August 2012
31 posts
clientsfromhell:
A client provided a Scottish narrator for a video I was editing for them.
Client: The voice over sounds too Scottish in this part. Can we edit it to make him sound less Scottish?
Me: Well… he’s Scottish. Did you want us to get him to record it again?
Client: No, no, can you just make it less Scottish?
Me: You mean by using a de-Scottish setting?
Client: Yes! Can you do...
clientsfromhell:
Me: What do you want the dimensions to be?
Client: I have no idea. Like the front side of a hat?
We were discussing a poster project.
clientsfromhell:
Client: There is way too much free space, don’t you think?
Me: I think you’re being skeptical of empty space. Sometimes a lot of breathing room works really well in a design.
Client: A man does not fear space, he conquers it. Mars, bitches.
clientsfromhell:
“Can you make it 20% less mysterious?” —
You probably type too much. →
I had a feeling I type too much. But I wasn’t sure how. So like any programmer, I got a computer to figure it out for me. What did I type? Is there a history of everything I’ve typed? Something I can mine for interesting data?
Instapaper on the Kindle - David Smith →
The feature of the reading experience that really pushed it over the edge for me was the inclusion of links that can manipulate your reading queue right from the Kindle. These are given at the beginning of the compilation and the start/end of each article. Clicking these links you can: Archive All: This will archive all the articles in this compilation (not your whole queue).
Download Newest: This...
Goodbye -9999px: A New CSS Image Replacement... →
The element’s background is displayed and it’s text is moved off-screen so it doesn’t get in the way. Simple and effective. It was often adopted to show graphical titles — that’s rarely necessary now we have webfonts, but you’ll still find it used all over the web. Until now. A new technique has been discovered by Scott Kellum and promoted at Zeldman.com
More on Sparrow and talent acquisitions –... →
If so, when Google offered them a lot of money to come work on their extremely successful email service, what were they supposed to do? Sparrow probably made the right move, and almost everyone who’s angry about it would probably have done the same thing in that situation. As Matt Gemmell yelled at many complainers, we shouldn’t condemn Sparrow for “screwing” or “abandoning” anyone, or for...
Announcing an audacious proposal by Dalton... →
Contemplate for a moment how scary a theoretical purely ad-supported Dropbox would be. I can easily imagine the overly-cheerful corporate blogpost explaining why placing ads in my personal documents, or selling the file-listing of my music collection to the music industry, or shutting down IFTTT API access is “important to the health and welfare of the community.” I happily pay to avoid that...
What Twitter could have been by Dalton Caldwell →
As you likely already know, the advertising group won that battle, and many of the open API people left the company. While I can understand why the latter camp wanted to build an ad-based business, the futurist in me thinks this was a tragic mistake. If you are building an advertising/media business, it would then follow that you need to own all of the screen real-estate that users see. The next...
How to fix your Tumblr custom domain name - Moncef... →
According to Tumblr’s official help document for custom domain names, everyone with a naked custom domain name (i.e. just website.com, without any prefix) needs to point to 66.6.44.4. I could be wrong, but it sounds like everyone who is currently pointing to 72.32.231.8 will have to make a change sooner or later. Tumblr made a significant change to my blog’s settings (and yours could be next) that...
BBC News - Ben Ainslie: Lymington gold post box... →
Yep, that’s the sort of “vandal” you need to be going after.
Clients From Hell: I was designing a photographic... →
clientsfromhell:
I was designing a photographic history exhibit for a prestigious university. The project required a series of panels that each depicted a different decade, from the 1930s to present.
Client: You know, this is all great, but it could use a little more diversity. Right now, there are a lot of…
clientsfromhell:
A client insisted on being ‘nearby’ for the final revisions.
Client: Can you stop doing that with the keyboard?
Me: What? Typing?
Client: Yeah. And stop doing that thing with the mouse too.
Me: …
Client: Okay. Enough time-wasting. Back to work.
Client steps back a few feet and watches me for 10 minutes.
clientsfromhell:
Client: We’re really happy with both logos.
Me: That’s great. Which one are you going to go with?
Client: Both!
Me: You can’t have two logos for the same company. That’s confusing.
Client: Our committee is split, so we’ve decided that we’d just use them both.
Me: Have you ever seen a company with two logos?
Client: We’ll be the first. It’s good to be different.
Me: …
Dear Tumblr,
Thank you soooo much for resetting all my themes to default and wiping all my custom html. That really was most helpful of you. I’ve really enjoyed spending an evening going through every single tumblr I have (and I have a LOT) and having to replace them all. Seems like a great feature; you decide there has been “suspicious behaviour” on my account, force me to...
BBC News - Hotmail replaced by Outlook.com in... →
Oh fudge, I’m going to have to spend forever talking non-techy types through this. Joy! :)
Was an Olympic record set today? →
Wonderfully simple, just shows a giant YES or not and then brief details.
London 2012: Row after NBC drop opening ceremony... →
I cannot believe this hasn’t had more coverage! They had it on TIME DELAY, that means, they didn’t need to cut anything! They could have cut loads of things, but seriously, you cut a memorial for the victims of terrorism?! Pretty offensive. Hardly surprising that I could say 7/7 to many Americans and be met with a blank response when their media do this! }:(
As to why it should get...
