Zigbot Media Design Blog

I was working out a few project details today in my preferred invoicing software, Freshbooks, and noticed that they had an application available for my iPhone. This makes both Freshbooks and my phone more useful to me, and is a perfect example of how the free/open development culture is so helpful.

Here’s an interesting article about how quality sleep is making a come back into productive society.

This is a particularly compelling statement to us creative types:

“Dr. Ellenbogen’s research at Harvard indicates that if an incubation period includes sleep, people are 33 percent more likely to infer connections among distantly related ideas, and yet, as he puts it, these performance enhancements exist “completely beneath the radar screen.”

Photo by http://www.sxc.hu/profile/BPLOL

I’ve been looking for a real reason to kick the major caffeine habit I’ve developed over the last year or so, and this looks like it’s it. Sleep is as essential to productivity as being awake. Something I’ve always said about design … we get paid to have a good idea. That can happen in 5 minutes or 5 weeks, and there is no clearly defined start and end of this development. If I can do this 33% faster by going to bed a little earlier and taking small steps to have a better night’s sleep, that potentially has a major impact on the success of my business.

Good to know. Best of all, unlike gallons and gallons of coffee … sleep is free.’

*Photo courtesey of BPLOL

Look at this shirt I just bought here. Very simple, and very me.

Also, let me clear this up really quick. A Skeptic is NOT the same thing as a cynic. The word has been trashed by the fun tv culture. Where after discussing the wonderous possibilities of alien life or any other number of fanciful conspiracies, the party-pooper skeptics are always called in for some quick snarkification.

A skeptic views the world objectively and realizes that he/she can be wrong about anything, and invites it! A cynic is the opposite. A cynic observes the world through a filter of their own expectation and ego. A skeptic does not consider their opinion as part of the truth; a cynic does not consider anything but their opinion as truth. Polar opposites; yet forever-siblings in the eyes of society. How?

It was interesting to me that when I wrote an email to marketing master Seth Godin awhile back asking that he change a title of a post where the words were clearly mistaken in their pop-culture form, he added ‘cynic’ to the title (appreciated!) rather than just replace the word with it’s proper term. Though the post is absolutely great with the latter, it remians categorically false. The real marketing lesson for me is this: even those who expertly nagivate the flashing world of marketing fall prey to its power to corrupt purpose. Skepticism is a major part of my life … a philosophy derived from the core of ideas responsible for every bit of progress we’ve made as a species. Objective, pure, reason. How quickly can even a master of branding turn away an entire group of people by one seemingly small oversight? INSTANTLY. Ironically, the biggest lesson I’ve learned from Mr. Godin comes not from the portion of his work I’ve gone through to this point, but this tiny little deal that has ended up high on that shelf of ideas I keep that shapes my daily view of branding.

Here’s the post if you’re curious. Subscribe to his feed while you’re at it.

I’ll be wearing this shirt around town in a few days. I look forward to the opportunity to reclaim the word … at least within my radius.

This is some seriously great news. For all the designers and developers out there that will tell you that Flash is not a major part of the Web these days … well, try cruising around the WWW without it for a few days. This is the nail in the coffin for my poor laptop, which once warmed my lap nearly nightly and now sits dusty in a bag under other miscellaneous previously-useful stuff. 

Anyway, check it out: http://www.flashmagazine.com/news/detail/flash_for_the_iphone_confirmed_at_fotb/

I was pleasently surprised in my evening feed cruising to see my most recent logo project for Chase Mitchell Music featured on one of my favorite inspiration sites, faveup.com (from Envato, formerly Eden). It was my first submission and I’m glad to start trickling into this amazing community of designers I’ve found myself a part of in recent months.

Saw this site mentioned today on Freelanceswitch.com, and whoa. How useful! I don’t know how many times I’ve annoyed my IM list with “Hey, can you see blahblahblah.com?”100% Awesome bookmark for anyone that works on the web: http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com

I finally went out to see the new Batman movie Tuesday night. I liked it. There were of course, as there would be with any movie of this sort these days, those places where someone who’s involved in the making-of-things may cringe and mutter internally about the impossibility of most of the technology. It’s a movie, so who cares.

There was one part in particular though that made me laugh a little. Near the end of the movie, when (spoiler alert, I guess) The Joker is spotted on the multi-screen sonar contraption, the screen starts flashing red as ‘alert!’ jumps up and blinks. At this moment, I thought of Batman sitting at a computer, deciding on the right HEX color to use for that alert mode. Even if he programs the whole system in about 15 minutes as the movie suggests, he would at some point have to open a color dialog and select the right color values for his ridiculously overblown interface.

Anyway … made me feel funny to myself for a second or two. You other nerds out there will get it.

Shhh … don’t tell my designer peers.

see more pwn and owned pictures

I saw these shirts for sale today and thought about buying one, but then remembered how much of a toolbag I felt like in my new ampersand t-shirt I had on the other day. Sure I love my job, but you don’t see the guys in IT running around with pictures of ethernet cable on their shirts do you?

Anyway, here ya go:

If you want one, here’s the link.