I have attempted to try to meet those requests and therefore have launched version 1.1. The updates in this release are:

• There is now the ability to set the timeOut option to 0, and thus keep leaveNotice from automatically forwarding the user. When timeOut is set to 0, the user will have to click the link from the leaveNotice dialog in order to advance to the linked page.
• There is a new option that can now be set that is called linkString. This is just a string that gets added to the outgoing link. The purpose of this property is it allows for adding a class or other property to the outgoing link.
• LeaveNotice now works when jQuery is running in noConflict() mode.

You can see examples and get more info if you’d like: leaveNotice plug in page.

Note on updating: You’ll have to delete the old bookmarklet and drag a new copy up to your favorites bar to gain the new functionality.

I haven’t written anything on here in a LONG time, but I have a little something to share today.

I am a huge fan of bookmarklets. In fact, I’m sort of passionate about them. I have a whole folder of bookmarks in my browser that is just filled with bookmarklets. Recently, I’ve come across a need for a new bookmarklet that looks up bible references on web pages and I thought I’d try my hand at creating one of my own. So I did.

Here’s what it does: If you see a Bible reference that you want to look up, you can select it and click the bookmarklet and it will open up the passage on Bible Gateway. If you don’t have anything selected, it will ask you what you want to look up. Pretty simple.

Here it is (drag this to your bookmarks toolbar):

Bible Link (opens in the same window/tab)

Bible Link (opens in new window/tab)

It works only in Firefox and the webkit browsers (Chrome and Safari). Sorry IE users, you’re not my target audience.

For a test, you can highlight this passage and click the bookmarklet: John 3:16

Check it out!

I have written some scripts that I have used across various projects I’ve worked on. I have thought frequently about making them into actual plugins, but until now have not done so. It was pretty easy and kind of fun.

This plugin shows a user a dialog box when they click links that link away from a given website. I’ve seen this sort of functionality around the web and, as I said, implemented it a few times myself. Hopefully, this plugin will make things easier for people.

Check it out and let me know what you think!

As long as I can remember I have believed that a person is only as old as they think. My grandfather was an awesome example of this: He worked hard, traveled, learned, discovered, and lived life to the fullest far after he retired from his career and well into his 80′s. He always said he wanted to die in his bootstraps and he did. I really want follow his example. As long as God gives me life, I want to truly live.

Thus, as I am beginning to hear the jokes about how my last birthday that is worth looking forward to is approaching, I want to stop and deliberately protest. My life will not end at 25–nor at 30, 40, or 50! No, every year I will work hard to ensure that it is better than the last. I will not settle for drifting into monotony; I will live an adventure passionately seeking for the things that are better, more good, more right, and more true. I will seek to become more true to whom I was made to be and I will strive not to waste a moment in lament over times goneby.

But why this hope? Is it merited?

Before I say why I think hope is significantly merited, it is important to stop for a second and note a few things about the nature of hope itself.

Hope is, in essence, saying I believe there is a reason to suspect that good is on it’s way. The catch here, though, is that there has to be a reason to hope. Hope is inspired, fundamentally, out of reason. If hope exists where there is no reason to hope, it’s called ignorance. Hope simply for hope’s sake is foolishness.

Therefore, hope can only truly exist if there is a reason to suspect that good is to come.

So, what’s my reason to expect good in the future?

It’s not in myself. While I have done okay so far, hoping in my own abilities to find a great life falls short for me. Why? For every time I have succeeded, I’ve failed twice. For every time I’ve tried something new, I’ve sat back afraid to try at least five times. For every time I’ve had a good idea, I’ve had at least twenty bad ideas. I’m a person of average intellect, average skill, average looks, average family, etc. I’m not extraordinary. While I could focus on my successes and conjure up hope for some grand future, I can’t do that with intellectual integrity because it ventures out into the realm of ignorance–there is not significant reason to expect anything great. If my hope is based only on what I know of myself so far, then I can hope to live an average, mundane life. I don’t want that, though, and therefore I don’t and won’t find my hope in myself.

It’s not in my family or friends. I think I probably have the best family there is and, likely, the best friends there are, too. I love them deeply. Even still, the people who are closest to me let me down the most. I don’t hold it against them, they’re human. But neither am I willing to build my hope of my life on the relationships I have with them. Doing so sets me up to have everything crash down when they’re not around (for whatever reason). This is maybe sad to recognize, but I must be honest with myself here.

It’s not in my career. I don’t think I need to say much about this. The past six months have amply shown that even the best jobs can be lost, the biggest companies can fail, and even good, hard-working, intelligent people can find themselves without jobs and with seemingly nowhere to turn.

It’s not in my government. Many people are tempted to look to the government for hope. I think this is a very sad mistake. While the government is good–it protects us, it provides us certain services that enhance our lives greatly–it’s role is to provide an safe environment for us to live our lives. Not somehow to give us lives to live–that’s not freedom and that surely isn’t hope. Furthermore, look at any government agency: you’ll find beauracracy, inefficiency, corruption (not always, but more often than not), and a fair level of incompetency. Now, I’m not ranting on government, but I’m trying to be honest. If that is what I’ve always seen, where is the reason to think it will be any different? Even a very charismatic politician cannot change a system that’s so much more established even than he.

So why do I hope? How can I?

My hope is in Jesus Christ. What’s my reason?

In John 10:10, Jesus told us that he came to give us life. He did this by dying to pay the penalty that all of our own shortcomings demand. We’ve been brainwashed to think that we’re all basically good, but we’re not and we know we’re not. At the core of us, there is evil–we hate, we’re self-seeking, and worst of all we reject the God who made us.

This evil of ours presented a dilemma for God who loves us, but is also just. He must love but he also must maintain justice. Therefore, he can’t let evil go unpunished. To remedy this, he sent his perfect Son, Jesus Christ, to earth to live and to show us his love is by dying the criminal’s death we deserve so that we, in turn, wouldn’t have to die if we would turn to Him and ask forgiveness.

No one in history changed the course of humankind more than Jesus Christ. But this being true, Jesus promised us this in John 14:12-14: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. ¹³ Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. ¹⁴ If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.” [emphasis mine]

The truth is that as I (or any of us) believe in Jesus and commit to living lives like he lived–not according to some religion, but according to his example–we will be able to change the world and make it truly better. THIS IS HOPE! It’s not because any of us are so great, but because Jesus himself will be with God working on our behalf, supporting us in our efforts.

It’s been a very long time since I’ve posted anything on here. I’ve been pretty busy with all of life’s demands, which isn’t bad, but I haven’t written very much.

Part of the reason for my lack of writing is because ever since I put together my previous design, I haven’t really been pleased with it. I had a variety of goals for it that I felt weren’t really acheived. In the mean time, though, I thing I’ve put together a design that I feel a little bit better about. Here are some things you might notice:

• More thorough typographical consideration. I really love and care about my type. In the previous iteration, though, I didn’t spend as much time as I would have liked working it out. I think this version is much better.
• Use of Clarendon. For better or for worse I’m a huge fan of Clarendon. I discovered Clarendon while in school and really began to love it then. My type professor, however, really hated it. Therefore, my love for it grew. (wink, wink). I have had intentions of using it in public work for a while, but haven’t done so till now. How did I do it? Next point…
• Use of typeface-js. Typeface-js is a javascript solution to embedding typefaces on your website. I won’t go in to detail as to how it works, but I will say I am pretty pleased with how easy it was to install and configure. I have previously used sIFR, but I am glad to leave flash behind for this. (I am aware that Cufón might be a more mature project that works similarly, but I found this one first and like it… I might change later if there is significant reason to do so.)

Some things you probably won’t notice without significant digging, but that I’d like to mention:

• One reason I was able to build this theme quickly (by the way, I was able to build this quickly) was because I found a really helpful, stripped-down WordPress theme that serves as an excellent blank canvass for starting new template developments. It’s called Starkers and it was made by Elliot Jay Stocks.
• I used less javascript. I really like javascript. I really dislike, though, features on sites that don’t significantly contribute to the overall user experience but that still take time to load. Therefore, I cut out some javascript effects I used on the previous iteration of this design. (The only javascript I am using is for the earlier mentioned font embedding.)
• This hardly merits mentioning, but in this iteration I didn’t even bother trying to get things to appear right in IE 6. Very few people view this site and a negligable number use IE. It’s simply not worthy my time or effort.

That’s all. Please let me know what you think of the update. If you notice anything that doesn’t look quite right, let me know–I probably missed some stuff.

Rock on,

Rewdy

» For anyone involved in creative problem solving, this is an absolute must-read. I can’t stress the importance of what he says in this article enough. It’s been so very profound for me.
http://www.andyrutledge.com/complex-order-simple-chaos.php

» About a year or so ago I stumbled upon the blog of a small design firm in Ireland called Contrast. Over the past year they have posted some really awesome stuff on their blog. There are two articles that have been really helpful for me to read in the past couple days.

First, an article about the learning potential in failures and the value of simply creating.
http://www.contrast.ie/blog/fail-early-fail-often-and-learn/

Second, and this is so important in this day and age, an article that talks about distractions, avoiding them, and how to help yourself be productive.
http://www.contrast.ie/blog/killing-distractions/

The last three I have not read in great detail, but from skimming them they look good. I post them partially to share and partially for posterity–so I can come back and read them as I have time. I won’t give intro for them.

Intro to design patterns from 37 Signals.
http://www.37signals.com/papers/introtopatterns/

About the redesign of ABC News.
http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2004/10/abcnews-redesigns

UX Mag writes about the style layer.
http://www.uxmag.com/design/86/the-layers-of-design-the-style-layer

Thanks, peace.

Posted by email from rewdy (posterous)

Posted by email from rewdy (posterous)

Here’s a nice collection of some cool typography/posters. Some is better than others, but check it out. The hand-drawn stuff is nice. Typography Mega Inspiration

Here’s a really good article on “A Designer’s Worth”. It is from David Yeiser’s blog called “Design Intellection”. In my opinion, his blog has some amazing design. It’s very simple, very elegant, yet maintains a strong sense of unique style. Read the article, enjoy the design while you’re there. A Designer’s Worth

I don’t know if I’ve shared this link before or not, but here it is: I love patterns and this site has a bunch of good repeating patterns. (Warning: It has some nasty ones too.) Din Pattern

Say good bye to those annoying searches for HTML character codes. This site has a bunch of the most commonly used special characters and allows to simple click a character to add it to your clipboard. Paste it where you want it and you’re good to go. Cool, simple, but really helpful little site. Copy Past Character

Here’s the link –> http://www.zazzle.com/custom/stamps

Posted by email from rewdy (posterous)