Christian Ross

Christmas tunes

Editor’s note: I did this on another one of my sites last year and it was pretty popular so I thought I’d give it a go here.

I have a decent collection of Christmas music. It’s not huge but I have accumulated some quality tracks here and there over time. Of course I dig the classics by Elvis, Sinatra, Crosby and Ives; but a majority of these will probably be a little more contemporary with names like: Jason Mraz, Damien Rice & Coldplay.

Not sure if I’ll remember/have time to do a song-a-day post but I will try and be as consistent as possible with it.

Tip: I may offer the songs in a variety of different ways – normal blog post, Twitter-only link and/or an RSS-only link might happen as well. I would recommend you subscribe to the RSS feed as well as follow me on Twitter to not miss a single track.

If you have one you think might fit in well with the series, send me a note about it.

Let the games begin.

Jason Mraz – Winter Wonderland

[audio:http://bit.ly/8lmVim]
Download: http://bit.ly/8lmVim
*Right-click and “Save Link As” or “Save Target As” to download

AFTv7

And we’re back. I enjoy Fashionable Thursdays, just been lazy about getting back into them. It’s actually kind of surprising how much traffic they get from searches.

This week is pretty tame, nothing too crazy although nothing actually falls below the $175 mark. Might have to do a blue-light special for AFTv8.

Pro tip: Brown & Blue are always a good match

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I’m Thankful

Idea stolen from @blankenship.

In no particular order, the things I am thankful for this year:

my wife, my kid, my second kid, family, toggl, eating out, cookie monster diapers, muxtapes, station wagons, iChat, Pei Wei, WordPress, friends, Adobe, Twitter, the enjoyment on Cohen’s face when reading books, presentation inspiration, Gotham Bold, our yellow house with a (now) solid foundation, ESPN, abc’s spoken by two-year olds, Banana Republic, QuadCamera, clients, Monday & Wednesday afternoons, Canadian dotcomrades (and a few American ones too), Woopra, the American version of The Office, skype, Helvetica, iTunes, YouVersion, A Fashionable Thursdays, Jesus, the sound my kid makes when eating an apple, Apple, El Taco H, Art Direction plugin, the Internet, Sunday afternoon naps, NYC, decent cooking skills, flickr, Woody & Buzz, J. Crew, our Church, McDonald’s, taking laps around the mall with the family, Netflix, The Sartorialist, Akismet, quality ties, Vimeo, Chipotle, slab-serifs, Tumblr, iPhones, ?ºber–talented web designers, the means to fix our house, Instapaper, Chick-Fil-A, Mad Men, GAP, 960gs, Clarendon, grillmaster abilities, Google, TiltShift Generator, Nicaragua, RSS, health, insurance, music, working from home, the library, Frank Sinatra, service men/women, rarely having to do the dishes, being able to do the dishes sometimes so I feel like I am being helpful, Starbucks, Tweetie, MAMP, Delicious, freedom, moderate amounts of Christmas music, FireFox, fried turkeys, and of course, you.

Bio-Diversity

I could potentially rename my blog to the Christoph-Niemann-official-reblog and it still wouldn’t bother me. He continuously posts some of the best (and cleanest) stuff on the web. I think I understand why he so rarely posts, genius like this takes time to grow.

Bio Diversity – Abstract City (NYTimes)

Same place, new face

If you follow this blog through RSS, I’d encourage you to click on through today to see the new digs.

It’s been a little while coming, lots of after-hours time put into it over the last few weeks doing everything from sketching to designing, coding and then re-coding. Working on your own stuff is one of the hardest things to do. You’re never truly satisfied with the result but at some point you just have to go with it. At this point in the game I would normally be tired of the design already, but thanks to the help of some ?ºber-talented guys I still like it on launch day. A tip of the hat to Dave Ruiz (website | twitter) and Jesse Bennett-Chamberlin (website | twitter) for sharing their eyes, ears, minds and talent through the whole process. Stellar guys with amazing talent. Don’t hold it against them that they’re Canadian.

Hopefully we’ll start to see a little more consistent flow of content around here again. I know you’ve been waiting with baited breath. And if you care…

Specs

The layout
First off, you will notice that I’ve gone back to a centered layout. I wasn’t so much that I disliked the left-alignment of the last one (or the fixed column) it was more of the fact of the previous implementation. In my attempts to design the gray one I wasn’t ever able to come up with a way to distinguish from one post to the next. Thus the boxes. And man did I dislike the boxes. While offering less space in the content area, I have been able to feel a little more free with the content itself. (more…)