As Jon & I got to the Tri-C campus, I was a little unsure of how this was going to go. I didn’t know how welcoming the group would be to noobs. Outside of Brad Colbow and Nate Klaiber, whom I’ve only previously chatted with via Twitter, I didn’t really KNOW anyone. We all were seated in a circle and introduced ourselves (for our benefit, I’m sure). Everyone was very friendly and very easy to talk to. It was nice getting a little background on everybody before we got started. We had a very good open discussion on form design with a few topics in particular. I don’t really think I contributed anything to the discussion, but it was a nice open format and it was great listening to other perspectives on the matter.
Afterwards, we headed up to Max & Erma’s for a late dinner and some chit-chat. We talked about all kinds of web-nerdery. It was so much fun getting to know everyone! I can’t tell you how great it was hearing people tell stories of their own jobs that you can TOTALLY relate to. Needless to say, we are counting the days until next month’s meeting and we’ll hopefully have Josh with us. If anyone in Northeast Ohio reads this, and you really have an interest in web standards, I totally recommend coming to the CWSA meetings. You will NOT be disappointed.
{extended} ]]>I love, love, LOVE The Olympics! I seriously can’t get enough of it. I’ve literally tried to watch as much as I can. My favorite is the USA Basketball “Redeem Team”, which is no surprise to anyone that knows me. But I’m also loving the Swimming. Phelps just blew us all away, didn’t he? So, as I woke up this morning around 5am or so, I figured I’d check out what I missed last night as I dozed off early. Looks like the USA Men got a gold in Beach Volleyball to match the Ladies from the previous night. That’s just awesome! Unfortunately the USA Women’s Softball team went out on a sour note losing to Japan 3-1. Their record was so crazy good, the Olympic higher ups were basically looking to close the sport because they were unbeatable. Don’t even get me started on the Women’s Baton Relay team. Put some glue on that baton and QUIT DROPPING IT!!! Regardless, it has so far been an exciting Olympics.
And then this morning I come across something called “Racewalking” which, unless I hadn’t heard the announcer, I would have probably called it “Extreme Mall Walking”. They seriously look like those people you see in the mall at obscure times just making loops of the mall…not buying anything…not even window shopping. They’re just there exercising. Now I wonder if these people are truly “mall walkers” or are they future Olympian “RACE Walkers” just training indoors. Maybe there’s an indoor version of the sport I’m not aware of either. Then I wonder what these people walk like when they’re not racing? Are they natural speed walkers or can they slow down to a normal pace like the rest of us? I digress.
Up until this point in my blog, I was pretty convinced that is wasn’t a sport in my book. But as these Racewalkers make their way down the final stretch, 31 miles I believe the announcer said, they enter the stadium filled with people cheering. Tears are streaming down the racer’s faces. Tears. That’s when it hits me…this really IS a sport. Now, I’m not saying I fully understand what motivates these people to get into this weird walking sport. I just think that walking 31 miles is definitely not looping around the mall a few times. It’s dedication. Somehow these racewalkers have tapped into something that motivates them to get out there and be the best they can be. So as a designer, I can understand that and relate to that and actually use that as a segway to say that maybe this blog is design related after all! Regardless of any lesson that should be learned, these racewalkers’ motivation has helped me motivate myself to blog this early morning, and for that I am thankful.
And now back to bed.
-R
Well, why not?! That’s not really a good answer, is it? Basically, it could’ve been a lot of things. But first off, you probably want to know what “IBG” stands for. “I Believe in Good Design” Group. So technically, it could be called “iBIGD” ...but that’s lame! I couldn’t call it BIG Design because that was taken. There have been other nicknames and stories that go with “IBG”, but we’ll leave it as is. This is my answer, and I’m sticking to it….for now.
{extended} ]]>Today is my first blog post on my first real blog. It’s amazing that it took this long to do. Anyone that knows me knows that I have a few vices, one of them being Google Reader. I have 400+ feeds right now where I read mainly web designers talking about all aspects of their work and lives. So after analyzing from afar how they write and pinpointing the type of posts that have been helpful to me, I’m going to take a stab at writing here.
This also marks the unveiling of the ibgdg.com website. After finding inconsistent amounts of work on our own, we’ve decide to group together and work off of each other’s strengths. Russ has been handling all the business aspects of the business so that we are actually a business and not just guys carrying business cards with phantom company names on them. Russ also laid out the main parts of the design of the site. When I started putting it all together I wanted to go back and rework the site in a grid. I figured I would start with a CSS framework to see how easy they were to work with. Blueprint was my first choice because that was the first one I remembered hearing about. But after examining the code I didn’t really feel comfortable with how it all worked. So I switched over to 960.gs which has been getting rave reviews. The code in this framework was much easier to customize to how I like and was even easy to remove 2 columns because our site was not the standard 960px. Now everything lines up beautifully and was a breeze to code. We’re now using their psd templates when we start laying out a website.
Another big desire has been to develop a site in ExpressionEngine. Everyone always talks about how great it is but finding good tutorials/books on the topic has been difficult. I followed Michael Boyink’s website and bought his book but there was still a large part that was not clicking. That was until Ryan Irenlan came out with his ExpressionEngine screencasts. Currently he is on video number 5 and each one has been invaluable to me. Now that I have had a good run-through of the basics from Ryan, I am getting much more out of Michael Boyink’s book. After all is said and done, I would expect the ibgdg.com website to be somewhat of a testbed of my knowledge and grasp of ExpressionEngine. So stay tuned to see how else we will push the envelope with our ExpressionEngine wizardry and hopefully a few posts on developing in ExpressionEngine from a CMS beginner.
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