Digital Skraps

Bellow is a screen shot of my issues with “The CSS Awards”. The rating system makes little sense. When i saw the name, I immediately questioned how you can give an award based on CSS which by comparison is a rigid and unintelligent language. It makes things pretty, and it isn’t actually even smart in the way it goes about doing so. Absolutely no logic rules are involved. Simply Select, declare, instruct. In terms of CSS, there are of course many ways of doing things, but like Photoshop, not any one way is really a default best way. Certain cases call for certain methods. I like the patch tool in PS. My co-worker prefers the clone stamp. Both have similar effects. The same goes with CSS. A lot of times its a matter of preference on how to tackle an issue.

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I just launched a new site that I’ve been meaning to put up for quite a while, DavidSparks.me. After researching what the .me domains were intended for I discovered my name wasn’t taken. This is more or less a miracle because there are a ton of David Sparks’ out there and most everything on the internet that you would want to use your name for, has been swiped up by another David Sparks. For example, after only 2 hours of FaceBook giving us custom urls David Sparks was already taken and I had to settle for TheDavidSparks, how lame! DavidSparks.com has been taken and not updated since i was in high school which infuriates me. The silver lining is however, the .me domains were created and intended to be used for exactly what I always wanted to do with the .com. For it to be a one stop shop for all things me, David Sparks.

The site basically gets the job done for what I wanted to do with it, but in the future I plan on adding a lot more features. For now this will do though. So go take a look, leave a comment let me know what you think. If you have any good ideas about what I could do with the site feel free to chime in and let me know. Enjoy!!!

I just finished uploading some designs to the website MySoti.com. It seems like a pretty cool site. I’m not sure the pricing is very fair for the designers but I didn’t spend too much time on these to prevent me from uploading them and taking the chance. Also, most of the designs, in my humble opinion, that are up on this site are lacking.

Regardless, I do like the designs I worked up. If you do as well pick one up. My personal favorite is the “Design the Future” Yellow Canvas one. Take a look and let me know what you think!

I was aiming for a Classic American feel to all of them while using some of the techniques and looks that I’ve been playing with lately. I hope you enjoy them!

In a lot of ways, DigitalSkraps feels much older than 2 years and in others, it’s hard to believe 2 years have already flown by. Honestly I thought after the redesign was up which is was more geared towards blogging, that I’d be able to do more of that. My 1 regret is not doing that more. I’m hoping now that the site has been around for a while with a focus on blogging, I’ll be able to use that as some motivation for some of the things i wanted to do here.

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I’m very happy to announce that I’ve launched a new side project site called “Cool Tweets”. It’s currently accessable by way of TweetCool.com however I’m working on securing the more obvious Domain Name.

A Quick Run Down:

Part of my job is staying on top of web trends and technologies. as a result I have my ear to the ground in a lot of places and I’m finding some amazing stuff all over the web on a regular basis.

It got to a point where I was wanting to share it all but would have driven a few of my friends absolutely bonkers had I been sending it to them through I.M. every day. As a result I started looking for a way to share it all but thought a full blown site would be more work than I currently have time for. Also, I wanted to share it the way I would with my friends through I.M. which usually consists of me just copy and pasting the link and sending that to them with no other info. very quick and “click to find out” sort of set up.

The obvious handicap there is I know what my one of my friends would think is cool and want to look at where as I dont have that benifit of being selective with a wider audience. So some information would have to be added.

With the DigitalSkraps Twitter profile being fairly young at that point I had begun posting a few links here and there within that but again, didnt want to over load my followers and have them stop dropping. The volume of stuff I wanted to share had again interupted what I wanted to accomplish.

Keeping with the theme, the same way I run across all this wonderful stuff around the web, the service BrightKit was brought to my attention. Allowing me to manage multiple Twitter profiles. So I gave it a shot. BrightKit is set up to give you the first account for free and then you can add any secondary accounts for a fee, however while in beta, all accounts added are free. Not knowing when beta would end, I quickly started trying to think of every possible Twitter profile I could possibly want in the future just to add it for free now. Upon thinking of all the ideas that could require their own Twitter account it occured to me that Twitter was the perfect place to share all these links, but I simply couldnt do it through DigitalSkraps. So i quickly created CoolTweets and added it to my BrightKit profile.

BrightKit recently launched a bookmarklet called “Hootlet” which allows you to tweet any site your currently on. It automatically shrinks the link and adds it to your tweet inside a pop up. So the ability to share these links got even easier cutting out probably over half the work!

With the process being so easy turning it into a site seemed doable now. Motivated by wanting to increase traffic and followers on Twitter, I did some digging to find the tools I needed to make it happen.

The tools are now in place and the site is around 95% complete. There are a few things here and there that I need to tighten up but I feel pretty confident in letting her fly.

What’s on CoolTweets?

• Video
• Artist Portfolios
• Web Apps
• Graphic Design
• Interior Design
• Green Design
• Concept Design
• Inspiration
• Mac Apps
• Home Accessories
• Toys
• and So Much More!

The Format:

Like described earlier, I wanted to make theses posts similar to just sending the link but I also wanted to help the visitor click on just the links they were thinking seemed cool. Because of Twitters character limit it also had to be condusive to that and easy to scan through so consistency and a pattern where needed.

Because the only qualification for being posted on the site is that I think its cool, regardless of genre or subject, Not everything fits perfectly into one kind of category like the ones listed above. As a result I keep having to come up with new “Categories” and rename some.

The goal however is to have the appearance of things related to eachother organized in groups which are displayed in front of the colon sign.

So if you want to watch every cool video I’ve ever posted you can go to the search bar and enter “Video”, if “Home Accessories” are your thing and you’re super into lamps, give that a search!

Because I do all the posting for this site through Twitter, and not through the website itself, I’m not able to assign actual categories to each post within Wordpress so if you’re a blogger yourself, dont think of Categories the same way when you’re at CoolTweets.com.  It would take me forever to go back and edit every post. Typically theres a new post once an hour, on the hour.

Assistance?

On that topic. I’ve done some searching and had no luck finding this. If anybody out there knows of a plugin that will search the content of a post and file it in a category for me, please let me know. I’d love to have a plugin that looked for “Interior Design:” and then file every post that began with that in a catory named the same. I currently don’t know of a way to automate that.

Hope you all enjoy CoolTweets!

There will be contact information up on the site very soon where you can send me a link to something cool that you would like posted.

Thanks!

If you’re interested in leaning jQuery, the “Write less do more library”, or maybe you need help being convinced it’s the Javascript framework you want to devote your time and energy to. Here’s a pretty in depth video intro to jQuery by the creator John Resig given at the AJAX Experience 2008 conference.

He assumes you don’t know anything about jQuery and haven’t spent much time with it. Making it maybe not the most ideal or beneficial video for any jQuery graduates but it is always good to hear straight from the creator what the product does even if it’s just to receive affirmation that you know what you’re doing.

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That’s right. I’m talking about it. I know none of you want to hear it but somebody needs to tell you the grim reality.

Nothing hurts you more than procrastination!

So I’m going to lead by example and try and help my fellow procrastinators out. I have had the landing page for this site up for way to long. Between switching jobs, trying to get my own business up and running, work on art, personal projects, single life, and toying with the idea of going to school/dealing with loans. What went up as a coming soon page that was supposed to last about 2 weeks. its now been months. I had managed to grab myself some decent traffic for the site under the design previous to this one. Nothing to write home about but had it been managed well would have started to turn into some probably steady traffic. Thanks to the long stay the coming soon page had most of that traffic is gone.

There are countless articles out there in the blogesphere about how its many times more important to get something, anything out there instead of waiting and waiting to get 1 perfect thing out there. So today my site goes live. Not ready, incomplete, lacking information, bugs, etc. It is however something.

So. here are 3 steps you should take to help yourself avoid procrastination.

1. Clean up that work space yo!!!!

It’s strange how the clutter of a desk duplicates it self in the cluttering of your head. I have found countless benefits to having a tidy and sometimes, even borderline baron desk. It forces you to focus on whatever the task at hand is. You’re able to channel all your concentration and effort on that one thing. Soon resulting into a finished product then allowing you to go veg out or do whatever it was you were doing when you procrastinate.

2. Prioritize

Sorting out the junk from the money can be very beneficial. The money being anything that reaps a reward and the junk being time killers. I’m pretty freaking addicted to Call Of Duty 4 on xbox but I have managed to play it less and less to force myself into doing more important things even if its just painting or doing another time killer. I have found mixing up your time killers can be productive too as it forces you to find more outlets. However, the money is obviously where it’s at.

maybe you need to tidy up or make your resume up to date, you never know when you might need to send it to somebody. evaluate whats important and try and takle 1 or 2 of these money tasks and then go chill with some junk.

3. The To Do List.

I don’t care if its Backpack, iCal, Google Cal, Moleskine or freaking trapper keeper. Putting down a daily, but preferable monthly, to do list is in my opinion the best thing you can do to to ensure productivity. Especially monthly. The advantage here is that you get to map out far in advance what needs to be done by when. Things don’t sneak up on you for your projects near as much and giving yourself a visual time frame for when it has to be done is priceless. I have my iCal synced up with goggleCal so I can access it from work if I need to and at home my iCal is always running. Setting even modest goals for yourself can quickly prove to be priceless. The smallest amount of goal driven productivity is rewarding and contagious.

Maybe you need to mark Monday night down to clean the clutter off your workspace. Takes care of all 3 of these steps in one fail swoop.

Doesn’t matter how big or small, putting something down is better than nothing just like getting something out there can be better than getting one perfect thing out.