1. Give us a bit of background on who you are, and what you do at Imulus.
Hello world! I am the Graphic Designer at Imulus. I get to create all day long, drink coffee, speak with my Bosnian accent, and sometimes play Halo. You should hear my non-sense jokes…yet everyone finds a way to cry their tears out. So yes, I was born in Bosnia and moved to Colorado in 1995. I graduated with a Fine Arts degree in Multimedia from University of Colorado at Denver and love the work that I get to do everyday. I am a graphic designer because I am a problem-solver, thinker, maker, and believe that the world always needs progress.

2. Describe the most exciting thing you think is going on today in our industry (service, trend, idea, etc).
Web apps, iPhone, Twitter, social media.

3. Who is your favorite designer, and why?
I don’t usually favor anything. It’s just a thing I have, but I do have a few designers that I admire. They are all great designers with passion, ambition, and dedication for the love of their work. Ellen Lupton, Stefan Sagmeister, , Paul Rand, Hillman Curtis, Milton Glaser. That’s my short list.

4. If you could change one thing about people’s attitude towards the online world what would it be?
I would ask them to dump their IE 6 browser and move on to a modern browser. Life at that point would be so much easier for designers and developers.

5. What’s the number one design mistake you see made now days?
I would say bad typographic choices. Also, a redesign of some brand logos that look worse than what they already were.

6. If you were forced to carry a medieval weapon with you at all times what would it be?
A dagger.

7. If you were allowed to only use one computer program the rest of your life what would it be?
For the rest of my life…I feel violated! I think it would be a browser. Definitely not IE. I would prefer Safari / Firefox. With a browser I can do anything and I am not completely restricted. I can e-mail, design, develop, and communicate.

8. Regarding fruit. What is your favorite kind?
Strawberry and Figs

9. What song or artist have you been listening to the most recently?
James Blunt and Letu Stuke <--bosnian group

10. Where do you look in your life to get design inspiration?
Everything around me is design. To be a great designer it’s important to observe the outside world, away from my desk and a computer. When I am aware of my surroundings and observations that’s when I get the inspiration. On the other hand, I also get inspired with the talented team of people at Imulus, turning pages of annuals, reading essays on graphic design, collecting ideas from compelling work.

11. If Imulus were a person, what kind of personality would (s)he have?
If Imulus were a person…The type of personality that Imulus would have–well see answer to question 14.

12. You have to choose between being blinded or losing both arms, what would you choose?
Ouch! Hopefully this loss of my abilities would not include torture. I wouldn’t want to lose either, but I would rather choose to lose both of my arms rather than being blind. Since my profession is heavily based on visual, I guess I can learn my way around things. Type & move the mouse around with my feet and toes.

13. What’s your most used keyboard shortcut when working?
Command+Z to undo. Command+S to save.

14. Thanks for your time, to finish can you give me one word to describe each of your Imulus co-workers?
Scott – understanding
George – determined
John – passionate
Steph – wonderful
Mario – intriguing
Kat – amusing
Bruce – ambitious
Taylor – kind
Corey – entertaining

As I wrote these words down, one word is not enough, but rather all these words and many more could describe each one of us and that’s what really makes us great. We are one great team, but above all we are a family.

I just recently got back into the magic of Pandora, an awesome way to find new music and share music mixes with friends.

However, after a few hours of use I remembered what kept from making it my main jukebox player in the beginning. The answer is simple, it’s hard to use while working in other applications. For someone like me who spends hours at a time locked in a text editor, switching to my browser and tracking down a play/pause button 20+ times a day can be frustrating. My first idea was to move Pandora to a standalone browser instance using Fluid. However, after a quick search and a bit of help from a co-worker I found an even better solution — PandoraBoy. It’s a small free Google code application that works similar to a standalone browser instance but also adds global hotkey controls.

You can set global shortcuts for actions such as: play/pause, next song, next station, previous station, vote up, vote down, player volume, and mute.

Once mapped you can use Pandora as your primary media player without ever having to view it in browser. Props to the makers of this app, it’s exactly what I was looking for. If you’re keen to try it you can download it now.

If you find, like me, that you can’t stand the dock icon you can use the quick one I whipped up. Download my PandoraBoy alternative icon.

After installing Snow Leopard on my 15″ MacBook Pro a few days ago I noticed that fonts, specifically at low sizes, looked terrible. Edges where overly rugged and text seemed dim. In essence, it seemed as if every font had decreased an entire weight.

With further research I discovered that this is a problem with 3rd party (non-apple) monitors and their default status in 10.6. Previously in 10.5’s System Preferences users where able to alter Font Smoothing with one of several options:

Yet, in 10.6 the option has been replaced with a simple Use LCD Font Smoothing When Available dialogue. The problem is OS X 10.6 detects some 3rd party monitors (Dell, Samsung, Lenovo, etc.) as CRTs and doesn’t allow them to utilize font smoothing. Here’s an example side by side of font non-smoothing vs. smoothing on Snow Leopard.

Fortunately there is a way to force font smoothing via terminal, simply paste the following text and hit enter:

defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain AppleFontSmoothing -int 2

• 0 – is the setting for CRT rendering (looks horrible on LCD)
• 1 – is the setting for Light
• 2 – is the setting for Medium (Best for Flat Panel)
• 3 – is the setting for Strong

Once you’ve set this you will want to log out and back into OS X. At this point all the fonts should look as they did before your upgrade to 10.6. Hoorah!

Update: Added another example from iTunes music selection that highlights this issue a bit more. Also, updated a grammar fix thanks to Reddit user guriboysf.

In the Beginning

When I first started using Mac OS X in college I fell in love with the Safari web browser. It was light weight, sexy, and fast. Unfortunately, the more I ramped into complex web development the more I realized Safari’s severe developer limitations. Back then developers had to enter terminal commands to even gain access to Safari’s developer menu. And, once turned on, the developer menu lacked the oomph of Firefox’s flourishing Firebug and Web Developer Toolbar extensions.

Since that day I’ve been using Firefox heavily for development and only occasionally jumping into Safari to test site feel and functionality.

Then, about a year ago, Safari started making real steps to support web developers. The release of Safari 4 earlier this year capitalized a nice upswing in Safari developer improvements. But, unfortunately, Safari still lacks some of the most basic development capability.

In my opinion, if Safari doesn’t address the following three issues, it will never become a viable competitor to Firefox for developers.

Source View Made for the 80’s

Any time your browser’s source code view renders like Internet Explorer’s you really need to sit down think things over. Is this acceptable, am I being an asshole? The answer, obviously, is yes.

Let Me View Background Images!

The web is no longer a mass of tables and img tags. Thanks to CSS we’ve started abstracting background effects from real content. Knowing this, there is absolutely no reason why Safari shouldn’t have a view background image option. Safari, do you really expect me to right click, inspect element, and then track down the CSS that links to that background image? Give me a break.

Target HTML Elements Faster

The best thing about the Web Developer Toolbar extension for Firefox is that you can hit cmd-shift-y and instantly view HTML elements. This is perfect if you’re trying to track down a styling issue or remember an ID name. It’s fast, easy, and accurate. Safari’s right click > inspect element isn’t even in the same ballpark as this. And, as hard as I’ve tried, there’s no way to reassign the Inspect Element shortcut in OS X.

Conclusion

Safari, you’re a great consumer browser. And yes, WebKit is a phenomenal web rendering engine. Hell, even Google loves you. Please, just fix these small problems and I’ll switch to you full-time, I promise! Until then, I’m going to continue buying FireFox t-shirts.

It’s 6:30pm and you’re tired from a long day of work. You’ve just finished writing a four page email to a client. Documenting all of the tasks you completed that day. In fact, you even took time to explain the reason you used nofollow linking to the client’s intranet website. Then, moments later, Mail unexpectedly quits. Your work is gone.

Or… is it. You remember copying the contents of the email to your clipboard minutes before. Quickly you open a new email and anxiously paste:

http://tr.im/OMG_ribbons …

wait, no, surely that can’t be right. You paste again:

http://tr.im/OMG_ribbons …

Then you remember, that co-worker of yours, Taylor, sent you a link on IM (”Haha, d00d this is hilarious”). But for some reason it didn’t format right and you had to copy it.

You think — there must be some solution, assuredly. Yet no, your work is gone. You swear to yourself, “never again.” Fortunately, moments later you find a blog post describing your exact scenario. It suggests downloading the free app Clyppan to record your clipboard history. “Wow, that’s awesome,” you say to yourself, “I’m gonna use this all the time.”

And guess what, you do.

Edit: One note, if you don’t set Clyppan to run on startup via system preferences > accounts, then you’ll have to start it manually every time you login to OS X.

Edit 2: Some might suggest the Quicksilver Clipboard module for this same functionality, however, as of 10.5 that module tends to randomly appear when quitting certain applications. Hence why I moved to Clyppan.

Process is like most things in life, it needs balance. The hard part is determining where the right balance is for a company.

Companies that focus too heavily on process can slip into the all-to-common roll of being a workhorse. Producing medium quality work that lacks feel and creativity. Yet, companies that can’t reign in certain aspects of process tend to lose money and long-term durability. The key lies in finding a medium.

Implementation of a strict process can help companies rebound in times when individuals aren’t present. Yet, companies must be careful. The ability to swap individuals in and out has a cost. There’s a reason small businesses sometimes change the game all together and not just the rules. Small companies thrive on being nimble and innovative. These two things are the result of talented individuals working together as a family. If you remove this aspect from a company, over time it will bloat, lose drive, and eventually quality will diminish.

Case in point, rather than: check your approach, verify other team members understand and agree, confirm the customer is on board, document it, and then start. It’s better to just do it. If the result is good: add it to your toolshed, document it, and teach others. If not, eat crow, fix it, and move on. My feeling is most of the time this gamble pays off. Especially if your people are high caliber and your customer buys into the strategy.

However, for small companies it’s a facade to pretend that you can replace a family member and keep moving forward like nothing happened. A company, especially one that strives to break barriers, will always be hurt by the loss of a key individual. There is no way around this. The goal of a good process shouldn’t be to avoid this all together, but rather to mitigate its damage. Employee happiness, company profit, high quality work, and long-term sustainability should be enhanced by process. Not stifled. This… is not easy.

Best of luck to all companies (including us) who are trying to combat this challenge

Well, what a surprise, AT&T is now behind on MMS messages for the iPhone again. This time the delay is said to be keeping the service out of our hands until September. Not to mention rumors of a $55 upgrade fee for tethering ability with your iPhone.

The delays are frustrating, yes, but compared to the bullshit I deal with daily on AT&T’s network a two month delay for MMS is laughable. In fact, I’d go as far as to say I would sacrifice MMS altogether just to get some decent service from the company.

Let me recap briefly some of the issues I have daily while using AT&T as my wireless provider:

• Appalling 3g coverage – AT&T’s 3g network is horribly inconstant. It frequently drops in and out of reach, even in heavily populated areas. And, when it does work, the speeds are mediocre at best. I’ve used it on three different iPhones and a Sony Ericsson w600i. In comparison to Verizon or Sprint the 3g AT&T offers feels childish.
• Weird network restrictions – AT&T has a ton of network restrictions, some applications on iTunes can’t be used unless on wifi, iTunes store downloads over 10megs are disallowed, yet we as users pay a fee for 5gigs of data per month. Why should I be limited to 10megs per download if I pay $30+ dollars a month for 5gigs of bandwidth?
• Regular plain old cellphone coverage – It’s one thing not to get wicked fast 3g speed all over the city, but it’s another to simply not get cell coverage at all. I live in the middle of Downtown Denver, yet, I at this moment I have no service on my phone. In fact, if I want service I would need to walk over to my window in the other room and sit within a 10 foot radius. This isn’t just limited to my apartment though, it happened at my previous house, and still happens to this day at the Imulus workplace in Boulder.
• Dro…
• Dropped c…
• D…
• Dropped calls!!! – I’m not kidding, everyone I know on AT&T has calls dropped so frequently it’s literally become a joke. I recognize this would most likely be tied to cell service area, but I get dropped calls even at full bars. I swear if AT&T offered a land line it would still drop my call. I get at least 7 dropped calls daily. Daily!

The point is that AT&T is terrible when it comes to wireless cell service. It’s a travesty that the iPhone, which is an amazing piece of technology, is limited to such a terrible network. It’s like having a Formula-1 racer and only being able to use it on dirt roads.

The truth is if Apple doesn’t bring the iPhone to another network in the next year, I’ll honestly consider switching phones. Simply to get away from AT&T.

My long time friend Erik Reagan (@ErikReagan) runs a website by the name of TextMate Tips. It’s a useful resource for keeping up to date with interesting TextMate hints, shortcuts, and utilities. Further, the site is open for contribution and is always on the look out for new and interesting TextMate uses.

If your a fan of TextMate you should definitely check it out and maybe give it a bookmark if you’re feeling extra generous.

Here at Imulus we’re massive fans of jQuery. We use it on a lot of our projects. We’re also fans of TextMate, an awesome text editor produced by the folks at MacroMates. Over the last few years we’ve refined our TextMate bundles (code highlighting and language recognition packages) to work ideally within the Imulus process.

So, during my recent love affair with jQuery I’ve heavily relied on their documentation section to look up specific functions and commands. And while their documentation is awesome, it’s still a slow process. Luckily, an awesome guy named Karl Swedberg has put together a beautiful jQuery bundle for TextMate that has tons of snippets for common jQuery tasks. And, it’s free!

Installation

Head over to GitHub and grab the lastest version of the bundle. When you download it you’ll get a weird filename like this:

kswedberg-jquery-tmbundle-b0622e4f889112c37e03400a6a3e63241ab29c31.zip

Unzip the file and change the folder name (which is the same as above) to:

jquery.tmbundle

Open up TextMate and then double click the jQuery bundle file you’ve just created. Boom! The bundle is installed.

Making it work within HTML documents

By default the jQuery bundle is set to only work within .js files. However, if you’re planning on using it within HTML pages you’ll need to do another few steps of work. First, copy the following code to your clipboard:

{    name = 'source.js.jquery.embedded.html';
            begin = '(?:^\s+)?(<)((?i:script))\b(?![^>]*/>)';
            end = '(?<=</(script|SCRIPT))(>)(?:\s*\n)?';
            beginCaptures = {
                1 = { name = 'punctuation.definition.tag.html'; };
                2 = { name = 'entity.name.tag.script.html'; };
            };
            endCaptures = { 2 = { name = 'punctuation.definition.tag.html'; }; };
            patterns = (
                {    include = '#tag-stuff'; },
                {    begin = '(?<!</(?:script|SCRIPT))(>)';
                    end = '(</)((?i:script))';
                    captures = {
                        1 = { name = 'punctuation.definition.tag.html'; };
                        2 = { name = 'entity.name.tag.script.html'; };
                    };
                    patterns = (
                        {    name = 'comment.line.double-slash.js';
                            match = '(//).*?((?=</script)|$\n?)';
                            captures = { 1 = { name = 'punctuation.definition.comment.js'; }; };
                        },
                        {    name = 'comment.block.js';
                            begin = '/\*';
                            end = '\*/|(?=</script)';
                            captures = { 0 = { name = 'punctuation.definition.comment.js'; }; };
                        },
                        {    include = '#php'; },
                        {    include = 'source.js'; },
                    );
                },
            );
        },

Then open up the TextMate bundle editor and drop down the HTML arrow.

You should now see a huge list of snippets, commands, and preferences. Located in this list is an HTML language icon, it looks like this . Once this is selected you should see a large amount of code to the right. Past the above code directly in the following position after patterns = (

That’s it, you’re done. How you can access tons of jQuery snippets and code examples directly inside TextMate.

Let’s face it. Today’s tech industry work ethic revolves around tight deadlines, top notch output, and dedication to your users. This performance hat trick isn’t an easy thing to pull off. If you’re like me you rely heavily on caffeine and weekend sleep to keep on your game. And, while sleep may not be plentiful during the week, it’s even worse when it’s restless.

Here’s the thing, even if you only get 6 hours of sleep a night you’re still spending 25% of your day asleep. That’s a fourth of your daily life that’s spent in an unconscious state. So, if you’re going to spend that much time sleeping you might as well make it good.

The quickest action you can take to increase sleeping comfort is to aquire a new pillow. I’m not talking cheap, I’m talking a quality of pillow that Zeus himself would use. The type of pillow that makes you feel as if you’ve been placed in a bed of satin angora rabbits.

My personal choice is this monstrosity of comfort offered by Bed Bath and Beyond. It’s fluffy but also large enough to avoid constant readjustment. It’s nice to wrap your arms around or place directly under your neck. If you’re not into down pillows another option is the selection from Tempurpedic. A bit sci-fi for sure, but sturdy and made to fit your exact curvature.

Realistically, the pillow type doesn’t matter, what matters is that you sleep better. I know way too many people who just aren’t willing to drop $100 on a pillow. Trust me, it’s worth it. You’ll be more refreshed and less sore. Your actions day to day will reflect this. Don’t buy it? Ask around. I guarantee a few of your good friends have learned the lesson of crap pillows: being cheap on comfort just isn’t worth it.