Dan Rubin's SuperfluousBanter

Author: dhilhorst

  • Music and Creativity

    To me music is an essential part of the creative flow. In short: no music,
    no creativity. But I wonder — do some genres of music lead to more creativity
    than others? I guess it all boils down to personal preference. A number of people
    might go all creative listening to classical music or jazz, others might prefer
    some more alternative styles or even heavy metal. I tend to have frequent atmosphere
    or mood swings as to what music I listen to, with each having it’s own
    particular style.

    Personally, while working, I enjoy ambient music and trip hop, mixed with jazz
    and occasionally some electro or house. My favorite streaming channels come
    from the folks at Soma
    FM     and Netmusique.
    Soma FM’s Secret Agent stream is lovely and I enjoy the short sound clips
    inbetween songs from movies such as James Bond and Ocean Eleven. Close to bedtime
    I switch to Soma FM’s Beat Blender to relax and enjoy the mix. Most of
    the time I have either one of these streaming channels playing. So what music
    do you listen to while working? Any streams I should add to my favorites?

  • Style Master 3.5 Quick Review

    Style Master 3.5Due
    to rapid gain in popularity of CSS-based design among web designers and developers
    more and more specialized WYSIWYG tools are becoming available to edit stylesheets.
    Westciv’s StyleMaster
    3.5     is going to seduce both the novice user as well as the confirmed stylesheet
    expert. Style Master 3.5 has an intuitive and complete interface — configuring
    the various dialog boxes to fit my personal preferences was done in a mere 5
    minutes.

    Some interesting options include Support Watcher to crosscheck compatibility
    of different elements and Live Preview to instantly view changes in an HTML
    document. Personally I enjoyed using the Statements List dialog box together
    with the Properties dialog box to quickly make adjustments to specific rules,
    while still being able to handcode if required. However it must be noted that
    while Smart property editors (context sensitive editing) is a very practical
    tool, it will, unfortunately, considerably slow down the application.*

    Style Master 3.5 includes a number of helpful wizards that generate layout
    elements, navigational elements as well as link styles, among others. These wizards
    are great tools to learn CSS by example but also a valuable timesaver for more
    experienced coders. Style Master 3.5 comes with comprehensible help files, tutorials
    and links to online resources, weblogs and books.

    Priced at a more than reasonable $59.99 Style Master 3.5 is available
    for both Mac OSX and Windows    . The application instantly seduced me by it’s
    ease-of-use, robustness and assortment of options and features. Give
    it a try    !

    * Tested on Windows XP, P4 1.5 GHz and 512MB RAM

  • Time Management

    I have a problem. Whatever I do I always seem to be late. Whether it’s an appointment, deadline, assignment, article, column or thesis. Status: late, delayed or cancelled. A few years ago I couldn’t care less about this issue, but life tends to become slightly more serious and I have to pay bills (yes, those are late too, but I’m not about to change that!).

    First of all, RSS feeds and aggregators are evil. They consume so much time. Maybe I should learn speed-reading or something. Today I decided to remove some feeds that either post too much random bullshit or are of limited interest. Aside from these rather small measures I need to really organize my life.

    Being a student doesn’t really help matters. Students are so lazy. If an assignment is due by Monday morning 9:00 AM I’ll be working all night to hand it in at 9:01 AM. Though if I’m late I’ll always blame technology (“Uhmm, sorry professor, but the upload function was f*cked.”). I don’t think I’ve ever handed in an assignment or article two days or even one day in advance. Nope that’s just not me, got to rush the job.

    Working under pressure is fine, even stimulating. However with clients time management becomes crucial. I can’t tell them to bugger off and wait for 2 more weeks. That’s just not professional. So my question is: How do you effectively manage your time?

  • Why Scoble Is Wrong

    So, I’m a bit late to join the party. But heck, it was a busy week and
    I only got a chance to dig through my RSS feeds this weekend. It seems Scoble
    thinks design is useless    , eh? Big deal. While I don’t care much for
    Scoble’s views on the matter, I do however care about design as a fundamental
    part of daily life.

    Reading his rant against design I pictured Scoble at the movies: “Uhmm,
    no thanks, dialogue transcripts will do, pictures are just embellishment of
    data, don’t need that”. Surreal. Yet, he’s saying exactly
    that in his post.

    Jumping into the field of information management, theory holds that there’s
    an unambiguous distinction between data and information. However, my purpose
    is not to debate theoretical details, but present an analogous concept applicable
    to design. Moreover the difference between data and content should be noted.
    In essence content is (re-)packaged data.

    Scoble is clearly data oriented. For Scoble the package (or wrapping) in which
    data is delivered plays an inferior or even detrimental role. I’d like
    to remind people that data as such is useless. To become both convenient and
    effective data requires to be interpreted to fit human processing. Whether,
    in the end, design is good or bad is a subjective matter, prone to hefty (unproductive?)
    debates. But arguing design or aesthetics are not required is bogus.

    Next time Scoble boots up Windows, he should be reminded of the fact that some
    folks at Microsoft spent a considerable amount of time designing its interface.
    Oh wait, maybe we should get rid of that too, it’s just a nuisance, right?
    Design matters! More than
    ever.

  • Copy & Paste Mentality

    We all know that a digital environment is prone to illicit reproductions: songs, movies, stylesheets, markup, code, graphics, software etc. You name it. All your bits are belong to us! As such this is nothing new, I remember the days when tapes were hot, hot, hot! But somehow there was at least some level of effort put into getting that wicked new album on tape – after which you shared it with your friends getting drunk while playing NHL or Road Rash on a Sega Genesis (yup, those were the days).

    Presently sharing requires as much effort as switching on your computer. Aside from the fact that sharing is inherent to a network, a worrisome trend is taking shape: copy and paste mentality is infecting all layers of society, not only the computer literate and hardcore geeks. In the great tradition of client stories from hell, here’s my version.

    While working on a corporate web site I get a phone call from the client: “Umm, yes, we just had a meeting with our 3 CEO’s and would like to expand the site with a few extra sections, is that possible?” Ok, first of, what the f***? 3 CEO’s? Ugh, welcome to feedback and approval cycle from hell. Anyway, more business is always good, so I told them I’d send a revised offer and contract. No biggie. Right?

    Two days later I get another phone call: “Yeah, errmÂ… we had a look at your offer but found its price rather disturbing.” I get these types of answers most of the time, clients always think any price is ridiculous, whatever the amount (tip: odds are a client will try to bargain, make sure you calculate some safety margin; anywhere between 15% and 20% will do). After getting the “this price is ridiculous” preach, I explain how I calculate my fees, the amount of work it will take and of course offer them a 15% rebate since they’re requesting more business (safety margin, remember). But at that exact moment lightening strikes: “Yes, yes, yes, that’s all fine, but isn’t a few extra pages just a matter of copy and paste.”

    Click, click, boom! Copy and paste mentalityÂ…

    It’s during moments such as these that I hate clients more than I need them. As if matters couldn’t get any worse, my sensible explainations failed miserably to convince the client otherwise: “Yeah, well, if you’re going to charge for these few extra sections we’re afraid that we’ll be forced to take our business elsewhere.” Talk about extreme measures. Worst of all, I already finished all the compositions and just got approval, from all 3 CEO’s, which is close to a miracle.

    So I ask you? What would you have done? Give in, and finish the project without billing for the other sections and keep a client happy (and get the full initial amount)? Or, refuse to do work for free and tell them to f*** themselves, accompanied by the traditional middle finger. Yet bill for the hours already worked and risk losing a referral and money?