solid color instead of a picture. Head into your dock settings and uncheck the ‘Animate opening applications’ option and turn off magnification. If you don’t use Spotlight then consider unchecking all of the categories in the system preferences pane to stop the search program from scanning your hard drive for changes. If you really want to get into the nitty gritty details check out TinkerTool which uncovers hidden menus and options that let you do all sorts of things.

Now with a little sacrificing and tweaking you can get some good use out of your old, trusty Mac. If you found these suggestions helpful or if you know a tip to further spruce up your PowerBook let me know in the comments.

I love eating plain toast. It’s just like bread only warm and crispy. Probably the biggest advantage is how easy it is to pop two pieces of bread in the toaster and be done with it. If there was something like a toaster for steak, then I probably would eat it as much as I eat warm, crispy bread.

Luckily Ariete makes a product called the SteakHouse Grill which pretty much fills the fantasy of any lazy steak lover. Functioning pretty much like a George Foreman grill, the 2000 watt vertical cooker allows fat to drip out the bottom while cooking the meat on both sides. I don’t think the cooked meat pops-up when done but this shiny kitchen appliance is certainly more eye catching than that rusty old cooking pan.

This burly man toaster can be yours for the mere price of €150. Yowza! On second thought I think I’ll just have toast.

(via BrownPau, Boing Boing, and Appliancist)

Valentin Agachi’s XHTML Challenge takes the rating meme under the hood letting users compare websites based on their (X)HTML markup. When a challenge is set up between two sites, a PHP script from XHTMLChallege.com slurps up the source code and begins a detailed analysis. Facets for competition include which doctype was declared, validation, content length in bytes, a ratio of content/markup/ and whitespace, use of conditional comments, and the number of table tags used.

As I have written about before, there is more than just HTML that goes into making a sexy source. I think XHTML Challenge could expand their analysis to include the number and positioning of CSS and JavaScript files, use of microformats (which results in more semantic, though bulkier, markup), and total file size of all components. This would paint a better overall picture of all the necessary components that go into a modern design.

Frontend web developers, like myself, take a lot of pride in how we structure our code. HTML coding is all about semantic, well-organized markup that is as small as possible while providing a solid structure for the content. It is good to see that there are others out there like myself that can appreciate the thought and planning that goes in to the under pinnings of a modern website.

XHTML Challenge should not be confused with Command Shift 3 which rates the aesthetics of a site not its code. Maybe the two sites should get together producing the ultimate website rating tool!

via (Web Designer Wall)

Photographing the unboxing of a product is a big deal in the blogosphere. Kristina must have picked up on this fact because this year for Valentines Day she wanted to take a picture of me opening every single gift that she gave to me.

The Goods. All lined up and ready to be unwrapped. I really liked the alligator box which required me to rip out it’s teeth in order to open it.

Read the rest of this entry »

I finally finished kingkool68.com this weekend. The purpose of the site is to aggregate all of my activity on the web into one single stream, commonly referred to as a lifestream. To mash all of my RSS feeds of activity together I used SimpleLife, a WordPress adaption of the SimplePie PHP script. For the front end I used jQuery, a JavaScript library, as well as standard HTML and CSS.

Most lifestreams I saw didn’t include a way to for end users to filter out certain items, so I built one into my lifestream application. Using the power of CSS selectors built in to jQuery, I wrote a function to grab the list items with a certain class and then toggle a fade effect. If the item was hidden the script would fade them in, otherwise it would fade them out. You can see the 13 lines of code I wrote to do this for yourself.

Once I finished writing the filter code I noticed it didn’t work in Safari browsers even though it performed flawlessly in Firefox. After debugging and digging around on the net for possible solutions I stumbled upon the Safari Developer FAQ. Did you know you can unlock a debugging menu in Safari? The FAQ provides details on how to reveal it and then by holding Apple+Shift+J shows a JavaScript console alerting you to any errors. I used this to figure out that you can’t use ‘class’ as a variable name even though Firefox doesn’t seem to mind. I haven’t tested the site on any version of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer which is notorious for choking on standard code.

So if you ever wanted to see everything I do on the web, checkout kingkool68.com. And if you want to add me as a friend on any of these popular sites, click the small icons associated with each item to take you directly to my profile for that site. The next step would be to package my modifications up into a WordPress plugin so anyone could run a lifestream just like mine. In the meantime if you have any problems implementing a lifestream on your own, leave a question in the comments of this post and I’ll do the best I can to help out. Happy lifestreaming!

Beats me, but according to willdietcokekill.us it will. Pretty self explanatory site with a clever domain. I wish it would link to some information supporting its stance as I drink Diet Coke every Tuesday for the most part.

Kudos Jon Maxfield of Saint George, Utah!

For some reason this video makes me cackle out loud. The cat’s expression is priceless.