But many of you, particularly my girl friends, have never heard of “Will It Blend” or Blendtec. And when I say “Oh! It’s so cool! They have these super tough blenders that blend stuff, like magnets and silly putty and iPhones!” you look at me like I’m from another planet.

So here are a few links to fill you in.

Blendtec on Modern Marvels: Super awesome behind-the scenes stuff, and a great overview, too.

Total Blender on Time Warp: Blending stuff is even cooler when it’s filmed at 10,000 frames per second and then played back in high definition slow mo! On this one they blend strawberries, gum balls, a video camera, and butane lighters. Parental discretion advised if your kid is a pyro. Otherwise, be sure to watch it in HD!

Bad guys, good guy, and a blender: A notoriously tough guy gets in the blender with the bad guys. Who will win? Blendtec had to remove this after the tough guy (whose name I dare not mention since I work for BT now, but you can find one of his many fan sites here) sent a cease and desist. But several youtube users had re-posted the original video, including this one. Too funny.

And of course we have Will It Blend? — a huge video collection of Tom Dickson blending stuff. And last but not least, blendtec.com — which is going to look awesome before the summer’s through.

And the best part of all of it? They Gave Me A Blender! Anyone up for smoothies?

We’re asked to review on the following criteria:

• Is the article well-written?
• Is the article applicable?
• Are arguments in the article valid and sound?
• How is information in the article applicable to Web designers?
• How can we interpret the article’s information with respect to visual design, usability, Web standards, etc?

To the first three questions: YES, YES, and YES! Here’s a seven year old article that is still perfectly applicable to web designers and the clients they serve today.

In fact I’m currently encouraging my clients to get more, not less, content on their pages, both so that search engine spiders are more likely to find them, and so that the folks who find them will find what they’re looking for. More often than not, they’re looking for information, not for an immediate purchase, and we want them to stay on the site, remember it, and use our information to make a good purchase decision.

The Bottom-Up development Cameron Moll mentions is just another way of explaining what we were taught to do in this class: create the content first and then use the home page to create logical, easy-to-use paths to that content. “Determine the final pages on which your visitors should land, and emphasize those pages on your homepage.” I remember hearing Cameron speak on Good vs Great design. Well, this article isn’t just good, it’s great, because it’s so brilliant and simple. I love it.

As far as web standards go, this thinking applies well here, too. After, if users can’t get at the content, it doesn’t matter how “flashy” the home page might be.

While the particular design suggested for his example, Salisbury, doesn’t look trendy by todays standards, that was SEVEN years ago. The principles still apply perfectly, and many of the features he’d suggested are in fact being used on Salisbury’s site today with an updated look and feel.

Personally speaking, I was glad to read this today; it reinforces exactly what I’ve been trying to do with my clients. This is a classic article for the ages.

I guess I’d always pictured gophers when I said that, but I laughed and told them about the pop up windows we had to endure back in the day. “But most modern browsers take care of them for you, so you guys probably don’t know what I’m talking about.” My oldest isn’t nine yet and I’m sure pop-up blockers have been around at least that long!

“Oh, I’ve dealt with pop ups before,” Mary sighed. “Especially if I can’t get Firefox out of Safemode and I have to use Internet Explorer. It’s so annoying when I’ve got ten windows to close”

Ethan nodded. “Internet Explorer IS a pop up.”

To do when they’re home again: Check for malware & install Chrome. :-p

“Lack of Flash in the iPad (and before that, in the iPhone) is a win for accessible, standards-based design. Not because Flash is bad, but because the increasing popularity of devices that don’t support Flash is going to force recalcitrant web developers to build the semantic HTML layer first.”

When Apple and Adobe fight, standards win. Sing that now to the tune of Particle Man by They Might Be Giants (and forget, like I did, about that hater Triangle Man always winning everything). Like the ubiquitous Particle Man, standards -should- be everywhere. Thanks to iPad, standards may finally begin to find the priority they should have had with every designer all along.

Developers will still use Flash, but they’ll have to use standards for their foundation. Without meaningful markup, a Flash site is just a castle in the clouds. Not everyone is capable of finding their way there.

Apple didn’t create this problem. Flash-only sites have been alienating audiences for more than a decade now. iPad will simply increase the number affected, and in the process will hopefully inspire these developers to come down to earth. Once their site does its job regardless of platform particulars, they can build from there as much as they’d like. Getting there might be a rough ride for the plugin-centric, but in the end the web just might be be a more stable place, and that benefits everyone.

This week we had two articles to choose from. I’m opting to respond to the one that is readily available online: “10 best-designed websites in the world” by Ben Hunt. I question his choice of titles. Reading through his list, it seems the post focuses much less on design than it does on trends.

As in any list of trendy sites, his top pick is Apple.com, of course. Now don’t get me wrong, everyone loves apple.com, but I am not sure about choosing it as the best designed site in the world. But Apple is Trendy with a capital T.

Remember Stacey from Junior High? Maybe I have her name wrong, but surely she went to school with you: she’d walk into class with a new outfit on Monday, and by Friday several other students were wearing the same thing. Within six months, you’d more or less be beat up for not dressing like her; and by the time you get the outfit, they’re beating you up for not wearing the next big thing.

Apple is the new Stacey in so many ways: ask any software author about the initiation to the iPhone App club and you’ll see a strong comparison. But I’ll focus on the wardrobe analogy. Stacey might indeed look fabulous, but isn’t calling it the best outfit ever going a bit overboard when everyone knows she’ll abandon her look as soon as the band geeks start wearing it?

Apple is the same way. They really do define trends on the web, but how well designed can it be when they change it so soon? I can’t say as I blame them, either, what with all the copycats out there, but I hesitate to list this design among the best of the best when they aren’t even using it anymore. For the life of me I can’t find a single page on their site that looks anything like the screenshot he’d grabbed. It’s not just the content, either. The navigation is completely different. I did find this, though, courtesy of the WayBack machine at webarchive.org:

Screenshot of Apple.com in 1997

You don’t see many sites looking like that anymore, right? Was it horrible design on Apple’s part, or did it simply go out of style?

Apple has changed their look and feel several times through the years, opting for a simpler layout in 1998, then adding tabs across the top and a news ticker that later went away. I had a great time digging through the archives, but I never found anything that looked like the screenshot Mr. Hunt provided. The layout has apparently been dramatically changed again since then, from the site with the cute icons and several boxes of information around the page, to this:

A screenshot of Apple's Site circa Jan. 2010

So now we have a few plain tabs across the top and a full-screen image with a brief description of the page. Users scroll down for some below-the-fold content. A glance back at his top ten list tells me Mr. Hunt would approve of that trend as well.

Tabs along the top, full screen image with summary, scroll for content.. wait a second!

The same thing happens with websites trends, and similar messages apply. When I’m evaluating clients, I like to try to figure out where they stand when it comes to web trendiness. Well-funded clients are happy to pay for a team of designers to give them a cutting edge look. Others are happy to pay, and re-pay, to ride each trend as it comes along. Remember the message? “We are successful enough that we can afford to keep up with the ever-changing trends!” — if that’s really what they want, I as a designer am happy to help them with their goals!

Some are happy to utilize whatever is already functional and cheap. Some balk at designers rates; bear their expectations in mind when giving them a quote. Personally, I’m the type that would rather find a neat and functional look of my own so I can stick with it for years as style takes a back-seat to content. None of these are wrong; use what fits your client best.

But real design work… the type Apple pays the big money for… is much less a question of which trend to follow, and more a matter of rational thought and strategy with style sprinkled in as a finishing touch. This makes judging a top ten list much more complicated, because how are we to know what a company’s goals are and what limitations they must work within? How are we to know whether their intentions are being carried out successfully? Design doesn’t start with a template or with inspiration from a trendier-than-thou model. It is learning what the client wishes to communicate, and finding the best way to do so.

Just Googled and read the whole article and i must have to say that me and my husband loved reading your post. I liked your site because of the easy language you used to explain things here. Now i can stop my research having found my answer in this awesome article. We bookmarked and will regularly check more quality tips to come from your website. Thanks alot.

How sweet, right? Until you notice her name is “Watch Movies Online!”

Assuming your blogging software already has some good anti-bot intelligence going for it so the spam is few and far between, probably the easiest way to find a spammer out is to google their comment, in quotes. Disheartening, isn’t it?

A few other tell-tale signs:

- Keywords instead of a name
- Links in the comment body
- Name and email address both appear to based on real names that are totally unrelated

And of course you could click on their site to see what they’re selling, but I personally avoid that if I can.

If you want to read my long winded journey to that solution, I’ve preserved it in the rest of this post.

So I had to post what felt like a totally ridiculous question this morning. I’d turned to google and didn’t find anything simple. And alas, while I feel fairly comfortable in linux, I only know what I know… and sometimes what I know most is that I don’t know nearly enough.

The problem: my exim_mainlog had exploded and I wanted to trim the bazillion lines of garbage, leaving just the last few intact. And I had to do it quick because this log file was taking up way too much of the limited space on this server, and it kept growing while I was trying to patch up the problem.

I thought tail -n 100 /var/log/exim_mainlog > /var/log/exim_mainlog would work, but instead that left me with an empty log. So I could export to a new file, delete the old, move new to old, reset permissions and ownership and, yadah yadah… but that was too complicated when I had to work quickly, and I didn’t have a minute even to write a shell script to take care of it for me. This is what ended up working best. All one line now so it was easy to rerun:

tail -n 100 /var/log/exim_mainlog > tempfile; cat tempfile > /var/log/exim_mainlog; rm -f tempfile

And then restart exim (or whatever daemon is doing the logging) for good measure.. thanks Bryan

Obviously if you’re working with a different log file, change the name and path. If you don’t want 100 lines saved, change 100 to some other number. And if you’re working with a lifo, use head instead of tail. Maybe not the best answer, but it worked in a pinch, without having to install any trimming programs or create new scripts. If that’s what you’re looking for, I hope it helps you, too.

And if you know of an easier/better way to do this — or if there’s a problem with this method — holler

If you’ve got a VERY old installation, particularly if it’s been heavily modified, it might be easier to start with a fresh copy, import your content, install whatever plugins you might need to get your old bells and whistles back, and then add the design back in around it. And then don’t fall behind.

WordPress makes it easy to know when you should update, because a link advising you to do so appears at the top of your admin section. So as soon as you see that, back up the site just to be safe (or make sure your host is keeping frequent backups for you), then click the upgrade link, and you should be good to go.

* I stand corrected; WordPress’s url rewrites can conflict with other friendly url rewrites. Which is no big deal, unless you’re using friendly rewrites for all sorts of other content. Not sure how to unhook that to make the upgrade to 2.8.x less painful for those folks.

Here’s how it looks. Now to see if I can come up with some money to print it!

Number Zero Geek - because who wants to settle for Number One?

Oh and here’s the old design. I do think it looks geekier with the blocky font like that, but I’m not sure whether I like it as much. What do you think?

This is the old design... looks like it is still up on printfection