Jeffrey Veen and I will be conducting a one-day workshop in San Francisco a week from Monday, the 8th of November: Redesigning Blogger. We’ll be covering the process and thinking we used when Adaptive Path and Stopdesign worked with Google to simplify and redesign Blogger earlier this year. Jeff and I have worked together for a little over eight years now. We’ve learned a lot from each other, and from our successes and failures on various projects. ~300 words
The last three days I spent in Wellington couldn’t have been better. The weather was ideal: clear skies with a few clouds, mild temps, and a low breeze blowing off the harbor — apparently kind of a rare environment for Wellington. The days were relaxed, nothing was planned, and I got to meet quite a few local webbers. ~900 words
Best taken while suspended upside-down, dangling by a rubber band strapped to your ankles. Begins with intense anxiety. Guaranteed rush to the head follows. Heart continues pumping for at least 30 minutes after. ~100 words
I mentioned in a previous entry that I’m actually going to make it to New Zealand’s North Island for a brief stay. Thursday — 21 October — I’ll be flying from Christchurch into Wellington around mid-day. I’m spending a couple days there, and I really don’t have much planned. I just want to see and experience New Zealand’s capital city, enjoy the coffee, see a few LoTR sites, and hang out with more Kiwis. ~300 words
On Friday, Mt. Hutt was still closed, and I had almost given up hope of boarding in NZ. But we learned after walking around Methven that one small club field was actually still open: Broken River. Not willing to forfeit another day of boarding, we jumped at the chance. ~900 words
I arrived in New Zealand late last night, after quite a bit of drama at the Cairns airport earlier in the day. I almost didn’t make it to NZ for multiple reasons. ~300 words
For those of you loosely following along on the OZ/NZ adventure, I just wrapped up five very relaxing days at Airlee Beach. It was a perfect spot to use as a base for exploring the nearby islands, and ended up being a great spot from which to head out to the Great Barrier Reef. ~900 words
A few times while traveling around Australia, either I’ve noticed a slight glitch on a site (Stopdesign, or a client site), or someone else points out a bug or problem with some file on a site I have control over. I left my laptop and cables, etc. in Sydney to shed the weight, so I haven’t had access to the tools I normally have at my disposal. Any of these changes are usually quick edits or corrections of previous oversights. However, I’ve been missing some sort of text editor that can work on files remotely via S/FTP. ~600 words
Check out the latest Stopdesign mini-project: Mighty Goods, a new shopping blog by Margaret Mason, known for her long-running Mighty Girl weblog. Margaret came to me wanting a simple, clean design with integrated images for most of the items she posted. This is the end result of holing ourselves up in Canvas for a Saturday a little over a month ago. ~200 words
I stepped off the plane yesterday in Cairns and immediately got hit with a warm tropical breeze. It was a drastic change from the cool San Francisco-like weather of Melbourne. I loved Melbourne, and wished I could stay longer, but this short trip mandates that I keep moving so I can experience everything I planned. ~400 words
Firming up more of my itinerary the next couple weeks made me realize how little time I have left, and how much more I still want to see. Which means I’m now flying out of Melbourne tomorrow morning, heading up to Cairns. ~200 words
I’ll be joining up with Peter and Russ to fly into Melbourne this Tuesday afternoon (5th of October) for a spontaneously rescheduled Web Standards Group meeting that night. Dave Shea and his wife April are traveling to Melbourne, so they’ll also be there for the meeting. If you’re in the area, please come out and join us. Details on time and location will be posted to this page on the WSG’s site when they become available. ~200 words
Man, is Sydney beautiful once the rain and overcast skies go away. I woke up at 6:30am this morning, gazed outside my window, and saw bright sunshine already casting its brilliance over Sydney, so I rushed to get out to experience the day. I hopped a train up to Circular Quay and caught the 8am ferry over to Manly. Such an awesome experience to catch the ferry first thing in the morning… ~500 words
Well, Web Essentials wrapped up on Friday night, and I can truly say it was one outstanding conference. Earlier, I think I wrote that it looked to be the largest web standards event in the southern hemisphere this year. That… was an understatement. It was easily the largest event focused exclusively on web standards in the world (outside the W3C), and the wonderful organizing team pulled it off flawlessly. ~600 words
