1. Opera
2. The World of Coca-Cola
3. Atlantic Station
4. Design Within Reach
5. Loca Luna

Scenario:

1. Check office voicemail
2. Write down important details (names, numbers, companies, etc.)
3. Hang up
4. Google names, companies, etc.
5. Read up a bit
6. Return call

Does anyone else do this? I do it 99% of the time, and it’s so ingrained into my workday that it feels like an unconscious process.

Lake Lydia is a wonderful little slice of East Texas heaven, right outside a town called Quitman. I’d apologize for being missing in action this weekend, but I’m not sorry.

1. Cooking and/or eating Mexican food
2. Graffiti
3. Passionate, early voting for Barack Obama
4. Building buildings
5. Serving in the military

The donation-funded Atheist Bus Campaign launched today in the UK with the slogan “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

They want to use the advertising to “brighten people’s days on the way to work, help raise awareness of atheism…encourage more people to come out as atheists…and help people think for themselves.” and as a direct counter to recent overtly Christian adverts on buses in the UK. The back-and-forth public dialogue is interesting and welcomed. The assertion that I can’t think for myself and be a person of faith is tired and trite.

1. Hand illustrating all our white cardboard magazine holders from Ikea
2. Hemming a pair of jeans I rarely wear
3. Writing classical guitar arrangements with a loop pedal and practice amp
4. Organizing my downloads folder
5. Carefully grooming a mustache-less beard

If you’ve read this blog for any amount of time, I’m guessing you’re vaguely aware of my affinity for bags. It hasn’t gotten any better with time, only more focused.

In chronological order, as best I can remember it, I have owned/used the following bags since I started doing “computer stuff” and carrying a laptop: random black Northface backpack, Kelty Essential 950, Kelty Essential 750, another random black Northface backpack, non-desrcript black Target messenger bag, a Crumpler Barney Rustle Blanket, a 70’s Samsonite briefcase, a Tom Bihn SuperEgo, a gray Field Portage messenger bag, an orange Timbuk2 messenger bag, and (as of this moment) a black Manhattan Portage Laptop Backpack.

Obviously, I am on a quest.

To be honest, I love the the Field Portage messenger bag for the daily commute kind of stuff. But every time I travel and have to spend long periods of time carrying a bag, any kind of one-strap messenger-style bag digs a canyon of pain in my shoulder, makes it near impossible to remove items gracefully while sitting on an airplane, and apparently can’t hold a laptop, a book and an SLR camera without sticking 2′ off my back. The Timbuk2 is even worse at making me feel like a turtle, and for the life of me I don’t understand why they can’t make a bag that will sit up straight when you put it on the floor.

I made the decision to switch to a backpack, and did months of research before finally landing on the Manhattan Portage Laptop Backpack. Work was nice enough to procure it for me. I love the simplicity (three pockets, no gadgets, no ridiculous crevices and extraneous material, a literal old-school aesthetic, etc.) What I don’t like is them telling me it “Holds up to a 15” laptop” when it actually “barely has enough room to violently wedge a 15″ laptop into it and zip the bag up tightly around both corners.” It’s the perfect laptop backpack, an inch too short. Manhattan Portage has a great return policy that I’ll be taking advantage of I took advantage of, which is in their favor, but this bag was made for 13″ laptops.

And so back to the Field Portage bag I go, ever in search of bag perfection on this side of heaven. (Though I do have my eye on the InCase Nylon Backpack…)

How can I help you?

Let’s start this off right: I am a hack. An amateur. A hobby web developer who occasionally gets talked into building websites for other people. That being said, I spend an inordinate amount of time designing and developing sites of my own and a few client projects, and if I’m going to spend time doing something, I will try my best to work smarter, not harder.

Being dependent on an internet connection to do development work forces me to work when said connection is available, not when I want to work. During a stint of traveling a few months back, I started researching local development options and the process has been so beneficial to my workflow. Here’s how I do development without an internet connection:

1. I use TextMate ($55) for code editing. Use whatever you’re comfortable with here, but I’ve grown to love TextMate for its flexibility, user interface and integration with my ftp client of choice, Transmit ($30).

2. MAMP (free) is an app that installs Apache, PHP and MySQL as a local server environment on your computer. I point MAMP to a document root at /Users/~/sites and keep my files for each project in separate folders there. A browser sees whatever is in that document root as http://localhost:8888/ by default. MAMP also allows of full installs of Wordpress and ExpressionEngine without the need for setting up hosted databases, so I have the freedom to develop fully-functional, content-heavy sites locally.

3. Fluid (free) creates site-specific browsers for any URL. Each Fluid app is treated like a unique application. I create a Fluid app for each project with the URL structure of http://localhost:8888/projectname/ (which is pointing to /Users/~/sites/projectname in the Finder.) I like being able to focus on one project at a time and keep it quarantined off from the rest of my recreational web browsing.

4. But what about everyone’s favorite browser Internet Explorer? Using a combo of Darwine and ie4osx (both free), I can run IE6 and IE7 beta as an X11 app on my Mac. I have Parallels ($80), too, but I typically don’t need to boot a full Windows install just to see what IE is doing with a website. ie4osx is awesome in its simplicity.

It’s a work in progress, and I’m certainly still learning, but separating my development from the internet-connected browser has set me free to make websites whenever I want to. Web dev is now no different than sketching or playing in Photoshop or writing an article. And it’s possible thanks to mostly free technology.