Contrary to what you might think, I haven’t stopped blogging or anything. It’s just been busy around the office, and around the house. Here are a few things I’ve seen this week that I thought were worth passing on.

• Declutter Your Desk, DIY-Style – I’ve been meaning to do something similar at home. Their idea is better than mine.
• Adobe Photoshop Killer Tips » Digital Nose Job – Not that I need one, but it’s a neat PhotoShop trick.
• Graphic design education is failing students – h/t Noisy Decent Graphics
• CascadeExposures: Bursting in Slow Motion – Makes me think of spring in the Cascades
• Seth’s Blog: Name tags – With me, it’s buttons, the pin on your lapel kind. I hate wearing them, but for some reason designing them is fascinating.

I finally found a Women’s to Men’s language translation: What Women’ Words Really Mean.

1. FINE: This is the word women use to end an argument when they are right, and you need to shut up.

You’ll have to click on the link to read the rest.

Planet PhotoShop has a great tutorial today on making an image appear as if it’s on a textured surface. They use a brick wall on their tutorial, but most textured surfaces would work. I’ve used the individual techniques they employ before, but I’ve never seen this done quite this way before. They put the whole process, and the tutorial, together flawlessly.

It’s time again for the Monday edition of Open House. As usual, comments and trackbacks are open. If your site doesn’t support trackbacks, use the Wizbang Standalone Trackback Pinger.

I’ll repeat (yet again) the request for the last couple Open House editions: I’d really like to feature artists of various sorts on these posts, so if you are an artist or a designer, send me a trackback.

Here’s a little humor to start off your day. Boing Boing: Beer-catapaulting fridge conserves beer-fetching calories

Have you ever gotten up off the couch to get a beer for the umpteenth time and thought, “What if instead of ME going to get the BEER, the BEER came to ME???”

I don’t drink, but I can always appreciate a good labor saving device.

Michelle Malkinis posting about the Gathering of Eagles. It’s well worth reading. Here’s a few choice words from their Mission Statement.

1. Gathering of Eagles is non-partisan. While each member has his or her own political beliefs, our common love and respect for America and her heroes is what brings us together.

2. We are a non-violent, non-confrontational group. We look to defend, not attack. Our focus is guarding our memorials and their grounds.

3. We believe that the war memorials are sacred ground; as such, we will not allow them to be desecrated, used as props for political statements, or treated with anything less than the solemn and heartfelt respect they–and the heroes they honor–deserve.

9. We will accept nothing less than total, unqualified victory in the current conflict. Surrender is not an option, nor is defeat.

Sacred ground. In our society it’s rare that anything is considered sacred. It’s even rarer that someone acts upon this. I wish them well.

Trackposted to Perri Nelson’s Website, A Blog For All, stikNstein… has no mercy, basil’s blog, Pirate’s Cove, Blue Star Chronicles, The Amboy Times, Conservative Cat, and Pursuing Holiness, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

It’s been a rough week, I’ve been knee deep in a major site redesign (not this site). I’ve been replacing some very old online forms with better designed and functioning versions incorporating PHP. Within my area of knowledge I do OK with PHP, but when I have to stretch my limits, it makes my head feel like it’s going to explode. It’s a great resource, but definitely not intuitive for me.

Sorry blogging has been light. I spend so much time working in front of a computer, that when I’ve actually had time to blog, it’s been difficult to focus. The last thing I want to do is spend more time at a computer.

I feel the need for a couple more Design Review posts… Any suggestions on sites to review? The good, the bad, the ugly, the dear god what happened here? If you’d like to see something reviewed, let me know. No promises, but I’ll take any suggestions into consideration.

Without further ado, here’s the Thursday edition of Open House. As usual, comments and trackbacks are open. If your site doesn’t support trackbacks, use the Wizbang Standalone Trackback Pinger.

I’ll repeat the request for the last edition: I’d really like to feature artists of various sorts on these posts, so if you are an artist or a designer, send me a trackback. I did get two artist trackbacks on the last edition, but we can do better.

Since I don’t have any inspiration of my own today, I’ll steal someone else’s:
10 (+5) Requisites for Professional Bloggers

I realize that I haven’t posted anything for a few days, but I just don’t have anything useful to say. You could I suppose, argue that I never have anything useful to say, but that would just be rude. I could I suppose bore you with the details of my current project, but that’s even boring me. Rather than be subjected to that design minutia, why don’t you stop at a few of my current favorite sites and see if they have anything interesting going on.

• CascadeExposures
• ConverStations: Business Blogs as Conversation Stations
• Day by Day
• Jarrett Fuller | Blog
• OUTDOOR-EXPOSURE
• Adobe Photoshop Killer Tips
• Seth’s Blog

And another Monday Open House rolls around. I wasn’t ready yet. A nice three day weekend would have been nice about now… I know, it is a holiday, and yet here I am in the office. Why is it that time sensitive projects always seem to fall around holidays?

My original interest in the Monday and Thursday Open House posts was to try to promote links between design and other associated blogs. Hasn’t really worked out that way. A little promotion seems to be in order.

If you have a graphic design, web design, photography, or some other related blog, I’d like you to trackback to this post. It may be just me, but it seems that designers are the least likely of any bloggers to link to other designers. Afraid of competition? Come on designers, let’s here what you’re writing about. As usual, comments and trackbacks are open. If your site doesn’t support trackbacks, use the Wizbang Standalone Trackback Pinger.

Spelling challenged today. Sorry for the errors if you read it before they were fixed.

A little burned out this week. Just too many irons in the fire at the moment.  Several projects are scheduled to be wrapped up by early next week, so hopefully I’ll have more time for blogging in the weeks to come. I won’t hold my breathe.

It’s Open House time again. Usual rules apply, comments are open, trackbacks are open, and keep it clean. This isn’t exactly a family focused blog, but I’d like my grandmother to be able to read it without embarrassment… Who am I kidding, my grandmother knows more dirty jokes than anyone I know. Change that to, I’d like my mother-in-law to be able to read this without embarrassment.

I noticed an incoming link from Jarrett Fuller’s blog a few days ago. Jarrett, your welcome. Your blog deserved to be on the list, I was happy to include it.

With no further ado, here’s the Thursday edition of Open House.

I’m a fan of American Chopper so I went to take a look at the Orange County Choppers website. Fairly impressive design, and very appropriate for the company, but I see some things worthy of a review, so here it is.

Style:
Love the style. A dark, red and black design, it has the look and feel of some of their best bike designs. It’s a first class design, and I give them high points on style.

I particularly like how they’ve integrated bike images thoughout the design. Even if it’s subtle shots of custom painted tanks, or a little chrome, much of the imagery used in the site is images of the bikes they produce.

Nothing is left undesigned. Every detail seems to be designed to fit an extremely unified theme.

A little whimsy is always good. Photos of Paul Sr. and Paulie are very serious, but they throw in humorous photos of Mikey to break it up.

Structure:
It’s a fairly straight forward CSS layout. Should be reliably represented in the most recent versions of all major browsers. I was surprised to see that the CSS is embedded rather than linked. This would make in necessary to change each page to make global updates to the CSS. This seems like a mistake to me, but there may be a technical reason.

Load time is fairly reasonable at 25.25 seconds on DSL or 75.19 seconds on 56K modem. With all of the images they use, I’m surprised at how low this is.

The CSS in general is reasonable, but it could be done better. I see a lot of Class selectors in links for instance. This could be done in a more elegant fashion by defining different link styles for the different ID selectors being used to control the site layout. I wouldn’t rule out the use of Class selectors on links entirely, but I’d think I could get rid of most if not all of them.

There are places in the site where ID selectors are used multiple time in a page. This is an error, and the sort of thing that’s just not acceptable. Some minor changes to the CSS and it’s use in the site structure would eliminate this problem.

While the design is quite superior, the execution of the details of the site lack a little something. A lot of images lack Alt codes for instance, and a number of scripts types are left undefined. With the attention to detail in the design, the lack of follow through on the execution of the design surprises me. It may be that the site has been edited and added to by someone other than the designer since it was created. This would account for the attention to detail in some aspects, and the lack of attention in others.

One minor little annoyance that I saw was a nice little video that plays when you arrive at the home page. Annoying, not because I didn’t like it, but because even on my large monitor, it was below the fold. I heard the video playing, but couldn’t see anything until I went looking for it. Though it appeared to be an ad, it’s still poor placement choice. Anything auto-playing needs to be above the fold. The alternative I suppose, would be to keep it from auto-playing.

Content:
Bikes, bikes, bikes… and of course bike merchandise. Fantastic photos, good graphics, decent written content. There are also some very nice bike sale brochures available in PDF format. High marks to the graphic design who does their print design work. While I liked the PDF brochures, the ability to look at larger images of the sale bikes without downloading the PDFs would have been nice. High marks for content on the whole.

What I would change:
I’d change very little over all. The style is very well done, and I’d shy away from any changes there. Instead, I’d improve the execution of the existing design. Adding Alt tags to all images would improve the ability to search, and adding script types to scripts should improve their reliability across browsers and platforms.

I’d also make an effort to clean up the CSS as well as linking the pages to a remote CSS rather than embedding it. This would make global style changes to the site much easier. Updating the CSS to make better use of the ID and Class selects would also make updates easier.

Summary:
A very nicely designed site, that could use a little polish behind the scenes. Quality web design deserves quality execution of the design.

Trackposted to Perri Nelson’s Website, The Random Yak, Faultline USA, basil’s blog, Blue Star Chronicles, Stuck On Stupid, The Pink Flamingo, The Amboy Times, Cao’s Blog, Dumb Ox Daily News, Conservative Cat, Random Dream, and Pursuing Holiness, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

I’ve held New Orleans in contempt since they started confiscating weapons rather than trying to stop looters, but apparently it’s now legal.

Better late than never, here’s the Monday edition of this site’s Open House. As usual, trackbacks and comments are open. let me know what you’re writing about, or thinking about. Keep it clean is really the only rule.

Seth Godin has brilliant post on his blog.

I define “sheepwalking” as the outcome of hiring people who have been raised to be obedient and giving them a braindead job and enough fear to keep them in line.

Sheepwalking seems to be the way of design world at the moment. I’m seeing this trend in both graphic design and web design. I see it in job listings and descriptions all the time. Someone who knows little of design wants to hire a designer. Do they want someone who is good? No! They wants someone to fill a seat. To plug ad copy A into design template B. The prospective employer may be brilliant at their job, but they’re shooting themselves in the foot. They’re going to get one of two things. A good designer who will be annoyed by the micromanaging and eventually leave for a job where they are allowed to actually design, or more likely someone who isn’t a designer but knows some of the software. Neither of these options is good. If you need design work done, hire a designer!

If you want control of every aspect of the design… do it yourself!

Trackposted to Blue Star Chronicles, Perri Nelson’s Website, Mark My Words, Faultline USA, third world county, Dumb Ox Daily News, stikNstein… has no mercy, basil’s blog, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

I read the book Night by Elie Wiesel a few months ago. Quite powerful. The author has apparently been attacked by a Holocaust denier. Mr. Wiesel is apparently OK.

This story—about the beating of Elie Wiesel by a Holocaust denier—is horrifying in itself. A 81 year old Holocaust survivor beaten by a moronic Holocaust denier. – AMERICAN FUTURE

It’s been a rough week. I’ve been doing a fair amount of web design. I’m working on a design change for a client with a fairly large site. A little over a thousand pages of static HTML. Fortunately I’ve convinced them to add some dynamic elements to the upgrade. The PHP I’m helping put in will keep me from doing quite so much update work in the future, and cuts down on the total number of pages. A bit of a headache right now, a lot of old and conveluted code that just doesn’t want to be updated.  It’s going to be nice when it’s done, but that’s a little hard to see some days.

In contrast, my graphic design work is going fairly smoothly. I have one very nice four color design, and several one color designs in various stages of production, and I’m pleased with how all of them are coming out.

All in all, I’ve gotten an unusual amount of free rein from clients lately.  I figure it’s not going to last, but I’m enjoying it while I can.

I was going to stay out of the Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan discussion, but this is one of the stupidest public statements I’ve ever heard. I just couldn’t pass it up.

“they have both assured me that it was never their intention to malign anyone’s faith, and I take them at their word.”
- John Edwards ’08 Blog

“I take them at their word.” Does that now mean something different than it used to? If you take them at what they blog about, then it seems obvious then Ms. Marcotte at least, clearly meant to malign someone’s faith.

Don’t get me wrong, I can understand hiring them, even keeping them, though I wouldn’t have done either. What the Edwards campaign seems to be ignoring though, is that these bloggers, like the rest of us, have spent a lot of time and effort defining themselves on their blogs. To read their blogs is to know who they are. Suggesting that they are somehow something different than that, is doing us a disservice. Hire them, fire them, or keep them, I don’t care. Just don’t lie to yourself or to us about who they are.

h/t Hot Air and Patterico’s Pontifications.

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, The Virtuous Republic, Perri Nelson’s Website, A Blog For All, The Random Yak, Big Dog’s Weblog, basil’s blog, Shadowscope, Stuck On Stupid, Cao’s Blog, The Bullwinkle Blog, Jo’s Cafe, Conservative Cat, Conservative Thoughts, third world county, Faultline USA, stikNstein… has no mercy, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Dumb Ox Daily News, Right Voices, and Gone Hollywood, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

I stumbled upon something interesting today. In the visual editing mode in WordPress, there’s another formatting toolbar that you can toggle off and on. It allows you to use headings, underline, remove formatting, and more.

Be Lambic or Green has the full details, and I don’t want to steal their thunder, so go and check it out. Don’t forget to come right back.

Trackposted to The Virtuous Republic, Perri Nelson’s Website, A Blog For All, The Random Yak, Big Dog’s Weblog, stikNstein… has no mercy, basil’s blog, Shadowscope, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Dumb Ox Daily News, Conservative Cat, Right Voices, and Conservative Thoughts, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Today’s quotes come from John Adams, second President of the United States.

In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress.

No man who ever held the office of president would congratulate a friend on obtaining it.

It may be just me, but the level of political speaking has gone down since the arrival of the “sound bite”. US Presidents used to say things like this, now we have discussions about the definition of “is” and how do pronounce “nuclear”. In an era where anything they say can and will appear instantly around the world, politicians try to please everyone rather than say what they think. Nothing leads to a mediocre speech faster than trying to please everyone.