Ken

img046

Sun, 08 Apr 2007 23:28:10 -0700

Cuddley Cat

Sun, 08 Apr 2007 04:48:08 -0700

Hurley actually gave me some love. She's normally so tough and aloof. Lol

Black and White Night

Sun, 08 Apr 2007 04:47:56 -0700

Got the guys together with the girls and went out in style.

Ahhhh! Goz-reeyah goz-reeyah!

Sun, 08 Apr 2007 04:47:39 -0700

Hurley's my 18 lb rescue kitty someone just dumped out on the street.

Nickey and I

Sun, 08 Apr 2007 04:47:19 -0700

My girlfriend and I grabbed off of a helio phone.

Nickey, My girlfriend

Sun, 08 Apr 2007 04:41:38 -0700

These are all a set of pics that I did when I first met Nickey. I wanted her to model for a picture I had stuck in my head. Then she had this cat that fit perfect, and now we're dating. =\ Bad form I know, but do ya blame me?

Nickey, My girlfriend

Sun, 08 Apr 2007 04:41:28 -0700

Nickey, My girlfriend

Sun, 08 Apr 2007 04:41:19 -0700

Nickey, My girlfriend

Sun, 08 Apr 2007 04:41:08 -0700

Nickey, My girlfriend

Sun, 08 Apr 2007 04:41:01 -0700

splatterFun2

Thu, 05 Apr 2007 22:58:03 -0700

Finished, but im not completely happy with the commenting list. Probably gonna change that up.

splatterFun

Thu, 05 Apr 2007 17:48:02 -0700

My progress since yesterday (while I do my real job heh).

Blood, Sweat, and Tears

Sat, 29 Dec 2007 07:59:34 -0800

Ya know, I really wanted to save this for my official CSSBoost website launch, but I'm just itching to get this all down before I forget. If you don't already know from my twitters and other ramblings, I've recently trained and started a group of freelancers working under the name CSSBoost. We're going through a name change, but we used to be called CSSBurner (where you can find our closest thing to a website at http://www.cssburner.com). This business steps up and brings quality to markup and css that we have yet to find anywhere else. It's all about the little details for us, and we make sure that every pixel counts for each design we do. In a nutshell though, we take designers files, turn them into flawless, clean, sexy html and css, and then turn around and browser check them in 7 browsers to be sure everyone seeing the layout is going to love it just like the designer intended. It's a competing business with several other PSD to HTML services. We bring an edge and love for the trade to the table, for half the price in half the time though. Anyways, theres the elevator pitch (albeit 100 floor elevator pitch...). It's been a hard road though. This little "business" of mine has seen its share of flaky trainees that never made it through the rigorous training I provide, and currently, we're in our busiest month, with 2 trainees in the pipe, but only one (other than myself) official, full time reliable freelancer to staff. Our business this month quadrupled. Maybe its the December, end of year rush to crank out some last minute dough before the year ends, or maybe its just that we're getting around, I dunno, but what I do know is that I'm tired. I know right, how could I admit this to possible customers?! I'm human, and I hope my customers understand such a thing. Another thing to understand is that I am not ready, nor want right now, to have employees relying on me for their entire wage, thats just too nerve wracking for me to even think about, much less carry through with. So we all have full time jobs as a result, which we eat, sleep, and breath html / css at. Then, we come home, crack the laptops open, and start up on all the 1 day rush jobs we just got in the night before, organize the invoices, send out emails, update clients, and somewhere, try to find time to keep our girlfriends happy and our eyes shut for a few hours of sleep. It's a great problem to have for a couple of freelancers, but man, when burnout hits, it sure does hit. We're doing innovative things though, and finally got a big client that wants us to build out an entire applications html front end. We took a unique solution to this and went ahead and made them a CSS / HTML Framework. Guys, its sick! This thing is a joy to work with, can pump out 7 different grids with the same exact markup and a body class, has an intuitive, rounded corner module system, and we're building an abstracted library of parts and pieces to plugin to the layouts, so the developers just get to lego their way through a layout with some very simple things to keep in mind, and never have to worry about browser issues and all the headache devs feel when doing markup. Tonight, we just got done putting in about 11 hours for this gig, and we're both so tired. My colleague has gone to bed, but I'm still wired from the redbull and can't seem to sleep without getting this off my chest. Anyways, we built them the framework and module system, made some slick documentation for them, and also video taped a walk through of how to use it. Within hours, we saw crazy results from the developers with just the framework. It was so cool to watch all that happen, and to see the entire, slick and shiny package come together. Excitement aside, I'm still so tired, haha. I dunno, I guess I'm venting more than I am blogging, but eh, I don't think too many people read these posts anyway ;) I look at our load of work to do, and its staggering due dates, and freak out. Theres a tiny pin prick of a light at the end of the tunnel, and when the next two trainees step up to the reigns, this light will come to be all we see, but for now, this is brutal. Honestly, its just the blood sweat and tears part though right? This is how all great companies start from the ground up right? Anyways, anyone else going through this, or have been through this phase, this burnout? I'd be curious to know how you weathered the storm. Thanks for reading ;) -Ken

Hat Tip to Designers

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 10:58:49 -0700

Man time really flies. I was just posting a couple months ago about how I would be back in the market hunting again, and my contract (even though it was short) is already done with and I'm already moving back into the market again. This last contract has been a blast, with some serious hurdles that taught me so much. I learned that I would gladly take browser patrolling and code validating any day over a full time design job, and I also learned how much respect I had but didn't know I had for designers. The design industry is rough, cut throat, and exhilarating all at the same time. If you haven't been following, or if I didn't even post it, I've been working for Peopleclick doing UI Design and Usability for some of their public facing programs. I can't even begin to describe how much fun it is to get my hands dirty with the clients that use the application and do flow studies and reports. I also can begin to describe how much of a salesman you have to be as a UI Designer, or a designer at all for that matter. It's always hard for me to not get attached to that one design. And you just can't do that, because almost always, its going to change. My UI input stayed intact, but the flourish of design always changed. That was probably one of the most difficult things about this job, which is probably why I've disliked being a designer lately. What a lesson though, to learn that to finish this job, I had to really be a designer, and really let go of my "babies" and let the customer pick and choose and decide. Once I released my designs to them, it was a breath of fresh air, and it was fun all over again. Because it wasn't a chore anymore to design and ruin my original, it was just another chance to do more design, and I ended up getting excited when they would both shoot things down and come up with their own ideas, and I would get excited when they would accept them as well. Overall, I'm hoping to pick up the next contract (really hoping for a full time job though) to be doing HTML and CSS again. I sorely miss those semantic battles I would have with myself and architecting beautiful css documents. I'm in my comfort zone there though, and sometimes, just to make sure your still alive, you have to shake up everything around you and dive into the waters. I'm definitely glad I did, and my hat tips to you designers out there. -Ken

No Really, DL's Are For Dictonaries

Mon, 23 Apr 2007 15:48:01 -0700

So, I run into alot of guys that do CSS, just because I can't keep my trap shut about it. I absolutely, 100% love Web Standards. With that comes the oh so powerful CSS. Thats just part of the territory. If your new to it, a big part of Web Standards is that your markup means what your trying make it say. You always hear "Tables for layouts are bad in web standards" but toss that out of your head. Who cares about that, if you ever hear someone push this as the biggest thing for Web Standards, I wouldn't listen to too much of what they are saying. These guys are generally skimmers. And they're probably wrapping and coding everything up the same way they used to, they just replaced all their tables with Divs. So along those veins of thought, lets look at something here. Web standards are all about the semantic markup (your html means everything that it really is) and you mark up your html/ xhtml (these are by no means the same, and the current way xhtml on the web is served out doesn't even give the browser proper xhtml, but thats another blog post for another time) with proper markup. So if it is tabular data, then use a table. If what your marking up is a list, use the list tags appropriate ( Unordered List ((UL)) or Ordered List ((OL)) ). If your marking up a dictionary definition, you use Definition Lists ((DL)). Paragraphs for P tags, etc etc. But sometimes you have to flex the semantics a bit. Sometimes there isn't a tag for what your trying to do. By doing these things, we bring the web back to everyone. You mark up first without caring a thing of what it looks like. And you style it with CSS. But by doing this, you ensure things to look proper in Cell Phones, that Screen Readers should (generally) not have a problem with your page, and that the guy living in the middle of nowhere with dial up and images turned off will still get to see the text your header had hidden away and understand what your page is about. Hell, even search engines start to be able to understand what your page is about and bring you to the top. Accessibility is what this is all about. Bring the access back. Screw your design eye, if half your audience can't understand what your page is about because they're either handicapped, mobile phones, or search engines, or they have feature a or b turned off of your site, it doesn't matter if it looks right or not. So maybe it just frustrates me when I see people use DL's for everything under the sun. Menu's are unordered lists. Your not creating association in your code for a section by making it a definition and the links that go with it definition lists. Imagine with me for a minute that a screen reader (like JAWS for example) is reading to a blind person. And they go to navigate your page. And they listen to it (you can kind of get this experience by running jaws trial and turning your monitor off). At the start of a list, Jaws says the number of items in the list, and at the end, Jaws says list end. So they can navigate very quickly through lists. Whats weird and alien is when you hit a Definition List. The DL will readout that a Definition is starting, and that there is one definition with x number of definition terms. It'd be like someone describing the Virb menu, but calling each piece of it and each step through it a definition and the term. Why would you guys do that to your users? In my opinion, and thats all these are really, you want to be using UL's or OL's for situations like these in conjunction with Headings. [ul id="mainMenu"] [li][h3]Category 1[/h3][/li] [li][a href="#"]Link 1[/a][/li] [li][a href="#"]Link 2[/a][/li] [li][a href="#"]Link 3[/a][/li] [li][h3]Category 2[/h3][/li] [li][a href="#"]Link 1[/a][/li] [li][a href="#"]Link 2[/a][/li] [li][a href="#"]Link 3[/a][/li] [/ul] This type of menu will actually offer quick skipping for a JAWS or similar screen readers. When the user hits the page, they will hear a summary of all the Headings. Here I have the menu using H3's because I assume your using h1's for your branding, h2 for the main content or article of the page they are on, and h3's for the navigation. Essentially, unless its a web app, the thing people are doing on your blog or info site are reading. So you want them to know who you are first, what page they are on or what the main idea is, and then they can skip right down to the menu headings. OR when they get to your list, they'll be able to skip through and hear the headings and understand that each link below that heading is associated with that heading. You could also get even wilder with it, though this muddies up the sound of JAWs, if your still just not convinced this associates things properly: [ul id="mainMenu"] [li] [h3]Section 1[/h3] [ul class="submenu"] [li][a href="#"]Section Link[/a][/li] [li][a href="#"]Section Link[/a][/li] [li][a href="#"]Section Link[/a][/li] [/ul] [/li] [/ul] The w3c says this about headings: A heading element briefly describes the topic of the section it introduces. Heading information may be used by user agents, for example, to construct a table of contents for a document automatically. (Cite) http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/global.html#h-7.5.5 I don't think you can make a list more semantic than that. Headers give you your association, and lists, well, they are lists. Not a dictionary.

Bitter Sweet Small Shops

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 21:04:05 -0700

So, I've been going back and forth with myself for weeks now on whether to truly get the wheels moving with a job hunt and find a new place, or just stick things out and make it work. The most recent problems with my current employer made me frustrated enough to give the wheels a good kick, just enough to roll them forward a few inches, and so I put my feelers out for a few days and then I just stopped. I got an opportunity from one of my favorite recruiters for a great hourly rate with American Airlines. The distance was too far, and I doubt I would be happy in such a corporate environment. So I chilled on my search and held my breath in hopes things would get better here. Well, a really cool friend I met at the recent Dallas Barcamp pointed me to the job boards once more. Except this time, it was to Authentic Jobs, which instantly adds credibility in my book. If your cool enough to post an ad there for help wanted, and your description is something that fits in there, with words like css-ninja and such, then you get lotsa points from me. Not only that, but these are the guys that did the designs for Honda and Acura news sites that I did the css for. I've already done work for them, how cool. Small shop. Sweet. RD2 was my dream company, if I do say so myself. I called them up, shot them an email afterwards, and they shot me back a test, my favorite way to apply somewhere. I cranked it out in a couple hours, chock full of CSS coolness, trickery, and ninja-ness along with tons of great organization, and they called me in to talk. I interviewed my way through the office place, and finally got to the budget talkers. I'm telling you guys, RD2 is a dream place. It's downtown, theres a bar on the bottom floor, even the elevators reek with designer creative juices. But after 10 minutes with the head budget talkers, I had that bitter sweet feeling come creeping in and I knew that I wouldn't be able to work there. This happens to me so often. I love the place, they love me, they love my work, we've got great chemistry, and then they tell me my rate was too high. So frustrating, because the offers I'm getting from the recruiters are 40k+ more a year, and I already took a dive in my salary at my current job by 20k+ per year, and then I was being asked again to drop it another 20k+. It's like, I'm sure they are thinking, "Jeese this kid's expensive, why can't he just drop his rates," while I'm thinking "We're perfect for each other! Please just shell out a little bit more so we can work together, and I'll happily churn out reams and reams of quality, organized, web standards compliant code!" And then we both bitter sweetly part ways, lol, and they always ask me to point other css guys i know to them. I gotta hand it to RD2 though, they're the only people that made me even think twice about giving up 40k / yr of my target salary just to take a job. If anyone in the dallas / ft worth area has CSS chops and are good, give them a shout, they're definitely worth the visit. I walked out of there saying to myself, "That boss, and that team, is how a small interactive shop should be run."

Offline VIRB Editing

Sun, 08 Apr 2007 04:29:31 -0700

I love it when I accidentally hit the x-buttons in firefox. Anyways, carrying on. After falling in love with VIRB in only a few short seconds of creating my profile, I spent a couple days digging through other's profiles and customizations and learning the in's and out's of page elements that VIRB used. I quickly found that live editing a page was going to be near impossible. Pasting in the stylesheet, hitting save, and then refreshing another tab wasn't my cup of tea either though. So I dug a bit, and I found a great article of semi live editing here at Circle Six's blog. Thought it was a great tip guide, I just couldn't get the live editing feel I really needed. You know, the traditional feel, you hit Command-S and then Command-Tab and the Command-R every few seconds, OR even better, just use CSSEdit on a local file, and it magically changes while you code out your page with the X-Ray feature. So armed to the teeth with CSSEdit, Firefox 2.0 and Firebug, I dismantled what the basic things my profile page would need. I was only looking for Meta data, Blogs, Friends, Groups, and Commenting with some flair. So I've packaged the things I needed up, and I'm shipping it out to you guys if you'd like. It's got an editing folder that you would use for local edits, and then a live folder that you would use for actually putting into the fields of VIRB for your profile layout. The CSS is lovingly crafted, equipped with a table of contents and text searching flags to make finding that section easier. If your up for it, you can strip the styles out and just use it as a template, when I redo my VIRB Layout for Virb Reboot I'll be dropping back to this stylesheet myself. I say that because of the elements I do have on my page, it hits almost every aspect of them. So anyways, here's the archive of what I've done, I even give ya the cut up images you can use :D. Download the Archive here. Size: 1.1Mb.