I’ve mentioned the Read & Trust Newsletter before but hopefully a little reminder doesn’t hurt since my first contribution hit email inboxes this morning.
My thoughts are on Creativity, and while I struggled to pull them all together, I feel like they turned into a least a coherent stream that makes a bit of sense. If nothing else, it’s 1600 words that can help you pass the time while using the facilities.
Once again, if you’re a fan of high-quality, long-form reading, I encourage you to sign up for our weekly articles. Five bucks a month gets you exclusive material from some great writers – present company excluded – and actually provides you a way to give a little back to those you enjoy reading work from. Win-Win-Win.
Sorry, a quick little something on my mind that I couldn’t quite fit into 140 characters…
You know those times you need to send that email knowing what the future outcome is most likely to be? Especially knowing that the potential for the outcome to be positive is relatively low? Yeah? Send it.
Example: Today I sent an email finalizing some work done in January that didn’t get paid until late April letting the client know that it was a great opportunity to work with them and to let them know if they needed any help in the future to keep me in mind. After a number of missteps on both of our ends, I’m fairly certain that the client will be deleting my contact info in short order. Do I enjoy knowing this fact? Not really. Was sending the email the right thing to do knowing that neither I or the client probably care too much about giving it another go? I think so.
There’s enough burned bridges in my past to afford me some amount of experience in the fact that in most cases, it’s your turn to call. So whether you’re hovering over the send button, staring at the phone in your hand or sitting in a parked car down the street, the shortest route to closure is to take the first step.
Yes, it’s a post about more illustration-type stuff. No, that’s not the sole focus of this online journal but one more consecutive post might push us over the edge.
An Illustrated Guide is a fun little single-serving blog I’ve been following for a bit that serves as a mini book-review of illustrated childrens’ books. Both the concept and execution are simple and well done. It’s definitely one of those, ‘why didn’t I think of that?’ type ideas.
Each book is categorized any number of ways: digital, junior, wordy, etc and shortly described to give you just enough to consider picking up a copy for your little ones. My favorite part is the recommendation they provide at the end of each review, things like:
The perfect book for the royalist.
The perfect book for the hipster child within.
The perfect book for a pint-sized Sherlock.
The nerd in me also digs the fact that they used a little -webkit-transform coding magic as you rollover the book covers as well. In most browsers you’ll probably see the image rotate a bit but if you’ll pull it up in Safari or Chrome you get the full effect. Nerd dads unite.
Definitely an easy (and resourceful) tool to throw in your RSS feeds for those of you with little ones.
PS. While your kid will probably enjoy any of the books you get them from a site like this, their enjoyment of them would be one-hundred fold if you decided to sit down and actually read it with them. Just FYI.
Cleaning out my ShoveBox last week I stumbled across a link1 I had thrown in there a while back for Lotta Nieminen. Originally from Helsinki, Finland and now residing in the greatest city on earth, Lotta’s skills are impressive across the board but her illustration style is what caught my eye. Some of my favorites below:
The Select tag in HTML is the code used to create a simple drop-down list on the web. In its simplest form, its usage is for organizing a long list of options and allowing a user to click one item from the list. One of the most common usages of it can be found as you fill out a web form and have the ability to select your state from one.
I had that exact need arise this week and can’t actually count on two hands over the years how many times it has come up. The code is easy but with 50 states + options like Washington DC and Canadian provinces it gets a bit tedious to re-type it all. And what’s more, sometimes you just need abbreviations of states and not the full name.
Posting mostly for my future self but in case you need a quick copy/paste down the road I’ve gone through and done up three versions:
US states + DC (full titles)
US states + DC (abbreviations)
US states + DC + Canadian provinces (full titles)
Each includes an id and a class name so you can style to your liking and a tabindex number to remind you that keyboard accessibility is useful.
