I made a spoof of the double rainbows video last night. Check it out:
This is a little off-topic from my normal posts but since it basically ruined what was supposed to be a Saturday of freelance work I thought I’d share.
I never get fooled online. EVER. Whether it’s a Facebook scam, Instant Messaging virus or those phony popup virus threats, I’ve always prided myself in being smart enough to see through the lies… until today.
My son had been online checking out some awesome lego sites. Later, I sat down at the computer planning to do a few hours of freelance work. There were a bunch of Windows Antivirus messages on the screen saying a threat had been detected and did I want to remove it. Now I did hesitate for a moment and wonder if they were legit. But let me tell you, these alerts were well done. They even had the Microsoft privacy message at the bottom of one of the screens, AND used the Microsoft shield as their icon in the tray and on their screens.
Here’s an example of what one of the screens looks like:
For one reason or another, my guard was down and I clicked to remove the supposed virus. It was all over - that tiny bit of interaction was all the program needed to install and start causing havoc. Within a few minutes my computer was seemingly completely infected with over 20 viruses and was also getting attacked every couple of minutes by “hackers”.
The solution? Buy the full version of “Antivirus XP 2010″ of course (yes they even use “XP” in the name!).
At this point I knew something was up (duh) and after seeing that the program wasn’t in my Program Files directory or in my list of programs in the Control Panel, I started searching for ways to get rid of it. I hate doing this because you never know if the person writing the solution is trying to help you or exploit the situation you are in and do even more harmful things to your computer. I get especially nervous when they ask you to start making registry edits which many of the solutions online did.
The following is what worked for me. It might work for you too:
1- Download Malwarebytes
http://download.cnet.com/Malwarebytes-Anti-Malware/3000-8022_4-10804572.html
Since I found a cnet download link I figured it was a legit piece of software. Some people in the forums said Antivirus XP was preventing them from downloading Malwarebytes. If this is the case you may have to download it to another computer and throw it on a USB drive so you can get it on your infected computer. Personally, I was able to download it fine using Firefox.
2- Install Malwarebytes
This is where it got tricky for me. I double clicked to install and nothing happened. Tried again — nothing. You guessed it, that sneaky Antivirus XP 2010 was actually BLOCKING my install. There were lots of theories online about whether it was blocking all exe installs or just Malwarebytes. Changing the file name didn’t work for me but changing the file name AND changing the file extension from exe to bat worked and I was able to install the program.
3- Run the program in Quick Scan mode.
When I first installed Malwarebytes I assumed I’d need to run a full scan of all my drives. 2 hours later the scan finished and nothing had been found. I was pretty frustrated. Some more Googling and I found one site where the guy specifically mentioned running the Quick Scan rather than Full Scan mode. I did that and sure enough, it found all the bad files and I was able to remove them.
After a required reboot, my system is up and running and I haven’t seen any sign of the bastard piece of software.
So there you have it, over four hours and a ruined Saturday later, I’m ready to start on my freelance work. Goody.
Last year, rather than make a bunch of specific resolutions that I wasn’t going to keep I decided to make one larger global resolution that would affect lots of different aspects of my life. My resolution was simple:
Try new things
I had a great year full of lots of new things. Some of those included:
I kept track of each new thing I did in my favorite cloud note keeper Evernote, which made it easy to update from wherever I happened to be at the moment of the new experience.
This year I plan to keep that same goal of trying new things and keeping track of them. I’ve also got another goal:
Create (for free)
All of my design clients just got excited. Sorry - I’m not talking about doing your work for free 
I’m talking about art, video, animation, music, etc. I’ve got tons of creative projects in my head that I have never started on because there is no income potential. My goal this year is to forget about the money and just create. It should be an interesting experiment and I’m excited to see how it goes.
I will of course be posting any creative endeavors I complete here for you, my undying fans.
As a concluding and somewhat related note, I’m also participating in Project 52 which is a cool challenge created by Anton Peck, based on creating fresh web content on your blog/site weekly. Thus you should see a lot more of my musings here. If you’ve got a blog, or have always wanted to start one, sign up!
Update - 3/3/2010: In case you didn’t notice, my aspirations of a blog post a week didn’t quite happen. LOL. It’s been a busy couple months. Project 52 is an awesome group though with lots of cool bloggers and awesome content. Maybe next year I’ll be one of them…
Cheers and happy new year!
For the past 6 or 7 years I’ve been burning a CD with some of my favorite artists/songs that came out that year. Rather than shoot for a certain number, my rule is that all the songs must fit on a single CD. Now that CDs are pretty much obsolete, that rule is a little silly, but I still like the challenge it poses, so I’ve stuck with it.
An interesting side note here - After completing my list I noticed that 10 of the 21 songs were the 2nd song on their respective albums. I don’t know what to make of that but it’s interesting none-the-less.
So… here are the songs on my “Best of 2009″ CD. They are listed in the same order as on the CD which is more of a mix-tape style and not necessarily “best to worst”.
Also - check out my 2008 and 2007 lists.
| Name | Artist |
| How Your Heart is Wired | Bell X1 |
| Quiet Little Voices | We Were Promised Jetpacks |
| Osaka Loop Line | Discovery |
| Coast of Carolina | Telekenisis! |
| My Lover | The Sounds |
| Moth’s Wings | Passion Pit |
| Shake Shake Shake | White Denim |
| Daylight | Matt & Kim |
| D.I.A.L.O. | John Vanderslice |
| I Say Fever | Ramona Falls |
| Geraldine | Glasvegas |
| Early in the Morning | Heartless Bastards |
| Eye on the Prize | Eulogies |
| Won’t Want For Love | The Decemberists |
| Always Like This | Bombay Bicycle Club |
| Huff & Puff | Dat Politics |
| Golden Sand | Republic Tigers |
| Don’t Haunt This Place | The Rural Alberta Advantage |
| 1901 | Phoenix |
| Two Weeks | Grizzly Bear |
| Walking On a Dream | Empire of the Sun |
Here’s our Christmas video for this year. Have a great holiday!
Merry Christmas 2009 from jdawg on Vimeo.
In case you want to see some of the older videos: 2008, 2004 (an all time fav)
Being a designer takes thick skin. You can’t grow so close to your work that you get offended or upset when a design or idea is turned down. I’ve had numerous experiences throughout my career where I thought I had come up with the perfect design, only to be told by the client that for one reason or another the design needed to be changed. I usually find that what I come up with in the end, once I really understand what the client is looking for, is much better than my initial concept.
I’m currently working on some branding and web design for a docmentary about an amazing rescue that took place on the north face of the Grand Teton. The film is titled “North Face 1967″, and I am so excited to be a part of the project.
When we initially started talking about the logo, the client mentioned a concept that I really liked. She thought it would be interesting to see if we could incorporate the mountain peak itself and the path taken by the rescuers, into the logo design. I immediately started sketching up ideas and a day or two later, I had the concept flushed out. Everyone (including me) loved the design.
However, as the client started thinking about the tone of the film it was decided that something more simple would fit better. I had to agree. While I love the original logo I came up with, it looks more like a clothing brand or ski shop logo, and doesn’t really fit with a documentary film. Instead, we’re going to go with a simple typeface logo and let the pictures and trailer tell the story. I back that decision up 100% and am glad we made it. Even though I like the original logo I did, the client knows the story she is trying to tell and the logo needs to embody that.
Since this logo will never see the light of day, I thought I’d post it here as a reminder that situations like these can teach us to be better designers. Sometimes it’s frustrating to have to start over, but if we internalize everything that we learn, we’ll end up better than when we started and more prepared for the next adventure.
I’m excited to see what we come up with for the logo and website design and I’ll of course be posting that here as soon as it’s online
Recently I needed to compare two very large code files (1200+ lines) in order to make a few small revisions. At work we use the Tortoise SVN Subversion app for revision control and it makes side-by-side file comparison very easy. However, since I was at home, I had to find another way to do it. I Googled “File Comparison” and got a huge list of different free and non-free apps that I could try. I hate downloading unknown apps especially when I won’t be using them much, because they often come with spy-ware and other garbage. I ended up trying something different and it worked pretty well.
I did my file comparison using Google Docs. I was happy to find another cool way to use Google Docs. Plus this keeps it in the cloud in case I needed to access the file from somewhere else. You can do a simple file comparison using the Revision History tool. Here’s how:
1. Create a new document and paste your old code into it. Save your document:
2. Now delete all the code and paste your new code into the same doc. Save your document again.
3. Go to File >> See Revision History
4. Select the current and the previous versions and click the “Compare Checked” button.
5. Where ever changes have been made, the code from your old file will show up as crossed through and the code from your new file will show up as highlighted.
Now the obvious advantage you have in a real file comparison program like Tortoise is that you can make the changes right in the actual code file. With Google I had to find the changes I was looking for, copy the old content and paste it into the file in the correct place. Not the most efficient, but it got the job done quickly and kept me from having to download who knows how many free programs to find one that worked right.
I decided at the last minute to enter Veer’s “Carved” pumpkin carving contest. They were giving extra points for using a typeface so I figured I’d use the font that haunts designers in their nightmares: Comic Sans.
This was my first attempt at typography in pumpkin carving and I’ve got to say, it is a lot harder than it looks. It came out pretty sloppy looking, but hey, it’s Comic Sans. Sloppy is what we’re going for right?
I created this quick tutorial that shows you how to use Photoshop to change a daytime photo into a nighttime photo.
My kids got some of that old modeling clay they used to have in art class. I made a skull and then got carried away. Here is the finished product with some Photoshop lovin’ for extra spookiness.
I first heard about Madsen Cycles through Facebook. Someone suggested I follow them and when I saw they were a local Utah company I decided I would check them out.
Next a popular design blog that I read called Swiss Miss wrote of her love for the Madsen bike. The fact that Swiss Miss wrote about them totally impressed me because she is the be all end all when it comes to cool design. Many of my cool product design tweets come from stuff I read on her blog.
Next I was at the Spudman Triathlon in Burley Idaho and saw a guy, who I think was Jared Madsen riding his kids around in a Madsen along the route and cheering people on. I was again impressed. First he somehow got that large bike from Salt Lake to Burley. Second of all it was cool to see him there supporting the athletes.
Sooooooooo, Madsen is currently holding a contest where to enter you need to post a link on your site or tweet about their bicycles. I figured I’d right a little review on them rather than just post a link because I really do think they are quite cool. Check them out! And while you’re at it, why not enter the contest as well.
For months now I’ve been hard at work on an illustrated version of The Lord of the Rings. It’s put my pen and ink skills to the test and has proven very challenging. The watercolor work alone has taken hours upon hours. I’m also doing audio-book style voice overs for the narration. Here is a sneak peak at one of the finished scenes.
The Fellowship is Born from jdawg on Vimeo.
This morning I did a trail run organized by Erik Storheim called the Grandeur Peak Fun Run. The first two miles is neither fun nor a run. It goes up the face of Grandeur Peak starting in the parking lot near the bridges that go over I-215 and Parley’s Canyon in Salt Lake City. You climb about 3,500 feet in 2 miles up to the peak and then head down the backside, hook up with the pipeline at Church Fork in Millcreek Canyon and then work your way around the front of the mountain back to the trailhead. It’s about 10 miles long and was a great time. You can see the map here: http://sites.google.com/site/mrcultra/granduer-fun-run
I got a little carried away on the way down from the peak and twisted my ankle pretty bad (heard a crunch) but luckily I was able to walk it out and get rid of any stiffness so I could continue running down. That was only about 3 miles into the race so I was nervous I’d have to drop out. I was glad the twist wasn’t as bad as it sounded and I was able to keep going.
My favorite part was when the route left the pipeline trail and scrambled up a deer trail across the ridge of Millcreek canyon. The 600 ft climb there was a little grueling but coming down the other side of the ridge was a beautiful single-track completely covered in trees. There were a couple spots that were so green I felt like I was in the Northwest.
My two goals in the race were to finish and not finish last. Luckily I accomplished both of those. I made it to the top of the peak in 1 hr. 15 minutes which is pretty good for a mere mortal. To put it into perspective the winner finished the whole race in 1 hr. 45 minutes. Sickening right? My finish time by my watch was was 2 hr. 49 minutes.
Below are some photos from the race, mostly of the way up. Once I got to the running portion I was having too much fun to stop and take pictures.
It’s been quite some time since I blogged. I’ve been super busy on some larger freelance projects that will soon (hopefully) hit my portfolio. At work I’ve been dealing mostly with CSS bugs on our internal web app UI and after knocking out a particularly difficult one this afternoon I decided to share the experience with you, my faithful readers. There is some documentation out there but no “sure-thing” fixes.
In-frame JavaScript pop ups are quite popular these days. Basically these are divs that start out hidden when the page loads but can later be displayed by clicking a button on the page. These may be tool tips, images, forms or other elements that are optional to the usage of the UI.
Many times the z-index attribute of the position style is used to pull these elements to the very front of the screen so they float over the rest of the UI. The problem in IE 6 and 7 (not yet tested in IE8 ) is that if any of the elements underneath the pop up div are positioned relatively or absolutely, they are on their own z-index scale and thus show up on top of your pop up element no matter how high that element’s z-index is.
It’s a real pain to deal with especially because often these pop up elements are added in after the basic UI is created, thus making it hard to simply remove the positioning on the other elements.
Here are a couple of the solutions I found:
For my particular situation I had to employ all of these tactics in different spots on the page. It was a brutal couple days of bug fixing and I am glad to be through with it.
I found quite a lot of good info on the subject here:
http://www.quirksmode.org/bugreports/archives/2006/01/Explorer_z_index_bug.html
Ignite Salt Lake last Thursday was awesome. The turn out was amazing and the talks were inspiring. If you missed it or attended and have been wanting to watch your favorite talk again, the videos have now been posted on YouTube. You can get to them all from here:
http://www.ignitesaltlake.com/ignite/index.cfm/watch-the-presentations/
For those of you bored enough with life that you would even consider watching a 10 minute video of me playing Rock Band - here it is! This is the video of the Rock Band competition that the company I work for had, in which our team slammed the competition.
If you can’t bare to watch the whole thing, at least watch up until the long silent pause after the intro so you can hear Luke’s stand up comedy.
The Ignite Salt Lake 2 agenda is online. We’ve got another excellent line up for you this time around with topics in design, entrepreneurship, science, technology and … Pee Wee’s Big Adventure (seriously!).
http://www.ignitesaltlake.com/ignite/index.cfm/speakersagenda/
There are only 9 days until the event! Make sure to be there!
Over the weekend I had a couple of ColdFusion programming techniques I wanted to test out for a side-project I am working on. I figured that rather than just play around with them on my local machine I’d build a simple little site that utilized both of them. The result is the Single Serving Site Generator www.singleserve.me
What’s a single serving site you ask? Ryan Greenberg’s paper on single serving sites (which itself is enveloped in a single serving site) states:
“There is, however, a growing and unusual phenomenon where site authors pursue a different approach. Many people have created sites that span merely a single page and do one thing—or nothing. These sites, which writer Jason Kottke termed “single serving sites” in February 20081, capture visitors’ attention for a fraction of a minute, a tacit acknowledgement of the economy of attention in which they operate.”
You can read Ryan’s full paper here: http://isthisyourpaperonsingleservingsites.com
One of my favorite single serving sites came out as the Large Hadron Collider was about to be activated. Here it is:
http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/
Seem pointless? Yeah - that’s the point.
So - you want to generate your own single serving site, but you are too lazy or cheap to buy a domain name, set up hosting, etc. etc? Up steps www.singleserve.me to save the day. Just enter the question you’d like to ask (which will be displayed in the web address) and the answer, fill out the fun little reCaptcha (which is one of the ColdFusion tests I was working on) and wala! You have your very own single serving site.
Go ahead - waste a minute creating one and then send the link to your friends to waste a few seconds of theirs. It’s kinda fun.
Last week I was interviewed by Matthew Reinbold of CouchCast. The interview is about the Ignite Salt Lake event that I organize. The next event is coming up on March 26th.
If you are not familiar with Ignite, the tagline of the event is “Enlighten us… but make it quick.” 16 speakers get 20 PowerPoint slides to talk on something they are passionate about. The slides rotate automatically every 15 seconds, making each presentation a grand total of 5 minutes long. We held our first event in November and had a great time. November’s presentations are available to watch at www.ignitesaltlake.com
To check out the CouchCast audio interview visit: http://voxpopdesign.com/bloomburst/?p=669
(the volume on my end is a little wonky so you may have to turn it up a bit)
Yes I admit, I am a Twitter addict. In fact my Facebook friends who aren’t familiar with Twitter probably think I spend all day updating my FB status. That’s actually just coming over from Twitter. Does that make me any less of a geek? No, actually that’s probably arguably more geeky, but I just thought I’d point it out.
The way I describe Twitter is that it is an open group chat where you can type a question, comment, what you are doing etc. and have it seen by all of your twitter friends (and anyone on twitter who happens to look). They can reply to you if they have a comment or an answer. The great thing about this is it lets you put things you are thinking of or working on out into the internet cloud and wait for a return. It’s passive communication at its finest.
For example - the other day I was asking a friend on twitter a question about a new prototyping application called Balsamiq. The creator of Balsamiq was also on twitter and was receiving alerts on any twitter post related to Balsamiq. The result was that about 2 minutes after my post I received a personal answer from the creator himself. Talk about customer service. I was impressed.
Anyway - enough of the blabbering. I read this article about the birth and creation of twitter and really liked it. It was interesting to see how it started and read about the process that led it to what it is today.
Here is the artcle: http://www.140characters.com/2009/01/30/how-twitter-was-born/
If you aren’t on Twitter yet. What are you waiting for? Sign up today and hey - add me as a friend. My Twitter ID is jdawg.
Have you ever set a tag style on your form input tags in attempt to make the input text fields just the right size? Everything looks great until you notice that now the submit button (since it is also an input tag) is also that same size. In the past I’ve always just created a separate class for my input tags and styled them that way. However there is an easier way using attribute selectors. You easily can target each type of input to style by selecting that type in your css.
“What about IE?” you ask skeptically. Well that’s a good question. IE7 and above does support attribute selectors, but it is not supported in IE 6 and below. You’ll have to decide based on your own website audience whether you can safely use this newer style method. If now’s not the right time, surely the time will come soon where you’ll be able to attribute selectors safely.
You can read more about attribute selectors on the W3C’s website.
I’m very very (very) pleased to announce that I’ve been asked to speak at the How Design Conference this June in Austin, Texas.
My topic will be “Working with Indecisive Clients”. I’ve been putting together the outline of the talk for a few months now and it’s going to be a very fun presentation.
I first attended How Conference in San Diego in May of 2004. It was an absolutely amazing conference and I came away totally inspired, invigorated and excited about design work. I also came away with the goal to speak there one day, and am super happy about meeting that goal (took 4 years but hey… it’s a big conference!)
For any designers out there looking for a conference to attend I would highly recommend this one. The quality of the keynote speakers and of the speakers in general (ahem) is bar none. It is conference money very well spent.
Core 77 Design Magazine and Braun are hosting an international photo contest called “Shoot Your Inspiration”. The basic idea is as follows:
What inspires you? What thought, object, vista, event or person has moved you more than any other? To celebrate the launch of the international BraunPrize 2009, Braun and Core 77 invite you to share your most inspiring images and stories with the world by entering a special photo competition.
I’ve got 7 entries in the contest, so check them out and give me a vote if you like my work.
Here are the links to my photos:
Each year I create a CD with some of my favorite artists/songs of the year. Here are the songs on my “Best of 2008″ CD. Also - check out my “Best Music of 2007” list.
| Name | Artist |
| Turn Tail | The Young Knives |
| What Would Wolves Do? | Les Savy Fav |
| Resistance St. | What Made Milwaukee Famous |
| Campus | Vampire Weekend |
| Good Arms v. Bad Arms | Frightened Rabbit |
| Nursery, Academy | Tokyo Police Club |
| Tonight I Have To Leave It | Shout Out Louds |
| Each Year | Ra Ra Riot |
| Now | Mates Of State |
| Wrestlers | Hot Chip |
| A Sky For Shoeing Horses Under | Why? |
| Hummer | Foals |
| The Band Marches On | Ghostland Observatory |
| Death to Los Campesinos! | Los Campesinos! |
| Untrust Us | Crystal Castles |
| Lost! | Coldplay |
| Dancing Choose | TV On The Radio |
| Hummingbird | Born Ruffians |
| Journey of the Featherless | Cloud Cult |
| Boneless | The Notwist |
| Gasoline | The Airborne Toxic Event |
I’ve been super busy on a couple of projects and haven’t had a chance to install my new Adobe Master Collection CS4 Suite. I figured since I have Christmas week off, this would be a great time to get it all installed and start playing around with some of the new features.
As I started the install process, I got a warning message saying that I needed XP Service Pack 3 in order to continue. Now this is interesting because I have XP auto updates turned on, and have since I have owned this computer. I don’t know why the new service pack wasn’t pulled down by the auto updater, but I figured - it would be pretty easy to just grab it online.
Literally 30 minutes later I still could not find the actual link to download the file! Major failage on Microsoft’s part. All the links in the search engines and on Microsoft’s site were linking me to a page that appeared to be the SP3 download page but was actually a download page for 3 different versions of the “Overview” document. LAME!
In order to save anyone else the trouble of having to hunt down the file, here is the link detailing how to obtain SP3:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/322389
and here is the link directly to the Service Pack 3 install page .
The presentations from Ignite Salt Lake are now available here:
http://www.ignitesaltlake.com/ignite/index.cfm/watch-presentations/
You can check out my intro presentation on “What is Ignite?” or one of the many other (probably more entertaining) presentations as well.
Looking for something to do in November? Well on Thursday November 13th you could be a part of the first ever Ignite Salt Lake event. What’s Ignite? Visit http://ignite.oreilly.com to check it out but the basic idea is:
If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds?
The event is free and will be held at the old downtown library (now The Leonardo Science Center).
For more info visit:
http://www.ignitesaltlake.com
Wiley Press which publishes a ton of the design books you probably have already have on your shelf is giving you the chance to create the cover for their next Photoshop book which is titled, “Photoshop for Right Brainers”.
This is a super cool contest in my opinion and I would enter it except for one tiny problem. I’m a judge. I’m totally looking forward to seeing all the awesome ideas that all the folks out there come up with though and getting together with the other judges to pick the winner. There are already some great entries in the gallery which you can check out here.
The contest ends October 31st, so get going and submit your design! You can view the details on how to enter here.
Good luck!
I just read a really great piece on snook.ca about using jQuery to create menu hover animations. I’m a big fan of jQuery so I figured I would check it out. I was pretty impressed. Take a look at these demos!
Here are the instructions on how to accomplish this effect:
http://snook.ca/archives/javascript/jquery-bg-image-animations/
Hi, I'm Jesse Harding. I'm a designer from
Salt Lake City, UT. I love Photoshop and everything about designing for web, print and anywhere else you can put color. I'm one of the organizers
of a cool event called Ignite Salt Lake. I like to speak at local and national events. I'm a husband, father and have a huge list of hobbies including
music, triathlons and playing with Legos.
