Relative Sanity » rambling

200[0-9]

relativesanity — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:26 +0000

Fucking hell, that was quite a decade.

2000: drank a lot of beer. A lot.

2001: graduated from Glasgow University.

2002: moved to Edinburgh.

2003: got engaged.

2004: got married.

2005: drank a lot of beer. A lot.

2006: became a dad.

2007: started to get the hang of this self employment thing.

2008: avoided moving house.

2009: took self employment out of the bedroom and into the office.

2010: to be continued…

Staying sane

relativesanity — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 09:30:33 +0000

Staying sane is important. Keeping calm under pressure is always preferable to going totally ape, even if you feel the situation warrants it.

The first one to yell loses

There’s a reason that yelling is often called “losing it”. Yelling shows you’ve lost control, it shows that you’ve lost sight of what it is you’re talking about. Yelling means that you’re trying to beat the other person, not win the argument or express your point.

If you start to feel yourself lose it, just:

Smile
Breathe
Go slowly

There’s something much more compelling about a whisper than a yell. This wallpaper might help you remember.

Creating nice drop shadows with Fireworks CS4

relativesanity — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 23:04:17 +0000

Ever wanted to make some decent-looking drop shadows, but spent ages faffing with airbrushes and filters?

My first screencast

Okay, it’s not my first screencast, but it’s the first that’s been created simply as a how-to. Most of my screencasts have been in direct response to client questions on “how do I do x in my CMS again?”. Much faster than typing an email, typically.

I use ScreenFlow for capture, and this was all done in one take while waiting for some updates to compile on a Gentoo server.

Get to the point!

I ramble a lot. I need to learn to edit this stuff, but hey, you don’t learn if you don’t post.

Feedback?

Creating nice drop shadows with Fireworks CS4 from Jonathan Barrett on Vimeo.

Oh, and it looks much better in HD.

Painting the Hammer

relativesanity — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 15:57:42 +0000

Remember this.

Languages, frameworks, design patterns, blogs, Photoshop, Fireworks, off-the-shelf products, roll-your-own solutions, operating systems, servers, desktop PCs, laptops, phones, shoes, socks, paradigms: they’re all just tools.

Craftsmen create. They use their tools and they get the job done.

The end result is the job. The tools are irrelevant to the craftsmen. Don’t debate others’ choices of tools – learn from them. That is the path of the artisan.

The more tools you have, the better. The more you use them all, the better.

Anything else is just spending your apprenticeship looking for the perfect hammer, then spending your career painting it.