I’m in Washington D.C. this week, spending time with a few good friends. Since everyone is still working, today is my opportunity to tour around independently and see some sights. I haven’t been here since my eighth grade class trip, so I’m looking forward to a quick whirlwind tour of our nation’s capital. To take maximum advantage of one short day, we decided the best approach would be to focus my time around the National Mall, allowing me to pop in and out of the many Smithsonian museums. continued

New rules govern my play. My professional environment is suddenly different. No one expects me to be “in the office”. There are no looming deadlines. I have no voicemail waiting for response. No conference calls planned for the day. Just the oh-so-minor responsibilities of working out the plans for a new business. Right? continued

After 6 years, 3 months, 3 days, my employment with Wired comes to an end today. What a ride it’s been.

Jumping back in time, I remember picking up an interest in bulletin boards in ’92 while I was still in college. I started at a marketing design firm named Mentus as an intern during my senior year. In my spare time, I spent countless hours exploring the concept of connected computers and online content using the company’s AOL account. Of course, with a 14.4Kbps WinFax modem, the majority of my time was spent waiting for the next screen to load. continued

Anitra Pavka wrote an article for Digital Web a little over a week ago. Accountability of Accessibility and Usability digs into some of the reasons Southwest Airlines was brought to court over their alleged inaccessibility. Anitra explores some basic ways to prevent such lawsuits, and touches on two sides of the debate over whether the ADA covers websites as public spaces.

Somehow, I recently stumbled across the controversial discipline and methodology of XP. Not another lame X-based abbreviation for the new OS from Redmond. I’m talking about eXtreme Programming, which has roots from 3 to 6 years ago, depending on which source you believe. I think I originally saw a brief mention of the concept on Paul Boutin’s log, and followed a link to his Wired magazine article and some results of Googling for “extreme programming” (1, 2) continued

At the very last minute, I gave in to an urge to head down to tonight’s monthly BayCHI program. Ironically enough, I ended up driving down to Palo Alto with Peterme of Adaptive Path and Erika Hall from Mule Design. I had just spent some time visiting Mule’s site last night for the first time. Some of Erika’s simple, to-the-point writing helped spawn yesterday’s post about simplifying writing style. continued

How do we say more with less? When I write, I tend to be wordy. Four long convoluted paragraphs that could probably be summed up in one short sentence. As a designer, I was never trained to be a writer outside of a few college papers. But I know the power of words. And I believe in simplicity. continued

Sitting in the Miami airport, waiting for a flight to Chicago. Here’s a few more shots to highlight from this past weekend: