From The Myth of Discoverability…

If, as a designer, I tried to weasel out of this, by giving everything equal attention in the design, I’d ensure only mediocrity. By treating everything equally, I’d force customers to make choices of prioritization, which generally, they’re not so interested in doing. Most people are glad that the steering wheel in their automobile is easier to discover than the fuse box. They expect that whoever designed the automobile, or web site, is making good basic choices in their interest, so that they don’t have to think about it.

Paula Scher, in her book Make it Bigger, discusses the negotiation process that goes on between the designer and the client.

A correlative to this rule is that apparently simple jobs are rarely that. When a client once tried to persuade me to cut my fee on a “simple” job, I told him that I needed the money to pay for all the changes he was going to make. He insisted that the project was uncomplicated and that there would be few revisions. I offered him a deal: the design would be free, but every revision made–no matter how minor–would cost a thousand dollars. He refused the deal.

And

When my design failed to make it through the bureaucratic gauntlet, I found that the project would be reassigned to a large, powerful design firm for a large, powerful fee. I discovered that clients tended to respect an opinion in direct proportion to what they paid for it. The quality of the design was often irrelevant.

Nice. A 3-col layout via CSS that has variable height columns and a footer that stays nicely at the bottom. And no hacks or absolute positioning.

Tim Bray points to the OBJECTIVE: Christian Ministries: Homepage and asks whether it’s a parody site. If you need to ask, does it matter?

Mark Pilgrim discovers that Google’s new calculator knows the answer to life the universe and everything. (Yes, it’s 42).

Don’t forget about the conversions. I tried “98 degrees fahrenheit to celsius” and got “98 degrees Fahrenheit = 36.6666667 degrees Celsius”. How cool is that!?

Jessica made it through the final cuts during tryouts for the freshman girls basketball team.

Go Jess!

We were talking today about the Wired article on synthetic diamonds. I’ve never been a big fan of the diamond industry’s (aka the De Beers cartel) tactics. Anil Dash, back in January, does a pretty good job of explaining why we can do without the current diamond “industry.”

In response to a print ad…

“Want your materialistic, easily-misled wife to stop being such a frigid bitch? Buy her a diamond! Did your husband decide to increase your consumer debt in order to buy you a pair of earrings that were mined at gunpoint by children in Africa? Reward him with grudging sex and a temporary cessation of your relentless nagging!”

Simon Willison Don’t use document.all reminds me that old habits should be reviewed every now and again, just to be sure they still make sense. Javascript’s document.all is one that doesn’t. As Simon says: “Don’t use document.all. document.getElementById() is supported by every Javascript supporting browser released since 1998.”

Well, Google now has a calculator built in. Seemed a little silly at first, until I realized that I can type an expression into Firebird’s Google toolbar and get a result faster than fumbling around with Start->Programs->Accessories->Calculator.

I was riding around in a canoe this past weekend with a couple of young kids, just talking and rowing - Hannah telling a story about how she once caught a 15 inch smallmouth bass. “We made salmon out of it.” she said.