Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

Things Kickstarter Should Change
July 20, 2012

Recently Kickstarter posted a blog entry about some cosmetic changes they made to their project page layout. The change looks nice, but just reading the comments reveals some issues with the new design. Moreover, they’ve made revisions that don’t improve the current usability problems on the whole site.

One of the big complaints about the change is that the “backer badge”, a large icon that used to be located prominently at the top of the page, is no longer present. This icon is has been replaced with a small “You Selected” (in small white text on a green background) in one of the pledge boxes. When I first saw this, I had difficulty determining which pledge level I had selected - the one above the notice, or the one below.

Stuff I Should Do
July 17, 2012

This is a list of stuff I should do. Please feel free to bother me about any of these items and why I haven't don't them yet/lately. I may eventually add a button to this page that lets you automatically pester me about one or more of these things. Yet another thing I should do.

So far, they're in no particular order, but this may change. Starting simple and vague.

Custom Bottle Caps
July 13, 2012

At the Brewfest, one of the brewers, File Mile Brewing Company, had really cool custom bottle caps for their beer bottles. I was really impressed with the quality of their logo and the application to the cap. They told me that they used Bottlemark to have their caps printed.

Sometime after the fest, I remembered the link and looked up the Bottlemark site to check out their prices. They were about 12 cents per cap, which is pretty good for custom-printed caps. Usually, 60 unprinted caps (they’re usually measured by weight, not by count) is about $1.60. For $7, Bottlemark will ship 60 caps printed in full color. This was worth looking into, since the kids have been using my blank caps for summer art projects.

Router Junkie
July 12, 2012

The Dark KnightI admit it. I’ve been having some network trouble at home. There are certain requirements I have for The Perfect Router, and I’ve been rampantly accumulating hardware to try to accomplish these requirements:

I have a stack of seven routers here in the office that haven’t made the grade. I’ve got everything from a WatchGuard Edge router, which is an amazing piece of consumer-expensive hardware, to some off-the-shelf garbage from Linksys.

Suburban Reaissance
July 11, 2012

After I got my hair cut yesterday, I set out for West Chester and a new-ish coworking space, ReworkWC, and then off to the new Suburban Philadelphia WordPress Meetup.

I’ve been a “friend of” Indy Hall for a while, back in the Strawberry Street days. I remember the sweaty afternoon soon after the space opened spent helping Alex assemble the tables with a screwdriver and set them around the floor. There were a couple of movie nights with beer, and quite a few stop-ins before/after a client meeting in the city. But because the Hall is so deep in the city (which is a perfect place for them, no doubt), it was never someplace I could get to regularly or justify paying for every month. So after my first year of membership, I allowed it to lapse; now occasionally paying for a drop-in day when I have business in the city and it’s convenient to have a place to work.