About this site's lack of design: Yes, it's supposed to look this way — I'm using a sandbox theme for WordPress (see it on GitHub).

Dan Rubin's SuperfluousBanter

Design, random musings, and the Web. Since 1977

Archive for 2005

Comments on QuickBooks Online Edition

Tuesday, November 1st, 2005

I’ve been evaluating alternate accounting packages for our firm for much of this year (we currently run QuickBooks Pro on a PC — we’re a Mac-based business, but QB for Mac just doesn’t seem to cut the mustard), since, as a user experience consultant and user interface designer, I can’t stand actually *using* QB.
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8 Comments

Designer CMS on Rails

Friday, June 10th, 2005

Paul Jarvis (of twothirty fame) and I have been discussing an idea over the last few days, centered around this concept: many designers (especially those who, like us, believe in and evangelize web standards for our projects, and care about building user-friendly interfaces) bemoan the absence of a CMS that meets the following requirements:

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63 Comments

Why My Mum Chose Homeschooling

Thursday, March 31st, 2005

I was reminded today of the kind of nonsense that made my mother search out alternatives to the public school system here in the U.S.. My younger brother, Alex, was educated at home for the entire equivalent of the K-12 public system, while I only had to endure one year in “Pre-1st”, an experimental grade (at that time) intended for kindergarten-aged students who were more advanced than the standard program was intended for. The rest of my standard education was managed by my dear mum, and chatting with her today she mentioned one of the typical run-ins she had with a school official during my “Pre-1st” days.
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23 Comments

Stat Tracking for Web Projects

Monday, January 10th, 2005

I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not always using the best software for monitoring stats for web sites (and by stats I mean anything from hits to referrers to user patterns, and everything in between and on each side), including personal projects such as this site, and commercial projects for clients. I’ve tried built-in log-analysis offerings from various hosts (e.g. Webalizer), as well as free scripts such as Shaun Inman’s ShortStat and Dean Allen’s Refer (usually combinations of more than one such application and/or script), some of which provide useful information, but I’m not entirely convinced that I’ve found the correct collection of tools to evaluate and monitor (and allow clients to do likewise) web site statistics.
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45 Comments