Kenny Landes | Graphic Design | Web Development | San Francisco

Designing and developing for the web is a constant learning process, which is fun! Technology evolves at a rapid rate. New standards evolve making old ways of doing things irrelevant or just plain wrong. So staying relevant means keeping up with what’s going on. This makes time-management an essential creative skill.

When it comes to code, it is counterproductive to reinvent the wheel for every project. So I try to write solid code that works and validates the first time. Then I know I can use it over and over again, making adjustments for display purposes. I have developed my own snippets resource book to tap into when I need to do something I’ve already done before. There’s simply no sense reinventing the wheel.

A blog I follow regulary is Chris Coyier’s CSS Tricks. This past week, he added a new feed called Code Snippets. Practically overnight, it has become one of my favorite resources for web development solutions. It’s not a new idea to use snippets, but it’s an amazing new central location for solutions to common problems. Now if we could just get Internet Explorer into the 21st century…

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There are many interesting and unexpected sights in San Francisco. In fact, the local economy practically depends on starry-eyed visitors coming from around the world to gawk at and photograph our local sights and frights. Our spectacular geography, famous fog, historic and modern architecture, and neighborhood freak shows create a gestalt only approachable in a few other places on the planet. In short, when you come to San Francisco, you get a feeling you’re not in Kansas anymore.

It’s really true. After a while, you walk past the guys in leather chaps…and little else. You practically don’t even see the fancy pet outfits. Perfectly coiffed, exquisitely outfitted elderly twins fade into the background around Union Square. You don’t even question the obvious fact that Speaker Pelosi, Senator Feinstein and Mayor Newsom are entirely too conservative. Basically, it takes something breathtaking and unexpected to grab your attention and make you say, “Holy cow!” And this brings me to my point.

I tell people about this all the time, but they never believe me: There are real live buffalo in San Francisco! Okay, technically, they are the same American Bison, commonly called American Buffalo, that have long been sacred creatures to Native Americans. Growing up in the Midwest, I don’t recall ever seeing one anywhere. Sadly, they no longer freely roam the Great Plains as they did for thousands of years. Whenever I am on the west end of Golden Gate Park, I always take a moment to stop and see these majestic animals. I rarely get a photo clear enough to post, but this time I got lucky.

According to Wikipedia, Bison have been kept in Golden Gate Park since 1891, when a small herd was purchased by the park commission. At the time, the animal’s population in North America had dwindled to an all-time low and San Francisco made a successful effort to breed them in captivity. In 1899, the paddock in the western section of the park was created. The animals today are cared for by staff from the San Francisco Zoo.

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Growing up in the Midwest, lightning and thunder were frequent occurrences. The sound of  a storm approaching came up as a low rumble over the horizon, growing louder as it approached. I’ve had many nights’ sleep interrupted by it, to the point it became a soothing, comforting experience. When I moved to California as a teenager, I left that pleasant experience behind along with colorful autumn leaf displays, cold snowy winters, and stormy spring tornado seasons. I’ve always missed the thunderstorms, though.

Last night, we had a nice one pass through the Bay Area. After going to bed around 1 a.m., I was first awakened by the approaching storm around 3:30. By 5:00, I just got up for a while to watch and listen. Around 6:00, I went back to sleep satisfied with the experience. Suddenly, about 8:30, a bright flash and immediate loud explosion rocked my neighborhood, waking me up and sending the cats scurrying beneath the bed. It reminded me of the crescendo of light and sound that happens at the peak of Midwestern storms. It turns it was an exploding transformer, that left part of the city in the dark.

I don’t know why I find the weather so fascinating, but I do. I guess I love the intensity of nature, especially when nobody is being hurt. This afternoon, I found this photo on the San Francisco Chronicle’s website. I’ve never seen a photo like this, of lightning striking into the fog. I guess it’s another only-in-San Francisco thing.

If you want to, you can read the whole story there: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/12/BA0319MAI7.DTL.

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I spent the past few days upgrading my Mac operating system to the latest release 10.6, dubbed “Snow Leopard”. It was the easiest OS upgrade ever, featuring mainly under-the-hood improvements that speed up processes taking advantage of the advanced hardware used by Apple computers. The speed difference is noticeable. At $29 it seems like money well-spent.

The only hitch came when I tried to copy files stored on my Time Capsule. My Time Capsule backup files are fine, but I had other valuable files on the same disk that did not exist elsewhere. When I tried to copy several gigabytes of files to my computer, the procedure failed repeatedly. So I ended up going out to purchase new external drives for secure storage of my most valuable files: my portfolio. I will now keep those valuable files on one drive with a separate backup. I’m still slowly copying those files over, which I will complete over the next few days. I definitely gained a better understanding of how these things need to be set up to be (mostly) fail-proof.

All-in-all, I am very pleased with the new system. It runs quickly and improves on the previous system, which was already the best operating system ever. Owning a Mac definitely costs more, but I still believe I get a good value for the dollars spent. Snow Leopard adds further value.

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