A List Apart is one of my favorite online magazines and resources for web design, encompassing culture, code, content, standards and practices, etc. Right now they’re conducting a survey of “designers, developers, information architects, project managers, writers, editors, marketers, and everyone else who makes websites” to get a sense of how our profession is practiced. Take the survey! It’s fast and easy.

A co-worker forwarded a really fantastic article from Smashing Magazine, about new standards in web design. The good news is, I appear to be doing a lot of things right in my design work. Although the survey analyzed large blogs, I think the results can apply to any type of site. Here is a summary; the percentages in parentheses indicate the percentage of surveyed sites conforming to the standard:

• large blogs require a multi-column layout solution (usually 3 columns suffice) (58%);
• layouts are usually centered (94%),
• layouts usually have a fixed width (px-based) (92%),
• the width of the fixed layout varies between 951 and 1000px (56%),
• 58% of the overall site layout is used to display the main content,
• CSS-layouts are used (90%),
• the background is light, the body text is dark (98%),
• the most usual (not necessarily most user-friendly) line length lies between 80 and 100 characters,
• Verdana, Lucida Grande, Arial and Georgia are used for body text (90%),
• the font size of body text varies between 12 and 14px (78%),
• Arial and Georgia are used for headlines (52%),
• headlines have the font size between 17 and 25px.

 

My friend Brad pointed me to this really cool application that creates a customized word cloud from any text or URL.

This one is created from the text of my cookbook. Good times!

I found this image on ArtDaily and thought it was beautiful.

Javier Peréz
Mascara de Seduccion (Mask of Seduction), 1997
Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa

Horse hair, cotton fabric, silk, text

Smashing Magazine has collected some really gorgeous desktop backgrounds for your Mac. Or, your PC, I suppose. This is the one I’m currently using both at work and home.

I realized tonight that I’ve only made three short posts in the past three weeks that AREN’T about my miscarriage. Part of me is tired of thinking about it, and I am sure that my readers, all two of you, are tired of reading about it too, so I’m going to try to move on to other topics now for the most part. I can’t promise there won’t be the occasional “woe is me” post, but I am trying not to let the woe engulf me and writing about normal things will be an exercise in getting my head out of that sadness.

So. Onward!

Last.fm
Doc turned me on to this cool site called Last.fm. It’s a free service (similar to Pandora) that keeps track of what music you listen to, streams music that it thinks you’ll like on your own personal “radio stations” (and does a darn good job, by the way, of choosing music that I like), connects you with people that have similar tastes, and introduces you to independent artists and music you may not have heard before.

Try it! It’s very easy to install and operate. It imports your iTunes listening history and then is able to custom-tailor “radio stations” for you.

The 6 Cutest Animals That Can Still Destroy You
I absolutely love Cracked.com’s lists. The people who write them are hilariously witty and razor sharp. Even if I don’t have any interest in the topic, although I usually do, I still read them for the quality of writing. Here are just a few choice quotes from a recent article about six adorably cute animals that can fucking kill you. This shit is bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S.

If animals could talk, they would spend most of their time calling us dicks and telling us to get off their land. The traits we think of as “cute” are often simply tricks animals have developed to get tourists to throw them food.

There is no way you could look at a big, fat, happy, squishy, huggable hippo and not think, “If she could talk like a human, she would sound just like Jada Pinkett Smith and be oh so sassy.” You would totally name her Sassybaskets and she would be your tutu-wearing, ballet-dancing, strut-walking pal for life. Just you and Sassybaskets against the world! Look out, New York, here comes Sassybaskets!

The platypus is mother nature’s way of saying, “I made this thing out of spare parts I found on the workshop floor, and it can still fucking cripple you.”

It turns out swans are now and have always been vicious, mean little motherfuckers who will not hesitate to snap your fingers off one by one for daring to pollute its presence. And then going off to laugh with all their friends about what a huge loser you are.

Orange Almond Cake with Caramel Sauce
A few weeks ago I made a delicious cake. It is in no way low-calorie or low-fat, and it tastes utterly decadent. Here’s the recipe:

3/4 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs plus 1 egg yolk
1/3 cup orange marmalade
1/3 cup light sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1-3/4 cup flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
7 ounces almond paste, crumbled

Sauce:
1/4 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon rum extract
1/3 cup orange marmalade

Preheat oven to 350.

Lightly butter a 9″-round bundt cake pan; set aside.

With a mixer, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 3-4 minutes. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the apricot preserves, sour cream, and vanilla extract; beat for 1 minute more.

Stir together the flour, baking powder, and salt; lightly fold into the batter along with the almond paste.

Spread batter evenly into the prepared pan . Bake for 40-45 minutes or until the center of the cake is firm when the pan is lightly tapped.

For sauce:
In a medium saucepan, melt butter. Stir in brown sugar and cook for 2 minutes. Stir in remaining ingredients and simmer over low heat for a few minutes more. Drizzle over cake slices.

Recent Activities
Last Friday night we went to an art show and dinner with Kathryn and Brett. Even though I didn’t particularly care for most of the art (a student show, watercolors), it was nice to get out and do something cultural with friends. I don’t know why we don’t do that more often. Recent events have got me thinking a lot about priorities and free-time activities, and I’ve realized that I miss actively making art and actively going out to look at other peoples’ art. I want to start doing that more often. We need to force ourselves to find the time…. maybe by just writing on the calendar what we are going to do, and then sticking to it. For someone who’s supposed to be an artist, I sure avoid art a lot of the time. I don’t understand myself sometimes.

Think of your favorite teddy bear. Now imagine it’s been ripped open, gutted, and turned inside-out. That’s what Kent Rogowski’s Bears series has done to the iconic stuffed animals of our childhoods.

Thank god I chose to be an artist for a living, since we command such large salaries! I wonder if I would make out as well by, say, fashioning lamps out of squirrels.

Artist Jeff deBoer creates intricately scuplted suits of armor for cats and mice. Actually he does a lot of other things as well, but the armor series is my favorite. Check it out! Thanks to Doc for the link.

I love this artist’s series of photographs: Jan von Holleben’s “Dreams of Flying”

This is a photograph by Olivo Barbieri. I love his work. He makes big giant scenes look like they’re miniature models. I learned how to fake this technique in Photoshop, but he does it the authentic way: in-camera tilt-shifted focus taken from a helicopter. Click the photo for more images from his series Site Specific.

Why spend oodles and gobs of your hard-earned money for a fancy-pants artsy-fartsy designer, when you can simply apply some “Make My Logo Bigger” cream to your project?

While you’re at it, try some Whitespace Remover Spray and Sparkle Dust!