31st of December, 2006
The last theme lastest about three posts, after so much work I hated it quickly and didn’t want to write words that would appear within it, so an impromptu blogging strike was put into affect.
After a hugely successful launch of the Brisbane Creative website and the moving of most content to that URL, I’m happy with the way things are set up. The first jimwhimpey.com theme brought everything work and personal together and I didn’t like it, now it’s separated again and I do.
On top of that I’ve consolidated all my email addresses down to three, my work, Brisbane Creative address, a spam address for signing up accounts and a personal address for messenger and things. This theme was also developed locally with MAMP, a wonderful thing and my entire development process has been changed. All in time for the new year, I feel ready, although university is still up in the air.
I suppose you want to know what I’m reading. I’ve just finished Kane and Abel, an inspirational book and now I’ve just bought and started The Life of Pi.
As for this latest theme, I like the footer.
12th of December, 2006
Reading through the Facebook jobs page, not because I’m looking for a job but because I like to read, something became clear quickly. Working at Facebook would be awesome. Here’s just some of the benefits.
- Medical, dental and vision plans with no premium for employees
- Complimentary catered breakfast, lunch and dinner daily
- Complimentary beverages and snacks
- Dry cleaning and laundry service onsite
- Catered Friday Happy Hours at the office
- $600/month housing subsidy if you live within one mile of the office
- Standard-issue 24″ LCD monitors and your option of 15″ Apple MacBook or IBM ThinkPad
Free healthcare, free food (for every meal, snack and drink), $600 a month off housing, huge monitor, great portable computer. It’s amazing and it explains why wonderful people work for Facebook, why their product is so great and why they roll out new features constantly.
There are so many advantages to treating your employees well. They want to do great work for you. They want to give back what you’ve given them. They want to impress you. They want your company to succeed. They’d feel guilty not doing or feeling this way (unless they’re heartless monsters).
They’re job advertisements ask for all the right things.
Requirements:
- Strong portfolio featuring interaction design samples
- Expertise in PHP, Unix, XHTML, CSS, Javascript, AJAX
- 3+ years of experience building web or desktop applications
- Clear verbal communicator and detail oriented
- BS or BFA in any field
Bonus Points:
- Experience with user testing and complicated workflow design
- Portfolio includes self-started personal projects
- Solid taste in music a plus
A BS or BFA in any field impressed me. They’re in the university market and they obviously understand what university is about. If you’ve got three 3 years practicing programming and writing markup, it doesn’t matter what your degree is in. University teaches things far beyond the subject of the degree.
Having to have self-started personal project is also a great idea for bonus points. I don’t know many people with the motivation to start and follow through with a self started project.
Google, Apple and Pixar have the same philosophy when it comes to employees, treat them well and they’ll treat you well, make them want to do great things for you. I think it was Michael Moore who said something like “pay your employees a lot of money, they’ll work much better if they’re not worrying about paying the electricity bill”.
11th of December, 2006
Lego isn’t what it used to be. When I was a 10 year old kid you were able to disasemble and make anything with the same pieces of lego. Now a set of Lego seems to make one specific figurine and that’s it. You couldn’t pull our little orange friend apart to build a dog house or power plant.
10th of December, 2006
Listening to the latest Hi My Name is Mark podcast, the best podcast there is, I was seduced by the thought of life on the road.
Day after day of sleeping in a luxurious bus with your friends (and groupies) while commuting around every great city of your current continent. From Brussels to Paris to Zurich to Geneva with a spontaneous party each night that feels spontaneous but really isn’t when they happen every night but who cares.
Taking the stage each night to a crowd that loves you enough to spend $40 to see you stand on stage making jokes about the midget you slept with last night between songs. Pulling the guitar tech on stage and making him skull a beer because it’s his birthday. Starting a brawl by simply throwing a pick into the sea of people beneath you.
Waking up at 2pm to a delicious breakfast of four cheese burgers and a chocolate milkshake.
What a life it would be.
9th of December, 2006
For the 100th time, fightingfriends/jimwhimpey.com gets a thorough redesigning. For the 100th time I’m writing about a redesign and it’s getting really old. Each time I tell myself, wow, this is totally cool I’m going to love this forever and I can focus on writing to a higher standard than I was in year 4 with a year 7 marking it for me.
There are some things I want to chat about though. Internet Explorer is officially unsupported. There are sections where I could have used a simple, well-worn hack to make things look nice in IE but I left it out. At the same time, this is the most accessible theme I’ve ever created for people with disabilities they cannot help. I see Internet Explorer as a self-imposed disability that can be easily remedied by getting Firefox (or Opera or even Netscape! They’re all free and easy). This time I’m refusing to waste my time writing hacks to support someone too lazy or (unreasonably) scared to get a new browser.
Why doesn’t Microsoft just bundle Firefox as the default browser in Windows, making a decent browser themselves is obviously just too hard. There’s no shame in admitting defeat to make the internet a better place, Microsoft.
Apart from that, I’m using sIFR, something quite special and clever to generate very pretty titles in my chosen typeface, Mister Earl BT. I think they look great and they degrade with class.
