You Are Not So Smart

Awesome site with articles debunking popularly held ideas.

You Are Not So Smart

Mark Twain’s Autobiography

My grandfather used to quote Mark Twain’s witticisms and the recitation of those sayings encouraged me to explore beyond the required Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn reading list. This man was a true literary genius with a razor sharp wit. Mark Twain’s will stipulated that his memoirs be unpublished until 100 years after his death. That date passed on April 21st. In November, the University of California Press will release the first volume of Mark Twain’s memoirs.

Mark Twain's Autobiography

Ultimate IE 6 Cheatsheet

I hate it. But the fact remains that Internet Explorer 6 is still being used by a significant number of people. I’ve vowed to close Imp Designs to celebrate the day IE 6 market share drops below 5%, but until that happy day we’re stuck with it. Here’s a link to an awesome site filled with documentation about how to deal with this standards hostile steaming pile of $#%!!

Ultimate IE 6 Cheatsheet

Top Ten Astronomy Pictures of 2009

Yes, I’m a science nerd. The best Christmas present I ever got was a Sears 3-inch refracting telescope. I used to spend hours outside laying on my back looking at the stars and planets. I’m still fascinated by astronomy; these pictures are simply amazing.

Top Ten Astronomy Pictures

Sci-Fi For Real

I read a while back that one of the most under reported stories in science was the propagation of private companies and consortiums working toward developing space travel technologies. Here’s one of them, The Planetary Society, formed in 1980 by the late Carl Sagan and others. In 2005 they attempted to launch a solar sail using a Russian Volna rocket, but it failed to reach orbit. They’re going to try again in 2010. They hope to prove that propulsion via solar winds is possible.

I still remember staying up to see Neil Armstrong step out of the lunar module. My uncle worked for Grumman back then (they’re the contractor that built the lunar module), and I got a TON of insider swag which has since vanished. Here’s to the LightSail-1 project! SCIENCE!

Solar Sail Project

Ultimate htaccess Guide

We manage over 120 websites over at Imp Designs. There’s always some reason to fiddle with the .htaccess files… redirects, URL rewrites, password access… all sorts of web server activities can be managed by modifying the .htaccess file. This site is the best all in one place references I’ve found.

Ultimate .htaccess Guide

Baseball Nerdery Meets Nerdy Nerdery

Found this on Kottke.org—this site has got to be the perfect mix of Baseball stuff and just plain geekery. There are infographics that display baseball nerdery such as the direction a batter faces at each of the MLB parks (nobody faces south or west) and how much money MLB would be out if stolen bases were actually stolen.

Flip Flop Flyball

Amazing Optical Illusion

This is an optical illusion created by the same guy that made the Ames Room, Adelbert Ames, Jr. Ol’ Adelbert was quite the scientist in his day and pioneered the study of physiological optics. “What the hell is that?” you say. Well it’s the study of how our brains process visual data. It’s awesome. It’s geeky. It’s way cool bucky.

The Ames Window

NEWS FLASH! Clicking in a Website Isn’t Evil!

An awesome article on UX Booth explaining that usability isn’t tied to how many times you click, but to how simple the click choices are to make. Long live simple interfaces!

Stop Counting Clicks!

Bad Web Layouts and How to Avoid Them

Excellent little article with examples of widely used but bad web layouts. Better yet, concrete examples of alternatives to these ‘in the rut’ layouts.

Bad Layout Conventions

One Stop OSX Ruby Environment

I just got a new laptop, and Jerrod has convinced me to load everything fresh instead of using the migration tools to just copy over all my stuff from the old laptop. A royal pain in the ass, but considering the old laptop is seven going on eight years old and has remnants of four operating systems upgrades it’s definitely the correct strategy.

I’m playing catch-up with the ninja on this ruby thing. The link below contains a list of gems and associated software that the author claims will probably have a life span of around 6 months, so don’t expect this list to be relevant for much longer. Still… a great starting point for setting up a ruby on rails development environment on the mac.

Giant Robots' Rubyist Setup Guide

Eye Candy Rocks

Some web pundits, most notably Jakob Nielson (who I refuse to link to), claim that design impedes usability. This is frequently rolled out as an excuse for ugly ass websites which work despite their visual shortcomings (Myspace anyone?). Reminds me of when the first band I was ever in would say, “We play this cover song, but we play it our way because we don’t want to just play it like the original.” Truth was, we couldn’t have played it like the original if our lives depended upon it. I suspect something similar is true when I hear someone say that they know their site is ugly, but boy do they get good ranking on Google. Truth is, their site doesn’t have to be ugly… they just don’t have the design skills to make it look nice.

Below is an article that points to studies that show that design does matter. According to the studies cited in the article attractively designed things just plain work better. I love it.

In defense of eye candy.