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The colour of devotion on Photography Served. Web Standards Sherpa. HOWTO: Configure Tor + SASL + irc to connect to Freenode | random neuron misfires. Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011 at 8:39 pm| 17,722 views | trackback urlTags: freenode, identd, irc, linux, nickname, Perl, Python, Tcl, VMware, xchat I fought this problem on the train into the city today, because my MiFi‘s hostname was not correctly reversing to it’s given IP (verified by dig) and Freenode was denying the connection; it looked like this: Mar 22 06:51:41 * Looking up irc.freenode.net Mar 22 06:51:41 * Connecting to chat.freenode.net (86.65.39.15) port 6667...

Mar 22 06:51:42 * Connected. Now logging in... Mar 22 06:51:42 * *** Looking up your hostname... Mar 22 06:51:42 * *** Checking Ident Mar 22 06:51:42 * *** Your forward and reverse DNS do not match, ignoring hostname Mar 22 06:51:55 * *** No Ident response Mar 22 06:51:55 * *** Notice -- You need to identify via SASL to use this server Mar 22 06:51:55 * Closing Link: 166.199.4.113 (SASL access only) Mar 22 06:51:55 * Disconnected (Remote host closed socket).

Mar 22 06:52:05 Cycling to next server in Freenode... As Old TVs are Switched Off, a Glimmer of 'Tron'-esque Graphics. Best Practices of Combining Typefaces - Smashing Magazine. Affordable Email Marketing & Email Price Options - VerticalResponse. Landing Page Tutorials and Software. Museum of American Packaging. CSS line-height – a simple step-by-step presentation. Edit this Fiddle - jsFiddle - Online Editor for the Web (JavaScript, MooTools, jQuery, Prototype, YUI, Glow and Dojo, HTML, CSS) Explorations in Typography / Typeface combinations. Website gallery of diacritics. Install Plugins ‹ Vapelicious Blog — WordPress. What Would Seth Godin Do. Seth Godin advocates using cookies to distinguish between new and returning visitors to your site: “One opportunity that’s underused is the idea of using cookies to treat returning visitors differently than newbies.

It’s more work at first, but it can offer two experiences to two different sorts of people.” (Source: In the Middle, Starting) I built this WordPress plugin to implement Seth Godin’s idea. It reduces the “work at first” to almost nothing. By default, new visitors to your blog will see a small box above each post containing the words “If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. New visitors will appreciate some context and background information about your site.

I can be reached at wwsgd AT richardkmiller DOT com. Installation is easy: That’s it! Subversion (SVN) users can check out the plugin directly from the WordPress.org repository: Get this plugin now to grow your business. Do what should do. Boost Your Sales by 80% with a 'Call to Action' One of the most important elements of your web site is the "call to action. " Your site may have a compelling headline that grabs your visitors' attention.

It may have well-written salescopy, great graphics, awesome navigation, fantastic testimonials, and an unbelievable opt-in offer. But all these things aren't going to mean squat if you don't include a clear call to action! Take a moment to consider the purpose of your web site. What is it you want people to do when they visit your site? Now ask yourself: Does your site tell your visitors exactly how to do these things? Your visitors need to know what you want them TO DO. Be explicit about the actions you want your visitors to take. The Power of Suggestion Just in case it's been a while since you brushed up on your marketing lingo, a call to action is a strongly worded suggestion that clearly states what action you want your visitors to take. For example, the following phrases are all calls to action: "Click Here to Subscribe! " IG-HTML5-Cheatsheet-1000px.png (PNG Image, 1000x15993 pixels) Sanborn Fire Insurance Map Typography. Title pages, headings and letterforms clipped, cropped and isolatedfrom maps and map publications issued between about 1880 and 1920.

"D. A. Sanborn, a young surveyor from Somerville, Massachusetts, was engaged in 1866 by the Aetna Insurance Company to prepare insurance maps for several cities in Tennessee. [..] Before working for Aetna, Sanborn conducted surveys and compiled an atlas of the city of Boston titled 'Insurance Map of Boston, Volume 1, 1867'. [..]

The atlas includes twenty-nine large plates showing sections of Boston at the scale of 50 feet to an inch. It is believed to include the earliest insurance maps published by Sanborn.The success of the Boston atlas and the commission from Aetna must have impressed the young surveyor with the importance of detailed and specialized maps for the fire insurance industry. Following his assignment in Tennessee for Aetna, he established the D. Albany, Georgia - April, 1920 Allentown, Pennsylvania - March 1885 Allentown, Pennsylvania - 1897. Vintage InfoPorn No.1. My conceit, when I started making infographics, was simple. I believed this was a *new way* of expressing and visualizing information, a thoroughly modern and zeitgeisty fusion of data and design.

Oh you muppet David… These infographics were created by students of American African-American activist W.E.Dubois in 1902. They’re so modern looking! Right down to the type. Then there’s ISOTYPE – the International System Of TYpographic Picture Education. There’s a gorgeous small-format book on Isotype by Neurath’s wife Marie and Robin Kinross that’s worth a look. The vibe of ISOTYPE, and its tight visual language, depended heavily on the pictographic work of German artist Gerd Arntz.

Nice! Gerd Arntz: Graphic Designer (look inside) is gorgeous book, recently published by 010 Publishers, celebrating his work (Amazon UK | US). So infography has risen and fallen in history. Bible Design and Binding: Bleeding Through: The Sorry State of Bible Paper. Back in June, Iyov posted an excellent photo essay titled "Bible paper bleedthrough," using photos from my review of Cambridge's Pitt Minion NKJV to illustrate just how bad the problem of thin, translucent Bible paper really is.

In my review, I described the paper as "relatively opaque," saying the ghosted print image from the reverse of the page was "faint, and not pronounced enough to be distracting. " Iyov then used the photos illustrating the review to argue that my assessment shows just how far we've sunk: "…we have become so accustomed to bleedthrough that four layers of text can quality as 'relatively opaque.'" Fair enough. Far from bucking the verdict, I feel the need to confess. The photo above illustrates a phenomenon that goes by a couple of names — some call it bleed-through, others ghosting.

I have a stack of vintage Bibles at my elbow. Readability ought to be the highest goal of any Bible edition. So what's happened? Another factor is the current rage for thin Bibles. David Baron's weblog: What does a blur radius mean? [Note that this blog entry contains a good bit of markup, including script and SVG, and will probably not syndicate very well.] A bunch of Web platform features involve blurring. For example, the CSS text-shadow property lets a shadow be both positioned and blurred. Each shadow is given with three numbers: the first two give the position and the third gives the blur radius. For example: text with a shadow The CSS box-shadow property is similar, though it also takes a fourth number, a spread radius, which I won't discuss here, except to say that nothing discussed here is relevant to it. The HTML canvas element has a similar shadow mechanism, which applies to all drawing operations: Different browsers, however, have historically done different things for the same blur radius, both in terms of blurring algorithm and what the radius means for that algorithm (i.e., how blurry a given radius makes things).

In Firefox 4, we've changed our implementation to match these changes in the specs. box blur. The Future of CSS: Finally, Sane Layout Tools. HTML5 and CSS 3 offer web designers new semantic tags, fancy animations, server-side fonts and much more, but that’s not the end of the story. The next major development in web design will likely revolve around one of the things neither HTML5 nor CSS 3 have yet addressed — page layout. For all the great new tools in both technologies, the task of making page elements arrange themselves the way you’d like remains an imperfect process at best. Floats, absolute positions and the occasional bit of JavaScript will get the job done, but that’s a lot of code for something as basic as positioning elements on the page.

Surely there’s a better way. For example, wouldn’t it be nice if you could simply define a box and then position child elements within that box using a few lines of code? Perhaps something like this: These CSS rules tell the browser that our section tag should be a box. The Flexible Box layout Module isn’t the only tool the W3C is considering for improving the layout tools in CSS. HTML5 Makes a Great Color Picker. HTML5 is changing more than just websites — it’s changing the capabilities of browsers, as well.

For example, a very clever use of the HTML5 canvas tag allows developer Heather Arthur’s Rainbow color scheme add-on for Firefox to extract a color palette from any webpage. Because browser add-ons — those in Firefox and Chrome anyway — can be built using HTML, they too can take advantage of HTML5′s new tools. In Arthur’s case, that means using the HTML5 <canvas> element to load the entire web page and then use the getImageData function to extract colors. Now it’s true there are already some add-ons (and desktop software) that can do this, but the shortcoming of most such add-ons is that they simply parse a page’s DOM and extract CSS styles to build a color palette.

That works just fine — unless key page elements are actually images. Of course behind the scenes there’s a good bit more going on. See Also: Plugin Install — WordPress. Horizontal Scrolling Websites Design Inspiration chethstudios Design Magazine. Its Sometimes great and refreshing to see someone break the conventional web design style of top-down scrolling and come up with horizontal scrolling website. Not only these look structurally different, it gives you the freedom to do whatever you wish, and come up with new ideas because its a whole different game in web designing . This design trend is mostly seen in design and photography portfolios.

Here are some excellent examples to inspire you to create a horizontal scrolling site! IndoFolio Pretty Production PDCdesigns22 Inhouse James Joyce Candice Holloway Peter Pearson Aubrey Edwards Photography Dimitris Theocharis Photography Tom Hoops Photography Stephane TARTELIN stéphane BUCCO the boxdoodle project Jaynelle Lording Harry Wittlinger zupadupa Furniture store Merus Wines hvasshannibal Eolo Perfido Photography nirvana the band the show Snohetta Talents Tinkainteractive Mariana.

Pairing typefaces in book design. Choosing a typeface combination was something I struggled with when designing my first book. So it’s with pleasure that book designer, page compositor and layout artist Stephen Tiano wrote the following as a guest contribution. Image courtesy of arnoKath Choosing typefaces is one of the two most important choices you make when designing a book.

Aside from a cover photo or illustration, it is the detail that is most out there in front of readers. Fonts* used on a book cover make the initial reading impression and, when properly chosen, prepare readers for how the reading experience will feel when they turn to the first page. I know of two ways to select typefaces for book projects. A few of my favorite type superfamilies are Fontin/Fontin Sans, Liberation Serif/LiberationSans, and Scala Pro/Scala Sans Pro. The second way to pair types is the “hard,” creative way; the doping-it-out kind of way, where the book designer does the matching. 10 Things You Can Do To Become A Better Web Designer. Like a lot of web designers I didn’t go to school to learn design or development. My degrees are in completely unrelated fields. As a web designer and developer I’m close to 100% self-taught. That self-teaching isn’t random though. Since the beginning I’ve set a course for self-study that I continue to adapt to this day.

I thought I’d share some of the things I do to continue to improve my design and development skills. First I want to offer a few thoughts on learning in general. Two Types of Learning One of the frequent topics of conversation on small business forums is how important a college education is. Most people typically fall on one side or the other and I’ve usually found that side depends on their own career path. There are good arguments for both sides, but I think the best way to learn is through a combination of theory and practice. Theory Learning through theory is about learning from the experience of others. Theory: Practice Practice: Tips for Becoming a Better Web Designer. 5 Website Features You Can Offload to Reduce Costs. The term "offload" or "offloading" in information technology and computer science refers to the transfer of something from your system to an February 08, 2011 The term "offload" or "offloading" in information technology and computer science refers to the transfer of something from your system to an external system.

In the context of websites, your system is your website (and your Web servers/Web host), and the external system consists of third-party Web services such as Google Analytics or Shopify. Why You Should Or Shouldn't Offload There are advantages and disadvantages to having parts of your website catered to by third-party Web services. Pros of Offloading Reduced Cost: Whether it's lower Web server costs or fewer employee hours to commit to maintenance and management, the Web solutions listed below will generally lead to cost reductions. Cons of Offloading 1. Check out the following excellent hosted e-commerce management systems below. 2. 3. 4. 5. Image credit: iStockphoto, kemie. 5000+ Free Photoshop Gradients. Photoshop gradients are one of the many presets that can be use to create some really creative designs and effects in your photographs or any other graphics.

Before you go ahead and dive into these colorful Photoshop gradients please pop your eyes into some other nice posts on Photoshop tutorials and Photoshop resources that we have here: Have a great day, and enjoy the SuperBowl! If you get a chance to help promote this post, we’d really appreciate it. Thanks for reading! Ultimate Web2.0 Photoshop Gradients Realistic Sky Gradients Vintage Gradients by IceChicken Faded Gradient Pack Web2.0 Gradient Pack Adobe Gradients Pack The Ultimate Gradients Pack 1 Clean Gradients Set iPhone Gradation Set Smoshing Free Gradient Set Modern Photoshop Gradients Pastel Gradients Tango Gradients 156 Photoshop Gradients New Gradients 1000 Free Web 2.0 Gradients Dooffy Gradients Set PSP Gradients 3 Dark Light Styles and Gradients 400 Gradient Varities Advertisement.