maniacal rage

For a long time, HDR was all the rage on Flickr. Every day, when I browsed the interestingness pages, they'd be crammed full of god awful HDR images. If you don't know what HDR is: It's the process of taking several versions of the same photo (each at different exposures) and tone mapping them together. It can be used to create really nice imagery, but its even easier to ruin photographs with it. Most of the photos uploaded to Flickr with the tag "HDR" are terrible. But for some reason, it was a very popular kind of crap, so for weeks on end interestingness was all crap HDR photos. Luckily (at least for me), that has started to die down.

At the same time, another annoyance has gained more popularity. I'm talking about the whole, "I'm an admin for a group called X and we'd love to have your photo added to the pool." This is so very annoying. If I wanted to add my photo to your group pool, I would have. If I cared enough about the subject your group is related to, I would have found a group. If I didn't, I probably don't care. When I get a new activity notification, I am absolutely incensed to find out that it's one of these comments. For a while I would oblige, but that stopped a while back. Now I just delete the comment immediately.

What's particularly annoying about these requests is that they often come up for the most ridiculous or random of groups. Rarely will I get a, "I'm an admin for the group called Mountains of Europe" comment. But I will get something along the lines of, "I'm an admin for the group called Men Who Wear Belts." What is the point of that?

A perfect example is a recent comment Katia received on one of her Nova Scotia pictures, in which you can see her feet on the rocks above an algae-filled pool of water: "I'm an admin for a group called Keen Shoes..." Now, granted, she noted in the description that "Keens rule!" but seriously? A group for photographs of Keen shoes?

The primary reason I redesigned yesterday was to get back some of the simplicity I started with after my reboot in 2005. People who know me (especially in the web development realm) know that I like to talk about simplicity a lot. It's the base of all of my thoughts on web and application design and I always strive for very simple things that work well.

"Simplicity" should not be confused with "lacking" or "incomplete."

For what they are, weblogs can become complicated very quickly. We're talking about a collection of writing (interspersed with photos, links and such from time to time), and yet I'll frequently see weblogs that have three or more columns. If you have two sidebars, you're probably complicating things.

My primary interest in running this site is to write. I've noticed the more random stuff, structure or layout metaphors I add to the site, the less I write. And usually, the writing is more fractured, unfocused and sloppy.

In 2005, I banished all the old content and started anew with an extremely simple layout. No comments, no archives, no titles, just searching and content. Over the past two years, I've slowly crept back to complication and this is an attempt to get back to that better place.

I said it back then and I'll say it again: Getting rid of post titles and comments is the best thing you can do for your content. I've been without comments for over two years and I don't ever plan on bringing them back. I turned titles on for the last design and immediately regretted it. I am so thrilled they're gone again.

Since releasing Leaflets, we've received some feedback regarding the Safari 3 requirement. Generally, there have been two types: First, people wanted to try the demo and were frustrated that the browser check wouldn't let them if they weren't using Safari 3, and second, people were upset that we had designed for only one browser.

The first issue (demo browser-sniffing) was both an accident and a quality-control issue. It was an accident because I wrote the sniffing code late at night just before launch and I completely forgot that, hey, other browsers use WebKit. So searching the user agent string for Safari is pretty stupid. I fixed this a few hours after launch—users can now view screenshots of the various Leaflets and then try the demo, although they'll be warned before it loads the first time if they're not using Safari. The whole reason for the browser requirement in the first place, though, was related to the quality-control issue.

We didn't want to have people without Safari 3 trying to use the demo, because without Safari 3, Leaflets looks odd in places. We rely heavily on Safari 3's CSS3 support and when you view the site with another browser, parts of the navigation are rendered as blank or squares and are unclear (thus, it's difficult to use).

Aside from the use of -webkit-border-radius, which is not a valid CSS property, we aren't using any special hacks or tricks to style Leaflets. In fact, the primary feature of CSS3 we use throughout the site, and which is vital to the display, is multiple background support. Sure, we could design the site without using this (and, thus, support more browsers without visual quirks), but there's a huge benefit to using this feature: Bandwidth savings.

Each of our Leaflets that uses the common top navigation bar has a different color scheme. Some have different button configurations and differently sized breadcrumb elements. We use multiple backgrounds to share a few images to create many differently sized buttons and shapes. And because they're all transparent, we can change the background color of the bar to alter the shade of the images. Not having to download multiple images saves the user bandwidth. And by using multiple backgrounds, we can also cut down on the amount of code structure on each page, adding more to bandwidth savings.

A few complaints were along the lines of "if you had just written Leaflets in standards compliant code, it would work perfectly in every browser." And, of course, we did write it using standards compliant XHTML (validate it yourself). Leaflets does work in other browsers and older phones, it just doesn't look so hot without CSS3 support (see it running on an older Samsung A900). And, to be fair, we all know that writing things using web standards does not ensure things will work in every browser. I wish it did.

We didn't choose to limit Leaflets to Safari 3 because we're elitist jerks or to make it iPhone-only. It's just that iPhone is the only device on the market that has a really modern, nearly fully-featured browser. Javascript, CSS3, full-scale rendering—it all adds up to a great experience, and we wanted to create something that was more than just the average mobile application. Our goal was to take web services people were already familiar with and modify them to fit the mobile context. Fast downloads without compromising user interaction and experience. iPhone allowed us to do that quite well, we think.

Whenever I travel to Europe, I always drink a crap-ton of orange Fanta. It sounds silly, but the UK/European version of orange Fanta tastes a lot better than the US version. Without going into too much detail, the non-US version contains some actual orange juice, while the US version contains only citric acid and high fructose corn syrup (it's a different discussion entirely to explain why the US uses corn in everything, and we'll save it for another time). Suffice it to say that foreign versions are better. So when I'm abroad, I drink it like crazy.

When we went to Japan a few years ago, we found that Fanta was available almost everywhere we went—from Tokyo to small towns alike—in vending machines for our convenience. It was almost always sold in these cute little metal bottles, and usually available in both orange and grape. The grape version in Japan tasted a lot like carbonated Dimetapp, if that means anything to you (and if it does, that will probably evoke sweet memories of childhood). We also came across a few cans of melon flavored Fanta (not sold at all in the US), which tasted like bubble-gum.

It's a strange thing to say, but Fanta has been a part of every trip abroad I've ever taken. Whenever I fly into Heathrow, the first thing I do is buy a bottle of Fanta. When we left Japan, I brought home an empty grape Fanta metal bottle. And when we were in Italy I refused to shower in anything other than pompelmo Fanta. Sure, it got expensive and I never really got clean, but it was worth it. It's strange that I never drink soda when I'm at home (except random occasions of root beer or black cherry cravings), but I always drink it when I'm abroad.

As part of my they're-starting-to-sound-creepy-now Fanta thoughts today, I happened upon the Wikipedia page for Fanta and learned that it was created during World War II in Nazi Germany. Due to a shortage of Coca-Cola syrup, the plant in Germany (which, contrary to urban legend, was not run by Nazis) had to get creative and they made Fanta out of whatever they could find. They started with whey and leftover apple fiber. Mmmm.

I'm so behind. I meant to write this SXSW download post right when I got back but then work and life and podcasting and sketch writing and all that stuff got in the way and so here we are, weeks later, and I'm posting it. It's so late, it might as well be about next year. In fact, due to its ridiculously late appearance, I've stripped it down quite a bit to just bare essentials and thoughts and simple stuff. Many other people wrote really great posts about SXSW, so who am I to compete?

To put it briefly: I had the time of my life. I met hundreds of people, stayed out late, talked about SimpleLog, the podcast, hell, even xPad, and everyone else's stuff, and I had nothing but fun. The only down point was when, on the first morning, I had room-service breakfast. There's a reason TGIFriday's (the restaurant in the Radisson) doesn't make breakfast, and I learned my lesson rather quickly. I spent the whole second day feeling terrible, but luckily by later in the evening I was finally okay. That was the worst part of the trip. Everything else was a blast.

Before I left for SXSW, everyone I mentioned Austin to immediately told me they loved the city. I think SXSW must have been in the wrong area of Austin, because I didn't understand why anyone would be so into it. From my five days there, I came to think of Austin as the town with eight hotels, a conference center, two other buildings and one street lined with bars. I've been told that Austin is fantastic, and maybe next year I'll get out farther away from the convention center to find out. At the same time, when I went I really had no interest in Austin itself.

Everyone at the conference was wearing Threadless shirts. If you weren't already sure of how successful Threadless was, you could just look around SXSW each day and see that hundreds of people were wearing shirts. Panel speakers, young people, old people, during the day and at night. It's not that I didn't expect it, but I was a little surprised by just how prevalent it was. Granted, I have a crapload of Threadless shirts, but I actually didn't bring any to Austin. I sort of felt left out with my single-color tees, but each time I saw someone wearing one of the Threadless shirts I own I was glad to not be wearing it.

Buttons were also all the rage this year. I really like buttons and I think this is a trend I wouldn't mind continuing. You have to give credit to El Boton and DS Buttons for starting this whole thing, but everyone had buttons this year and it was a fun little additional thing about meeting people. By the last day I had to take the buttons I had been collecting off my bag because they were randomly popping open and poking me. That and people kept saying, "Uh, wow, you've got a lot of buttons there." Apparently, it's creepy to have more than a certain number of buttons.

The panels were so-so. That's the best way to put it. The problem with panels is that nearly everyone at SXSW already knows the majority of their content. That and most of the panels are made up of friends, who also have friends in the crowd, so it's a little silly to try to run through a panel when you're getting screaming and laughing and clapping all the time. It's still fun, but you're not learning much. The best panels weren't panels at all—single people on stage really talking about things instead of bullshitting with friends. I'm biased, but Brian Fling's mobile panel was my favorite. Chock full of info (almost too much!).

I only took a few photos. I was too busy enjoying myself. I had planned to take tons and tons of pictures, but every time I thought to grab my camera, I realized that I would rather just spend the time talking to people instead. I appear in plenty of photos, most of which you can find on Flickr, but I only took a few. Next year I hope to make a better effort with photos.

Nearly every picture I took is from the Avalon Star Bowling event, which was extremely fun and definitely one of my favorite events from the week. Brian Veloso did a great job putting the event together and it was a blast. The bowling alley we played in was nicer than any I'd ever seen. If anything, it was too nice. They had you use a demo ball to find the perfect size and then they gave you a perfect ball right there. I'm used to walking the rows and rows of crappy, heavy, mis-fitting balls and then having a hard time bowling the whole night. Not at this place. Granted, I still had a hard time bowling the whole night, but I can't blame it on that perfect ball.

This was my first SXSW, and I immediately regretted not going last year. I'm already counting down the days until next March. If you haven't been, but you've considered it, you owe it to yourself to go next year. It's worth it.