I’ve done a little tweaking to go ahead and chill the look up here a bit. I’ve decided to forgoe Fall entirely as we really don’t get that season here in Houston, it generally goes straight from hot to cold.

My blogroll is starting to collect dust, and the only excuse I can give for not updating it recently is because I’m in the process of making a pretty comprehensive links page that will hopefully take my gargatuan favorites menu down to a manageable size and have all the links I’ve been meaing to add lately. Watch this space!

Today has been incredibly busy and incredibly productive at the same time. Getting ready to head out, meeting Mike for some food then we’re hooking up with Christine, Elaine, and maybe others at Kaveh Kanes for some sweet sweet coffee. Of course it wouldn’t be a get-together without a digital camera, so hopefully tonight I’ll have some neat photos to put up. Speaking of pictures, there are quite a few up in the photolog, however I didn’t take them. I’m participating in a new “lend-a-camera” program for digitally underprivileged high school students ;). Anyway, enjoy the guest photographers, and if you’re looking for some comic relief you really have to watch this video. It has flying and dancing. I really need a red light or something on the camera to let me know when it’s recording.

I have made quite the discovery. I’ve been seeing Kristine post about naps quite a bit, so when I found myself with some free time earlier today I decided to try it.

Oh. My. Gosh.

The rest of the day I was refreshed and on the ball, it was like a whole other world. The air was fresher; the sky was bluer; the chocolate was sweeter. I realized that there has been a huge gap in my life of about fourteen or fifteen years where I took no naps, maybe even longer since I seem to remember messing around during naptime in kindergarten. This has got to change—no longer will I sleep only in a large block (actually usually a small block) at nighttime. If you haven’t tried this nap thing lately, you really should. Anyone else recently discover the joy of naps?

Ever have one of those days where you seem to catch all of the yellow lights?

It’s no secret to many people that Jeffrey Zeldman is one of the fathers of the web and was in fact my first inspiration once I got into web design. The busiest man in NY, has recently “launched” two major websites, Fox Searchlight Pictures and Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture. Now to be completely honest, when I saw the Searchlight site, I was dismayed. Was this the same designer whose writing I have followed for years? Every other site he has done is unmistakably Zeldman, not so much in a particular aesthetic but in the attention to detail and functionality, both of which I think the Fox site lack. However the AIfIA site is absolutely gorgeous. Check it out for a wonderful example of cutting edge CSS design and a sublimely superb user experience.

UPDATE: Well thanks to some helpful comments I have noticed the serious mistake I made with confusing Zeldman’s endorsement of the site with his actually being behind it. My apologies to those who this mistake slighted and I hope they take this as an honest mistake which, in a way, is also a strong compliment. Time to give credit where it is due. Christina, author of a book I have heard about in different circles but haven’t gotten to yet, points out that Erin Malone is the designer behind the new AIfIA. In a roundabout way, one of the things I realized when writing this correction is I know very little about this “Information Architecture” thing everyone is talking about. Even my evaluation was relatively superficial because even while I looked at the underlying code behind the site, I didn’t really attempt to quantify what made the site so pleasant and usable, which I wrote of to the “Zeldman touch.” I see my ignorance on the subject (of IA) as an opportunity for growth, and to that end the AIfIA site has been a great resource so far, I guess a testament to its purpose. Also a little googling led me to, amoung other things, an interesting tutorial at Webmonkey. More on this as I learn. I’m also very inclined to check out the two books written by the two kind enough to point out my earlier mistake.

Well, now that it’s officially over, I must say that was a really excellent weekend that even the amazonian weather couldn’t dampen. It got started strong on Friday with a little car dancing, good food, a sarcastic ATM, and a trampoline.

Saturday got a late start, and it turned out the gig I was looking forward to got rained out. However I did get to meet some new people out in Spring Valley and had a wonderful homemade dinner. There are pictures too but someone *cough*Sarah*cough* absconded with my digital camera, so I’ll have to wait to see if any of them came out. Also got to help someone with their computer, which is always a good feeling. Sometimes I have bad streaks where people seem to come to me with the strangest problems that I really don’t have a clue how to take care of. Then I drove through the rain to hear “the group Mike sings with,” otherwise known as Lager Rhythms. The show was really technically excellent and entertaining, and I got to sit by Christine which was excellent because I got the feeling we both had been similarly exposed to Schoolhouse Rock, we were cracking up at the same times. Afterward I tagged along with Kathy, Elaine and Kenny, Hanna, Robert, and the blog-less Joe and Mandy to a neat place called Catbirds, where they had really excellent music. They were playing really classic jazz stuff, mostly stuff I had heard before but a few gems that were new to me, including one I know was Ella Fitzgerald but I forgot to ask the DJ what album it was off of. Our relatively large group was seated outside, which was fine for the cool weather but a little inconvenient once it started pouring again. I’d like to see them some more but unfortunately I won’t be able to make it out to the Renaissance Festival next weekend because of HPUG. However, if you are going to be in town though, be sure to check out the meeting at 1 PM next Saturday because we’re going to have almost every kind of Treo known to man and a ton of cool Bluetooth gadgets that Jason is bringing.

Where does that leave Sunday? Recovering. And it’s already almost four in the morning!

I hope everyone has a safe and pleasant night. In honor of the night I coerced my lovely black cat Helza for a brief (she doesn’t like being held long) photoshoot. She was more interested in looking around than looking at the camera, so here’s what came out. Besides, would this be a blog without at least one cat picture? Her full name is Helza Poppins, which we named her because when she first joined our household she would hide behind everything and jump out when you least expect it. I’ve seen some pretty interesting costumes today, and of course the decorations are always fun.