Kimler Adventure Pages (http://randsco.com)

What's more fun for a developer than to show up a huge online company like eBay? How about getting PAID to do it! Here's the write-up from my one, fun summertime web project - a pure CSS eBay photo gallery. (Oh and just for grins, it's displayed in another "Arti-zine" web design). I miss having time to write more blog articles!!

eBay Pure-CSS Photo Gallery Demo

A slide show of Alex's 2009. Over 100 photos presented in an "ArtiZine" format (unique design and layout, driven by the article content). Not your normal blog post. Come check out the design and Alex's year.

Slide Show: 100+ Pics of "the Oop!"

School Picture: Alex is appropriately wearing a "XXI Olympic Winter Games" shirt, the day school pictures were taken. Our "big" (little) first grader! She's so social & loves school.

Christ­mas came upon us very fast this year. Be­cause both sets of Alex's grand­par­ents own a di­git­al photo frame, we gave them each a 2GB SD card, con­tain­ing over 300 fam­ily pho­tos (mostly of their grand­daugh­ter). One month later, I've up­loaded some of the best shots to Rand­sco, to share with every­one else!

Alex is a very out­go­ing and en­ga­ging girl of six, though in most of these pho­tos, she's five. Al­ex­an­dra is her full name, but we just call her "Alex" or "the Oop" (a nick­name that she's had for a while and one that stuck). She had a very busy year at kinder­garten, vis­it­ing grand­par­ents, ex­plor­ing, mak­ing friends and just be­ing a kid. We in­vite you to share her year in pic­tures.

We hope you en­joy the show, which is presen­ted in an Ar­tiZ­ine What the Heck is an Ar­tiZ­ine? An ar­tiz­ine is a blog art­icle that has a com­pletely unique design & page lay­out, driv­en by the con­tents of the art­icle. It is re­min­is­cent of print magazine art­icles, where each art­icle has a some­what dif­fer­ent design, ty­po­graphy and/or art­work. In fact, the word "artizine" is a com­bin­a­tion of the word "article" and "magazine". An ar­tiz­ine is dif­fer­ent from a blogazine. In a blogazine, every art­icle con­tains magazine-like styl­ing. Be­cause such styl­ing takes work, blogazines are in­fre­quently up­dated and re­quire the blog au­thor(s) to main­tain a sep­ar­ate site for their "nor­mal" mus­ings. In con­trast, an ar­tiz­ine is simply a spe­cial, magazine-like art­icle, con­tained with­in a reg­u­lar blog. format and it's the second such art­icle we've pub­lished. As such, it may be a bit dis­or­i­ent­ing to some folks. Just wait for the page to load and then hover over the mov­ing theater screen stat­ic. Click to start the slide show. Then click the thumb­nail im­ages to move for­ward, or back­ward, through the slide show! (Simple really)

Now, let's get on to Alex's spe­cially de­signed slide show!

 

Show me the Show!

This article was a long time in coming. Over 25 years, to be exact. However, it contains much more than observations on why software fails the users for which it's supposed to be designed. It also demonstrates a method of designing blog posts. Is it "just another post" or a "completely new website"? You decide.

The Nose Knows: Software makers often fail to satisfy their users. We explore why this happens.

Programmers Cut Off Their Noses

Are users ever truly satisfied with the software they use? The answer is typically "no". We need the software. We use the software. But we often don't like it. Among the reasons: it's buggy, hard to figure out, doesn't do what we want, is overly complex, the navigation sucks, it's got a steep learning curve or it's poorly documented. Take your pick. Why does software fail the very users for whom it's supposed to be designed?

Why Software Fails

Why Software Fails