Ordinary-Life.net

http://zackgiallongo.com/

I was surfing youtube for time wasters and stumbled on the below video. Produced by Hometown Baghdad. It’s a short video and there are almost a dozen more located on the main site, all are worth watching if you’d like some insight into the day to day lives of a 20 something Iraqi living in Baghdad.

Interesting eh? Watch more of them, notice how the middle and upper class have left or are leaving in droves. That’s a big red light that things are going to get far worse as the more financially stable, better educated population is replaced by the less rational and educated, as best described in the video Forbidden Salad. 

Mark did something very cool, and used ExpressionEngine to build his own simple invoicing system. It goes to show you how flexible EE really is. Nice work!

Check out this threat at Jambor-ee for more interesting talk on EE backends.

I promise the title was on purpose. Fantastic anime-style illustrations over at xuppets.com

Damn that guy over at Mezzoblue and his “talent”. Dave Shea recently released a lovely new set of Icons called Chalk. Good Stuff Here!

James: http://www.glumbert.com/media/300pg
James: This amuses me
Lea: haha i saw that
Lea: gosh, i love 300
James: knew that was coming
Lea: gosh, i wanna sleep with a spartan
James: lol

A great article by D. Keith Robinson about the challenges of starting, and yes finishing a project. Almost everyone has issue with some part of the project. Sadly I’ve got more then a little of both. I find that when I start to stress and procrastinate. I take a breath. Give myself a set amount of time to just relax, usually about 5 minutes. Then I try to dive in to the task. First breaking it up into small manageable chunks. I try to do 1-2 easy items so I get a feeling of accomplishment, then tackle a medium to large sized item once I am more in my zone.

How do you get over your work hump?

So I’m hunting for apartments in the South-West Connecticut area, specifically Bridgeport, Fairfield and Stratford. Don’t suppose anyone has tips in general about renting?

There’s a fantastic writeup on the recent design of pmachine’s (Now called Ellis Labs) web presence over at Digital Web Magazine that is worth your time. They renamed, rebranded and broke the company website into expressionengine.com, Ellis Labs, Code Igniter and EngineHosting.

I love them so much, I’ve entered them into my personal OL Design Hall of Fame (tm) on Flickr.

Jesus, this short article at CBS Chicago must have been written by an intern. Its got the depth and originality of Britney Spears. Wow, a story about comics entitled “Comic Books Aren’t Just For Kids Anymore”. I mean I’ve only read about half a dozen articles with the same title in the last 5 years. Not only that but the story title and the actual article content have very little to do with one another. It goes from mentioning the wide spread appeal of todays comics to mentioning the apparently rampant(?) pirating of scanned comic pages. Then directs us to check out new online distribution method a small publisher is using to get around the problem. Possibly the only interesting point in the entire article. Sad to say the comics themselves look like crap overall. I’ll have to do a little legwork and see if I can find a daimond in the rough. I’ll let you know.

SpeekUp has a great article on the graphic design in Mike Judge’s Idiocracy. A humorous yet mildly disturbing look at one all to easily imaginable future where the not so bright out breed the intellectuals.

I have to admit, all though I’m a fan of youtube and similar sites. The user generated content often leaves much to be desired. Only the occasional funny home video or (more often then not) traditional TV show or advertisement captures my interest. That is, until “the show with zefrank” came to my attention. Witty and often odd shorts and rants are the order of the day. Often in the form of political commentary or slice of life rants. Ze has done more to cement in my mind at least, the value of user generated content then almost any thing I can think of. Today his one year project comes to a close. I can honestly say I will miss his contribution to my day.

Be sure to check the popular shows archive.

My good friend Lea was lucky enough to run into him at SXSW 2007

This is going to be blogged to death by anyone with a pulse and a computer, yet its worth reading anyway.

Five Principles to Design By

“Dang Canadians, with their penguins and maple syrup.”

As seen on DIGG (comment section)

I’m going to be writing about the NYC Comicon that took place last month in just a bit, but one thing I love about attending any type of Con is the enthusiasm for the medium you walk away with. I’ve started checking out more comic and illustrator material. I wanted to share this one for today.