I had a black cape from Halloweens past and black pants and sweatshirt. I had made a light saber handle on our wood lathe a year before. All that was missing was the chest panel, plates and belt panels. I made these out of Styrofoam, tape and paint. I had a near-miss with the knife - a little moment of panic where it cut my wrist a little and was having visions of lying in a pool of my own blood with my moment of geeky glory unrealized :P (I still have a scar battle wound from that). Either way, I got the costume done and I looked awesome! I was ready to go!

Checking the paper for showtimes, I planned of having my brother (who HAS to be the BEST brother in the world to do this) take me to the theater the next day (Saturday). The afternoon show! Not too busy, so the perfect time to show up in my fanboy best!

My brother thought I was "off my rocker" but he said he'd drop me off. Getting dressed up, we got in the car and off we went! I opened the door, got out and he drove off with a laugh. There I was, 5'4" Darth Vader, standing at the theater box office ready to pruchase the ticket to... um, "isn't there a showing for The Empire Strikes Back?" "We stopped showing that yesterday," came from a chuckling voice inside.

...kill me now.

"umm... ohhh-kayyy... what is playing?" I ask. "*snicker* the only thing that isn't "R" rated (pointing out the obvious lack of height for a Lord of the Sith) is The Four Seasons with Alan Alda," came that same (already loathed) voice.

"I'll take a ticket, please!" I said immediately. At this point, sitting in the back of a very dark movie theater sounded like the best damn idea I had all that day.

"Here is your ticket, the show starts in 30 minutes. *chuckle*"

...

...bastard.

I stood in the lobby for 20 hours minutes- Darth Vader, feared by a galaxy, second in command of the evil Empire, going to see Alan Alda in his finest performance.

The door opened and I slipped inside, took my helmet off and sat in the back and thoroughly enjoyed the movie- I recommend seeing it, it really had some great acting that moved me in many ways.

The movie ended, I put my helmet back on, assuming the guise of the Dark Lord again and walked outside to the curb and quickly in my brother's waiting car.

Getting back to the house, I checked the paper and it was the previous week's paper- The Empire Strikes Back's final week. Whenever planning a visit to the theaters regaled as the Lord of the Sith, ALWAYS check the dates for the movie times! :P

Update: After visiting my family this Thanksgiving, I have come home with photographic evidence. Behold...

My Mom dug this up from her photo archive. This is an actual photo of the suit!

Recently in my professional career, I have shifted from being a Web Designer Developer to a Web Developer Designer. I love all aspects of building a website- planning, designing and developing, but I have essentially just "planted my flag" in the development camp. For those who are not versed in what Designers and Developers do:

Designers:

Designers make the site look aesthetically nice as well as develop a naturalistic "flow" for navigation and how you move about the site. This involves some coding skills in HTML, CSS, Flash and some Javascript. Web Designers generally come from a training background in design and live in the application pool of Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks and Dreamweaver.

Developers:

Developers write the code that makes everything work as it was intended. At times, developers will dip into design with the layout of a form as well as coding the CSS and Javascript. Mostly though, they deal with programing the server-side application in one of many various languages including PHP, asp.NET, Coldfusion, Java, etc...

Eyes glazed over yet? Don't worry, that's as tech-speek as I'll get ;)

It's interesting that both camps look down on each other at some level. Both talented, creative and technical whizzes, each think the other as buffoons.

How Designers see Developers:

Elitist snobby nerds with no style. Coding in their mom's basement til the wee hours in the dark, they alternate between online gaming and writing code that only they can fathom. They dare to actually "design" a page, because they know what a header, body and footer is. They also think there are only 2 fonts in the world- "default" and "Arial."

How Developers see Designers:

Elitist snobby, Starbucks-drinking hipsters. They have rock-star delusions that they're recreating the web with every-freak'n site they build, when it's just another WordPress-looking hack. They dare to pretend they know code because they can hack some html and CSS and tack "developer" on the end of their title because they know how to echo "Hello World" with PHP. BALLS!

The fact is- both camps are right and neither are as good as they think they are ;) After living in the two camps, I've found complete respect for both. They're filled with incredibly talented people that know a great deal about their process. Sure, each could build a decent site without the other, but not a truly exceptional site!

Both need each other!

I propose a few theories:

1. Popularity of the "TV weatherman" has wained and all of the forecasters with fabulous hair are not choosing that career-path anymore. As we all know, fabulous hair and rain do not mix, hence a more accurate forecast.
2. Universities' meteorological departments are having a brain drain and losing their competent faculty to the astronomy departments, where the actually study meteors.
3. More and more, the computers that run the models are getting smarter- now we know where "Skynet" really got it's name.
4. God is just having too much fun with the forecasters. "It's looking like rain...looking like rain...looking like rain...ok, it's going to rain! Ohhh!"

Anyone else have any theories?

Join AIGA Blue Ridge, SMC Frederick and Frederick Web Tech for Something Good: a talk about bringing design, social media and technology together to do "good stuff" in our community and beyond. Enjoy networking, snacks and refreshments followed by 3 short presentations and a panel discussion full of good intentions. RSVP by 10/24 at http://somethinggood....

Book Giveaway: Social Media Analytics by Marshall Sponder

Drop your name in the hat. We'll be selecting an attendee at random to win a copy of this new book, courtesy of the Social Media Club. Our chapter leaders had a chance to read and review the book recently, so you can check that out here and see what all the fuss is about.

Event Sponsors:

Special thanks to Residence Inn for providing our meeting space.

 Silver and Gold refreshment sponsors will be publicly acknowledged during the event.

Thank you so much for your support! 

Frederick, MD 21703 - USA

Tuesday, October 25 at 6:30 PM

Attending: 9

Details: http://www.meetup.com/FredWebTech/events/36910962/

If it were not for Steve's drive, determination and vision I would not be where I am today. It was the Mac that gave access to computers for the visual thinkers. No command line, no cryptic computer shorthand. The Mac embodied WYSIWYG!

Without Steve there would be no Mac, iPod, iPhone and Pixar. He gave us flashy presentations and made us anticipate product launches with religious zeal, dominating headlines regularly.

He was the best showman, visionary and ringmaster. Now the center ring is dark, the microphone is silent.

We'll miss you Steve

Yeah, you!

Put that mouse down and step away from the computer! Yeah, I know Illustrator is awesomely cool to make comps in! I know Photoshop has really fantastically phat filters! But when it comes to designing and creating, shut down your Mac, get out your sketchbook, go somewhere else and design!

Like most designers, more and more I slowly started to rough things out on the computer- to the point that I hadn't picked up a pencil or pen in years. It's just so easy to make something from nothing on the computer nowadays. I'd open up a blank canvas in Fireworks and start laying out headers and navigation elements. Moving things around, adding this, deleting that... But in the end, that's all I was doing. Working with the same elements, in the same general layout that I'm used to, to produce something that's comfortably nice. True- it's workable and decent enough, but it's not really thinking things through. It's not really designing.

Today, I had a little revelation. You see- I've been getting over a bad cold the last few days and I was in one of those going-through-the-motions-because-pseudoephedrine-really-makes-me-a-zombie design sessions.  Yesterday, I was in Illustrator comping out the "People" page for mojoLive.com. I had spent 2 hours polishing out a cool little "search results nav" on a page that really had no thought.  I was noodling details on something that was (at best) in the thumbnail stage.  What the hell was I doing?!  No thought was really put into to the UI!  Sure it was a cool page- but how did one arrive at this awesome page [with the shiny navigation]?!

During my meeting with Eli today, I was pondering this while he was taking a call. I got out my trusty old Molskine pad & pen and noodled some thumbnails. The heavens opened up and angels started to sing! I was clear! I had vision again! I found what had been lost for so long. True freedom to design! When Eli had gotten off the phone, I started babbling how I had this down now- that yesterday I was mired in details that should not have been (but still showed him the awesome nav idea)! Eli, ever nice and considerate, nodded his head in affirmation.

When I got back into town. I bought a brand new Moleskine- the MojoSkine! Armed only with a pen, my MojoSkine (and my iPhone), I walked downtown to Nola, bought an iced coffee and dove in! I noodled UI pathways, wrote notes to myself why "some things worked" and why "others didn't." Sketches, thumbnails- horrible little childlike scribblings. With every hatched ink mark on that grid-lined paper, clarity was coming! It was wonderful!

If you can't see the forest for the trees, step out of the forest, damn it!

Environment has everything to do with clarity. If you have an office, get out to a neutral area (be it a coffee shop, park, library- any other place but where you work), then mentally get about 30,000 feet above your project and look at it as a whole.  Start there and dive in (but never too deep) occasionally coming up to see how it affected the whole.

Having started it last night, I finished this article this morning as soon as I hit "publish," I'm off to another few hours of true exploration. I challenge all of you to do the same!

user-unfriendly usability chart

Starting a brand new site is always the best (and scariest) part of any project. Starting off with a completely new concept is at once daunting and fun. Like a lot of web designers, I live in the “form follows function” camp. When you’re building a web application, there really is no other camp you should be in. While I enjoy edgy sites, nothing pisses off the average user like “find the navigation” and “figure out what this site is about.” The average user wants tools they’re familiar with. Tools that don’t get in the way.

That being said, “tools they are familiar with” is not as simple as it sounds. For those of us that have lived and worked on the web for many years have a very distorted view of “user friendly.” We’ve already been trained to use navigation and know what logins look like are.

Once, I saw a user-experience presentation where the speaker called a 70+ year old man on stage. The speaker said the gentleman had never used a computer before. The speaker then asked the gentleman to walk up to the computer on stage and use the mouse (pointing at it) to open the file folder that was on the monitor. The man looked at the mouse hesitantly, then proceeded to pick it up and point it at the monitor like a remote control. We use the computer because we were trained to use it, not because it’s intuitive (sorry Apple, this is true even for our beloved Macs). The same is true for the web experience. While we designers still have to assume a certain amount of web knowledge is present (knowledge of “navigation” and “forms”) it is still our goal to make the most user-friendly, uncluttered and, therefore, enjoyable sites we can.

Today, I spent some time developing some possible UI styles for mojoLive. It’s fun and difficult to create something that’s simple and yet fresh- easy to grasp, yet original. Yet it’s something that us designers and developers do on the web everyday. Either way, I’m totally digging this stage!