I’m loving Ben Coleman’s pirated Death Before Dishonor Sailor Jerry-esque iPhone wallpaper. (Now, if only I could put a wallpaper on my awesome Nokia 2610…)

eleven2, my webhost for the past few years, is looking to hire a Senior Web Developer in Houston, Texas.

Use your intuition…People are notoriously poor at articulating anything besides improvements to the products they currently own. Market research is a pathetic catalyst for revolutionary products.
— Guy Kawasaki, Rules for Revolutionaries

Summize lets you search Twitter for phrases, @replies, etc. Handy.

Art of the Title Sequence is a blog about movie/TV title sequences and their designers. Big video. Big. Found via Wiseacre’s Twitter (which sounds like a disease or a deadly curve all the kids go racing on like daredevils.)

Not choice but habit rules the unreflecting herd.
— William Wordsworth

Job postings are tricky things. You want to be succinct. You want to be engaging. You want to rise above the noise and reach out in the right way to find the just-right candidate. Being truthful helps. So does being funny. You want to let potential applicants know what kind of culture your organization has. You want to communicate exactly what you want, and, perhaps more importantly, what you don’t want. There is a job to be done and you want the role filled, preferably with a minimal amount of false leads and wasted time in between posting and hiring.

I probably did a decent job of the above in the Art Director/Designer job posting. Most people chuckled a bit. And in the context of this blog, I think most of you know my general demeanor and writing tone, so it read funny. When it was posted outside the context of this blog, I wonder if it just read smug.

You see, a friend called me out on it. I think she actually used the phrase “totally harsh” when we talked about it. I also think she was probably right.

“Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious…”
— Colossians 4:5-6a

All of the things I listed in that original job posting are true. I intensely mean them. This role is for a highly-skilled professional designer that knows their stuff and has a portfolio of client work to prove it. I don’t want to come across as compromising on that. But in my attempt to filter the applicants on the front-end of the process, I used a tone and attitude that stands in stark opposition to the fact that above all, I’m a follower of the way of Jesus Christ and I am responsible for acting, thinking, and speaking in a way that best represents who I am in light of who I believe Jesus to be. This isn’t so much about it being a job posting for a church — that’s secondary to it being a job posting written by me.

“Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us.”
— Titus 2:7-8

Elitism, the pride it stems from, and the smug swagger it takes on in action have no place in the Kingdom of God. They ruffle my proverbial feathers, so I’m a hypocrite for hating them, and then engaging in a bit of my own oratory elitism for the sake of a good read and a laugh. So for that, I apologize. I want the right person for this role to join our team, but I don’t want to compromise the attitude I should walk in and speak from in order to take some short cuts in filtering applicants. The easy way is rarely the best way.

In light of all those thoughts, I’ve edited the job description on this site. Before anyone thinks this was in any way motivated by someone from NewSpring Church, I assure you this is something that I’ve been wrestling with by myself tonight and felt a personal need to talk openly about and to change. For those of you that read my blog who don’t really “get” the whole Jesus thing, I’m sure all this is difficult to understand, but it’s a part of the refining process I’m in and the journey I’m on, trying to walk with some semblance of integrity and goodness.

Thanks for bearing with me and my myriad of faults. You’re good readers.

The short: Are you a Photoshop-wielding, bezier-curve-drawing, typography-knowing, web-culture-loving, detail-sweating, direction-taking Art Director/Designer?

The long: You do jaw-dropping, killer print work. You have more than one good comp in you for any given idea/assignment. You work fast, handling everything from idea to implementation. You work well in the lead owning a project. You work well on a highly-collaborative team. You take creative direction with a smile, and then you make it better because you’re that good. You have an extraordinary mastery of typography, layout, and minimizing clutter. You know when to use Photoshop, when to use Illustrator, and when to use InDesign. You read. A lot.

Bonus point gold star cookies if you know some CSS/XHTML/PHP, can write more than your grocery list, and you throw down a mighty iTunes Library gauntlet.

Let’s see that portfolio URL via email. If you don’t have an online portfolio, this job is most likely not a good fit for you. No phone calls please.

P.S. We’re a church, so that obviously presents the proviso that you have to be a Christian. This is also an on-site job at our Anderson Campus; so no remote workers. We want you to be a part of the culture everyday.

The newly-released soon-to-be-released English Standard Version Study Bible is typographically gorgeous, filled with illustrations, and the website isn’t bad either. Wikipedia has a write-up on the ESV.

Delta just bought Northwest for $3.1bil making them the biggest crappy airline in the world.

I scored 32/34 on The Rather Difficult Font Game which managed to get me in the top 100 of the Hall of Fame (for now). Stupid Bembo Std…

When the focus of attention is on ways to beat the competition, strategy inevitably gets defined primarily in terms of the competition.
— Kenichi Ohame, The Borderless World

If I catch any of you using any of the top 10 made-up words of web 3.0 in any context, you will receive a swift kick in the unmentionables.

I miss Michael Jordan. And I don’t even really like basketball.

Ryan Carson uses Twitter to collect answers to the daunting question “Outside your day job, what are you passionate about?” And you people say Twitter is pointless.

The Utah Saints video for Something Good is the best thing ever (this week).

Robert Randolph (pictured) and The Campbell Brothers are a part of a musical style called “sacred steel*”. Born out of the House of God (Which Is the Church of the Living God the Pillar and Ground of the Truth Without Controversy) denomination (I kid you not), it leans heavily on the use of the pedal steel guitar in church services instead of an organ.

Watch Robert Randolph getting funky with I Need More Love and a short clip of Purple Haze or The Campbell Brothers makin’ church folk dance here and here.

*Sacred Steel is also German metal band.

Photo via the unstoppably amazing Danny Clinch

Mrs. Blankenship and I will be spending a few days in/near downtown Louisville, KY in late May. Wikipedia tells me that Louisville is home to a number of great museums and parks (and a slugger or two), but that’s about as far as my knowledge extends. What should we see, eat, experience, etc. while we’re there?

Cameron Daigle takes us on a walk down (his) memory lane with a variety of old pictures and insightful commentary. Great editing and timing all around.

Regarding Flickr video: I’m curious to see how useful/cluttery it is after the first few weeks of new-toy-syndrome wear off and people start using it “normally” as a part of their Flickr uploading process. Also: the fact that I can’t comment without the video stopping and reloading is annoying.

Flickr has added video uploading. Pro users can upload up to 90-second, 150MB clips.

A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.
— George Patton