Every once in a while, an application/utility comes along that hits a sweet spot. Something for which I’ve been looking, but haven’t been able to find. I’m a list-maker. Especially to-do lists. For more than a year, I’ve been wanting a simple to-do list manager that I can call up from the Mac OS X menu bar. Something simple, light-weight, nicely designed, and above all else, reads and writes to pre-existing data in iCal. continued

Cameron Adams thinks I need an excuse for a blog entry. As if three months off dried me up. (He also apparently thinks Eric could actually throw down enough to do any damage. Punk. Again, as if…) Well, OK, fine… continued

So what do I write about when it’s been over three months since my last entry? When I intentionally haven’t opened up my feed reader in over two months. When casual readers start to notice a lack of updates, and add comments or send emails asking, “is everything is OK?” When Aussies are still asking if I need more Tim Tams? continued

Silently, and with no fanfare, the Wired News redesign of 2002 turned 3 years old a few days ago. I had to search my own site and find the entry, Finally, We’re Live, to confirm the date. I almost let it slip by without even thinking about it. continued

I acquired a taste for them a year ago when I visited Australia for the first time. John and Sara had a pack of them at their place when Dave, Joe, and I stopped by for a barbie one night after Web Essentials 2004 was over. Maxine asked, “Would you like a Tim Tam, Doug?” Me: “What’s a Tim Tam?” Maxine, shocked at my response: “You’ve never had a Tim Tam?!”

continued

Inspirational, energetic, insightful, encouraging. That’s how I’d describe the Web Essentials conference in Sydney, Australia last week. An excellent crowd filled with so many wonderful people. It seems the WE05 team is on to something very successful. continued

The inner-workings for a clever little plugin named Photon that enables photo export from iPhoto directly to Movable Type and other publishing tools (to create photo galleries like this) are now available for anyone to explore and build upon. Jonathan Younger, who originally created the plugin, doesn’t have enough time to dedicate for updating and expanding the plugin. So he generously released Photon’s source code under the GNU Lesser General Public License so that others could continue evolving it.

So if you lament that you can’t use Photon because you’re not on a Mac, or you don’t use iPhoto, or for whatever reason, and you’re good with application/plugin development, here’s your chance to grab Photon’s source code, morph it, add to it, expand its function or supported formats, or whatever you want to contribute.

Since describing and pointing to my photo galleries back in January this year, I received lots of positive feedback, requests for the templates, and questions asking when they’d be available. Since the galleries are a personal, non-paying hobby, they took a back seat to other more pressing projects. In my spare time for the past several months, I made lots of additions and tweaks to the gallery pages. Meanwhile, I also started generalizing the templates, keeping in mind that I might eventually make them publicly available some day. That day has finally come. continued

Jeff Veen had some interesting thoughts last night on speaking at events where access to wifi might be a potential distraction to the audience and the speaker: Is anyone listening? WiFi and the new ADD. I’ve had similar thoughts at recent conferences. continued

On the one year anniversary of the article: Throwing Tables Out the Window, I thought it appropriate to reveal some behind-the-scenes info regarding the Microsoft example discussed in the article.

When I published that article last year, the words and advice contained within were welcomed warmly by large numbers of people. The article was translated into at least eight different languages, and continues to be referenced in other writings and in academic curricula. On the flip side, the same article was also the cause of flaming, accusations of ignorance, and general vitriol thrown my way, claiming I was over-hyping CSS and deceiving the multitudes of its capabilities. Those claims were voiced more loudly when readers couldn’t find any proving example code whatsoever. Those who refused to let go of their old ways assumed that I fabricated the entire case study. continued