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  • No time for being a nerd?

    January 15th, 2009 by Ben

    No time for new posts (2 projects in critical phases and getting a shiny new job in two weeks), but of course always enough time for taking stupid internet tests…

    And, darn - I really thought I would only score “somewhat nerdy”! :rolleyes:


    I am nerdier than 89% of all people. Are you a nerd? Click here to take the Nerd Test, get geeky images and jokes, and talk on the nerd forum!


    NerdTests.com says I'm a Dorky Nerd God.  Click here to take the Nerd Test, get nerdy images and jokes, and talk to others on the nerd forum!

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  • Font Conference

    December 20th, 2008 by Ben

    For all those typography freaks out there:

    (Beware, web designers - you won’t like this vid’s hero ;) )

    Hosted by CollegeHumor

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  • The Road Ahead - Checklist

    October 20th, 2008 by Ben

    In chapter one of the book (remember, that was back in 1995) there’s a small list of things that “will be” possible in the future. Just for fun I decided to check what already IS possible, and I rather like the outcome… ;)

    • Is my bus on time? - Check (info boards or mobile internet)
    • Are there any accidents on my way to work? - Check (navi or mobile internet)
    • Can I find someone to exchange theater tickets with? - Check
    • How often did my kid skip school? - Check (thought that’s a rather evil one ;))
    • Where to get a fish recipe? - Check
    • Where to get a special watch for the best price? - Check
    • How much is your old car worth? - Check
    • How to make a needle eye? - Check
    • Is my laundry done? - Check (okay, I don’t use laundry shops myself, but I’m SURE that’ possible :P)
    • Where to get abos for the best price? - Check
    • How to tell someone’s having a heart attack? - Check
    • What happened at court today? - Check (again, I don’t know, but I’m rather sure)
    • Do fish see colours? - Check (Google and Yahoo both say: depends on the fish ;))
    • What’s happening at a specific place right now? - Check (in many cases even on public webcams)
    • Where have I been last Thursday evening? - Check (doesn’t that just SCREAM Twitter on your GPS iPhone?)

    Welcome to the future, guys! ;)

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  • Cheat Sheets

    September 9th, 2008 by Ben

    There’s a nice article over at Six Revisions with a bunch of useful cheat sheets. While the whole collection is really useful, I decided to re-post the ones I’m actually going to use for personal reference (and to have them handy should any of the linked sites go offline).

    Windows XP

    Windows XP

    Windows Vista

    Windows Vista

    Ubuntu 7

    Ubuntu 7


    (from http://www.ampsoft.net/webdesign-l/WindowsMacFonts.html)

    Font Size Conversion

    Font Size Conversion


    (from http://www.reeddesign.co.uk/test/points-pixels.html)

    HTML Entities

    HTML Entities


    (from http://www.digitalmediaminute.com/reference/entity/index.php)

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  • iPhone 3G - First Impressions

    September 6th, 2008 by Ben

    I’ve never been much of a fan of mobile phones and am quite infamous for my dislike for everything Apple - but when my old (OLD!) mobile started to go down the drain, I just knew the new one would have to be an iPhone. And so far there’s absolutely no reason to regret this decision.

    I’m just not yet used to typing (though it’s by far easier than I had thought), so I’ll resume this message later today when I’m back at my desktop - for of course there’s lots and lots to write about.

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  • No Coffe Theme Update

    August 22nd, 2008 by Ben

    Forgot to post it, but a couple of days ago I’ve finally come around to get rid of some of my theme’s annoyances, namely the integration of some of the plugins and the link styles. No more plugin-related standard blue interrupting the brown-ish flow of the layout, and links are finally underlined again (colour-only indication works fine with sidebars and titles, but I just hate it when links within paragraphs of text are hardly recognize-able because of the missing underlines).

    I’ll probably add some of the setting scripts I did for a job-related blog theme I created and then release the whole theme, but with my current running-out-of-time situation I’m not sure how long it will take. After all there’s still a lot of other tasks waiting to be completed (like updating the Imprint, uploading the rest of my stock photos, working on the Farlarhen site and pretending to have a personal life :rolleyes: ).

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  • No time, lots of frustration and a new concept

    August 20th, 2008 by Ben

    First I have to get some of the frustration out of my system (which coincidentally happens to also explaining my recent lack of updates) - right now I’m spending 9-10 hours a day carrying boxes, crawling on dusty basement floors and getting my fingers crashed under heavy cupboards I’m trying to carry 7 floors up. Each and every day before laying down to sleep/die I have to check my contract whether I accidentally signed up as maidservant or removal man instead of programmer… ;)

    (And of course instead of my extra work being recognized I’m getting yelled at for not cleaning the refrigerator. Hence the frustration.)

    So that really doesn’t leave me with any time (or energy) left to work on my private projects, but at least during carrying out those physical task I have lots and lots of time to come up with new concepts for those non-commercial endeavors.

    Last time I was talking about the Farlarhen website, which is supposed to be a private playground for both programming and art (visually, textual, imaginary and vocal), and I decided to include some of the scripts I collected so far. For instance, skimming through information the user collected during their stay on the website will happen with a modified Stack of Photos script. Overall navigation will probably be using the JS Window Navigation concept. And of course the private project I was talking about in the Text Animations: Typing article was the Farlarhen site - system messages and auth will be handled by a steampunkified monitor that will be using this effect.

    Right now I’m thinking about a way to include plain HTML versions for all of these concepts - I’m aiming for an almost Flash-like experience accomplished with PHP, JavaScript and AJAX, but for those with JavaScript disabled the site should still be usable. Not because I think a private (media based) site should gather to JavaScript haters and text browser users, but simply because I love challenges. :D

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