Why did you start blogging in the first place?
I’m pretty sure my first website was in 2001, but first time I started regularly posting was in 2003, when my wife and I moved to Alaska. We used it to keep our family and friends in the know with our adventures. I suppose the first time I started posting on this particular collection of bits was in 2004. I was keen to become a part of this world of design and web standards. Dean Allen had just released some early version of Textpattern, and I gave it a whirl. I figured I was, perhaps, a little late to the party, but the best way to learn about all this stuff is to do it. So, I did.

What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it?
Around 2013, I started using Kirby. I admire Kirby’s simplicity and lean middle layer. Due to the incredible amount of cruft that has accumulated through a variety of migrations over the years, along with my general lack of patience, I’m sure I do not use Kirby to its full potential. Every time I rebuild the site I try to make it lighter, simpler, and less rough around the edges. I believe I still have some work to do here.

Have you blogged on other platforms before?
Yes, of course. Prior to Kirby, this site ran on ExpressionEngine, Textpattern, and I even wrote my own terrible, hand-built nightmare of a CMS. Each time I upgraded, I learned a bit along the way.

How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that’s part of your blog?
I’m pretty sure I have Kirby’s panel installed, but I do not use it. I hand-write any posts in whatever editor is handy at the moment and then sync my posts up via SFTP.

When do you feel most inspired to write?
It’s rare these days. I became very disenchanted with publishing anything on the internet around 2016. I kinda stopped blogging, posting to Twitter or anything else really. What can I say? The internet felt a little broken to me for a while. I’m slowly creeping back, though. I post words on Mastodon and images on Pixelfed. And I podcast regularly on The Incomparable. Things are looking up! Perhaps this is a kick in the right direction to post here more. No promises, though.

Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?
I usually post right away. If it’s a big thinker of a post, I’ll have a friend read it first, but once it’s out of my brain, I like to see it live as soon as possible.

What’s your favourite post on your blog?
There are a few that come to mind:

• On Criticism encourages people to take a beat to summon up some empathy before offering their unsolicited opinions.
• Learning to Ride is about a two-sentence dialog with my daughter makes me want to cry.
• The Process of Getting Better was about a multi-year long journey of trying to get a little bit stronger. It’s hard, but worth it.

Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?
Look, I’m just trying to remember this thing exists and type on it more often than once every 10 years. I’ve redesigned it enough times to know that will not make me type more. If I redesign or rebuild it, I will look to simplify even more, but I’m not looking for a bonus hobby at the moment!

Who’s next?
Gosh, it took me long enough that most of my internet pals have done this already. Dan and I had some coffee last time I was in Boston, and we did lots of reminiscing about the old days of the web. Given the nostalgia of this post, I’ll take that as a sign to tag him in.

Five years ago we welcomed Archie into our home. This fella has been one of the biggest sources of unrelenting joy that our family has experienced. He loves attention. He'll wander up to me and boop my arm to make sure I know he's there, and I should probably be paying attention to him. Occasionally I'll have a cup of coffee in my hand, and it ends in a mess; but most times my hand will start scratching his head before I even notice what's happening.

We love this guy and it's hard to imagine life without him. I wonder how my kids will look back on this time, where Archie has occupied a large amount of each of their lifetimes, especially my youngest who is eight years old.

Here's to you little buddy and hopefully many more head scratches to come.

Amazon. There's no getting around it, Amazon's huge. They have about 30 buildings in Seattle alone. My most recent company, Tagboard, had about 30 people. Amazon is a company where it's completely impossible to ever know all of your coworkers. In my professional career I have worked at several kinds of companies: non-profit, freelance, small agency, and startup; but I've never worked at a company like this.

As I considered possibly working at Amazon, I had lots of questions: How on earth do they maintain a culture they're proud of? How does design fit in? What's it really like there?

I asked around. I learned that this massive company is made of many tiny groups, all working on lots of interesting problems. It's very easy to get an idea, and build a mini-team to test it out. Amazon embraces invention and all the failure that comes along with it. From Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos's most recent shareholder letter:

I believe we are the best place in the world to fail (we have plenty of practice!), and failure and invention are inseparable twins. To invent you have to experiment, and if you know in advance that it’s going to work, it’s not an experiment. Most large organizations embrace the idea of invention, but are not willing to suffer the string of failed experiments necessary to get there.

He also writes about company culture in the same letter:

You can write down your corporate culture, but when you do so, you’re discovering it, uncovering it – not creating it. It is created slowly over time by the people and by events – by the stories of past success and failure that become a deep part of the company lore.

They did write down their culture. Amazon has these Leadership Principles they published. They use them in everything from developing product ideas, hiring new employees, and measuring progress. It's not just some silly fodder for inspirational posters. There's some good stuff there, like "Customer Obsession", "Invent and Simplify", and "Learn and Be Curious".

The culture of leadership, ownership, and intentionality that I see clicks with me and it's very refreshing. That said, I know this is just the beginning of a journey. Day 1 is just a point on a map, and I'm excited to get moving.

Daddy, you can let go now.

But what if I'm not ready?

I let go. She rides away.

In my adult life, I've never been very athletic, and as I've gotten older that's taken its toll on me. All that changed about two years ago, when I moved to Seattle and started going to a local CrossFit gym. This was a perk of my new job, and I'm thankful for that, because I'm almost positive I wouldn't have started going otherwise.

It was extremely hard at first. I remember a few days in that first month when I just dreaded going. I was sloppy, uncoordinated, and quite sore by the end of the day. Ask my wife, she can attest to my hobbling around our house like the old guy in Up.

Despite the dread, I actually started to have fun. I found a few things I was good at, and I found lots of things that I needed to work on. One nice surprise was that because I was starting at a near-zero level of fitness, it didn't take long to see some noticeable change. Very quickly, I was able to lift more, go faster, and do better than I had when I began.

Now it's been two years, and I've lost about twenty pounds. Twenty pounds in two years? Yep. Nothing to sneeze at, but it doesn't sound like a lot of progress.

I was a little discouraged with the lack of weight loss at first, but I realized my weight was relocating to more useful areas. Fat around my waist is now muscle in my shoulders. My old clothes don't fit and I had to drill several new holes in my belt (I eventually bought a new one). People make comments about how I've changed, and I'll admit that feels good!

Also, I'm much stronger. In the past two years, I've slowly started to do more and more things that I used to think were impossible. For instance, I went from barely being able to do a single pull-up to doing thirty without stopping.

That's a fun statistic, but the big realization for me is that with this new strength, I've seen a bigger change. Earlier I mentioned that it's easy to see gains when you start at zero. And that's the fantastic thing about doing something like this. It's actually pretty easy to get better at something as long as you apply pressure in the right areas. For example, if you can't string ten pushups together, try doing pushups a few times a week. You will be doing a couple dozen in no time.

The change I've seen in myself has given me confidence and inspiration that if I want to get better at something, if I see a change that's needed, or if there's a bit of my future I want to take a hold of, I can do it. I just need to find the time to get better, add that bit of pressure in the right area, and make it happen.

This isn't over. I still have plenty of weaknesses to whittle away and I have more goals in mind. While it's important to focus on those, I sure am enjoying the process of getting better.

(P.S. Huge thanks to Dan Lao, my coach at Acuo CrossFit, for shooting these photos.)

That's one of many reasons I love going to TypeCon. And it's why I'm so honored to get to speak there this year. TypeCon is the premier conference for type designers and aficionados. Every year, TypeCon travels to a different city. Last year it was practically in my back yard, just a short train ride to Portland. This year, TypeCon is in Washington DC, July 30th–August 3rd, 2014, with Tobias Frere-Jones giving the keynote. Check out the full program to see the incredible lineup.

I'm so thankful for this opportunity. If you have the chance to hit Typecon this year, I hope to see you there. In the meantime, pardon me while I go find a paper bag to breathe into.

For this conference I'll be speaking about, you guessed it, typography as it relates to the design & development process. I'm so honored to get to present in Vancouver this year alongside some really great folks, including my Butter Label cohorts, Luke Dorny & Grant Hutchinson.

Type Camp is February 1, 2014, in Vancouver, BC. The price is a bargain, especially if you're a student, so register now. If I see you there, then you can ask me about that time I was robbed eleven years ago in Vancouver by a meth head who took my laptop and passport.

I've had a marvelous time at Onehub, and I've learned a ton working with some of the smartest people on the internet here. In addition to the creative work, Onehub's penchant for health & fitness by sending the entire team to Crossfit 3+ times a week has been nothing short of life-changing for me.

I'm tremendously excited about this new position. The feelings of anticipation, excitement, and, yes, I'll admit it, a bit of nervousness, are all palpable. The folks at Tagboard are doing awesome work, and I can't wait to be a part of it.

Friendships.

It's uncanny how important personal relationships are in the work we do. The better part of a decade ago, I bought Sean Sperte a cup of coffee at SXSW; and we've been friends ever since. It wasn't until this fall at XOXO that I again bought him some coffee and he brought up Tagboard.

I also happened to meet some of my Happy Cog and Onehub friends at conferences, and those friendships happened long before we ever talked about working together.

This is one thing that both inspires and energizes me about the work we do. The people behind the pixels, the relationships we build, the coffee we drink… It all makes this work feel more permanent and meaningful.

2014 is going to be one exciting year, I can't wait to see what it brings.

I'm back from Web Design Day 2013, and starting to slow down and unwind. It was a quick trip, but I still found some time to relax in Pittsburgh and catch up with old friends. My talk, Thinking Typographically, went very well. I've never had this kind of experience, where so many people came up to me throughout the rest of the day to chat about my presentation. If you were one of those people, then from the bottom of my heart, thank you!

I have a few more people to thank, so bear with me.

Val and Jason put on a heck of a conference. They managed every last detail while being effortlessly charming. Huge thanks to them. Brad Frost braved some gnarly Pittsburgh traffic to give me a ride from the airport, so a big thanks to him too.

And former coworkers, Chris Cashdollar and Anthony Colangelo, thank you for the therapeutic late-night chatting and for the ride to the airport the next day.

Lastly, Neil Summerour gave me a sneak peek access to his new typeface, which I used for my slides, which was also much appreciated.

If you're interested in having me come to present, please let me know.

The article is thick with Bringhurst quotes and somehow they even let me sneak a pun through the editorial process. I had a blast writing for Typekit and I hope to work with them more in the future.

Check out the article and leave a comment if you like.

• Josh Clark
• Jenn Downs
• Aaron Draplin
• Brad Frost
• Stacey Mulcahy
• Sara Wachter-Boettcher
• Jen Meyercheck
• Rob Wierzbowski
• Chris Cashdollar
• Catherine Farman
• Matt Griffin
• Pat Fulton

I'm not exaggerating when I say that seeing this list instills a mild panic throughout my bones, knowing I'll be speaking and sharing a stage with such upstanding folks. Nonetheless, I'm excited to be coming to Web Design Day. I'm also eager to see Pittsburgh. Despite living in Pennsylvania for three years, It took me moving across the country to make time for a visit.

I'm told there are just a few tickets left to Web Design Day, so if you're even remotely close to Pittsburgh at the end of October and like making things for the web, then pick up a ticket and let's hang out next month.

What Do You Carry asked me to submit a photo of what I typically carry around with me. Here it is. The setting is my office at Onehub in Pioneer Square, Seattle.

We designers can't help but have an opinion when we see change. Take a look at my own twitter history and you can see I'm not above complaining about some site's lack of use of smart quotes and apostrophes.

The reason I'm writing this, however, is that I bristle when I see people reject a new design based on a single first impression. Tweeting "Fail." or "Woah, put away the ugly stick." the moment you see something you don't like is not contributing a single thing to the conversation. Wait, strike that. It is contributing something: Negativity. That's it.

I am completely fine with people being critical of the things they see on the web. As long as they know that they're doing it from a position of safety and ignorance. You haven't spent the hours/days/weeks/months that the designers spent working on that project. You don't have the same stakeholders they have, and you certainly don't have the timeline pressures that they dealt with getting this project shipped.

No, these designers and developers stuck their neck out for this project and they shipped it. Unless you, in your endless wisdom, are able to take a single glance at the new iPhone/Flickr/etc. and say, "Yes, I know, in ten seconds or less, better than all these people do, and I can say they all made terrible decisions. And now I really need to tell the world about how impressive I am in 140 characters or less.", if you have that capacity go for it.

The rest of us, take a step back, have some humility, and go ahead and write a constructive blog post that points out some things you would do better. Go ahead, be critical, but for cryin' out loud be nice about it.

Check out the lineup, and you'll see the lineup of speakers is staggaringly more qualified than I, but I'm excited nonetheless.

Tickets go on sale today. If you have any inclination to go, pick up yours now. It sounds like they're selling at a pretty brisk pace.

This spring I had the pleasure of writing an article for .net Magazine on one of my favorite topics, web typography. The article covers several ways you can take your type on the web from good to great by sweating the details. These details include simple things such as choosing an appropriate face for a project, or more fun and complex ideas such as using modular scale and tinkering with font-feature settings.

I had a blast writing the article. It involved at least a couple weeks of getting up at dawn to make some coffee and write (much like I'm doing right now). By far the most painful part was chopping the article down to size. There were a few harrowing days when I was several hundred words over my limit.

I'll post again when the article is available on the .net website, but that may be awhile. I suggest finding a newsstand to pick it up. Look for it in the June 2013 issue. No newsstand near you? Not to worry, you can order it directly, and you can even pick it up on the iPad (how convenient!).

For Jimmy's birthday we made rocket and a moon cakes.

It's hard to believe that it's been nearly a year since we packed up our house and moved to the Northwest. In some ways, our time on the East Coast feels like a distant memory. In others it feels like we just got off that plane.

I'll never forget our last couple hours in Pennsylvania. The movers had shown up late that day. They did a passable job, but were running behind. As they would finish a room, we would swoop in to clean it right behind them. Our plane was leaving that evening, so we didn't have much time.

As the day wrapped up, I picked up the kids from school, and as I got back the movers were closing up the truck and Anna had finished cleaning. We scurried to load up the cat and the last of the bags, sped off to the airport, dropped off our luggage, returned the car, rushed through security, and found our gate. Ten minutes later we were on the plane. It was that close. I don't think Anna and I breathed a sigh of relief until we were well over the midwest.

But here we are, a year later in Seattle.

This year has been incredible. A huge reason we moved here was to have the kids grow up near their cousins and grandparents, and that has been returning rewards in bounds. We're also really enjoying the area. We love living both near the water and the mountains. It reminds me a bit of our time in Haines, Alaska.

The city has welcomed us wonderfully. The people have been kind, and just between you and me, the weather is way nicer than you've been told. We still have tons of exploring to do, but just about everything we've seen so far has been lovely.

I walk around feeling very thankful. This is home.

For years, this site ran on ExpressionEngine, a highly capable content management system. I would certainly recommend ExpressionEngine for plenty of types of projects, but for now, Kirby's a great fit for me.

Transitioning from ExpressionEngine to Kirby was an interesting process in which I learned a lot. The first and biggest task was to get all of my posts out of ExpressionEngine and into individual text files. Here's how you can do it too:

Step 1: Build a Kirby-Friendly EE Template

I'll assume that since you have an ExpressionEngine site, you're comfortable building a template to show your entries. Basically your goal with this step is to have a single page with all of your entries on it. Here's a good start:

  {exp:channel:entries channel="blog" limit="9999" sort="asc"}
  Title: {title}
  ----
  Date: {entry_date format="%F %d, %Y"}
  ----
  Slug: {url_title}
  ----
  Text: 
  {body}
  ----
  ##########
  {/exp:channel:entries}

Put nothing else in this template. No design, header, footer, nav, etc. This should be only your posts and nothing else.

Feel free to customize this to your heart's content. I certainly had to tweak mine a few times to get it just right. Make sure you keep the general format of this template, including the ##########. We will use that part with the hashes to tell our script where to separate the posts.

Once you've saved that template, visit that corresponding page in using your web browser. If you have a few hundred posts, it might take a few seconds to load, but the result should be a nice plain page of all of your posts. If you have too many posts it might not load at all. You might need to break this up into multiple pages, where you do a few hundred posts at a time. Play with it a bit and see what you can get.

Step 2: Your posts.txt file

First, go to your desktop on your computer and create a new folder. I called mine "chop-shop".

Next, you need to download that posts page to your computer. There are plenty of ways to do this, but if you're new to this kind of stuff, the safest bet is to view source and copy and paste that into a text file on your computer. The result you are aiming for is a plain text file with all the text and info about your posts. Call it what you like, but posts.txt sounds good to me.

Step 3: Your Post Chopper Script

Next we're going to get a little awesome using some code. Trust me, this won't be too painful. The first step for you is to download the Kirby Post Chopper. Unzip it and move post-chopper.php into the same folder you have your posts.txt file.

The post chopper script that you just downloaded will take your posts.txt file and turn it into a bunch of folders and files based upon a few assumptions:

• First, it looks for ########## to decide where to separate posts.
• Next, it looks for the Slug: line to decide what to name the folder, adding the post number to the beginning. (e.g. The post with Slug: mix-tape-3 became the folder named 397-mix-tape-3.)

Ready? Let's go. Open up a terminal window, navigate to your chop-shop folder (cd Desktop/chop-shop), and run this script using the following command: php post-chopper.php. Hit enter, and you'll see it go crazy creating new folders.

Once it's done, check out the results. There should be a new folder called posts, and inside is all of your posts.

Step 4: Kirby Templates

Once you have Kirby installed, you will want to create a folder for your posts. This should live in the content folder, and give it a number and a name, such as 05-blog.

Next, we are going to make three files. The first is blog.txt. It's a very simple file:

Title: Blog
----
Text: This is a nice Demo Blog. 
----

Save this in your 05-blog folder. That's right: Inside that folder is a bunch of folders for all your posts and this lonely little text file.

The other two files are going to be php templates. In your Kirby folder, open up site/templates and create two files: blog.php and blogarticle.php.

blog.php

This page serves up a list of your posts. At bare minimum, you should have something like this in there:

<?php // Outputs the contents of blog.txt in the blog posts folder ?>
  <h1><?php echo html($page->title()) ?></h1>
  <?php echo kirbytext($page->text()) ?>

<?php // The posts loop ?>
  <?php $articles = $page->children()->visible()->sortBy('date', 'desc')->paginate(10) ?>
  <?php foreach($articles as $article): ?>
  <article>
    <p class="date"><?php echo $article->date('j F Y') ?></p>
    <h1><a href="<?php echo $article->url() ?>"><?php echo $article->title() ?></a></h1>
    <?php echo kirbytext($article->text()) ?>
  </article>
<?php endforeach ?>

There are two sections to this file. The first shows the contents of that blog.txt file we created. The second section loops through the posts.

blogarticle.php

This page serves up a single post. Notice how the title of this file maps to the title of the .txt files for each of your posts? Not a coincidence.

<article>
    <p class="date"><?php echo $page->date('j F Y') ?></p>
    <h1><?php echo $page->title() ?></h1>
    <?php echo kirbytext($page->text()) ?>
</article>

You will want to get a little more creative to design these pages, adding all the extra stuff you will need to make these work, but these code blocks should help get you started.

Step 5: It's up to you

From here, it's up to you. I recommend familiarizing yourself with the "How to build a blog with Kirby" series. This helps a lot with the basics and gave me a great launching point to start customizing stuff for this site. Check out the post about custom post types too for some good tips on making blogging with Kirby well-suited for you.

I could have written lots more about getting started with Kirby, but I mostly wanted to focus this article on transitioning from ExpressionEngine. Any questions, thoughts, and tips are more than welcome.

On March 28th, 2013, my son, Jonathan Michael Warren, was born. Mother and baby are all super happy, and it was a very smooth process.

We now have three kids living in this house. This is a big change for everybody, but it's been pretty frickin' fun.

Interesting Fact: The three aforementioned kids were all born in different cities, states, and time zones. Needless to say, we're looking forward to settling down a bit with this family.

From time to time, the Society of Typographic Aficionados organizes a project to support relief efforts after natural disasters. Font Aid VI: Aster Affects is our latest project, raising funds for Red Cross relief efforts after the terrible events of Hurricane Sandy in October 2012.

This project brought together hundreds of designers and typographers across the globe to collaborate on a single font consisting entirely of asterisks and star-like symbols. I was honored, proud, and happy to contribute a glyph of my own to this project.

From the Font Aid VI page:

An asterisk can denote something that requires attention — and an event of this magnitude and impact certainly deserves some attention. ... The root of the word comes from the Greek astēr or “star” — signifying hope and light. In computer terms, it’s a wildcard character … and hurricanes are certainly wild and unpredictable.

This was my first time participating in Font Aid, and I can’t see why I won’t take the opportunity to contribute again in the future.

Please, if you have the means, buy the font and know that all the proceeds of your purchase go straight to those in need.

It's helped me discover a few things about myself and where life has taken me over the past few months. Here's an excerpt from a recent entry.

I'm worried a little bit that I've given myself over to the idea that I'm too busy to try new things. I remember in the past that when I worked more hours, and despite having kids, I would find time to write more, do more, tinker more.

Add to that, this older post from Daniel Jalkut where he reminds us as well as himself that even though our gut reaction when it comes to new stuff is to say no, what we need to do is find ways to say yes to the things that move us in the direction we want to go.

So I'm working on a few new things, and I'm excited to show more soon. Oh and we have a baby boy due next month, so I'm sure I'll have something to talk about.

I remember the first time I had a good beer from a can. It was 2004, and I went by myself to a David Bazan show at the Bluebird in Denver, Colorado. For just $2.50 you could get a can of Old Chubb from Oskar Blues Brewing Company. I slowly sipped the Old Chubb, listening to Bazan's lyrics meander around the room. That started a still-to-this-day love affair with everything Oskar Blues had to offer.

Oskar Blues went on to evangelize good beer in cans to breweries across the nation. When I visited the brewery several years ago, I met Dale (of Dale's Pale Ale), and he handed me an Old Chubb, straight off the canning line (it didn't even have the lid yet). At the time, another brewery from Hawaii was there, getting tips on how to run a canning line of their own. A couple years later, New Belgium Brewery in Fort Collins started canning their Fat Tire, having consulted with Oskar Blues along the way. These days, it's easy to find plenty of craft beer sold in cans, and breweries who do it are enjoying the benefits of cheaper shipping, longer shelf life, and more delicious beer as a result.

Sixpoint brewery from Brooklyn, NY, is just such a brewery. These guys make an great product, and they ship it in some of the finest looking cans I've seen to date. Their design aesthetic is spot on for the type of beer they are making. On top of that, they don't put their cans in plastic rings, they ship them in boxes with more opportunity to showcase their excellent aesthetic.

Sixpoint's attention to detail both in the fine quality of the beer and the remarkable design work they're doing has secured these guys as one of my top favorite breweries.

For example, check out the short film Sixpoint made for Resin, their impeccably well-balanced double IPA. Watch out, it might make you thirsty.

Want to learn more about Sixpoint? Head over to their website and take a gander. To appreciate this brewery, I recommend finding a can of Resin, or any one of their other interesting and delicious offerings, such as Diesel, Sweet Action, or Bengali Tiger. Let me know if you do.

From my recent Basecamp post to the Happy Cog team:

Wow, this is harder to write than I thought it would be. By now many of you know that this June, I'll be packing up the family moving to Seattle, Washington. This was not an easy decision for us to make as a family. After all, I love my job at Happy Cog. It's been the most fun, challenging, and exciting job I've ever had. But our kids are growing, and we'd love for them to do that near some of their extended family. Neither they, nor their grandparents, are getting any younger, so now is the time. Seattle's a lovely city, and with the abundance of family we have there, it's a good fit for us. I'll be working with the small, extremely bright team at Onehub, in the role of Lead Designer, right in the heart of Pioneer Square in Seattle. I'm not leaving today, I'm still around for three months, so I look forward to many happy hours, and there's lots of good work to do before June.

What followed was one of the most heartwarming Basecamp comment threads filled with animated GIFs I've ever read. I actually got choked up.

This next chapter of life is about to happen. It's bittersweet, exciting, and a bit terrifying. I'll miss Philadelphia. Its people, food, and personality won me over in spades. Now I'm looking forward to making my mark on Seattle, too.

This will be wild and fun. It always is.

I’ve been enjoying some unusual and delicious whiskeys lately. From the left:

MacAllan Fine Oak 15

This is the spry younger brother of the 30-year-old Fine Oak that my father and I tasted in Seattle. He sent me the fifteen as a late Christmas present.

Hogshead Whiskey — Edgefield Distillery

Distilled by the lively, talented, and prolific McMenamins Family, just outside of Portland, Oregon. Hogshead is a delicious, exceedingly smooth whiskey that has some hints of spice and butterscotch. Anna and I picked this up at the Kennedy School while on vacation over the holidays.

Breckenridge Bourbon Whiskey

Thanks to my good friend Derek Balmer for sending this one my way. Brekenridge dares to try to unseat my all-time favorite hometown brand, Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey. Derek ran across Breckenridge Bourbon Whiskey during the dark days of the Stranahan’s drought of 2010. He did me a kindness in sending me a bottle for Christmas and wow, it’s fantastic.

Design within constraints is good. It gives us limits to our work and challenges us to stretch in good ways. One chief constraint in our writing is that we were contributing to the seventh edition of this book. We had make sure that what we wrote fit in with six editions written over the course of fifteen years. Throughout those years, the book was used often as a textbook for teaching HTML and CSS, thanks to its approachable nature and step-by-step instructions. Any new content had to mesh nicely with this way of learning. This got tricky explaining @font-face properties, line-by-line, but I had fun doing it. If you know me, it doesn’t take much for me to get exciting talking about web typography. This was as much an exercise in reigning myself in as it was in articulating how stuff like web font stacks work.

The other constraint we had was time. Both Scott and I had mere weeks to write our chapters. Additionally, I was right in the middle of preparing for two speaking engagements. This Fall, if you saw me tweeting in the middle of the night about writing and scolding Microsoft Word for crashing, now you know what I was up to.

Nonetheless, this was an awesome experience, and I dare say Scott and I might find the opportunity to collaborate on a book project again soon.

HTML5 & CSS3 Visual QuickStart Guide will be released December 27th, 2011. If you are interested, I highly recommend picking up a copy, perhaps from Amazon or from one of those fancy stores you walk into and buy things in person.

A huge measure of thanks goes out to Cliff, Robyn, and the rest of the editors at Peachpit. Also, I want to thank Elizabeth Castro for writing the first several editions, and Bruce Hyslop for taking the reigns on this one.

Our plan is to talk about web fonts from our perspective as web designers. If you saw that lineup list you can imagine that many who attend Typecon are type designers, foundries and the like. This makes for an awesome opportunity for us to communicate directly with those at the forefront of type design and lettering, to discuss how type on the web affects us, and perhaps share some ideas about where the world of type on the web is headed.

I'm excited about this opportunity. If you are in New Orleans for Typecon I sure hope we can hang out and learn about this stuff together!

to help provide some direction on where the world of type on the web is headed so we can help each other get there.

Every year as SXSW prep starts, I go through a strange mixture of emotions. Usually a few months out, I start to find out who isn't coming this year for one reason or another. I also look at the ever-growing number of sessions and extracurricular events to weed through and decide what's worth attending. All of this usually just bums me out and I wonder why on earth I'm going again this year. Then things start looking up: I start talking to all my friends who are coming and we start to reminisce about years past, getting instantly excited about what to expect this year.

More so than ever before, the truly wonderful times were had with some of my best friends on this planet, outside of any sanctioned events or schedule. I participated in the SXSW Found Type Photowalk, and I did go to two sessions, which were both fantastic. I went to one official party which was pretty lousy; and Happy Cog hosted a private party which was excellent. The rest of the time I spent doing much more important things like grabbing coffee with friends, old and new, in the morning; and pints with the same in the evening.

SXSW is definitely too big for its britches. I wonder if they will ever start capping attendance and making everything a bit more manageable. I sure hope they do, because for several years now the trend to skip the conference badge and hang out has been gaining momentum. I don't say that with any ill-will toward the people who run SXSW. Here's what I said under the comments section when I filled out the survey this year:

These days 95+% of my enjoyment of SXSW comes from non-SXSW-related activities (hanging out with my friends, going to a pub/coffeeshop/etc, shooting photos). Every year I'm less likely to get a badge because it's too big, too overloaded, and the signal to noise ratio is getting worse. I really really want SXSW to succeed and it has a huge place in my heart as the place where I really got started in the web. I miss the days when it was all in the convention center and it was easy to bounce around and make panel attendance decisions on the fly. I hope it gets better!

As Christmas approached, we at Happy Cog started planning our holiday party and, as we do every year, drew names for a secret santa gift exchange. I drew Chris Cashdollar. I was excited to draw his name, even though I had no idea what I would get him.

The last piece of this puzzle is Blue Beanie Day, a day every year in late November when everybody in the web design community dons blue hats to show their support for web standards. The day before, I shot photos of everybody in the Philly Happy Cog office all blue-beanied-up for the event.

As I was brainstorming ideas for Chris' gift, it all clicked together. Of course! I have this beer that's just about ready to drink, maybe I could do something with that?

I sent my dear friend Derek a message asking him if he wanted to collaborate on this project: A beer label with a custom illustration of Chris Cashdollar based on his blue beanie day photo. I sent him this photo of Chris to get the creative juices flowing:

Derek didn't hesitate. Minutes later he wrote back saying "I'm totally in!". Just days later I had an amazing illustration to work with.

Derek made it very easy for me. I designed the label and glued it on the night before our secret santa party.

There are only five of these in existance. I'm pretty excited about how these turned out! The look on Chris' face was pretty dang priceless.

My topic is about making client friendly websites. I’m a firm believer that a really excellent developer not only makes great code for a website, but also crafts a good experience for the people running the site. It may take more time and effort to do it right, but it really pays off for your client.

This looks to be one of the best EECI conferences yet, so I hope you can make it out!

One thing I can say about my work over the past year at Happy Cog is that every project has brought something new and interesting to the table.

I remember the first time I saw some of Chris Cashdollar's early designs for Happy Cog's blog, Cognition, and I thought "I really want take this design and build it." I'm not sure what it was. Something about the unusual color palate and the gorgeous typography. It just pushed all the right buttons for me. So when the design phase started wrapping up, I was pleased to see I had some extra time on my plate to take this project on.

There were two areas of this project where I got to really play around: Web Fonts and Responsive Design.

Web Fonts

The design for Cognition didn't come out of a vacuum. We'd been working on getting a unified style for all of our documents: Everything from contracts to keynote presentations. This effort, spearheaded by the brilliant Kevin Sharon, resulted in using Jenson, Sentinel, and Franklin Gothic our house typefaces. We used Typekit and Fontspring for our type on the web, with Adobe Jenson Pro and Franklin Gothic. Sadly, no Sentinel for now, so Clarendon had to play stand-in.

Originally we went crazy with these, using lots of weights (of Franklin, especially). It was so fun seeing all this gorgeous type on the screen. The danger, of course, is that if you use five different weights of Franklin, you're asking the user to download all five of those fonts. In the end, we consolidated our choices in the weights a bit and were able to get the page a bit more trim.

Using web fonts on this project was a wonderful, liberating experience. From a technical standpoint, it was a bit fidgety, though. Browsers are still figuring out how to deal with them and it requires a bit more tinkering than it seems like it should. Nonetheless, I'm loving using web fonts.

Being Responsive

The other area of play was making the Cognition design responsive. Responsive design is an approach to web design to try to make your site flexible and appropriate to the viewing device. The end result is that nice wide screens get a more open, wide layout, and narrow screens and smaller devices get a more focused experience. For a much more interesting read on responsive design, check out my friend Ethan Marcotte's A List Apart article where he coins the term: Responsive Web Design

Taking the Cognition design responsive was very fun. It was a wonderful learning experience, and really scratched the itch on both sides of my designer/developer brain. It offered endless opportunities to tinker, fiddle, and tweak.

Lots to Talk About

We did a lot more in Cognition than I'm taking the time to write about here. For instance, we tossed out the idea of traditional comments, favoring using twitter to aggregate responses. We also offered a way for people to blog a response on their own site and we'd call that out and link to it as well. This is also one of the few times we've had a site of our own to build and improve as more ideas come in and better ways to do things present themselves. It's been very fun.

We have a publishing schedule with editors, proofers and illustrators all lined up to get an article out once a week. It's quite a process, but it's yielded some excellent results, like Chris Cashdollar's article about the magic number of designs to present to a client, Ryan Irelan talking about how composting relates to code and Jenn Lukas reminding us, using her own spin on Mad Libs, that We're All In It Together.

All of the ideas for Cognition ideas grew from lots of conversations, seemingly endless basecamp threads, and loads of collaboration from everybody on the team. That's what I love about this job. Nobody can take all the credit for anything, because everybody can be creative in any area of the project.

Taking my daughter on a date. She likes the chocolate muffins! (Taken with Instagram at Milkboy Coffee)

The Stranahan's logo is secondary in this label design. The label is dominated by the words "Colorado Whiskey". Are there other whiskeys made in Colorado? Probably. Does it matter? No. When you go to the store and see "Colorado Whiskey" on this label, it really stands out among all the other whiskeys on the shelf. Colorado, with its rich history of craft brewing, is seen as a place where delicious liquids are made. Add to that the cowboy and mining history of the the Rocky Mountains and you almost feel Stranahan's came from that era.

The label is set at an angle. I suspect that's intentional. These people don't have a labeling machine. In fact, they have volunteers come in and put all the labels on by hand, walking home at the end of the day with a couple free bottles of whiskey. So Stranahan's embraces the inexact nature of hand-labeling their bottles and has everybody put them on at an angle. Yet another thing that will help this whiskey stand out on the shelf.

The label is also hand-signed by the distiller with a batch number, the date and comments. The one pictured in this post says "1st Batch in New Distillery".

So, they're doing the design and labeling right, and I can attest that they're doing a fabulous job at making the whiskey. Their website is a bit of a mess, though. I won't spend a lot of time harping on Stranahan's for their website. One could argue it's even charming: Given that making whiskey is such an analog process, of course they will have a lousy website. But, I'll say this: When you have such a lovely product, with an established recognizable brand, you're doing a disservice to that brand to give it a crappy website.

A brand isn't just a logo. "A brand is the personality that identifies a product, service or company" (Wikipedia). Your brand is informed by everything from the design of your labels to how you treat your employees. So when you decide to have a pretty lousy website, you're saying something about the kind of company you want to be seen as.

I'll say it again: Stranahan's is an exceptional product. I hope I'm not being too hard on these guys. They really do great work. I hope for their sake that Stranahan's decides to improve their website to match the quality of the rest of their product.

You have a translucent PNG for which you had to run the AlphImageLoader trick to get IE6 to render properly. Everything is great, except this PNG is a sprite, and you also need to change the background-position, such as for a hover or focus state. Cue the sad clown kazoo. Oh well, I guess IE6 doesn't get a hover state, right?

That's what I thought too, till I thought of this handy little trick.

Setting the stage

Usually with this sort of situation, I am using an image that is a sprite which contains three states of the same image: The default, hover, and active state. Then I use background-position to move that sprite to where I needed it.

Take the following example:

This is a navigation element with the following code:

<li><a href="/new">New Post</a></li>

Normally, we'd do something like this to show a nice pretty title for this link:

#new a { 
    width: 99px; 
    height: 39px; 
    display: block; 
    text-indent: -9999em;  
    background-image: url(/m/titles/new-post.png); 
    background-repeat: no-repeat; 
    background-position: 0 0; 
    }

Of course this is a sprite, so the actual image for it is (Note: For this example I gave it a dark background so you can see it):

And for hover & focus classes we'd do something like this to expose the hover version of the image:

#new a:hover, #new a:focus { background-position: 0 -39px }

And we would do something similar for the active version and the on-state:

new a:active, #new a.on  { background-position: 0 -79px }

This all well and good, but as you may know, since this is a translucent PNG, none of these hover, focus, active or on states are an option with background-position for IE6, since background-position does not work with the AlphaImageLoader filter fix. The only alternatives are to just do without these states, or to cut separate image for each state and write separate lines in CSS to pull said images in under each condition. That's a messy solution that, despite being pretty sub-optimal, is a heck of a lot of extra work.

What if there were a better way? I think there is, and this is my solution: I named it ‘Backslider'. I know, it's silly.

Backslider

When you think about what background-position really is doing, it's moving an image around a mask, based on specific events or situations. The trick is, that you don't need background-position to do this, and often we don't need any more markup than what is already available to solve this problem.

Remember, what we're dealing with is a link inside of an #new element. Let's use that #new element to provide the mask, and then move around the #new element using absolute positioning. CRAZY, RIGHT?!

#new { 
    position: relative; 
    width: 99px; 
    height: 39px; 
    overflow: hidden; 
    }
#new a { 
    display: block; 
    width: 99px; 
    height: 117px; 
    position: absolute; 
    top: 0; 
    left: 0; 
    text-indent: -9999em; 
    background-image: url(button-sprite.png); 
    background-repeat: no-repeat; 
    background-position: 0 0; 
    }
#new a:hover, #new a:focus { top: -39px; left:0; }
#new a:active, #new a.on {top: -78px; left:0; }

In the IE stylesheet you can still apply the filter fix for the new-post.png. But because you're not using any sort of background-position changes, it works like a dream.

One little caveat for our good friend IE7: You still need to do that left:0 property. Every single time. Otherwise, it pretends you didn't really mean to position that element at all. You were only joking, right? Oh, IE7, you do seem to have an extra special sense of humor.

Really, though, it is that easy. It involves very minimal IE6-specific styling and works great for everybody else. This can be used for navigation elements, headings, logos, and more.

When I discovered this little trick, I just assumed people had done it before, and I was just late to the game. However after asking around, apparently this isn't a widely used idea, so I humbly submit Backslider to the internet.

Have a better idea, hate the name "Backslider", or just want to set me straight? Send me a note. Thanks!

It’s trash day. Which means I’m locked out of the office.

You see, on most mornings, I eat breakfast, gather my things together, get my iPhone and headphones, and then kiss my family goodbye before leaving the house. Today, it’s trash day. So I do all of those things, but I leave out the back door so I can take the trash to the curb. All of that is well and good; however, I always keep my keys on a cabinet by the front door, and pick them up on the way out. So, today, leaving out the back door, I left my keys at home.

I take the trolley to work, so this isn’t a mistake I realize when I get to my car or scooter. It’s a mistake I realize after getting to our office building, grabbing the three packages that were delivered last night, toting said packages upstairs to the office, and finding I’m the first one there and can’t unlock the door.

I headed downstairs to pick up a latte and get to work at a table there. Delicious. Bonus: Our office wifi reaches down to the cafe.

I think I’ll forget my keys more often, at least on trash days.

On May 28th, my son, James Baden Warren, was born. We are so thrilled to start getting to know this guy. It was a crazy fast labor, and he was a couple weeks early, so all of this came as a pretty fast surprise! We’re not complaining. He’s awesome.

Cogaoke

In what is undoubtedly now a yearly tradition, Happy Cog threw an enormous karaoke party entitled "Cogaoke". We pulled out all the stops this year with more contestants, more judges, more sponsors and a longer open bar.

It's funny because I don't really get into karaoke at all. It's not something I seek out or make time for. Nonetheless, it's downright impossible to not enjoy the spectacle that is Cogaoke.

We don't just put on a party though. It's a competition for which people are preparing months in advance. We started back in January by putting up a teaser site and in February we debuted the full site with contestant registration. Meanwhile we were making training videos, teaching people how to put on the most amazing performance they can.

It was a huge deal that entailed lots of extra work for the whole office. I enjoyed working on the whole project, getting to do design as well as front-end and back-end development. Fun stuff.

The event itself went off without a hitch. I didn't do a ton during the event, except for fire a confetti canon and run drinks to judges. Check out photos from the event at the Cogaoke 2010 Flickr photo pool.

ExpressionEngine Panel

The other enormous undertaking of SXSW for me was getting to give at talk at our "ExpressionEngine 2.0: Total Domination!" panel. Kenny Meyers led the panel, which was comprised of Ryan Irelan, Jenn Lukas, Mark Huot, and of course, me. Quite the crew!

We spent a decent amount of time before SXSW planning our talk, but nothing was a substitute for meeting and going through it in person, which we did a few times while at SXSW, before the main event.

I somehow found time before leaving for Austin to rehearse the crap out of my little talk, and if there's any little bit of advice I can give to a budding speaker, it's to do just that. Get extremely comfortable with both your routine and your slides. I'm not trying to toot my own horn here, but the one bit of feedback people gave me the most was that everything seemed really polished and I seemed nice and comfortable talking. The only thing I can attribute that to is the extra time I spent going over everything. The last thing you want to do is get stuck reading your slides.

Our talk was about ExpressionEngine 2.0, an app we use as the content management system for lots of our sites. It wasn't a commercial for the app itself, it was more a talk for people who make sites, like we do, with ExpressionEngine. I was a little surprised, but a lot of people in attendance hadn't used it yet, and were just finding out about ExpressionEngine.

My portion of the talk was about Accessories, a new feature in ExpressionEngine 2.0. I posted the slides from my talk to my site for download here

How did it go? It went really, really well. The ballroom was packed, the Q&A went great, and Kenny did a fantastic job of getting some good laughs from the crowd. After our talk, folks from EllisLab (the makers of ExpressionEngine) took us out for lunch, which was a super nice treat.

Everything Else

SXSW was really fun this year. I'm tempted to say it was the most fun year yet for me. As usual, I didn't get a chance to see everybody I wanted to, but that's just how it goes. I'm very glad Mr. Balmer finally made it out. And of course, lots of quality time was spent getting coffee in the morning, and pints in the evening, with such fine chaps as Mr. Boms, Mr. Dorny, and Mr. Van Damme and somewhere in the middle spending some time at my new favorite place in Austin, Frank.

In a lot of ways, 2009 was a lot about rethinking. I found myself rethinking how to run my business, what my professional goals were, and also what my personal plans were. I had lots of new things come my way that I didn't really plan on. I got to speak at three different events, edit a book, work on some of the most interesting and fun projects of my career, and watch my daughter turn 2 (I saw that one coming but wow, she's changed a lot in a year.)

There were some bigger things too:

In the first few months of the year, Be Good Not Bad grew a little bit as I brought Derek on to work part time. It was a welcome relief from the very busy workload, but it was a huge adjustment to my thinking in how to approach the business and interact with clients. Little did I know how everything was about to be much different.

The biggest change of the year, of course, came a few months later. In August, I accepted the job of Senior Designer/Developer at Happy Cog. Moving to Philadelphia has been both rewarding and challenging. The work at Happy Cog has been fun, and the people have made it especially awesome. I am also adjusting to more time spent home with the family, which is extra great.

One more surprise that came our way was finding out that we're expecting another baby come June. This will be a big and wonderful adjustment. I think Bridget will make a delightful big sister.

These are big changes, but definitely good ones, and so I must say 2009 taught me to be ready to alter my routine a bit. On the heels of all these changes, I figured, why not change a bit more, and so I'm redesinging my site and trying out Tumblr as a tool for blogging. We will see how this goes.

I know lots of people had a pretty rough 2009, but I'm feeling as thankful as I ever have. I cannot wait to see what 2010 brings.

A few months later, I found myself working on Typedia (which was already well underway) with a small army of fellow web designers & developers. Jason describes Typedia quite concisely:

At its simplest, Typedia is a shared encyclopedia of typefaces. Think of it as All Music or IMDb for type, but created and curated by everyone.

I remember back in college when I read The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst. There was one recommendation in that book that really resonated with me: Consider the subject matter when choosing a typeface. For instance, if you are designing a book cover by a British author, consider using a typeface designed by a British type designer. This means doing research. Unfortunately that's pretty challenging, and increasingly so, with new foundries, type designers, and typefaces, and no centralized repository of information.

We built Typedia to solve that problem. Typedia isn't just a catalog, though; rather it's built to be grown by you. We made it easy to create an account and start adding information. Know the foundry behind Centaur? Add it! Have a few spare minutes over your lunch break? Tag some typefaces to make searching easier.

We built Typedia with ExpressionEngine (surprise surprise), though the list of enhancements, tweaks, and customizations we added is extensive.

It's taken years to get this project launched, but it's easy for us to see that this is just the beginning. We can't wait to get your feedback and start tweaking things to make it even better.

We built Typedia with a forum so we'd love to interact with you there, or you can drop us a line at the contact form. And follow us on the twitter too, of course.

Recommended Reading:

• Jason Santa Maria: Introducing Typedia
• John Langdon: behind the Typedia logo

After three full years of working for myself, I'm now joining forces with Happy Cog. I've enjoyed working for myself so much over the years. It's been exciting, successful and extremely fun. For those reasons, I never really looked for a "real job". The idea didn't appeal to me. I knew if someone came knocking and actually lured me away from this career, it would have to be someone special. So when they asked me if I wanted to move to Philadelphia and work at Happy Cog, I told myself that this time I should really consider it.

Some Backstory

Let's slow down for a sec. In fact, let's rewind back to 2003 or so. I was living in Alaska and I started reading a book about web design by Happy Cog's founder, Jeffrey Zeldman. You may have heard of it. I thought to myself, "This stuff makes sense and I should do it". A few years later, I decide to quit my job and do this stuff full-time.

A Match Made in Austin

In 2007 I got a chance to meet a bunch of the Happy Cog crew and we hit it off very well. Well enough, in fact, that in the fall of that same year I started doing some freelance work for them and shortly thereafter got the exciting title of "Strategic Partner". We continued to enjoy working together on projects here and there, while not-so-subtle hints kept coming up from some of the people there that I should really just pull up stakes and come work there full time.

The Clincher

Back in July, when Daniel Mall left Happy Cog to work at Big Spaceship, the topic came up again. It just so happened at the time I had a trip planned out to Philly anyway for some Happy Cog work, so we turned that trip into a bit of an extended interview. It wasn't long till we all came to the conclusion that our working together, in a more permanent situation, would be a good idea.

I was giddy.

Starting in September, I will be working full-time at Happy Cog East in Philadelphia. I'll be doing a bit of design, lots of front-end work and some CMS work too. Basically, all the stuff I love and do right now, minus the whole "running a business" part.

Are we not still Being Good and Not Bad?

I'm wrapping up all my existing commitments with Be Good Not Bad, and basically winding down most of my work. I will be open to a few limited projects on the side, but definitely an emphasis on "few" and "limited".

We are very excited about this new chapter. I had no idea when I wrote this blog post what, exactly, 2009 had in store for me.

Back in January, I got to spend some quality time talking shop over coffee with my good friend Dan Cederholm. He mentioned to me he was writing a new book. No more than a handshake and a latte later I had the honor of being on board as technical editor for the book. It is called Handcrafted CSS: More Bulletproof Web Design and comes out next month. No comment on the rumors that Dan's latte might have been spiked.

I've been reading Dan's books for years. I bought both Web Standards Solutions & Bulletproof Web Design right when each came out, and each has been extremely influential in my work. Dan doesn't just tell you how to implement a solution, but also why we might consider doing it that particular way, and what are the pitfalls of some of the other methods. That kind of stuff is hard to do, but Dan does it so extremely well.

This new book is a little different in that it jumps right into details of how we can make websites better through craftsmanship. It takes a forward-looking view of some of the fancy new methods and tools we can be using and how to use those tools in such a way that degrades nicely for browsers that, shall we say, aren't quite as forward-looking.

It gets better. Ethan Marcotte, the Unstoppable Robot Ninja from Cambridge, wrote a delightfully magical chapter about fluid grids. It will melt your brain in all the right ways.

One exciting part that I had zero hand in is an accompanying DVD, called Handcrafted CSS: Bulletproof Essentials. They come bundled or separately, your call.

It was truly an honor to edit this book. While I was working on it, I kept thinking, "I cannot wait for people to get their hands on this." It was a great experience for me and I believe the final result is worth a few of your hard-earned dollars.

More information can be found at the companion site and Twitter feed. Also, check out Dan's announcement, on his blog, and Ethan's, on his.

Busy is good. We like busy. But at some point I realized that something needed to give if I was going to stay moderately this side of sane, as well as get to spend time working on the business and other internal and side projects.

Enter Derek Balmer. It's no secret we like collaborating with other freelancers. For as long as Be Good Not Bad has been around, we've been doing just that. With Derek we hit a sweet spot. We work great together and his skills blend nicely.

So we made it official and the big news for us is that we've brought on Mr. Balmer to work with us on a part-time basis. Derek recently left his day job to go indie, so we have no illusions about luring him into anything full-time. In the meantime, though, we are thrilled to have him on board. Derek has some amazing visual design prowess, and the front-end coding chops to back it up. We just wrapped up a project that turned out downright awesome thanks to Derek.

I'm sure 2009 has more surprises up its sleeve and we're looking forward to it.

I spent December of 2008 in mixed states of both reflection and eager anticipation. I realize our economy is in shambles, and optimistic may not be the most popular word these days, but it's hard for me not to be excited about things to come.

2008 Was Pretty Awesome

Just days before sticking a fork in 2007, my daughter was born, and a month previous, my wife quit her day job for good. What was to follow was both the most awesome year of my life both personally and professionally.

I was a little nervous with Mrs. Warren quitting her job. The main question on our minds was: How were we going to replace her income? We just bought a new house that year, and one income disappearing did make things feel a little more tenuous. Amazingly enough, just a couple weeks before she stopped working, some really good opportunities came in the door. I started working with Happy Cog on some projects followed by a fantastic project with the fine chaps at Airbag Industries. The Mrs. and I never hit a wall, never got scared, and just made sure to stay super thankful that it was working out this way.

And boy did we have a lot to be thankful for. Little Bridget has grown up exceptionally well, and our far flung family is very much enjoying my geeking out with making a website for her, while filling up my Flickr and Momentile streams with lots of photos and videos.

2009 Is Looking Good

So you can see why 2009 is looking good for us. Work with Be Good Not Bad has been going well, and the projects we're working on right now are very fun. One minor side-note: I've decided that for the foreseeable future I'm going to refer to Be Good Not Bad in the "we". I haven't hired anybody full-time or anything (yet), but it's extremely rare that I work on a project by myself; in nearly every project I'll bring in one of my ninja cohorts to work with me. This gives me a wonderful opportunity to work with extremely talented people with everybody learning from each other. The client benefits too, in that they get lots of talented people working together on their project. It's one of my our favorite things in this work.

Seriously? Like, Seriously?

Practically daily people ask me how work is going. What they really mean is: "Are you running for the hills and/or filling out Starbucks applications?". The economy is about all people can talk about, especially if they know you own your own business. I confess, I slipped into that mode too, becoming a hypochondriac for a few weeks this fall. If we didn't get a project that we estimated, or a client was late on a payment, I thought "Oh man, this is it. We're going down, folks". But once I took a step back and stopped hyperventilating, I realized that we weren't, in fact, going down.

Don't get me wrong. I'm under no illusions about the state of the world economy. But it's times like these I'm very glad I'm not working at a big company.

Consistently I am finding that the smaller the company, the more stable and optimistic people seem. The solo freelancers are the most positive and excited people I know. The way I see it, 2009 is the year of the indie. The smallest groups and independent people can work harder, faster, and, most importantly, they can work smarter than the big guys. We can partner with others like us, doing excellent work while keeping exceptionally low overhead.

I'm not the only one who thinks this way. Jeffrey Zeldman wrote about it in his 24ways Article: Recession Tips for Web Designers

Bad times are hard on overweight companies and over-leveraged start-ups, but can be kind to freelancers and small agencies. Clients who once had money to burn and big agencies to help them burn it suddenly consider the quality of work more important than the marquee value of the business card. Fancy offices and ten people at every meeting are out. A close relationship with an individual or small team that listens is in.

Greg Storey, founder of Airbag Industries has some fantastic advice to business owners in an amazing post about our current situation:

Don't turn away any work that comes through your door. Get it. Grab it. Take it —as much as you can— and network with the people who are ready and willing and have the skills you need. Team up, and conquer.

Go read the rest of his article. It's marvelous.

To You

It's in that spirit I say thanks to you, friends, clients, and readers. I hope you have an awesome year. I can't wait to see what it brings for all of us. If you happen to be looking for an agile team of ninjas for your next project, well, do get in touch!

Every now and then a project comes along that just makes me so glad to be doing the things I do. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy my work. I even look forward to jumping out of bed and starting my day. But sometimes a project is just truly exceptional. Recently, I had the honor of working on just such a project with the brilliant folks at Happy Cog.

From Housing Works' about page:

Housing Works is committed to ending the twin crises of AIDS and homelessness. We believe that all people have the right to a rich and empowering life. Since 1990, we have provided the highest quality services for homeless men, women, and children living with HIV and AIDS in New York City and beyond.

That's a powerful cause, and it's awesome to get to interact with and ultimately help those who are carrying it out. They are an awe-inspiring group of people.

With the excellent art direction of Daniel Mall, front-end development by yours truly, and Expression Engine development by the extremely talented Mark Huot we crafted the new Housing Works website that focused especially on the human side of their work.

For more about the project, check out the case study on Happy Cog's website, and definitely make sure to visit Housing Works to see it for yourself.

Sure, it's been awhile, but one might say I've had my hands full. I got the itch to put together another set for you guys, so I hope you enjoy this one.

I make no promises that I'll do this with any regularity. That way, every time I make one you'll just be so excited and thankful that it's there. Something like that.

Brian's Mix Tape #3 [34.8mb / aac]

I listed all the tracks below, along with links to where you can get them. Please buy the music, unless it's already free. Except where indicated, I linked to the albums at the Amazon MP3 store.

• MGMT - Time to Pretend
• Magnetic Fields - I Need a New Heart
• Sigur Rós - Inní mér syngur vitleysingur
• Nico - These Days
• Stereolab - Long Life Love (This one's off a 3 disc set, if you're looking for this one track, check #6 on disc 3)
• The Submarines - Peace and Hate
• The Books - take time
• El Ten Eleven - I Like Van Halen Because My Sister Says They Are Cool
• Bill Mallonee and Vigilantes of Love - Solar System

I enjoy making these, so I plan to keep it up. Let me know if you have any feedback, thoughts, or just if you enjoyed it. I'd appreciate it.

On December 29th, Bridget Ruth made her big debut. Wow. Anna and I are just stunned. We love this little girl more than we've ever loved anything in our lives. She didn't have to do anything to earn our love, she just showed up. If that's not a pretty good example of a miracle, well, I'm not sure what is. It's hard not to become just ridiculous optimists when a baby arrives. The sky seems bluer, the air fresher, the world awesome-r.

She's definitely got me wrapped around her cute little fingers. I take tons of photos of our little girl, and my heart melts pretty much every time I look at her. I can't believe I have a lifetime to get to know our little girl and be a key part of her life.

I think the world is going to be a better a place with Bridget in it. I know mine is.

I've posted a few photos so far, all here on Flickr, and a website where I'm posting links to videos and more fancy things over time, all at BridgetWarren.com.

It's Friday - a great day to give you guys and gals a treat. I put together another mix tape for you. Nice!

My first one was generally a success and didn't get an ounce of bad feedback, so I figured, “Why not do another?”

Brian's October Mix Tape [30mb / aac]

I listed all the tracks below, along with links to where you can get them. Please buy the music, unless it's already free. Except where indicated, I linked to the music at the Amazon MP3 store.

• Múm - Blessed Brambles
• Broken Social Scene - I Slept With Bonhomme At The CBC
• Bela Karoli - Prelude 2
• The Archivist - New Years
• Over the Rhine - Don't Wait for Tom
• Caribou - Melody Day
• Boards of Canada - Dayvan Cowboy - (Here's that the video I mentioned.)

I enjoy making these, so I plan to keep it up. Let me know if you have any feedback, thoughts, or just if you enjoyed it. I'd appreciate it.

About a year ago Kevin Potts contacted me about a book he was writing for Friends of Ed about web design for businesses, asking if I'd be the technical reviewer. Many months and edits later, the book is now out, on the shelves. Woo! The complete title is Web Design and Marketing Solutions for Business Websites.

This book isn't just about web design. It's also not just about marketing or technology or usability. It's pretty much the complete package. I recommend this book to anybody wanting a thorough (400 pages!) introduction to corporate web design. I may not hand this to someone looking for books with nice concise titles. Yikes. But alas, I was just the technical editor, and they didn't consult me on the title anyway.

Seriously though, there's a ton of good stuff here. After reading this you will definitely be the resident expert on corporate web design. If you're already a web design ninja, I'd still recommend scanning the chapter headings to see if there's some stuff there that you need to get a handle on or need brushing up.

Many years ago, I had kind of fallen into the job of web guru for a non-profit organization. I didn't know it at the time, but I did not know what I was doing. This would have been the perfect book for me. We weren't a “business” selling a “product”, but nearly all the same principles of site development still apply, and this would have been a very enlightening book at the time.

I'm not sure I really need to sell you on this. If you need a book like this, you probably already know, if you don't need it, then you probably didn't make it this far. So, check out the book if you like (That's an Amazon affiliate link. If you buy a thousand copies of it, or anything else, after clicking on that link, you'll make me “rich”. )

Mucho thanks to Kevin for bringing me on, and thanks to Apress/Friends of Ed for publishing the book.

This is just a bit of an experiment in making a mix tape for you. I got inspired by Keith's mix tape that he made. Maybe this will be a thing. Or not. Either way. I hope you enjoy it. Please let me know if you do.

My Summer Mix Tape [32mb / aac]

I've put together a playlist below. I definitely encourage you to buy the music if you like it. I put some iTunes/emusic links in there (the iTunes ones are affiliate links, so I stand to make a good nickel or two if you buy them. Woo!)

• Of Montreal - Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games
• Neutral Milk Hotel - Song Against Sex
• Panda Bear - Ponytail
• Cowboy Junkies - Sweet Jane
• David Bazan's Black Cloud - Let Down
• Gorky's Zygotic Mynci - Mow the Lawn
• Faces - Ooh La La
• Britta Phillips and Dean Wareham - Indian Summer
• Death By Panda - In the Summer

So, it's in embracing the good, that I am going to change the name of Be Good Not Bad to GoodBits, and I'm presenting to you, my new logo. What do you think?

Update: I decided to change the design back to it's old look. It's more “me” and I miss the little coffee mug. I'll leave this post up here for posterity and in case I need some inspiration. (psst: It's a prank. Dozens of my colleagues did the same thing.)

I'd like to think that because I'm sitting down to write that life has slowed down a bit and I'm regularly taking relaxed breaths of fresh air. In reality, it's the first week of March, which means designers around the world have been eluding the sleep monster while wrapping up as much client work as they can before heading to Austin for SXSW.

SXSW has a very special place in my heart. Last year was my first, and I went as an in-house designer who had aspirations of leaving the day job and maybe working at an agency or something fun like that. I had been there maybe 24 hours when I was already thinking about leaving the day job and pursuing the freelancing full-time.

I met a lot of great people, got very inspired, and had a lot of fun. Just a few short months later I had more freelance work than I could take, and had to quit the day job just to start getting my free time back. There hasn't been a single day, week or month that I've regretted it.

This year, I get to experience it from the other side. It's been an intense few weeks leading up to SXSW, with buying a house, moving, renting out the old house, and cramming in some client work too. I haven't had a chance to really look at what what panels and parties are happening. I'm heading into Austin a day early, so I'll have a bit of downtime to shoot some photos, look at the schedule and maybe get some extra sleep to catch up. If last year is any indication, I won't be sleeping much in the next week. I better get started now.

If you are at SXSW and you see me, please say hello! It would be great to meet you or catch up if its been awhile.

Excerpted and slightly modified from an actual email I sent a few weeks ago.

Dear Panic,

Can I just say thanks? I've been using Transmit back since OS9 or so, and each year I use it more and more. You guys entered a market that had plenty of competition and just nailed the FTP client. I'm impressed. I imagine I'd be quite a bit grumpier without Transmit around.

Top 5 reason I like Transmit:

• The tabs functionality in the latest version has been so amazing. So much power in a tiny little window. So many layers.
• Docksend. I use it only occasionally, but its handy and very well thought out.
• I'm supporting the little guy with my money. Granted, one couldn't find any huge megacorps out there making good ftp clients, so not much of a choice there. Even if there was, it wouldn't matter.
• Killer value. $30 bucks for saving tons of time and making the mundane task of uploading files easy and simple.
• You guys sell cool t-shirts. Granted, if you look at my order history, you wont see any tshirt purchases in there, but someday I'll buy a couple Panic tees. [Note: This has been remedied since the sending of this email.]

Thanks for all your hard work. I look forward to many years of Transmit usage.

Brian

P.S. Next time I'm in Portland let me take some of you guys out for some beers.

I just got back from Seattle and had a fantastic time up there. I just love hanging out with other web design folk. It's just so refreshing. An Event Apart itself was great, but I'm used to a longer conference like SXSWi. When An Event Apart was over I was totally ready for another day. All of the talks were great; some of them had me laughing pretty hard. I loved seeing the personalities coming out.

I got into Seattle a couple days early to hang out with my sister and see the sights. Every time I go to Seattle, within a couple hours, I'm ready to pack up my stuff and move there. It's a beautiful city with lots to see and do. Mark and I visited the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame on Saturday. You get to see tons of the cool gear from sci-fi history. The phasers from Star Trek, the cyborg arm from terminator, the embroidered (!) shirt Captain Kirk wore in the original series. Lots of geeky stuff. One thing we were continually amazed with was how crappy it all was. On the screen you can't tell, but up close you can see how shoddily much of this stuff was built. It looked like someone stopped by a toys-r-us and a hardware store and hacked all this stuff together. We also went to Zoka to meet with a client and work. We loved it so much we went twice in the few days we were there.

Sunday night we had our pre-party. It was a great success! We got to talk with lots of fun people and give away plenty of beer and t-shirts. I'm already looking forward to throwing another party at the next event we get to go to. It was too fun to only do once.

We also launched our site, Method Arts, while up there. We spent most of Sunday before the party working on it. It was great to work with Mark side by side. We had lots of fun.

All this means things are just getting busier. It's kind of weird though. You take some time off to relax and have fun with your peers, but it often leads to more work, making you busy and less able to take time off to play. Hmm.

The daily grind has changed a bit here since quitting the day job. As you can imagine, some things are the same, and others are quite different.

The Old Grind

The old grind was characterized by being at the office most of the day. The office wasn't bad. In fact, the people are great, and we had great coffee. One legacy I'll leave at the day job is switching the house coffee from Starbucks to noticeably better, locally roasted beans. The only problem was that I had to be there eight hours a day. This left only my evenings and weekends for freelance work.

The New Grind

The new grind is much better. Ask me what I did this weekend… I went camping with my godson and his dad. We had a blast! Work? No, I didn't do any of that.

I get to work all day, with few interruptions. The evenings and weekends? Well, I wont lie to you, they aren't entirely work-free, but we are talking about huge improvements in this area. This is the best benefit of freelancing so far. Working from home has been interesting. I'm not completely sold on the idea. When the wifer is home, I'd much rather hang with her than work. And I don't have an office where I can close the door and work undisturbed. Some days I'd like to get a studio that I can share with someone, and other days I love being here with just the dog and the nice view. I just don't want to turn into a hermit.

For now, I like the new grind and I'm going to stick with it. The benefits have been numerous and readily apparent. I'm still taking stock of how things have changed and what lies ahead. It's been fun, I've been staying busy, and I hope to keep you informed as it goes.

I'm sipping single malt on my porch as the sun sets. The cat is hunkered underneath the outdoor fireplace, and the dog is chewing noisily on a bone. Life seems to be moving slowly.

I'm not fooled. It's just starting to speed up.

The scotch is a present from my wife. She's congratulating me on quitting my job. Just a week ago I gave notice at the day job. It's not something one does every day. In fact, I've worked there for over six years.

But it was time to go, and opportunities await. I am going to freelance, full time, doing web design and a little bit of podcasting. After six years at the day job, this could be a bit of a terrifying possibility. I mean, leaving your job without any guaranteed income? Are you crazy?

Maybe, but honestly, I have a lot of peace about this opportunity. I already have some great clients as well as some excellent prospects.

Originally, I had thought I might quit my job and work at a traditional design agency; however, the freelance stuff has just been pouring in too fast for me to really slow down enough to hunt down a normal job. So, I tell myself, why start now?

More and more designers these days are quitting their jobs. They are extremely successful outside the standard corporate architecture. Groups of designers will band together for a project or two, and go back to freelancing solo-style. It makes a ton of sense. It's why we're founding Method Arts (launching next month, yeah, I know I said that once before, but this time free beer will be involved).

Still, I have moments of being scared. I think it's healthy. Often I think that's a good spot to be in. I've always pushed myself to do things that require me to be in that spot. If I hear people tell me "man, that's cool, but I could never do that," then I feel right at home.

Thanks for both your excitement and support. I'm open for business.

Typically, the McMenamins buildings are historic, quirky properties and the Edgefield is no exception, having been an asylum, as well as a poor house, in the past. The walls are adorned with all sorts of wild murals, with few corners left unpainted. Even the security lights had jesters painted on them. It's set upon a pretty large property with gardens, vinyards and an orchard.

Our room was on the third floor with a small balcony overlooking the grounds. They had just set up for an outdoor concert outside the Red Shed, a small brick building they fashioned into a one-room bar people sat outside on the grass enjoying the music. We let it drift into our open windows while we relaxed from the drive.

One-room bars are the norm at Edgefield. There is the Black Rabbit House, a tiny one room building with just a bench across from the taps. Just 20 yards away from that one was Jerry's Ice House. A slightly larger bar decked out with Jerry Garcia kitch, with a single TV playing DVDs of Grateful Dead concerts nonstop. Up the road was the Distillery Pub that houses the distillery and a small bar with outdoor seating.

We ate dinner outside at a larger pub right in the middle of all the other buildings. After dinner we skipped the movie (did I mention they have a theater?) in favor of a wine tasting at the winery's tasting room. As you can imagine, with a winery and a distillery, naturally they have a brewery on site too, with some fabulous brews to be enjoyed.

All of this created a really wild atmosphere: Tons of art everywhere, weird pipe sculptures around every bend, strange and beautiful flowers, an immense herb garden with intoxicating aromas. We felt like we were in a different world, with a different sort of people who make their own beer, wine, and spirits; who grow their own vegetables, fruit, and herbs. It's like some bizarre commune that's actually just a hotel. Did I mention it's cheap? $135 for the room, and that includes the massage. Food was extra but reasonable.

If I were to design a hotel, this is exactly how I'd do it.

Since we found out about being pregnant it's changed our food habits a bit. One thing we changed was drinking more milk. I grew up on the stuff, to the point that my parents had to start reeling us kids in, practically rationing it out. But over the past ten years or so, I wasn't buying it as often and it wasn't as big of a priority.

So when we started drinking more milk I did a bit of research and set up milk delivery. Now, once a week a guy in a blue truck comes by at four in the morning to drop off two half gallons of milk. We can get other stuff too, like eggs, cheese and butter.

This milk is amazing. It tastes far more creamy than the stuff you get at the store. They guarantee that the milk is completely organic and has been out of the cow for 72 hours or less by the time it hits your doorstep. Now I drink milk often. I feel like Archie Goodwin in a Nero Wolfe book.

I've got to say, I'm impressed. I'm so glad that it is still possible to get milk delivered to your door. It feels so un-modern for we americans. Ironically, Amazon is testing out a grocery, so maybe we're just coming back to our roots. I know I am. It was my job as a kid to go out to the milk box and grab the morning milk.

The Con

I think these contests are a total joke. They irk me and make my chin get all aquiver. At first glance, no big deal, right? Get a bunch of eager fans of your site all worked up and give away a cool prize. This is what is called spec work, and the problems are numerous once you get below the surface.

If you ask someone to do a design project for you, ideally you sit down with them and get a dialog going about the goals you have and the sort of style for which you are aiming. As a designer, if I can't sit down and chat with a client about a project, then I'm a grumpy designer. Not only that, the less input a designer has, the less likely he or she is to help meet your goals. Designers help solve problems, they aren't there just to make stuff look good.

Contests pay only one person, and usually below market value. A laptop for an entire site redesign is cheap. If you get 100 submissions, collectively, that's thousands of hours of work done by those 100 people, and only one person gets compensated for some of their time. One could argue that the submitters knew what they were getting into. Indeed. I still don't like it. You're still using your influence as the promoter of this contest to give these people hope and waste most of their time and do your work for you.

Raffling publicity for cheap design work isn't fair or respectful to the design community. You're telling designers that their work isn't valuable to you and that they need you more than you need them. The best plan is to hire a designer and let them do their jobs. That way you build a relationship, pay an honest wage, and get better results.

For the Designers

If you're a designer tempted by a "free" laptop, think twice. No, don't think, run. If you enter these contests, you're telling companies and your peers that your work is worth a laptop or just $150. That's if you win. If you lose, well, I guess your work is worth nothing, right? Wrong. Stay away. If you really want to work for free, consider offering your services pro bono to a company that can't afford to pay a designer. There are tons of non-profit companies out there who need your help. Be a part of a cause, do something you believe in. Also, make sure they know how much you would charge if it were not pro bono. It's helpful for them to know the value of your work.

Respect

It's all about respect. I realize that sounds a bit cheezy. However, if you respect yourself, you'll choose not to do spec work. And if you, as a company, respect designers, you wont condone or invite it.

At South by Southwest, a couple of panels that really got a couple of us fired up were Holistic Web Design and Design Eye for the List Guy. They were great panels, but the idea behind the projects they worked on really resonated with us. In both instances, a group of professionals got together and redesigned a website. Each person had the thing they were awesome at, such as branding, usability or CSS. They collaborated and the results were amazing.

The Coudal/Fried Keynote (mp3 link) was all about starting a business small and on the side. Embracing the constraints of being small, having no time or money, and so on, you can really do amazing things, often because of those constraints, rather than in spite of them.

So, while still at SXSW, Mark Bixby and I put our heads together and said “Is there any reason we couldn't get some people together to collaborate on a regular basis?” Naturally, we said no, let's do it. We're calling it MethodArts.

We've identified three of the four we would like to be kind of the core group. We'll bring any number of contributing members together for specific projects as it makes sense to do that. We want to be able to be organized together in a way that provides more unity and professionalism as a group, while also letting people show off their work individually.

Our office will be MethodArts.com where we will showcase our work, blog about our collaboration and link to our members' sites. We're working on it now and will launch sometime in May. We're already working on our first collaboration (it's a really awesome project), so it should be a pretty sweet launch.

The reason I titled this post “Building an Un-Company” is because that's one of our goals here. We're finding that it takes very little time and almost no money to collaborate this way. When you embrace the constraints of being small and doing stuff like this on the side, you end up prioritizing your values. You realize that you don't need a fancy aluminum sign or a VC-stuffed bank account. If we had those things we'd be spending a ton of time not working on what matters. We're also finding it's fun and energizing to work together like this. I'm not quitting my job … yet. That's why it is called a business on the side. We'll have to see where this goes.

More to come.

(image:76.jpg alt:"Business Cards from SXSW" />

These are some of the ones I got from new friends. With apologies to Mark Bixby, that mangled one up at the top is Greg Storey’s. It didn’t do so well in the washer (remember the part about keeping them in safe place?). The one in the upper right hand corner is mine. Sadly, I left for SXSW with not a single business card. I creatively left them in a pile on my desk. Rats.

The panels were fantastic, i especially enjoyed the Design Eye for the List Guy and How to Be a Web Design Superhero. The Jim Coudal and Jason Fried Keynote was extremely inspiring too. Monday night we went bowling and to a party put on by Lifehacker. Before bowling a bunch of us went to dinner at the Spaghetti Factory. The food was ok, but the conversation was awesome. The party on the last night was ok, the only highlight for me being that I got to meet Craig (as in “list”).

I'm hooked. SXSW was a ton of fun and possibly the most valuable five days of my web designing career. That said, it's a bit hard to put into words why. The panels were fantastic, chock-full of both inspiration and good information. More importantly, though, SXSW was the first time I'd really met people face-to-face who are just like me. These are my comrades, my cohorts, my evil twin brothers and my fellow crime fighters. Being around them, developing relationships, and having quality conversations with them was just as important to me as going to the panels.

So I left inspired and energized, that's worth the price of entry alone.

I meant to include a picture here. Well, it turns out I took quite a few pictures, but very few of myself (I need to learn a tip or two from Rob). So, no picture for you! If you want to see some that I shot during the conference, browse around my Flickr photos from SXSW.

I've been hanging out with Mark Bixby a lot, and that's been a treat. He and I had some chinese food, and got along quite nicely. This was somewhat a result of his Free Starbucks at SXSW post. On a side note, he told me all the people who responded to his post specifically asked to find a place other than Starbucks to hang out.

The panels have been awesome (a nice change from my last conference, AIGA in Vancouver), but as most people know, that's only half of SXSW. The evening events have been, for the most part, a blast. Moreso than the panels, they really illustrate how huge SXSW is. The Frogdesign party last night was packed and loud. There's no sensation quite like standing in line with a bunch of sweaty bloggers. The South by Northwest party was, thankfully, a bit smaller and indoors.

More later, just wanted to let you know how I'm enjoying things here in the heat. It's half over, which is surprising. Both in that it feels like I just got here, but it also feels like I've done so much.

We just got back from a lovely time in New York with the fam there. We toured Long Island, spent a day in Manhattan and did many Christmas traditions. My sister’s husband-to-be joined us and that was extra cool, as I hadn't spent any extended sort of time with him.

The above pic is a present I made for my father. It was a big hit. He's taking it to the office today to proudly display it.

Well, who cares, I'm ditching the modern shaving world all together. I'm sick of paying big bucks for replacement cartridges with pivot heads, rubberized something or others, and lubricating strips.

About a month ago, I bought an old school razor that uses a single blade. These are known as safety razors. They have no moving parts, just three pieces that screw together to hold the blade down. The blades cost about fifty cents or less to replace.

I don't use a shaving gel, I use a badger-hair brush and some english shaving cream.

The whole process of shaving is much more intuitive and interesting now. I can feel the single blade cutting my whiskers, I can even hear it happen. Now, I want to be clear, it doesn't hurt or anything, it feels very normal. It's a neat thing, and I haven't cut myself yet.

I am much more attentive now when I shave. Modern razors are designed for tired bleary eyed gents who just scrape and go. Shaving old school requires you to slow down and think about the process. If you know me at all, you know that I like stuff like that. Still, with slowing down, lathering up the shaving brush, and shaving my face; the whole process takes maybe four minutes. And I end up with a closer shave.

What? A closer shave? How can that be, with only a single blade? Surely three blades should cut a closer shave? Well, I could try to explain it but the results are what they are. Ok, well, I'll try my guess at explaining why: When you shave with a modern, multiple-blade razor, the blades go in one direction, each right after the other. So, if it's a three-blade razor, effectively you shaved in three passes in the same direction. When I shave with my single-blade, I shave once with the grain of my whiskers, lather up again, and shave a second time at about a 90° angle to the grain. So, I get a closer shave. That's just one reason, I'm sure there might be others. Arguably, you could do the same with your three+ blade razor, but you will end up with six passes (three for each direction), and some guys' skin might not like that as much. Nonetheless, you'd have a hard time convincing me that the modern razor cuts closer.

All in all, I'm very happy with my new purchase. I enjoy the closer shave, the more interesting process and the general rebellion against the extortion that is the modern shaving industry. I hope I can continue using this for a lifetime.

Papa died on Sunday morning.

I miss him already. He is the first person who I really knew in my family to die, which to me seems pretty weird. I'm nearly 30, which means for 30 years, no family member that I was close to has died. I'm really fortunate.

Speaking of being fortunate I'm so thankful I was able to say goodbye. I knew at the time that spending Thanksgiving was important and special. I was thankful for it as it happened, but the moment I found out about his death, it hit me really hard how awesome it was.

He was a good man and lived a full life. He was a bomber pilot in the Army Air Corps in WWII, and a father of five kids, grandfather of 19 and a great-grandfather of a growing number of kids. He had his faults, but man he was fun to hang out with. He helped me build a pinewood derby race car when I was in Cub Scouts, smoked a pipe when he was a bit younger, and once commandeered some cases of beer from a brewery in Japan after the war. He and his guys loaded it in their bomber plane, and took it up to 9,000 feet to chill it down.

I'm learning to grieve. It's a good process. I'm not really liking it so far though. I'm glad I'm sad, because I wouldn't want to not miss him.

His funeral was today and the burial is Friday. I have the honor of being a pallbearer. I hope we can send him off well.

So for supper we went to the Cellar. Wow. This had to be one of the best, if not the best, meals I've ever had. First of all, we spent over three-and-a-half hours enjoying our meal. We both took the Chef's choice route, a fixed-price, four-course meal. Each course is artfully paired with a wine by the sommelier and chef. The pairings on each course were just amazing. They did all this without being pretentious in any way. We spent much, much more on our meal than our room, and we were fine by that.

We needed this weekend. We were feeling a bit burnt out and just too busy. When we saw the opportunity, we jumped at it. And knowing that Anna's tips funded the entire weekend, well, that was just bonus.

Know of anything cheaper as far as hotels near the conference? I work for a non-profit and they're paying my way, I gotta stay on budget.

I'm looking forward to it, I'd love to meet up for a pint with anybody who's going to be there. As long as you're not creepy.

Check out the article here.

So then, now we are in Bruges. The first thing you might like to know about this crazy town is that there are about a baker's dozen different ways to spell the name of this town. Bruges, Brugge, Brugges, etc. It seems everywhere I look I see a new spelling.

We are staying at a cute little hotel called Hotel Passage. One of my favorite things about this place is the super cool Bar/Cafe they have on the first level. Decent prices, super classy, quirky atmosphere and a lengthy beer list (Germany was surprisingly disappointing in this department). Also, as a guest, if you get dinner there you get a free beer (unfortunately it's the same beer each night, so not much experimenting with the free beer).

The views in Bruges are awesome, and there is so much to see. I love the architecture and sense of aesthetic. It's a very stylish city. The only thing I don't like is that I've heard it's just a zoo of tourism in the summer. That makes it feel a little fake to me. It's not crowded at all right now, but it is February.

First picture is of a view out our window. Just yesterday we saw this cat prowling around the rooftop. The second one is from atop this enormous belfry that we climbed yesterday.

So, since we're leaving Germany soon, ever since I got to Germany I've wanted to tell you some of my observations of things that are different between Germany and America.

• Doors. Yep, doors. Every door that I've seen on German soil has been distinctly different from doors I've seen in America. Their doors don't completely nest in the door frames like American doors do. They nest about half way, and then they stop with a lip that overlaps the entire door frame. I like it. I think it provides better sound and heat insulation. It also gives one a slight tip on whether that door opens in or out. And we all know that I like things that are designed with visual cues for their use
• Toilets. Every toilet I've seen in Germany flushes different from American toilets. Most of them flush with a huge button that's built into the wall about 2 or 3 feet up from the actual toilet. I like this too. I imagine this is more of a pain for the builders of the house to not have completely self-contained toilets, but it's nice that it provides more room in the bathroom because the "business end" of the toilet is the only part that sticks out into the room.
• Light switches. I guess this one was to be expected, but every light switch is different too. They all use these big panels that you can just smack.
• Cars. Duh, Brian. You're in a different country, the cars are going to look different. But it's not just cars that look different. American cars all require a big noise when you start. Some sort of buzzing or bing-ing. It's the law. In Germany, no noise. Just "varoom!"

I love that this stuff is different. And I love that it's so consistently different, too. I'm not sure what it is, but I just love that there are things you can only find in certain areas of the world. If everything looked American over here, it would just drive me nuts. It's kind of like why it creeps me out that you can buy tomatoes and raspberries at the grocery store in January. I like seasons. I don't want June to look like January. I don't want America to look like Germany.

We went on a nice walk right out the door of Brad and Laurel's house down through this lovely valley in the countryside. We saw a cool shaggy horse on this walk.

We'e all but fully recovered from being sick and looking forward to Monday when we cut loose from work stuff and move onto the rest of our trip. We're not totally sure whether or not we'll head straight to Belgium or maybe stay at a town somewhere along the Rhine. Time will tell.

This house buying stuff invigorates and exhausts me. I wish Anna could be here for it, as that makes this harder. I took mucho pictures of the houses I was looking at, uploading them for her.

I fly back to Alaska at 7am tomorrow. I look forward to being home, while at the same time, leaving our new house behind.

A few details about our new house: It’s less than a mile from my office, has three bedrooms, one bathroom.

Garage, Yard, Fence: Check, Check, Check.

We close on the house June 15th, between now and then is paperwork and details.

I was riding my bike through town to go home for lunch or something, and I noticed that I was in the background of someone's video shot. I think he was filming the mountains. I can just imagine them looking at the video, with narration characterized by the inflection only squinting through a viewfinder can bring... "Well, here we are in Haines, Alaska" [panning slowly from the mountains down to street level] ... Those were the mountains, look at them go! And those are some trees, and there's the street. And that guy in the blue shirt, that's a real live Alaskan!" [They shut off the camera and go look for a moose giving birth.]

I've often wondered how many videos and photo albums I've shown up in. Seriously, we must all at one time in our lives been in the background of other people's vacation photos.

Everybody brings something to eat. We talk sometime during the week to make sure everybody isn’t bringing a salad. Typically someone experiments with something so it can be pretty interesting. This time, we had potato and leek soup, pasta spinach salad, hot German potato salad (no hot germans harmed in the making of this salad), and pasta with red sauce. Leftovers abound and everybody ate enough. Perfect.

As we relaxed over wine and talked, little Mark (almost 2 years old) ran around pointing things out or playing with found objects around the house. We usually have a chat or discussion before the reading time. The previous week we establish who will read the following week. People always have the option to bow out of their reading or just pass all together. Matt read this week.

Matt is an interesting character. He loves science fiction and loves thinking about things. He loves blurting out what’s on his mind without giving it the second thought. He’s not crass or obnoxious, but he certainly blurs the line between what’s appropriate or not. To Matt, politically correctness is just another silly way of keeping people from saying what’s on their mind.

Matt picked out a couple great readings today. He read from The Gift of Fear, by Gavin De Becker, a book discussing how we can use fear as a tool to avoid being in harmful situations. He read from a true account of a woman who was raped by someone helping her carry her groceries to her apartment. Scary stuff, however very interesting and thought-provoking.

Light of Other Days, by Bob Shaw, Matt’s second reading, was a short story about a man and his wife purchasing “slow glass” from a farmer in England. Slow glass is a type of glass that slows the light coming through it. They purchased “ten year glass”, meaning that light takes ten years to pass through the quarter-inch pane. In ten years they will be able to see the events occurring now.

In the story, people typically bought the glass that had been sitting in a wooded area or other serene places. So they can take home that scene and put it up in their dismal shabby windows in the city.

Thinking about this makes me want to soak in each situation, each view, each person I experience. As my time in Alaska draws to a close (for now), I realize that time will never give back these experiences. I can look back on them, but that’s all I can do: look.