Via Kottke I just skimmed an interesting article about the sort of test subjects that 3D artists use when creating their work (see the article here if you’re interested: http://www.artfagcity.com/2008/07/28/img-mgmt-20-archetypes/).

It made me think about the sort of FPO (which stands for “for placement only“) images and text that Buk uses in our projects. Of course there’s Lorem Ipsum, which I’ve been grabbing from Lipsum.com now for years. I take for granted that the majority of people (marketing people even) have no clue what Lorem Ipsum is, and can’t help but chuckle a little bit when they ask me “site looks great, but what’s the deal with all of that weird greek text?”

But where we get to have a little bit of fun is regarding FPO videos and graphics. It’s rare when a job is designed with the final assets; there’s always photo/video shoots to be produced, final logos to be delivered etc. And where we really get to flex our “FPO chops” is when populating a client’s new site’s CMS with test content.

So to that end, I am proud to show you some of our developers and designers “Island of Misfit Content” of sorts that we use to populate our sites and CMSs, most of which never see the light of day. (Note: some of the more scurrilous and NSFW images will remain locked deep within the http://locahost vaults of our more devious devs; we can’t put everything on front street!).

Read the rest of this entry »

Hey internet folks who read our little blog (thanks btw).

I’m sort of old school I guess when it comes to checking blog updates on my favorite sites, I don’t use RSS.

Rather, I use “Open in Tabs” on a folder called “Fun Stuff” in Safari’s Favorites toolbar. How 2003, right?

I intended this post to be more about how the lack of updates here has been because we are all so busy on some amazing projects for Dragon, Microsoft, Red Ledge, 2K and more, and not about my silly Favorites situation. We’re doing some amazing work and will be posting it soon. Hold on to your internet hats, we have some bangers coming out!

Ok, so now that’s out of the way, back to my digression!

So when I click “Open in Tabs”, I normally then go back to working, and let the 30 or so websites open up and make for one huge-assed tabbed window. It’s sort of like popping cookies in the oven…and then DING, my websites are ready!

I then go through each site (http://www.achewood.com has been my first tab for years), read what’s new and more often then not, just quickly hit Command+W and move on to the next one. I check out the usual stuff from Google News, Wired, Kotaku, Kottke, Penny Arcade, FWA, etc. including Buk’s own blog, on which I saw Mark’s old-ish post about Kill Start. And that’s what made me write this weird post, thinking that we needed some fresh content (the definition of content, used pretty loosely if you’ve made it this far in my post).

Lastly, I don’t use RSS because of, believe it or not, banner ads! I like to look at them, see what’s new, what’s cool. I owe it to my clients and my industry to see what’s out there, and RSS doesn’t deliver that.

What are your browsing habits? –DAN

Sometimes I have too many things going on on my computer and need a fresh start. I don’t want to go through every single Photoshop file, Safari tab, iChat conversation, text file, etc. to review changes and individually quit everything. I just want everything to go away. Without saving. And I want my computer to turn off. I want to start over.

Previously when I felt the overwhelming need for an immediate fresh start, I would just hold the power button in for a few seconds. This isn’t very good for your computer, though. It’s better to let each application properly quit and your disk to spin down. So I made an Automator application that does just this.

I call it Kill Start. When you run it, everything dies. No annoying dialogs. No force quitting. No waiting. No apologies. Your computer turns off, and then it turns back on. Anything you failed to save previously is lost forever. Sometimes that is the desired effect. If you ever have this desire, then Kill Start is for you.

Download version 1.0 (279k)