Hello World! LTNS.

Today I am going to hook you designers up with some links to sites that make the blocking of your content easier and faster. Traditionally we all use Lorem from to demonstrate text appearances in almost any design, But it seems that with a lot of clients, in my experience, if you show them Lorem, they think you are replacing their content with gibberish. In a way, that is true. Since most clients wait till the last possible second to get you content (which is backwards but that is for another post) using generated text for blocking is the sort of standard in our industry. But they always try to read it.

Where does this come from

Like most things in the web design world, the usage of Lorem and its creation comes from print.

In publishing and graphic design, lorem ipsum is placeholder text (filler text) commonly used to demonstrate the graphic elements of a document or visual presentation, such as font, typography, and layout. The lorem ipsum text is typically a section of a Latin text by Cicero with words altered, added and removed that make it nonsensical in meaning and not proper Latin.

–wikipedia

So if we are going to use this archaic method for dummy text placement, does it all have to be the same? Not at all.

I submit to you these Four Fine websites that will help you generate text and amuse your clients while you do it.

For the Thug in You check out GANGSTA LOREM IPSUM
Although the site doesn’t work very well, the concept is amazing and I hope that this concept of meme-ing the lorem with other english coloquial dialects.

For the Literate check out FILLERATI
This is really a fascinating generator that pulls sentences words paragraphs and lists from books that are public domain such as A Princess of Mars.

For the Adventurer check out MALEVOLE
This simple generator is both humble and a surprise with what seems to be lines and lines of text all slapped into a single box from the mind of the author perhaps.

For the Company Man check out CORPORATE IPSUM
Sadly this widget is only for the mac owner but the concept is fetching an unique enough that you may not be going to far.

Let me know if you have some other great generators!

Best,

Zach

The catalyst a short trip to cssmania.com for some clever inspiration led me to Mr. Dan Klammer’s personal portfolio http://danklammer.com/, which is captivating in its own right. After a couple of usual poking around examinations I really started to look at his site. Read content, see social icons, etc, and discovered a little link to 8tracks.com or more specifically to a mix he had posted on 8tracks. The mix was great and his followers also had profoundly good taste in music and so I proceded to listen to their work and made an account for myself.

Someone out there is snidely thinking, “Good job grandpa, you finally made into the mixtape digital age.” Shut your food hole mouth breather.

I really truly love this site, if for no other reason that its elegantly simple and utterly usable interface allows me to take the art nerd passion of Rob Gordon and share it with friends and family. The selfless nature of making things for other people (like mixtapes) is a great exercise and it can turn you on to all sorts of great artistry that you didn’t know was there.

Thank you internet for making me believe in the mystery and magic of information, again.

Best, Z

WordPress’ Thelonoius update, is something interesting. The once playful attitude of the blog software turned semi-cms is now making a turn into a big new world. With addition of taxonomies, custom menus and now custom post types, the once blog synonymous system is looking like its fellow Opensource juggernaut Drupal.

Good things come to those who love to wait for great improvements. I hope that this upgrade doesn’t foreshadow a negative change in the WordPress community.

Z

There seems to be something deliberate and deceptive about our culture. I love the idea of accidental replication but this is really not one of those cases.

It’s been a while since I have spoken to you my faceless friend (the internet) about much of anything and while I am preparing a post about a couple of recently launched projects that I am quite fond of I would like to quickly catalog something that I found quite interesting. ANAMANAGUCHI which is ironic in its name and production. An 8bit alt-rock group of electric leanings that is apparently quite popular throughout the gamer scene (of which I keep some loose ties with) and actually produces audio landscapes that hearken back to happier times in my somewhat cloudy childhood.

I remember all of the sights, sounds and smells of original NES getting opened with uncontrolled excitement on my 9th Birthday. The cold winter seemed a bit warmer as I traversed the caverns of Metroid and shot flying ducks from the projected skyline. The audio scape of the 90′s in its 8bit and 16bit forms are still fixed in my mind as prime examples of what is possible given available technology and true musical artistry.

ANAMANAGUCHI seems to have a real grasp of both the nostalgia and the sophistication of how to use it. Their site ain’t half bad either. Check em out here

This will be the first in a short series about knowing your development environment and how to make it your bitch! Now I know some of you designers out there, and you know who you are, have not a clue about where to begin when creating virtual instances on your Apache environment. You just downloaded MAMP and suddenly you think that somehow that is enough. Save me your BS encrusted psycho babel about how this is information that only the server wizards need to know. Even if you never become completely proficient in this area, it is worth breaking your install to test these tools and become more fluent in the ways of the Terminal, or shell to the UNIX crowd.

Today we start with MAMP and move to the TERMINAL. In the next article I will go over some cool commands for GIT and SVN as well as setting different editor applications to run in your TERMINAL.

Quick sob story, a few months back I forced my machine into corrupted library purgatory and had only the Install Disks and Terminal access at my command. At 3 in the morning I faced the obliteration of months of work due to my lack of diligence keeping back-ups. After examining the TERMINAL and asking it for simple information like if it could read my file library, I found that I could copy files from my dying drive to the portable entirely in command line.

TERMINAL

Simple commands that you will use day in and day out:

• cd — change directory
• ls -al — list all items in a table that shows ownership and permissions alphabetically ascending
• [control key] + [C key] — cancel the command that you just entered
• sudo ‘command’ — tell the system to overwrite all permissions and authenticate yourself as the admin
• ln -s /path/to/item/you/are/linkingto ‘nameofalias’ — make a relative link to something, can be a folder or a file
• rm -rf ‘filename’ — remove anything with the file name

Another neat thing in TERMINAL is the built in auto-complete feature. When entering in a path or a filename, you need to only enter up to the last unique character and then press TAB to complete the name. (eg /pa TAB results in /path/ or something like that) Also, pressing the UP or DOWN key on your keyboard will cycle through the commands you have used, super handy if you are using a lot of the same ones over and over.

MYSQL

First you need to create the database and user that will be associated with that database in your MAMP phpMyAdmin interface. Then you need to import some data. For smaller db’s you can easily accomplish this through the same web interface but for larger databases (anything over 3mb) you will need to do this entirely from command line. Crack open the terminal and run this command:

mysql -u dbuser -p yourdbname < /path/to/backup.sql

What this command does is tell mysql to use the specified database “-p ‘yourdbname’ ” and associated user “-p ‘dbuser’ ” and import the backup sql file that you have pointed it to.

Freelancers, Artists, Designers and Developers can all agree that the hardest thing to deal with coming out of an Agency environment is how to begin growing your lead or customer base. Word of mouth and connections through friends are usually the first thing that we establish because we are looking for what is familiar. Agencies have an old business ethic that teaches us to treat our clients like transactions, to quote a new friend of mine, and that very thinking is what has destroyed many companies in our country.

What is the first human agreement? It is the relationship.

What creates the need to be ethically and morally fair with your friends, family and customers? Knowing them, empathizing with them.

I would like to present a theory for making connections. Make friends.

Outgoing doesn’t mean “life of the party”

When I say that you need to make friends and allies to attract honest opportunities, I don’t mean you need to be the king of the keg to win people’s affection. I simply mean that you should first pursue groups that are in the same field and dedicate time every month to trying some of these meetups out and seeing if there is a group of people that you identify with.

If you like a particular type of software like Drupal or WordPress it is quite possible that you can find a user group in your area filled with other people who are interested in either teaching you how to work with the software or possibly work with you.

In Denver DBUG is a place to start or you can peruse the MeetUP website.

Chambers of commerce

Another fantastic resource are small local city chambers of commerce, the reason for going for the local groups will be the familiarity you get with the group that you are apart of. Being in a room with 20 people from other fields that want to talk to you and get to know hwo you are and how you work in the community is great way to not only make friends but find resources that you may also need.

Of course with COC the bar for entry is always cash but, in a smaller city or a suburb of the nearest large city there are plenty of inexpensive and fruitful places to meet other professionals.

Call on your heros

The other thing you can do is email people whom you hold in high regard as professionals or perhaps as role models in your field. I recently emailed craigmod of the Tokyo Art Space and Link Spice fame. He was nice enough to answer some questions that I had about a particular market and took the time to give insight to an area that I had been exploring.

Whenever you email someone that you are a fan of it can be rather strange, like sending fan mail to a musician that you enjoy, the results can really change your perception of them or what you found engaging about them.

I have been met with my own fair share of experiences where the image in my mind was better than the real thing. It will happen. But you have to remember that if someone you respect isn’t gracious with you it’s either because:

1. They are really busy and cannot afford the time for idle chatter OR
2. They are pretentious dicks!

Look for the humanity and feed your creativity from this. Then, you will be the greatest artist in the world!

Sincerely Your Pal,

Zach Attack Meyer
ps. I am sorry if I have every been a dick to you. call me.

Freelance has a lot of interesting barriers to overcome. First you have to find a client, then you must determine what the scope of work will be, then you must determine the price for your work and when all is said and done you have to COLLECT!

It seems like, even when you agree to something with your client,  you may encounter some last minute changes in schedule that weren’t apart of the original deal. Namely, they don’t want to finish paying you because they think that they don’t need to pay you for your work. They don’t remember negotiating your rate, or asking you to perform the work in an unreasonably short amount of time. I’m almost convinced that they don’t care. They used you for what they wanted to accomplish and now suddenly they want out of the deal.

No matter how fairly you have treated someone, they want to take their guarantee back.

So here is how everything happened;

1. A gentleman asked me to create a WordPress theme in one day for a client of his
2. He agrees, after many back and forth conversations, to the price for the work
3. I complete the work that I could do, and even generated artwork to complete the design
4. I am on call as a consultant modifying theme settings and php templates
5. I send the final payment for the other half of what the total job was priced
6. Customer says that he is waiting for his client to pay him
7. I politely tell him that this is not my problem
8. He doesn’t agree

From my perspective, if you have hired me to do something and you agree to pay a certain price then it doesn’t matter to me what other arrangements you have regarding the same project. I am willing to go a little bit for people, but if you have agreed to pay me for my time, you had better follow through without any condition attached.

I will keep you posted as to whether or not he actually follows through.

Thanks for letting me complain a bit,

Zach “the unpaid” Freelancer

A godfather to the ideas of digital communication and information surfing is Marshall McLuhan. While I was studying communications in college I found myself totally enthralled by McLuhan’s book “The Medium is The Mesage.” After watching him debate other intellectuals of his time it was clear that his premise would be an important thing to review and study as someone who wants to communicate online.

The idea that my words, images, videos and websites would become a medium by which others learn and interact with me would be something that McLuhan would adopt if he were alive today. It’s amazing to think that McLuhan advocated TV’s in the class room and discussed the idea that in a few years books would be an antiquated form of research and reference because visual learning is so much faster and effective. I personally don’t think that we will ever eliminate books as a form of communication or record keeping. The instability of digital memory is far to great to ever totally eliminate paper records of information.

Reading this book is a good way for designers and developers to get an honest idea of what this communication medium should be doing.

Let me know what you think,

Zach “attack” Meyer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan