General /mike

Design thieves are idiots

September 24th, 2008

Today a friend of mine found out his site got ripped. In this day and age ripping someone’s site so blatantly is the lowest of the low. And you’re going to get caught.

If you’re selling yourself as a designer or design agency you should either have enough talent to design something great yourself, or the money to pay someone else to do it for you. Be inspired by someone else’s work but don’t steal it, change some colours and two graphics, then call it your own.

It’s a popularity contest

If you’re going to steal someone’s design you should pick a good one. Here’s the problem, the good designs are usually popular and widely known. You’re shooting yourself in the foot right from the beginning because someone is bound to notice the theft.

Good design gets promoted. Good designers get promoted. People look at popular, promoted designs to get inspiration and learn from their peers, mentors, and idles. You’re seriously deluded if you think you won’t get noticed using a stolen design and passing it off as your own.

Make an excuse. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

When you’re stealing a design and you get caught — and almost everyone gets caught eventually — don’t use the excuse that you were “just seeing how things worked wasn’t going to keep it up[sic]” (source). Why? Because you’re lying. And you’re apparently really bad at it.

That excuse has been used over and over again. Every time I see another design theft when the thief finally reveals themselves and wants to win back some favour, they use that excuse.

“My bad. I’m just learning and wanted to learn from the best.”

“Oh, I only wanted to know how they did this or that.”

“This is just a temp site. I’m too busy to work on my own and needed something up right away.”

Anyone working in the web that is worth a damn knows about testing environments. Hell, anyone that’s built anything on or with a computer knows about testing. Using the “testing it out” excuse implies to me that you think you’re above testing your work. This reeks of immaturity and unprofessionalism. Would you build a client’s website and throw it on their live server just to see how things worked?! I don’t think so.

Grow up people. Get a better excuse. Better yet, get some talent.

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Getting Wordpress Email Notifications using Google Apps

August 9th, 2008

This is partly a reminder to myself and partly a note to the community as a whole. Ever since I set up screenflicker.com to use Google Apps for email I’ve not been able to receive emails sent from my WordPress install. After doing loads of searches and double or triple checking all my WP settings, I hadn’t found a solution. Until now.

One of my searches for answers included searching the WP support forums. I found this topic that seemed promising. It still didn’t spell out the solution I needed though, until tyr responded to my query.

tyr is using a (mt) Grid Server and discovered that in order to receive the WP comment notifications he needed to turn off email in his control panel.

Since I’m using a (dv) 3 Server from (mt) and hosting multiple domains/sites, the steps are a little different. Here’s what I had to do:

Log into my Plesk admin interface
Select the domain area of the admin (and subsequently select the appropriate domain)
Under the “Services” list, click on “Mail”
In the “Mail” screen, click “Switch Off”

Bingo, bango, bongo. After a quick test comment on an old post I was in business. Now my Google hosted email can receive all the comment spam-y goodness that comes with having a blog.

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Does momma still dress you?

August 3rd, 2008

I’m noticing a trend happening a little too often for my tastes lately. If the title didn’t give it away, the thing I’m noticing is that more and more people are making very bad decisions when it comes to their wardrobe.

You could make the point that I’m not the snazziest dresser, I would. But at least I have a good understanding of what might look ridiculous on me.

The worst offence? Socks with sandals. I’ve seen too many examples of this to even count. Part of the problem is that it seems like such a minor thing most people try to sneak it past the general public. Wrong people. Just wrong. And everybody notices.

Another case in point, the popped collar. Is that really something that makes you look better? Maybe it serves a functional purpose. Does a popped collar keep your neck warm like a scarf? Does it make you more aerodynamic? After some quick test cases in my lab, aka my bathroom, neither proves true.

Alright, so you got me, the British have been popping their collars for years. So what. They’re British. Here’s one thing the Brits do have over us North Americans, large people don’t wear tight fitting clothing. Maybe we could give the British their popped collars back and we could take the “no tight clothing for obese people” fashion trend instead.

Does this growing trend of poor style choices mean that parents stopped dressing their kids too soon? Should these fine examples of free will have been nurtured until their 30th birthday? Don’t ask me, I’m still wearing the clothes my mom picks out for me.

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Random Thoughts: Time travel and intersections

July 29th, 2008

When someone finally cracks the code for the time space continuum and gets around to inventing teleportation, I’ve got a killer idea for the first application of teleportation devices, traffic intersections.

Think about it, one of the most aggravating things about driving is hitting red lights and stop signs. If we build a teleportation device into intersections for one direction of traffic — either north/south or east/west on the road — we wouldn’t need stop signs and traffic lights.

Anyone driving in any direction would be covered. Northbound/southbound traffic would teleport across the intersection and eastbound/westbound traffic would drive through the intersection. No more stopping. Unless you’re one of those crazy people that decides they want to turn at an intersection. In that case you’re just screwed.

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Don’t annoy your customers with the wrong marketing

March 29th, 2008

Lately I’ve been noticing any annoying trend. Companies like Netflix and Disney are forming this habit of constantly marketing services to already paying customers. The method Netflix is using being a little more wasteful than what Disney is doing, with neither less annoying than the other. And frankly, I find both methods a great waste of time and resources.

Read the rest of this entry »

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/mike