Chet Reads & Writes* » Design

The Written Word Will Live!

Chet — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 17:04:19 +0000

For many weeks now I’ve been tinkering with the idea of book making. I came across Making Handmade Books: 100+ Bindings, Structures & Forms and since then have been feeling even more inspired. Then I found a ton of supplies at our local art supply store. I haven’t procured said supplies yet, but I have moved on to the project planning process.

I’m going to start by making simple journals with approximately 100 pages. They will be sized somewhere in the 4″ x 6″ or 5″ x 7″ range, pocket sized. Y’know? For now they will be unlined, but that makes them multifaceted journals. A person could use them for anything really. I even believe I know how I will structure and bind said journals. The question that does not have an answer as of now is, “What will the covers be made of?”

I’m not a leather worker in anyway, but I have been known to occasionally make pretty pictures using a computer. There is an awesome printing press and paper making studio here in Lincoln and I have a strong feeling that I will find my cover making materials there. I’m going to go look at supplies today. Maybe I’ll have samples soon, and hopefully I’m happy with them.

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Web Designer Declaration of Independence

Chet — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:53:26 +0000

I’m a huge fan of Web Design standards, and if I could I’d love to work with the W3C more closely. I believe that all Web developers, designers and users should follow their standards and stop taking petty shortcuts. Apparently I’m not alone; I’ve optimistically assumed that I never was alone in this.
Sam Dunn over on Build Internet has taken the time to develop The Web Designer Declaration of Independence, and it’s awesome.
The list of grievances are totally worth taking a gander at:

Myspace, which has empowered people everywhere to bring back the Geocities days of tiled backgrounds and animated GIFs. And sparkle text… so much sparkle text.

The Internet Marketer, their presence on Twitter, and their continued vague solicitations to “Market your internet”.

The pixel pusher client, because that one art class you took in college does not qualify you to “make the design better” by shifting everything 2 pixels to the left.

The family friend that gives you the “honor” of doing a free website for them. (Just wait, it will be the iTunes and Facebook killer – all in one).

Internet Explorer and everything it stands for.

Web 2.0 graphics, in all their high gloss, beveled, gradient covered, badge-y glory.

The use of meaningless stock photography, because a person and three of their coworkers are never that excited about what’s happening on a computer monitor. Stop pointing at it.

Tables used to layout an entire website with no tabular data. CSS was invented for a reason, quit using a candle when you have a lightbulb

“Dime a dozen” companies that “optimize SEO, innovate solutions, accessibility your HTML, scalability your Photoshop, and buzzword your buzzword. Oh yeah…unsurpassed quality too.”

Comic Sans.

For the full text of the declaration, and to sign it please visit Build Internet.

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Programmer’s Delight

Chet — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 06:16:25 +0000

I created a Web site for Fiance and I many months ago. It’s the home base for our wedding information as it stands now, and is updated almost daily by Fiance. It’s a relatively simple, and very, very minimal design. I think she is tired of it, and wants something more. I have a small project under works that I need to knock out, but then I need to do something new for Fiance. I feel something coming up now!

I sat down to pound out this post real quick in celebration of yet another victory by me against the spammers of the world. On aforementioned Web site I added a guestbook. I know they used to be all the rage in the days of Angelfire, but with WordPress and Blogger with their fancy instantaneous comments, no one really uses guestbooks anymore. That is only a problem because when I started that Web site I was still a rather novice PHP programmer, and even younger still in experience with MySQL. Logically I did the next best thing to programming it from scratch, I found a basic script through Google. Sadly enough this script came with no security measures short of the ones that prevent SQL injections.

Over the course of three unchecked months we accumulated several pages of spam. All of it either penny stocks, Viagra or increasingly disturbing porn sites. My first attempts involved CAPTCHAs. I’ve always hated CAPTCHAs, and when I couldn’t program a successful one I hate them even more. I dropped that idea like a hot iron, and decided to attempt the honey-pot method. BINGO! It cleared out all spam I’ve had to worry about, and I get a convenient email every time an attempt is made.

Not long after my initial victory, I ran into something worse than a spam bot, a spam humanoid. The honey-pot method is virtually useless against human spammers. After a few weeks of collecting and deleting spam from real live people, I noticed the one common link among them. They all used the same e-mail service. For the sake of protecting my coding I won’t say which one. Tonight I’ve successfully implemented a means to block anyone using that Web address for email. Sadly though that blocks out a lot of traffic from a large country. Oh well, they shouldn’t let spammers run rampant.

Have any of you out there got any good spam stories?

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Logos Part 2

Chet — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:14:26 +0000

I know we’ve done this dance before, but after a few months, and some design decisions. I’ve reworked my logo ideas into a much more minimalistic, and much more functional design. Here they are, let me know what you peoples think. I’ve included a black and then a color mock-up. Comments on this post will be hugely appreciated!

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