After 630 odd posts, it might seem an odd time to do an “about me” post, but it’s been on my to-do list since I lost my Blogger profile in the transition to WordPress.

I’m a professional graphic and web designer currently working in SW Virginia. I’ve been doing graphic design for print almost fourteen years. Web design became a major part of my work two and a half years ago.

I grew up in a very small town, one of fifteen in my high school class. My family has a strong belief in the value of an education, with a large percentage of them being teachers, doctors, or artists. I was undecided on which path to take and ended up studying both Fine Art.

Graphic design, as you can tell from the subtitle on this blog (it currently reads “Random mutterings of a wandering cowboy turned graphic designer”) wasn’t my first career choice. My first job, when I was 14, was working with cattle from horseback. I loved it. I had every intention of spending my life working with horses… Time passes, things change.

I found I had to reevaluate my choices when, in my mid-twenties, I was preparing to get married. Breaking horses, as I’d been doing since my late teens, just wasn’t a viable profession any more. I’d had three concussions, a back injury, various torn ligaments, and some bones in my foot fused already and retirement wasn’t exactly looming near. I started looking for another career. Something that would allow me to merge my education with my passion for art. I lucked upon a graphic design job with someone who liked to train his own designers. He recognized in me something I didn’t see myself, the designer. It was a fantastic stroke of luck, and I’ll be forever grateful for his training.

I’m not by nature a talkative type, my wife would tell you that I act like I have a lifetime quota on words and I’m trying not to run out too early. I do however, like to say what I think. I took up blogging because I have almost exclusively worked where I was one of few if not the only, designer. Blogging not only allows me a place to speak my mind, but also allows me to be a part of a community of people who have similar interests. While I’m often the lone designer at work, I’m one among many online. This is something that I’ve found that I appreciate.

While I make an effort to focus on design and design related subjects, I’m afraid that I often wander off topic. You’ll notice for instance, that I veer into discussing politics on regular basis. Bare with me, and I come back to discussing graphic and web design before too long.

I’m a problem solver by nature, I’m fascinated by almost any sort of puzzle. Trouble shooting design problems is a particular pleasure for me. I often find myself giving people unsolicited advice on how to fix problems on their sites that they aren’t even aware of. I’ve recently started a series on Design Review to take advantage of that. This series is intended to give people a look into how a designer sees design.

My restless nature, and my wife’s career choices, have moved us around the country in the last decade. From my native Washington, I’ve worked in Idaho, Maryland and now Virginia. I’ve designed things varying from newspaper ads to cookbooks and furniture. I find print design the most interesting, though the technical challenge of web design has a strong appeal as well. I’ve enjoyed the the journey, I’ve enjoyed each place I’ve lived. While I’d like to find a place to settle down, another move is being considered as I write this. Where next? I don’t know yet, maybe the Midwest. We’ll see where this road leads.

Consider this post to be guest book of sorts. If you’re reading this, drop me a comment. Let me know who you are, and where you’re from. I’m always interested in seeing who stops by.

Is Anybody Surprised that the president of the teachers union doesn’t know what 1/3 + 1/4 is?

I was feeling pretty good this morning, so I thought I’d risk life and limb today and review the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler. According to Google Analytics, they have 6,380,170 hits as of this post.

Style:
Love it or hate it, the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler has a distinct style. Strongly black and red, with content in white columns, it incorporates a fluid three column layout on the home page, with two columns on interior pages. While the content columns float free of a containing background in a manner that I criticized Argghhh! for in my last review, it works here. The solid background and fluid layout act as the container, giving it the grounded look I thought was needed at Argghhh!.

The use of color is well done, with a strong black background and red used liberally as an accent. (The only liberal aspect you’re likely to find on this site.) Gray blockquotes with red outlines nicely compliment this simple color scheme. The links are blue, which manages to be clearly visible without being overpowering.

Graphics are well done in a very unified theme.

Structure:
The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler is a WordPress site with an entirely CSS layout. The site structure is well done and should be represented well in any modern browser. Load time is high with 48.94 seconds on DSL or 157.08 seconds on 56K modem. This is quite high by blog standards and should be improved upon. A lot of the load time is caused by the high number of images. There were 72 images on the homepage when I tested it.

The CSS is well thought out and complete, though it could use a little clean up work. It has a some non-standard coding that should be fixed or removed.

While the site structure is good, the WordPress theme could use some minor updates. A quick validation check of the home page shows no true errors, but 442 warnings. Most of them are insignificant, but should be easy to fix too. A site with this level of traffic should really have this fixed. Most of them seem to be minor bits of extraneous code which could be easily removed from the base PHP of the theme. There is also some misuse of the CSS element ID which should be fixed. The ID element is used to describe a unique element which can occur once on a page, but is being used multiple times here.

While most if not all of the questionable code I’m seeing is not in the posts themselves, I’m concerned that it may affect RSS feeds and possibly the long term stability of the site. Without correction, what should be minor changes to the CSS or PHP could have much more dramatic effects than intended. The theme’s PHP and CSS should be carefully checked and cleaned of offending and extraneous bits.

Content:
It is politically off the charts to the right and pulls no punches. The authors’ vocabulary of obscene and profane language is vast and well used. This site doesn’t tolerate idiots of any stripe. While its authors will openly mock and ridicule anyone they feel is less than honest or sincere about their beliefs and/or politics, they are reasonably tolerant of polite disagreement. That said, their commenters are not always so polite.

What would I change:
I’d update the PHP to remove extraneous code.

I’d lower the number of images and optimize their use in an effort to decrease load time. Some improvement should be possible with little or no effect on the overall style.

I’d make minor changes to the CSS to make it more closely meet modern standards.

I’d add High Desert Wanderer to the blogroll, because… it appears to be tragically missing.

Summary:
While the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler has a very distinct style, minor changes should be made to images, CSS and PHP in order improve load time and to make it more closely meet modern web standards.

As I said before, the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler has a distinct style. By intention or accident, a unique and very marketable brand has been created here. Great care should be taken to maintain this style while improvements are being made.

I saw a great idea over at Blog Till you Drop!. The Z-Listers, a list of under-appreciated blogs. Seth Godin suggests it is a bad choice of names, but I like it. Using C-list or D-List would have been inappropriate, but Z-List suggest you don’t accept the whole idea of the A-List blogs at all. Can you think of any that need to be on the list?

Here’s the Z-List with a couple of additions of my own mixed right in.

Creative Think
Soloride
Movie Marketing Madness
Blog Till You Drop!
Get Shouty!
Jarrett Fuller | Blog
One Reader at a Time
The New PR
Own Your Brand!
OTOInsights
bizandbuzz
Work, in Plain English
Buzz Canuck
New Millenium PR
Pardon My French
Troy Worman’s Blog
The Instigator Blog
AENDirect
Diva Marketing
Marketing Hipster
The Marketing Minute
Funny Business
The Frager Factor
ARCHEBLogGER
Mindblob
Open The Dialogue
Word Sell
Note to CMO:
That’s Great Marketing!
Shotgun Marketing Blog
BrandSizzle
bizsolutionsplus
Win or Lose, We Go Shopping!
Customers Rock!
Being Peter Kim
Pow! Right Between The Eyes! Andy Nulman’ Blog About Surprise
Billions With Zero Knowledge
Working at Home on the Internet
MapleLeaf 2.0
Two Hat Marketing
The Emerging Brand
The Branding Blog
CrapHammer
Thoughts on Design
Drew’s Marketing Minute
Golden Practices
Viaspire
Tell Ten Friends
Flooring the Consumer
Kinetic Ideas
Unconventional Thinking
Buzzoodle
NewsPaperGrl
The Copywriting Maven
Hee-Haw Marketing
Scott Burkett’s Pothole on the Infobahn
Multi-Cult Classics
Logic + Emotion
Branding & Marketing
Popcorn n Roses
On Influence & Automation
Bullshitobserver
Servant of Chaos
converstations
eSoup
Presentation Zen
Dmitry Linkov
aialone
John Wagner
Nick Rice
CKs Blog
Design Sojourn
Frozen Puck
The Sartorialist
Small Surfaces
Africa Unchained
Perspective
gDiapers
Marketing Nirvana
Bob Sutton
Hola! Oi! Hi!
Shut Up and Drink the Kool-Aid!
Women, Art, Life: Weaving It All Together
Community Guy
Social Media on the fly
Jeremy Latham’s Blog
SMogger Social Media Blog
Masey.com
High Desert Wanderer

If you want to participate, cut and paste this list into your post, and add a few of your favorite under-appreciated blogs to the list.

I have too many irons in the fire right now to post much, so I’ll leave you with links to a couple of good design posts on other sites, and open trackbacks so that you can tell me what you’re writing about.

Thoughts on Design » Setting graphic design free

If I had the opportunity to give one, and only one suggestion to a young graphic designer… it would be “simplify”. It might sound too easy, and maybe it is, but that one word is a major key to design.

“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free. – Michelangelo “

The most difficult aspect of the design work I do is setting my design free.

Saurian Sagacity: The Official Blog for Inquisitive Florida Gator Fans: 32 Bowls, 32 Logos – Part 2

This is the 2nd part of a 4-part series where we evaluate the bowls based on their logos. “We” is myself, an 11-year veteran of the advertising business and Alex (the expert), a professional colleague who is a creative director that came out of the graphic design and art direction end of the ad business. Alex is a contributor at the popular South Florida blog called Stuck on the Palmetto.

Linked to Linkfests for December 26 and 27, 2006 (Linkfest Haven Deluxe)

I was tagged with a Christmas Meme a few days ago. I didn’t notice the tag right away (sorry), but I’ll address it now. I know, it’s after Christmas, but it’s the thought that counts… right?

Three Things I wanted for Christmas:

• To be with family
• Peace and quiet
• A white Christmas

Two out of three isn’t bad, especially when I only missed out on the white Christmas.

Three things I didn’t want for Christmas:

• Too much family drama
• Too much family drama
• Anything in blue plaid

I grew up having Christmas with the my father’s family. They’re… melodramatic would be a nice way of putting it. I like things a lot quieter now that I have a choice in the matter. Fortunately, the spirit of Christmas reigned at our house this year… and no blue plaid was in sight.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, and that you will have a fantastic new year!

I seems that the quality of education at Washington State University hasn’t changed since I attended. The sentiments shown here by Professor Streamas are very similar to those I heard being taught in the late 80′s and early 90′s.

“he (Prof. Streamas) argues that a person of color cannot be racist, by definition, because racism also defines a power differential that is not usually present when a person or color is speaking.” – The Volokh Conspiracy

A similar theme was present in the Women’s Studies program when I attended WSU. Any suggestion that a woman could be sexist was loudly and aggressively shouted down. It was taken as fact that no woman, by definition, could be sexist. I would have considered the theory that it’s less likely in women, but impossible? That’s just ridiculous.

Professor Streamas’ theory is just as absurd. While in his statement he says that the power differential is “not usually present” when a person of color speaks, this somehow turns this into an absolute when defining racism. Racism unusual in people of color? Sure, I’d accept that. Rare? No problem. A person of color cannot be racist? That’s an absurd argument.

Maybe Prof. Streamas isn’t aware of it, but “people of color” aren’t in the minority everywhere in the world. Is he arguing that because people of color were oppressed on some areas, they are incapable of racism in other areas? Has he considered the behavior of one minority race towards other minority races right here in the US? I somehow doubt it. The fact that Prof. Streamas used this idea as a defense, when he himself was accused of racist language, is when this story gets bizarre. According to him, he couldn’t have had any racist intent when calling a student a “white shitbag”. He’s a professor, the student is in an inferior position, and Streamas used racial terms to define his verbal attack… How is this not racist? I think the official reprimand was entirely appropriate.

h/t Instapundit.com

Other blogs posting on this subject:

• Sneakeasy’s Joint
• Professor Bainbridge’s Journal
• Daily Pundit here and here

I saw a new (to me) flash game called New Sand Game today. An interesting idea. Add elements like ground, sand, water and seed, and things grow. Doesn’t sound very interesting, but it’s kind of fascinating.

Time has come for a review of Argghhh! The Home Of Two Of Jonah’s Military Guys… Generally try to avoid criticizing heavily armed people, but John and Company at Argghhh! are a good bunch. They are currently averaging 1,519 hits per day.

Style:
At first glance Argghhh! appears to be disorganized and cluttered. This first impression isn’t entirely unfounded. It does have a unique and distinct style though. This style is created by a mixture of military and military inspired colors and images.

The cluttered appearance is caused by two things:

• The first is the sidebars, which are a little too narrow for their content. The use of outlines around all sidebar content items exaggerates this problem.
• The second is the lack of a unified background linking the two sidebars with the content column. While there is a background image, this camouflage pattern showing between the columns leaves all three columns floating and visually unanchored.

The use of color and imagery to give a military air to the site is well done.

I like the use of the rotating images in the header. It gives each of the primary bloggers a chance to have their header in place. It’s a nice touch.

Structure:
Argghhh! has an entirely CSS layout. It’s CSS is a little simpler than I might have done, but I wouldn’t consider that a negative. The CSS and site structure are more than adequate and should reliably present the site in any modern browser. Load time is high with 55.14 seconds on DSL or 179.13 seconds on 56K modem. This is quite long by blog standards and should be improved upon. A lot of the load time is caused by non-optimized images and images loading from other locations.

The site could use some updating however. Mostly small changes to the templates and CSS to make things load a little smoother. The site is using some depracated code, and would be better served with some updates.

Content:
The content is what you’d expect from a group of intelligent and well spoken ex-military guys. Their writing is about the military and subjects of interest to those who are or have been in the military. Due mostly to quality writing and humor, and despite it’s obvious military theme, this site appeals to a wide range of people. It is a great source of military history, thought, and opinion.

What would I change:
I’d update the structure to make it more compliant with current web standards. A site with this much traffic needs to work well.

I’d optimize images in an effort to decrease load time. I’d also bring as many images as possible that are loading from remote sites into this site. This should also lower load time.

Alter sidebar images, or the sidebars themselves in an effort to keep contents from overlapping outside of the sidebars.

Remove all or most of the outlines on objects within the sidebars in an effort to give them a more organized and structured appearance.

Make some minor changes to the sidebar styles in order to improve their usability.

Add a unifying background between columns. This will ground the columns and give the site a more unified and organized appearance.

Make some small improvements to the CSS in an effort to accentuate the current style. The style is interesting and very appropriate for the site, but could be better. I’d make it more of what it is, not something different.

I’d look into improving the performance of the rotating header images. Possibly with identical function, possibly with something slightly different. I’m not sure if it would be beneficial, but it’s worth considering if I could maintain or improve function while improving load time.

I’d add High Desert Wanderer to the Argghhh! blogroll, because… I could. Hey, if we’re considering hypothetical changes, why skimp?

Summary:
Argghhh! is a site with an interesting style and quality content. It could though, stand some structural and stylistic improvements. Load time is unnecessarily high and needs to be improved upon. The thing to keep in mind is that this is a functioning site. It may not be the best looking, but it already has good traffic. Any improvements should focus on improving function while maintaining and improving the current style. Care should be taken not to sacrifice current function for future improvement.

Spammers are stepping up the pace lately. I’ve gotten over 900 attempted spam comments and trackbacks in the last three days. Is it something I said?

I didn’t realize I was related to Henny Youngman, but this sounds just like my grandmother…

My Grandmother is over eighty and still doesn’t need glasses. Drinks right out of the bottle. – Henny Youngman

Someone once desribed my grandmother as someone who called a spade a spade. Her reply was:

I don’t call a spade a spade, I call it a f@#$%*g shovel.

Holidays with my family are many things, but boring isn’t one of them.

Why should you regularly review the design and structure of your site? Because presentation is very important. I see sites on a regular basis that have serious flaws. Flaws with structure, flaws with RSS, images, etc. These flaws will keep the authors from getting their message, whatever it is, to at least some of the people who want to see it. Consider RSS feeds. If you have readers on your site that view the site via RSS, and your RSS doesn’t reliably work, some of those people will stop reading.

The point of this Design Review series is to make people think about design and site structure. A website is like a person giving a presentation. Presentation effects a readers perception of the validity of the message. You make a poor presentation, people won’t be interested and won’t believe in you. Some of them might not even hear or understand the message at all.

So, consider your design. Does it fit you? Does it reflect who you are and the message you’d like to pass on? Does your site reliably work in all common browser? Do your RSS feeds work properly? All these things should be reviewed regularly to make sure your presentation is what you want it to be.

Update:
If you don’t think presentation is important, consider what would you think a fairly good presentation given by a woman in a very nice business suit. Now consider the same presentation given by a man in hiking boots, argyle socks, and a poorly fitting cocktail dress. Presentation does make a difference.

Are you using the Firefox add-on Web Developer? If you do any web designing, even minor touch-ups to an existing site, you should be using it. Why, you ask? Let’s consider the possibilities…

• Need to disable javascript, site colors, cache, or other features to test something?
• How about viewing the CSS of an existing site? Or better yet, temporarily edit the CSS on a live site just to see how it will look?
• Need assistance with form submission?
• How about viewing image paths, dimensions, alt attributes, or list the broken images?
• What else can see?
  • Access keys
  • Anchors
  • Block size
  • ID and Class details
  • Page Information
  • Response Headers
• Things you can outline (My personal favorite)
  • Block level elements
  • Deprecated elements
  • Frames
  • Headings
  • Table cells or tables
• Need to validate any of a wide range of file types? Find HTML errors or potential problems?

This is a short list of the things that the Web Developer add-on can do. Sure a lot of people don’t need it, but maybe you do. Maybe you’re a designer, maybe you want to be. Maybe you just want to see how web pages are put together. If you are any of these things… give it a try. The fun part is that you don’t even need a website to use it. It works on any body’s site. So install Web developer, go to your favorite site, and see how it works.

I took suggestions for my Design Review series. One brave gentleman who asked me to review his site is Tony Mack of One Source Graphics. My original thought on this series was to critique mostly high traffic blogs and commercial sites. These are intentionally sites where my criticism would have no harmful impact. They are a safe sounding board for my ideas and opinions on design. Mr. Mack’s site doesn’t fall into either of those categories, so I’m cutting him a little slack. I’m letting him see my review ahead of time and giving him the opportunity to address issues if he chooses. After he’s had a chance to make corrections, I’m going to review his site again. With that in mind, here’s the preliminary review.

Style:
In a general sense, the style of the site isn’t bad. This is a site who’s purpose is to sell design services though, so it needs to be held to a higher standard. In execution, this site falls short of that higher standard. I’ll start with the basics.

The background image is a repeating square pattern. Now I really like repeating pattern backgrounds, but this one doesn’t work in the context it’s being used. It’s distracting, and makes text difficult to read. Most of the text on this site needs to be put on a solid color background in a color that contrasts. That doesn’t mean it has to be black text on a white background, but that is a good example.

Graphic elements fall short of the standard I’d set for a design site as well. In his portfolio section Mr. Mack shows the talent at Flash and PhotoShop that should be visible here, but isn’t. This site is a portfolio and should reflect that.

Undefined links are a pet peeve of mine. Link styles on this site are left undefined. This leaves color and style of links left up to the default settings of the browser. This is an aspect of style that can greatly affect the style and appearance of a site. It needs to be defined.

Structure:
This is mostly an HTML based site with a table layout. It uses no CSS. Load time is reasonable with 12.76 seconds on DSL or 41.65 seconds on 56K modem.

Navigation is an issue here. It has both top and bottom navigation. The only bottom navigation I can see using is to repeat the top navigation if the normal page length is quite long. Someone who comes to the site isn’t necessarily going to see the bottom navigation. They cold potentially miss an important link because they don’t realize there is a lower navigation bar.

Content:
Mr. mack’s content is a mixed bag. Design related pages have good content which is a plus on this sort of site. He explains what he can do in a clear and concise manner. He also has some news related content which I think is inappropriate for a design site. It is dynamic content which will attract search engines and traffic, but it’s not the kind of traffic he wants. It’s very unlikely to bring in business.

What needs to be changed:
The number one thing that needs to be changed is Mr. Macks perspective of his site. This site is a portfolio. Keep the design related content, maybe even add to it. Remove the extraneous content. This isn’t where I’m going to go for news about Lindsay Lohan, so don’t offer it.

Put the main content on a solid background. Make the text a nicely contrasting color. Make sure that the link color and styles are defined in a way that compliments your site. Do not leave link styles undefined.

Add graphic elements. This is your place to shine. They don’t need to be complex, they can be subtle, but they must be there. Quality design is in the details.

Do a validation check your site. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it should be very close.

Seriously consider changing it to a CSS based site. Table layout and FONT tags work, but they send the message that you’re a little behind the times. I’d use an external CSS file so that the site has a tightly unified style. Having only one CSS file would also seriously improve your ability to make global design changes.

A little flash wouldn’t hurt either, but I’d keep it to a minimum. Clients should know that it’s an option.

Clean up the navigation. There should be a logical sequence of pages. I should be able to find where I want to go from the first page. That doesn’t mean everything needs to be accessible from there, but that I should be able to move in the right direction from the first click. Click and pray navigation is a big no-no. Yours isn’t that bad, but it needs to be better.

To sum up this site in one word: underachiever. It has potential, but it isn’t living up to it. It has content that should work, but lack of focus is keeping it from serving it’s purpose. It’s functional and utilitarian where elegance is called for. Mr. Mack can do better, and this is the time and place to see it.

lgf: LGF Wins Two Categories in Warblogger Awards

“Best Designed Blog” and “Best Blog Overall.”

I’m glad to see that Little Green Footballs won best designed blog at the Warblogger Awards. It’s well deserved, it is a very well done site. A nice, clean three column layout which still has plenty of content space. A lot of three column layouts crowd the content, but lgf has struck a very nice balance.

I’m not going to take the time for a full review of Tom DeLay.com, it’s just not worth my time, but I thought I’d point out a couple of problems.

Problem 1 – Boring!
The site has very little visual interest. The only graphic element in the design is a poorly done header image containing a picture of Tom DeLay. Yawn. If you don’t want to take the time to do something interesting, stick with a default template of some kind. Then at least we’ll know you don’t care.

Problem 2 – Comments
What I found objectionable about the comments is that there isn’t a single blogger’s URL showing anywhere. The only way to find out if the commenter is a blogger is to click on their name and go to a second page on the site which tells you if they left a URL. Annoying, and a little misleading. Showing a blogger’s URL is a simple way of putting the comments in the context of their other writing. By putting them one step away from the comments, you are removing this context.

In my experience, bloggers make up a significant percentage of commenters. Here though, I only managed to find two bloggers, William Teach and Becky, who left their URLs. It seems unlikely that all these are all people without blogs. Something odd is going on there. Either they’re being filtered (a note at the bottom of the comment page suggested this might be the case) or there is something odd about the way the site is functioning that is filtering out most of the URLs. Either way, the comments do not appear to be working as they should.

Problem 3 – Links
Far and away the biggest problem I see is the links in the content section of the blog. They’re hidden. Even in the small image I’ve placed above, the links should be at least partially visible. Sure you couldn’t read the text at that size, but the links should be bold, or italic, or colored. Anything to make them stand out from the regular text. They don’t stand out though. The text style of links is identical to the rest of the text unless you hover your mouse over a link. The image above contains three links in those first few paragraphs, but you’d have to hunt to find them.

The content links also have a flaw that’s a pet peeve of mine. Links are regular weight when there is no mouse over, but bold weight when hovered over. This causes the text to move whenever a link is “found”. Scroll your mouse down the page and each link passed over will make the text move. You might want to take Dramamine before you try that.

Summary:
This is a poorly designed site with little visual interest. The comment section is of questionable value, with commenter’s URLs placed one step away or missing. The link styles are horribly done. They are difficult to find inline and cause the text to shift in an annoying way when found. Everyone should strive to set an example. Unfortunately, TomDeLay.com is striving to be a bad example.

h/t to Raising Farrahzona » A Blog Roll I Will Never Be On for pointing out the site. I’d heard it existed, but hadn’t seen it yet.

Everyone needs a good calendar, and The Year in Pictures by JL Bussey should be a great calendar. I don’t know what pictures Jan chose for it, but I find it hard to believe she’d choose anything I didn’t love.

Update:
Jan e-mailed me a direct link to previews of the calendar photos. Apparently I missed the link on the calendar page

There are almost as many reasons to quit blogging as there are to start, but I’ve noticed a trend. A significant number of people seem to quit blogging because of the time and effort that it takes. A perfectly valid reason. Blogging can be time consuming, and a lot of the time consuming parts aren’t very much fun. Consider how much time do you waste on spam comments and trackbacks for instance. How the annoying little details of links and quotes and making your post look like you want? What’s the solution? Here’s a short list of things that I use to make things go a little smoother.

• Hands free design – Choose a blog theme that is well thought out and low maintenance. You’re there to blog, not fix the site
• Install Spam Karma or some other quality spam protection. You shouldn’t have to fight with that junk.
• Firefox and Sage – Any good feed reader will work, but this is my choice. Allows for more reading in less time
• Performancing – A blogging tool that allows you to view a page, blog it, and get on with your life. I prefer the blog to draft option, which doesn’t post to the web, but saves as a draft that I can edit and post later.
• WordPress – Any good blogging software will do, but choosing one that doesn’t work for you makes things much more difficult than they have to be. Try a few, you’ll notice the difference.
• Dedicated e-mail account – Get an e-mail account just for your blog. Don’t give it out indiscriminately. When you don’t want to think about your blog, don’t check it.
• Blog about what you like. Having fun is the key to lasting as a blogger.

That should give you at least a start on streamline your blogging workflow. Sure it takes a few minutes to make some of those changes, but each one can save you time in the future. Then the time you devote to your blog can be spent… blogging.

In the news, a British citizen’s ” phone was bugged by US intelligence agencies… …without the permission of the British secret intelligence services.

Authoritative leaks say the extraordinary revelations will be published this week by Lord Stevens and is bound to raise fresh questions…

In the era of the Patriot Act, this shouldn’t come as a big surprise. Our government has been caught yet again spying on someone inappropriately. Yet another black mark on the civil rights record of George W. Bush… Except of course, this wasn’t during his Presidency. Apparently President Clinton’s administration played fast and loose with the rules too. I can hear the cries of moral outrage from here. People taking to the streets to protest the Clinton administration’s treatment of Princess Diana… Sorry, my mistake, those were crickets outside my window.

National flags of the World… with clients corrections.