Return Key Photo by Guillermo Esteves

It has been about 5 months since I last posted on this blog, and boy do I have some catching up to do!

Where should I start? Ah, how about with why exactly you might have visited the blog and found a big alert that said it was down because my host was being an idiot. Well, that’s a long story, but in short, my web hosting shut off my entire domain because my blog was using too many resources. Which, wouldn’t have been as big of a problem if they’d:

a) Alerted me first.
b) Not locked me out of my own files.
c) Not also shut down my main site on the primary domain which I use for business.
d) Not plastered some ‘this user is in violation’ message up on my domain to make me sound like some sort of criminal.

So… obviously I pitched a royal fit, but it still took quite a long time to get my file access back. Now, here’s the real catch – under normal circumstances I’d suggest to any of my clients a very easy fix: change web hosts. Well, unfortunately I can’t do that yet.

As it would seem, my webhost has arranged things in such a manner that my domain name is being held hostage. Now this is when I get a bit embarrassed, since I am someone who works in this business and it’s just a matter of having been an idiot early on. When I registered this domain.. I suppose close to 5 years ago, I just registered it with a package deal. Found a little webhost with unlimited bandwidth allowed, and decided to go with it. Got the domain and hosting at the same time.

Well, I didn’t plan ahead, and didn’t find out what I needed to first. As it would turn out, they used another company to register my domain name, and that company won’t respond to any of my inquiries. I’d like to transfer the domain name to my GoDaddy account (where I keep most of my personal domains), but they have the domain locked for transfer – go figure. So… I’ve been trying to get in touch with these guys for months to get them to unlock my domain name. No joy so far – not even a response.

So that’s one of the reasons I’ve been gone.

The rest of them are personal. Here’s a quickie list:

1. I’ve been writing articles on here for nearly 5 years and decided I needed a vacation when all that domain nonsense started.

2. I started homeschooling both my kids and needed to focus on finding the right methods that would work with each. (It’s going GREAT by the way.)

3. Business has been pretty busy on the web development side.

4. Started a new company in September and starting another in November.

5. I’ve been having a torrid affair with jQuery, and will give you all the dirty bits later.

6. I’ve been attempting to educate myself more on SEO, which has actually been less complicated than I imagined.

7. Started a personal blog just to see if I can maintain one (I’ve never been good at keeping personal journal things up to date, and I’m not doing great at this either).

8. …. and all the rest of everything.

In any case, I’m back here, and boy oh boy do I have a TON of articles stored up in my head. It’s gonna be a fun holiday season for articles.

Until next time!

~Nicole

The short answer is simple: I didn’t feel like calling it that.

The long version is a bit more intricate, and includes a somewhat eccentric fixation on coffee.

NOTE: If you’re not in the mood for a slightly musing and off-topic post, I suggest you stop now and read another article on the blog.

I had my first cup of coffee when I was about 6 years old – it was a latte, with more milk than anything else and plenty of sugar – pretty much the same as drinking a coffee flavored milk instead of chocolate milk. But in spite of the fact that there was very little coffee in it, I loved the unique taste instantly, and began asking for that more regularly. Of course, as time went on I started to make my own with a decreasing amount of milk as the years past.

Counting back years based on how I made my coffee is starting to sound a bit like T.S. Eliot when he said:

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

But that’s only the background on my initial love for coffee, because years later it would mesh in perfect harmony with my love for technology. When I got into technology as a hobby and then a career, it was most certainly acceptable (perhaps even expected) for me to be a caffeine junkie (whether coffee or soda).

Back somewhere around late high school and early college… with late nights, lots of studying and hanging out with friends, drinking coffee became (for my so-called ‘yuppie-tech generation’) a combination of personal like, a need to stay awake until I chose to go to sleep, and also a social activity. My friends and I didn’t go to bars or clubs – we went to coffee houses. We spent hours pouring over ideas, thoughts, and random other things while enjoying an endless cup of coffee.

After years of that practice, I started to relish the habit of sitting down with a cup of coffee and thinking. It’s almost a meditiative thing in many ways. When you have developed a extremely strong tolerance to coffee, it’s not necessarily just about drinking coffee because your body won’t function without it (although that’s part of it). There is another aspect, for someone who truly enjoys something, to turn it into a very contemplative act. Whether it’s the ritual of drinking coffee at a quiet table in the morning, or something else, it can be a time to think while you engage in something you enjoy.

That is what comes when you move beyond the caffeine, when you aren’t drinking something, but are actually taking part in a ritualistic behavior that allows you to relax and let your mind work.

One of the founding fathers of realism, Honore de Balzac, once said:

When we drink coffee, ideas march in like the army.

I cannot agree more. I’ve had some of my most interesting and inspiring technology business ideas while sitting on my back porch, relaxed and sipping on a cup of coffee.

It doesn’t have to be coffee for all people, and I’m not suggesting to others that they develop an addiction to coffee so that they can ‘gain clarity of thought’ or whatnot. I’m simply saying that the idea of creating some simple, monotonous ritual, something that takes no actual thought but that you enjoy, can provide a period of ‘clear’ time for you. When your mind can wander while you do something pleasant, and perhaps… you’ll have some inspiration.

I think that balanced, relaxed, and contemplative few minutes is essential to staying sane in the midst of a world that is focused on time and how quickly something can be done. I believe that it’s a good practice and a pleasant task to set for yourself. You know, Bertrand Russell said once…

To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.

Perhaps I named it Beyond Caffeine because maintaining that ‘level’ is what I’m aiming for.

If you’d like to see some of the beautiful meditative coffee photos that I’ve added to my SXU lightbox, feel free to take a look – you’ll be seeing them on here soon anyway

~Nicole

(Apparently it was removed for a period of time pending photo permission from some people in the video. You can find the links on the TechCrunch site if you want to know more.)

I love this video.

I was in tech through the first bubble, through the massive market down-swing (pseudo crash) after 911, and I think I have a pretty good grasp as to what being in tech really means. It really takes a certain kind of person to persist in the tech industry.

Tech is like living on the edge of a cliff. You get to experience all sorts of really cool things, you get to create those cool things!, but when the ground rumbles, you have a good chance of toppling right off the edge of that cliff. People who belong in tech are okay with that. Maybe not ‘happy’ about it, but it’s a reasonable risk for the return you get.

To wax metaphoric for a bit…

Being in tech is like driving a super hot, fully loaded, sports car to the red line. It’s a great ride, it’s fun, exciting, nerve-wracking, downright annoying, sometimes vicious, and generally entertaining… but at the end of the day, the car will eventually run out of gas. And then, there you are… toting your empty gas can, looking pitiful, being angry at yourself, as you stomp backwards a few miles to the last gas station that you saw. (Of course the catch is that usually it also happens that you have no cash in your pocket and have to work at the gas station to refill your tank, but that’s just part of the game.)

Eventually, if you’re persistent, you will get back to the car and be able to keep driving.

It makes me crazy when I hear from some of these kids (sorry guys, but you’re young) who are so utterly convinced that they are going to have a life-long stable career in the tech industry. That its going to provide them benefits for life. It makes me shudder to hear the words ‘stable field’ and ‘tech’ in the same sentence. The only thing stable about the tech field is that it’s unstable.

I blame the colleges honestly. I’ve been to them. I know professors, have listened to their lectures, and I think that they are part of the reason these kids are leaving college thinking that tech is stable. Most of those professors worked in tech when working in tech meant maintaining mainframes, doing hardware support, and building huge applications that were for their business. The meaning of ‘tech’ has evolved away from that. I can’t honestly think of a single person I know who has graduated in the last few years and writes down ‘maintain mainframes and provide great tech support’ as their life career goal.

Not to say that there is anything wrong with that sort of work. But it falls more in the realm of ‘general hardware and technical support’ than ‘tech’ nowadays. Unfortunately, there is a huge difference between the kind of stability found in jobs like that 20 years ago, and the inherent lack of stability found in modern tech. I don’t think alot of people coming out of school are aware of it. There will be many more bubbles. They happen periodically… its sort of the market way of hitting the reset button. It’s normal. Alot of these new people won’t make it through the first bubble they hit.

But how you cope with a bubble in tech, and whether or not you go back into tech, really defines whether or not it is for you. I don’t believe anyone can say with certainty that they love this field until they have gone through one. It’s one of those rare fields where you can go from making hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, to making zero – overnight. Of course that zero rapidly falls into the negative if you have bills (which you certainly do), and when the tech bust is happening and you go into the negative… what do you do? Probably what most of everyone who lived through the first tech burst did – go out and get a ‘real job’ that you despise, groaning about getting paid $8.00/hr, and keep it for a while. And wait.

Patience is important in tech. You can ‘feel’ when the anger and frustration starts to fade. You can ‘sense’ when the time is right again. You’ll get ‘a hunch’ that people are ready. Then it’s time to jump back in the seat, and start accelerating back up to that red line.

There will surely be another bubble. There will certainly be many people who leave tech because of it. But as long as you look at that bubble as a certainty, rather than an off chance – you won’t be as shocked that it happens… because you’re only waiting to see what day it will happen on.

In the end of it, it’s worth it all. Being in tech is one hell of a fun ride.

~Nicole

Bleh. Apparently (at least as determined by a ridiculously ad-filled IQ test late yesterday) I’ve lost brain cells over the years. I could probably just say it was a bad day, a bad test, but I don’t doubt that I had gotten less intelligent over the years. I’m old.

Of course, instead of blaming it on getting old, I could blame it on having kids and being the only brain cell donor in the relationship. Who knows.

Either way, its dropped quite a bit over the years. Depressing. I feel like I need to start taking Ginko and picking up some of those brain exercise toys.

Sheesh. And I’m about to have another birthday on the 24th. In the tech world, I’m starting to become ancient.

~Nicole

Of course, the problem with that is that I do great designs for my clients and I realize that I’m not showcasing my abilities on my own business site. My current site doesn’t exactly tell a potential client that I am quite skilled with graphics, nor does it scream that I am decent with creating enhancements on a site with Javascript and DOM in a nice accessible way. It doesn’t even yell out loud that I’m strong with CMS and blogging software, nor does it give a great indication of my ability to use PHP since I never bothered to take my main site code out of SSI. This is what procrastination causes. Anyway, point being – I am trying to put together a nice ‘portfolio’ site. Something that I actually really put some effort in and use all of my skills in some way.

So I had been talking to a artist who was going to take an outside point of view on my site and try to help me conceive an idea for it and design it for me. Well, a few weeks later and that plan has changed. Unfortunately, my artist and myself haven’t been able to find a ‘meet in the middle’ point. My design preference is very minimal, where she is the kind of artist who wants to cover any white space because its ‘being wasted.’ So… it just wasn’t going to work to have her conceive of a design that I could use.

We did, however, realize quickly that she’s great at coming up with unique ideas for -other- designs, just not for my site. So we’ll implement some of those in the future. However, in all that creativity she had, I still was lacking a good design. So, I did the only thing I could do – I cracked open my Adobe Photoshop CS3 and started tinkering with ideas. And tinkering. And scrapping. And tinkering, and tossing. But then! Suddenly, I had the beginnings of an idea.

I knew already that I wanted my colors to stay at least similar to what they were already. In an ideal world, I would keep the exact colors and just use them in different ratios. When you change a site design entirely, it’s rather important for the site to still have some elements that are recognizable so your viewers don’t think they mistyped the url. With that said, I just also didn’t want to suddenly take my rich earthy toned website and make it look like a cotton-candy explosion.

My current color scheme involves the use of a deep burgundy, a rich chocolate color, some soft beige, a little white, and hints of gray. My design now uses the white the most, but right after that is burgundy, beige, then the chocolate and gray. I wasn’t terribly happy with that proportion, because I like the richness of the browns and really wanted to work with them more. I used one particular brown color for my skiplink menu at the top and really love it – so I decided I wanted to try with that color as a background.

Another thing I have been thinking about is my title font and little flower image in my current design.

To put it simply – I hate them. I have for a while, but I’ve just been too busy (or maybe too uninspired?) to change it.

I decided that since I hate them so much, I would focus on creating a title and flower design that I really loved. It took me a while to work that out, but I finally nailed the font I loved in Trajan Pro. It’s exactly what I was looking for in a traditional style print. So I’m going along, tinkering with brushes, and I used this great flower brush that really fit what I was going for and took the scale completely to another level from the old little ugly flower.

So I played with the title and flower, and played some more. Suddenly I realized what I was doing. I was having a design ‘moment’ and really creating what I like personally. I decorate at home in heavy traditional styles. Not modern traditional, but traditional as in antique, heavy, inlaid, carved (preferably all of the above) sort of furniture. I like dark, rich colors, with a heavy impact. This new design is definitely heavy. But you know what? It’s perfect for me for it to look like that. It is a personal site and if it’s going to reflect who I am, then it needs to be a heavy design because I’m just not a light and airy person. So… I decided to step out of my minimalism hat for a bit and went for the rich and dark sort of look.

If you want a sneak peek, here’s a look at that header, flower, and rectangle loving design remixed:

Before anyone starts thinking.. ew.. ‘I hate dark designs!’ let me say first that I don’t. I love dark designs. It’s also my website, and I want it to reflect what I like. However! Since I am going to use this as a showcase of what I can do, I will be adding in an alternate (at least one) switchable style that is completely and totally different – when I figure it out, that is. I am thinking, currently, of a chocolate, white, and pink deconstructed sort of look, but I’m not entirely certain what the alternative style will end up being. The only thing I do know is that the alternative style will be as light as this design is dark.

I had some great success working on this design today. I’m not going to be implementing it tomorrow. I probably won’t even implement it this next month. The design needs finishing, a few details, and then… I’m going to re-write some content, re-organize some of the pages and how they are laid out, and then I have to take it from being a rather complex Photoshop design to a completely flexible website design. Once it’s actually coded – then I can start creating some enhancement effects with Javascript and toying around with adding nifty features.

So.. it’s been productive. I am glad I decided to attempt getting outside input on it, but in the end, I finally ended up figuring out what I wanted and deciding to simply design for me.

~Nicole

I didn’t like Vista, on so many levels, before I started using it. Now I just plain hate it. I disliked it for the DRM junk loaded inside it. I really didn’t care for the visual changes made to every menu system and folder in the operating system because nothing seems to be done with any sort of user logic in mind and I can’t find anything (took me about 15 minutes before I was fed up with the UI and started turning on the options to revert to the old layout).

But… all those things aside, I hadn’t quite ‘hated’ Vista yet. That changed today.

Vista apparently doesn’t like my MultipleIE’s testing environment. So I can’t immediately start testing in IE6 and lower until I do a workaround for this. Apparently, it is a known issue, but new to me. I also tried downloading the standalone from Evolt. No luck there either.

Of course, I start thinking about what I can do to make it work. My best solution so far seems to be to install XP as a virtual operating system via VMWare and then install MultipleIE’s there. That is a MAJOR irritation. I’m not going to dual boot XP with Vista – that’s just plain inefficient for testing situations because I’m not going to log out of Vista and log into XP and then log out and log into Linux, etc.. that’s irritating. So… for now it seems that virtualizing XP is the best option I have at the moment. Of course, I’m very very strongly considering just picking up another copy of XP for this box and dumping Vista altogether.

Now, supposedly, there is a way to make it work, but it involves using another MS product when I’d rather just use VMWare (since I use it anyway). But… I might do this just to see if it works. Some instructions were posted on the MultipleIE’s site about how to virtualize XP and install MultipleIE’s on it via the Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 software. Still, its highly irritating that I have to jump through so many hoops to use IE for testing when it is already the bane of every web developers existence.

In my personal opinion, I think Microsoft should be providing ways to run their various versions of IE simultaneously on their operating system, instead of other people around the community having to figure out ways to hack and piece together those browsers so they work.

I’m ranting, I know. But at least every quarter there is -something- that goes on with Microsoft or IE, that makes me just want to throw out all support for IE and just provide a page to all IE users that says something like:

Dear John/Jane,

I’m sorry you use IE. Truly I am. I am also very sorry that we can’t see each other anymore because you use IE. It’s not you, it’s me.

I can’t stand the fact that you use IE. It drove me to the brink of insanity and I need to drop all contact with it. You could save yourself before it is too late. Firefox, Safari, Opera… they are all trying to help you. Please, don’t be another statistic.

You can recover, but I can’t talk to you until you stop using IE. It’s not healthy for you, for me, and we just can’t have a relationship while you are still using IE. I hope you can understand, and that you’ll consider the alternatives. I’ll be around if you decide to stop using IE – you know where to find me.

With all my love,

~ This website.

I’m tempted to, I really am. So, thanks again Microsoft, for reminding me exactly why I started using Linux as my primary OS in the first place.

~Nicole

Now, here is my question to all you Google-loving lurkers on my blog:

Is there any way (plugin / method / tool / etc…) to open a document on my computer (operating system independent) by automatically uploading to my Google docs account and opening it there?

Short of that method, is there any way to sync my desktop docs with my Google docs easily?

I really prefer to keep all my docs in one place, so having some functionality to always have my docs in my Google Documents would be nice.

Please chime in if you have ideas!

~Nicole

For a while now I’ve been looking at my personal sites and thinking.. bleh. My reaction is something like ‘I’m bored with this’ or ‘There is something off in this design but I can’t tell what it is.’ So, I’m doing what any halfway sane web designer does when they can no longer get perspective on their personal sites — I’m getting another designer to do it.

I’m lucky enough to have an artist relative who can be on hand to deal with my predicament. Of course, I have to say that she is a saint, because there is nothing more difficult than designing a site for a web designer. I’m one of the most difficult to please ‘clients’ in the world, and that goes double when it’s my personal site.

One of the first discussions we had was about ‘style.’ I told her I was open to design creativity, but wanted to keep my existing site colors. In preparation for this discussion, I had spent a few hours browsing and pulled up about 10 websites for her to look at, each having a layout that I found appealing or interesting and would be open to having a variation of. She sat there, browsed through each of them, and said to me ‘These are pretty much all variations on what you already have. Are these what -not- to do?’ I nearly cried.

After much discussion (read: bickering) we decided that it would have to be a middle ground, between my love of minimalism, and her desire to cover every inch of white space with some pattern or color. I started to have the feeling it’s still going to end up being more ‘graphical’ than I would prefer.

She has been throwing me sketches over the past week. Designs she came up with that won’t work for my site but would be good for someone elses. I’ll probably turn them into working designs just for fun, but they aren’t what I’m looking for. The range has been anywhere from a Texas themed site (which I’ve wanted to do for a long while) to a site that was somehow or other themed with toilet paper and trash cans. Odd…

Anyway, I think my designer is suffering from easy distraction into her art. It happens often enough, but since she’s just giving me all the designs she does and letting me do what I want with them, I can turn her sketches into something workable for web – someone else’s web, that is.

We’ll see what happens! She’s a picky artist. I’m a picky web designer. For all I know this process of finding something I want could be a decade long.

~Nicole

I’ve been doing all sorts of lovely things this summer, but they are all keeping me quite busy.

A few things I’ve been up to…

Went to the coast and took this (as well as many other) photos:

Finished taking a class on Film and Literature. It was allright. It forced me to watch a few movies I had never seen before and consider them from the point of adapted works.

I’ve also just gotten in playing WoW (yes, I fought against it for years), and now both my daughter and I are hooked on the game.

The game seriously has a dangerous addictive quality.

They need to create support groups or something. But I’m loving it.

And finally, I’ve been working on my CSS layout book.

This is, of course, all the non-client work things that have been keeping me entertained. I also judged a CSS/WordPress contest and got to see some great new designs come about.

Today seems like it will be one of those ‘productive’ days because I’m going to go pick up my glasses (been waiting a MONTH for them to be fixed) and buy a new computer (unfortunately I can’t find what I want without Vista installed, but ah well, I’ll deal with it.) Annnnddd.. it’s around that time to take my daughter for ‘back to school’ shopping. I’m putting it off and seriously considering ordering online to avoid the crowds.

So, there you go. A relatively busy summer has kept me from writing on the blog as much as I should. It will start to pick up again soon

~Nicole