I always had a certain admiration and sense of wonder for Obsidian. Not only is he a very talented graphic designer and illustrator, but to me he is the cornerstone of the Extra Life Radio podcast. Scott Johnson and Brian Dunnway also contribute a lot, but Obsidian is the star; he is the disruptor, he is the joke, the sarcastic comment and the witty punchline. Above all, he is a Latino inside an otherwise very American tilted show, and that makes it all the more incredible.

So in one of those few opportunities my job allows I was able to lure Obsidian into one of our product launches, and thus meet him in his native Medellin city, in Colombia.

For those who don’t know, Medellin has a bad reputation, but it’s probably one of the five most beautiful cities in the world to me. I love going there, I love the people and the dedication the new government is putting into making it even a nicer place to visit.

There are so many qualities to like from Obsidian that I would not know where to start. Probably what most impressed me is his extreme discipline. Obsidian draws and publishes a comic everyday, no matter what day, and hasn’t missed a date since the last three years! When I think I update my blog once a month, I feel ashamed. Not only does he pencil, scan, color and edits the comic, he even writes a nice blog on it, every day…

Obsidian updates his site with new content and makes a living through commissioned artwork from readers and fans. He has decided not to settle for a job, and works diligently to ensure his freedom. I usually tell my friends how much I hate my job and how much I hate hating what I do. Obsidian came as an inspiration of someone not willing to settle for mediocre, and willing to pay the price with enormous amounts of work to back up the claim.

Another trait which I found very interesting is Obsidian’s approach to education. As a graphic design professor at a local college, O seems a rather strict tutor! His philosophy revolves around work, lots of assignments and homework, and hours of refining artwork.

Obsidian seems happy ti sleep four hours a day, and uses a great deal of time (2 or 3 hours daily) to exercise, ride his bike and practice Kung Fu. He lives alone with his two cats in an apartment he calls himself Spartan. His schedule is built around his obligations, and wakes up at 6 a.m. to start his drawings and commissioned work.

Obsidian made me rethink my whole schedule. I travel a lot, and thus I find multiple excuses not to exercise, eat healthy, write my blog, etc. But ever since knowing him personally, I have been striving to catch-up with my favorite activities, by following a very disciplined approach to maximize usage of time and stop not focusing.

Please, take a minute and visit www.commissionedcomic.com for Obsidians impressive work.

written by Administrator

I am no one to talk. My design is not very good. I do kind of square things… I do some snappy design from time to time, but I am not a web 2.0 maestro. Yet it surprises me how much the Apple Developer Connection sucks…

I was recently looking for the second part of using Ruby On Rails for Leopard. The article was mentioned originally in YCombinator! but looking for it again a second time required that I login to the ADC member page. And that’s when I realized how ugly this website is.

Looking for the article in mention? I have no idea how to go back. If you accidentally hit the back button, you log out. Unless your browser saves in cache your login information, you have to type it all over again.

And what happened to the menu design? The home page has links poorly disguised as icons (and no, I am not so intuitive…) The ADC product icon takes you to another page where a paid connection is about a year’s salary here in Panama (and I am not sure if it gets any cheaper living in the USA). The download section has neat links organized on the side. It lacks any Ruby or Rails entry… It took me ages looking for the before mentioned article under some obscure link for Script Languages. Most of the free downloads are PDF books on Apple topics, which are basically twenty five pages explaining what a computer is, or what Java does, and then condensing all important API’s into five pages while one wonders where to go next (Google most of the time…)

I sometimes think that Apple does it on purpose to get paid subscriptions. Since I have no motivation for paying, I don’t know for sure. But it would occur to me that Apple would care about developers and design a very decent website. Maybe it’s because they developed the whole thing using WebObjects and JSF technology (okay, not JSF but at least JSP and servlets…) instead of a more friendly approach? I mean, all you do is download PDF files and some .dmg files, no need for big old Java, especially in the slow way these pages get updates… It seems to me they look the same since 2001.

Do we need good design for developers? I think my life would be easier if looking for part 2 of the Rails Using Leopard article was only a click away. I already bought a MacBook, but I might consider buying a new one even more if Apple cultivates me as a consumer. And please, not with glitter marketing (I majored in marketing…) but with cool products and even cooler service and support.

For example, there is no search box… and this is Apple’s website for developers! Even Sun has a half decent website where I learned the little I know of Java. For crying out loud, most of the cool pages I know for coding run on blog engines which are open sourced, and any of them look better than Apple’s Website.

So if anyone from Apple is listening, I will be more than happy to work on an ass-kicking, mind blowing, marketing fulled, eye catching, user friendly, and environmentally sound website for developers to get their goodies. I charge Panama rates, which are dirt cheap considering how much money you guys at Apple make. After all, the company that made DESIGN the fad word of the moment should have a compatible website…

written by Administrator

I get the feeling big companies are not the ones I would prefer to work for. My job is a perfect example. I am a supposedly “big marketing director” for a “big name shoe company”. But instead of doing real marketing, I spend most of my day creating PowerPoint slides on strategy. By the time we really get to work on the campaign, we output mediocre stuff - no matter how strategic - and I end my day wishing I could work on a smaller, more creative company.

That’s what I loved about nPost.

nPost is a company dedicated to promoting startups, with startup jobs at software and internet companies, startup interviews, and tech networking events.

The nPost site allows you to search for jobs, and has now launched a Widget much like Google AdSense. I have Google AdSense on my own blog, and I will spend the rest of the day comparing why nPost got it right (and Google got it way too square…)

First, let’s talk about design, since this is after all a blog about marketing Zen. Google has a format blue and flat, with a typical PHP look… I know, they don’t use PHP but Javascript, but it does have that square 1998 Internet look. As opposed, nPost gave me a modern, classy, web 2.0 design that really goes well with my own website. It looks way too cool compared to AdSense. I feel more compelled to click on nPost than Google, even if it’s only the first impression (and as you know, there is no second chance to make a first impression!)

Second, the way you set-up ads in nPost is way too simple. Just make your ad with a few mouse clicks (step 1), get a password (step 2), and fill your information (step 3), and done! The application takes you right to your ads where you can see the code for each ad you create and a little menu bar on top gives you editing, deletion, and your earnings up-to-date.

And this is really smart. It took me a long time to set-up my AdSense widgets, compared to less than 10 minutes it took to install the nPost widgets in my blog and index page in my website. That includes playing with the design. When I installed AdSense, I never got ads until some half an hour later, but nPost delivered them in seconds. That makes me feel good!

I took sometime this evening and looked through the nPost website, and I loved what I saw. Looking for jobs was a pleasure, as everything is well kept and organized in a way you never get lost. Some of the ads looked incredibly tempting, but all the job openings I saw were USA related (no thanks, I am one of those proud Latinos who would rather relocate within Latin America!)

Do I have any caveats? Well, a minor one. I wish ad formats could adapt a little more to my particular CSS design. I have a left column, which is 250 pixels wide, and the two available choices for the widget were a too thin for my taste. I am not sure if there is a way around this, but if there is, nPost will probably solve it before AdSense.

To set-up your own nPost widget, just click here and you will be done in no time. Or if you prefer, visit the website at http://www.npost.com.

Check out nPost, and if you are looking for a job, don’t think twice and send your resume to some of the great start-up and technology companies advertised there. Because making the next marketing break-through beats making PPT slides all day!

written by Administrator

I recently got a brand new MacBook Pro. I want to thank my boss Max for it and my buddy Glenn, Panama’s top Apple guy for giving me the best price available for my new Mac. It is such an incredible piece of machine I can not describe how cool it is.

But for such a cool design, I started to notice it got pretty hot, specially if working in places with no or little air conditioning systems. It affected me in my Bogota hotel, where I had the A/C system off since it was kind of chilly outside. But the temperature widget I had installed flashed 62 degrees Celsius and I started to worry abut the issue. I like my laptops to run as cold as possible. I know the cooler the system, the better the life span and performance.

While goggling around for solutions, I came across many in which some individuals actually reapplied the thermal grease used to ensure the proper dissipation of heat. Some say it voids your warranty, but I think it is a good advice given to people who are used to tinkering with hardware, and who are close enough to the best thermal grease money can buy. Since my Mac was getting hot on Sunday in downtown Bogota, I was as far away from the solution as ever.

After some research and a couple of misses, I downloaded and installed Hendrik Holtmann’s smcFanControl 2.1. It is a great program with GPL license that allows you to change the rate of your fan. For example, instead of letting my fan kick in at Mac’s standard temperature to start cooling the system at 2,000 RPM, I decided to have mine run all the time at 4,000 RPM. The program loads itself on start-up and is visible in the top menu bar.

In a properly cooled room, my average temperature of 54 degrees Celsius dropped to 42 degrees Celsius, and in some occasions to 38 degrees. It was late at night in Bogota and I opened my window (I was staying at the Habitel hotel, a great place to go!) It was really chilly, and the combination of fan and cold dropped the temperature way down.

In an improperly cooled room, I would have highs of 62 degrees Celsius, and at times even 70 degrees Celsius. This have dropped to around 48 degrees with some peaks at 52 degrees, but much less than the average stated above.

My only reserve is the fact that the fan spinning faster than the standard could ruin it. But I am willing to bet a cooler system is preferable to a well rested fan when the whole motherboard fries itself.

My friend Hendrik, congratulations for such a fine tool! Although I can not donate anything on my meager Panama salary, if you are ever on the Ithmus, I will buy you dinner or lunch!

Download the program from Hendrk’s website at http://homepage.mac.com/holtmann/eidac/software/smcfancontrol2/index.html

written by Administrator

This is getting a little bit too repetitive, but I changed the theme again. While I was fixing it to my liking (and to better reflect the rest of the website) I was wondering why it takes Yahoo ages to update simple PHP code. The changes in the CSS take hold in seconds, but I have to wait hours before the PHP changes. This is awful, as I am never sure if I did some wrong code or it’s just the server waiting to catch-up…

written by Administrator

Against all possible odds, I redesigned the theme to adapt it a little bit more to my taste.

I wanted a bigger area for text, and basically that meant retouching all CSS elements inside the wrapper. I can see a clear case for those who prefer liquid versus non-liquid cascading style sheet elements. It took some time and lots of writing codes for colors and numbers for sizes in paper stickies to get the job done. There was nothing scientific about it, more trial and error than anything else. And I still have many doubts about if I keep website and post as separate entities (which for the moment I will).

My initial thoughts were to keep more static elements such as my design portfolio and resume in the website and use the blog for more dynamic content, such as writing. But my lack of decisiveness kept me from either writing more posts or changing the whole enchilada. Last night I stayed late playing around with my HTML files but I keep hitting the same wall: web engines are much faster at indexing, tabulating and all that administrative work that HTML pages are not. I could roll my own, but I program in Python and Ruby, and my Yahoo! host only allows Perl and PHP, neither which I care to learn right now…

So for the moment being I will try to finish here and see if I can post at least twice a week. There is a lot less people coming here than my previous and public Wordpress blog.

written by Administrator

Non-conformance is my norm. I am not comfortable with the look of my blog. I would like to adapt the CSS so it fits more closely the design of the rest of my website. Now, changing a Wordpress or Movable Type theme has never been easy. Does anyone know of a good tutorial or free PDF that explains it?

written by Administrator

I have to admit I did not paid much attention to podcasts in the past, but for some reason, I came across the Extra Life Radio podcast last week. My life hasn’t been the same ever since. The show is supposed to be about gaming and other aspects of life, such as comics. But for what I have heard so much, the show is about anything that comes to mind between Scott, Brian, Obsidian, and whatever other guest happens to be in the show. The topics are varied and colorful. Although not specially a show for the conservative types, I can’t listen to one without laughing all the way. I highly recommend it! The link is www.myextralife.com

written by Administrator

Have you noticed how every time I place an image to the left, the new paragraph tag gets the I (which for some reason I use too much…) on the top and then the image and then the rest of the text. It is not ugly but it does annoy me…

written by Administrator

I finally found a theme for Wordpress that I feel comfortable with. It took a long time. Unless you unpack and install the theme, and then try it out with your own posts, you never really know what you are going to get.

But Nightlife has been the one theme I feel reflects my personality and taste.One question for you guys out there: any good plug-in for code snippets? I have found quite a few quirks when using the code tags inside Wordpress.

written by Administrator