Give it until 1:10. Things didn’t load so fast in those days, man.

I’m not one of those cats who gets all crazy for Radiohead, but… I mean, this remix is some masterful stuff.

The “vocals” give the machines a surreal kind of humanity – you feel sorry for them. It’s like you can see the strings holding up these sad old machines and forcing them to dance. Like they’re too old and too tired to be whirring and clicking away like this. Really surreal stuff, if you look at it with the right kind of eyes.

Is it possible to blog from TextMate, via a snazzy bundle? Yes. Can I blog from TextMate, via a snazzy bundle? We will soon see.

Edit: I’m pretty awesome.

CakePHP is kicking me directly in my stupid head. Seriously, I’d hate it if it weren’t so goddamned cool.

I just finished ripping apart a site built in Cake so I could style it all pretty-like, and I think I may have developed a touch of Stockholm syndrome. So begins the usual “I’m gonna learn stuff” routine: I go on a book-finding mission, take it home with elation, and sit down at my desk with a big ol’ grin betraying that I have no idea what I’m getting myself into. Double-digit hours later and my hair has shaped itself into a frustration-based fauxhawk from running my fingers back through it. I’m suffering from low-grade dehydration, my left eye has just stopped working, and my shoe is mysteriously missing. How long have I been here, I wonder to myself. Have I always been here? I can no longer recall.

I’m getting the MVC breakdown, sort of. I mean, I kinda know what they do? I remain confused, despite helpful learning aides like this:

The basic gist is that they point at each other.

Based on what I’m getting – and this is mostly me writing it out to try and manage the two liters of information I just poured into my dixie-cup brain – this is the break down:

The Model is the bid’ness end of the deal. I’m not sure if it refers to the crisp candy shell of the database and the creamy nougat data contained therein, but I do know that it refers to the process of ripping said nougat out of there. I guess it’s, uh, the straw, used to… Extract nougat. This analogy is falling apart fast.

The View – this I get. It’s a template dealie. The view is what puts the nougat on… Your eyes. The model rips the data down, the view does as the name implies. This also includes, say, producing the input field into which you type “buy some eggs why don’t you.” You hit save, and said egg request goes to:

The Controller, whose job is – as far as I can tell – to know what “save” means. “Save means put this into the database,” it exclaims, handing the information from the view on over to the model. And so is the circle completed.

One of you blogotopians can feel free to correct me if I’m off-base, or if you know any good resources for learning me some Cake. I’m getting into the kind of territory where googling an error returns thousands of sites that have that actual error, rather than something that tells me what it means. It makes things a little tougher.

Now, I have dabbled in the world of Javascript, and I have worked within the confines of something put together in jQuery. Generally my stuff is functional, but we will call it less than ideal. If you’re curious, hell, this action was all me: http://www.menshealth.com/bestfoods/memory.php Go on and look at the source, but keep it in mind that I am not claiming to be any good. My code is a dog’s code. This I accept.

So then, a few days ago, I attend a talk given by the dude who put together jQuery. I’m goin’, what, seriously, are you kidding me? This is voo-doo. I write five lines of code, clap my hands together, slap my MacBook’s screen, and like some kind of alchemist a JS accordion based on classes happens? Surely it cannot be so easy.

$(document).ready(function() {
	$(".toggle").click(function() {
		$("div.list_content").removeClass("open");
		$(this).next("div.list_content").addClass("open");
		return false;
	});
});

Oh, I guess it is so easy after all.

But that won’t cut it in hurr-hurr-2.0-durr land, right? You need fancy transitions and whatnot. Well, let me show you how to do a fade in thing!

.fadeIn()

That’s it. You sprinkle some of that on your code, and there you go - quicker than you can say “beta.” It’s delicious.

You like the AJAX? All the kids like the AJAX, nowadays. So let’s say you want to dynamically take a document from elsewhere, snag the contents of the h2 and p tags, split them up, and place them in different parts of the page? As a dude with zero (0) experience in the land of AJAX, this took me roughly fifteen minutes to figure out.

The best part is that the code is all of 14k (compressed). Chew on that, Prototype and script.aculo.us.

If I see one more blog post about “Web 2.0,” I’m going to headbutt a sidewalk.

I maintain that designers are a sharp bunch, at once embodying the unholy fusion of artist and coder - and on top of that, the vast majority of us are fully capable of speaking fluent marketing. Why is it, exactly, that we’ll all sit around groaning and eye-rolling about the corporate signal-to-noise ratio, then retire to our blogs to drone on endlessly about whether reflected icons or shiny-looking text is “more Web 2.0?” Some guy sitting in a two-hour meeting somewhere, taking notes on “leveraging the dub-dub-dub platform to shift standardized ROI metrics” spit out that “Web 2.0″ gem one day with the grin of a first-grader tacking construction paper and crayon to the fridge, and for some reason everyone bought it. It is a nothing term, and while we hear “low hanging fruit” on a conference call and all think “gawd, you mean ‘easier.’ I hate market-speak.” someone mumbles “2.0 is AJAX” in a coffee shop and they’re in sudden danger of being beaten to death with a sleek Apple keyboard because, “nuh-uh, it’s rounded corners.”

Now, yeah, there are some up-and-coming trends in buildin’ internets. User driven content? Hey, awesome, keep it coming. Current design trends, a la shiny text and plastic buttons? Hell, sure, go nuts. My blog’s got some of that shiny plastic action going on; I dig it. It is a trend in design. Just as M.C. Hammer pants were trendy once, some people thought “oh man so awesome it’s the future here today” and some people thought “boy what stupid pants,” and someday when we’re ever-so-much cooler than now we’ll all look back and slap our foreheads over how everyone jumped on the shiny plastic bandwagon.

You wanna write a blog about how glossy Helvetica is killing design? Go ahead! You wanna post a comment on said blog about how it’s truly a gift from a kind and benevolent force, bestowed upon the unwashed designer hordes? Little weird, but hey, whatever blows your hair back. To each their own, I say. The way I figure it, though: when you tag said entry under “Web 2.0″ and the title is “This is Web 2.0 and it’s bad” and it comes up on a listing of popular design blogs as “this is why Web 2.0 is awful and kicked my dog in the ribs and set fire to my house,” you’re just angling for attention. Every schmuck kid with a LiveJournal and copy of Photoshop Elements is out there doing us the favor of being the authority and defining “Web 2.0″ for us on a daily basis, to garner a few comments. Talk about techniques, talk about what you like and dislike in modern design. Talk about how you’re working to change the very face of the world around you, or that you’re just doing it to make a buck. Talk about something with substance. I’m tired of digging for the gold at the bottom of an RSS folder overflowing with debates on whether striped backgrounds slanting left or right are more two-point-oh’er, and for the life of me I can’t figure out why we’re all still hung up on the color of the Emperor’s new Hammer pants.

If we’re going to do this, we got to do it up proper. Designing and selling are basically my two big marketable skills, and I’ve already made up my mind never to get back into sales – it’s time to commit. That means a real portfolio, a resume, maybe even get me some schoolin’. If this is what I’m gonna do with my life, man, I should probably start doing it sometime.

That means updating this thing more than “let’s see how my blog looks with more than x entries,” too. I got stuff to share, yeah? Techniques. Gotta get the word out there; get myself some visibility.

So, now, where do I start? Someone said to make a list of strengths and weaknesses, that I might find areas that need improvement and things to play up when I get a portfolio together. Sending out an email with a hand-typed list of links and “here’s some sites I made please hire me I’m so hungry” at the top is probably a less-than-ideal way of bringing in freelance gigs. I’m reluctant to do it because I know I didn’t designate any styles for unordered lists within the content area on this theme I whipped-up, but, we trudge on.

Things at Which I am Bad

• Time management, man. I say this as it is currently 11:14, and I sat down to start getting my situation in order three hours ago. Instead I watched videos of pandas on YouTube. I don’t know why either.
• I really hope this list looks okay. I should go in and style it now.
• Doing little stupid things instead of just obsessing about them.
• My print is weak-sauce. Watching me use Illustrator is like watching an ape hit a large rock with a smaller rock in hopes that a set of business cards will somehow be produced. That is a weakness that needs real work.
• Going to bed at a reasonable time. I don’t do anything at night. I just sit around not being asleep. What the hell, man?
• Writing and speaking like a normal person. Somehow my speech went from defaulting to “I am going to the store for sugar,” to “man, we got to talk about getting to the store like prompt, due to the current sugar situation.” While this is loads of fun and all, I occasionally find myself tripping over words and stammering when I try to interact with someone on a non-ridiculous level. That could just be me being hell of stressed as of late, though.
• “Sugar Situation” would be a good name for a band.

Things at Which I am Good

• Naming bands.
• I have been known to make Photoshop dance for my amusement. Sometimes not? I’m not sure I’m so consistent. Is that normal?
• My CSS is both ridiculous and conspicuous. I write a stylesheet that could make a lady weep, or bring delight to the hearts of all who, uh… View source and figure out where it is, I guess.
• My PHP and JS are getting pretty brag-able, as well. I should probably get back into actively cultivating such things, though use of books and such. That’s probably part of why I’m feelin’ so stagnant lately: resting on my laurels.
• Probably other stuff. I want to go to bed.

Maybe this wasn’t the right approach. I think it’d be more productive for me to sit down and put together a plan of attack. Break down some phases or somesuch – I’m not gonna get anything done unless I set some deadlines for myself. I operate a hell of a lot better when I’ve got some pressure on. Otherwise I’ll just tool around half-making cool little widgets for this blog and never posting them, or write loads of nonsense instead of getting a resume on paper.

You got yourself some money, nice things, and a safe little situation - you got a little full of yourself, huh?

You’re starting over again, but now you don’t have to do it completely from scratch. This time, don’t get so hung up on how far you’ve made it that you stop moving forward.

This time, stay focused.

Aw yeah. We bloggin’ now, baby.