…a bunch of randomness today:
You guys would be so grossed out if you could see what I was doing right now (6:51 PM ). I melted a big block of Velveeta and mixed in some salsa to make this cheesy chip dip. It’s chunky and orange-red in color and all congealed along the edge of the bowl. Blech! …I can’t stop shoving it in my face though. I’d suggest you try it yourself, but I don’t want to be held responsible for any cheese food induced manias.
My parents got TiVo today. Woo Hoo! Everyone who plays with ours wants one.
It dawned on me today, during a fit of HTML writing (for the help file of our conference room scheduling application) that The Sundays are the only band I can think of that hasn’t done one single song that I don’t like. I mean, three albums and not one tune that I don’t care for…what are the odds? (I just know that now that I’ve posted this, I’m going to come up with a bunch of other examples…c’est la vie!)
I made an icon for bradlauster.com today. If you bookmark my site with Internet Explorer, you’ll get a little icon of my head by the bookmark and by the URL in the address bar. I made one for tpodd too! It was fun…
The new issue of Wired (Jan. 2001) has a big section on design. It’s becoming increasingly apparent that (making a HUGE generalization here) most designers are pompous gas-bags, more concerned with looking cool to their designer friends than creating something that (non-designer) people can really feel good about using. This is disconcerting because I’m really striving to gain enough knowledge and skills to be able to, comfortably, call myself a designer. A pompous gas-bag is really not something I’m shooting for, ya know?
It seems that there are companies out there that do strive to create products that people will value and feel good about owning and using. I get that impression that IDEO is one of those companies. Cooper Interaction Design is another. In fact, when I interviewed at Cooper, I specifically remember one of their buzz phrases being about design without the ego. I like that.
…which brings me to the topic of starting my own design firm. I’ve been thinking of launching my own company for a while now. Without giving away too many of the details before I’ve really thought things over, I think I might follow the model that Joel, of Joel on Software, followed to created his fledgling company Fog Creek Software: gather your thoughts together in a ‘blog, write a book colligating those thoughts into a unified vision for your company, launch the company. Simply genius, I think. …now to start a more concentrated ‘blog and begin writing my book. This is going to be a long process, but keep your eyes peeled for it on OpenLeaf.
…one last thing: what the hell is the point of Driving Over Jakob Nielsen?
