Archive for February 2008

Wow. Not often I get to write February 29. Glad it falls on a Friday so I can use it in my links title.

• Speaking of February 29, here is a link to Google’s leap year research results page.
• Deciphering Food Expiration Dates: I’m somewhat of a freak about germs (nothing like Monk), so I keep an eye on expiration dates. But they can confuse.
• Baby Sign Game: Adorable game where you see four pictures of the baby signing a word — select the sign that represents the word shown.
• How to get paid to travel with writing: Wish I had the time to study up on this so I can travel when people ask me if I am going to such ‘n such conference.
• You Thought We Wouldn’t Notice, but we did posts design work that may be copying another’s design work. Its about page clearly explains that some situations are OK.
• Grokdotcom points to New Yorker’s cool 404 page. I used to have a better 404 page, but since going to WP — I haven’t been able to get it back up. The same article refers to Smashing Magazine‘s great list of 404 error pages, which I missed.
• Someone frustrate you? Follow these directions.

I knew about Twitter when it first turned hot. But I opted not to join because new applications always come out and taking them all on will become a full-time job. Plus, why would people care what we’re doing?

Since a friend Twitters, I figure it couldn’t hurt. I won’t put it on the overcrowded sidebar. Just in this little inobtrusive entry.

Update: OK, I changed it to orange. I just think of it as an RSS feed. I’ve already changed my Twitter user name, too. I’ll stop fooling with it now! Seriously…

Read an interesting tidbit in cairril.com’s Sparks newsletter, which references a Post-it(R) Note Persuasion: A Sticky Influence study [pdf file] at Social Science Research Network.

Sending out a survey or business solicitation letter? Research shows that including a yellow sticky note with what looks like a personal greeting increases response rates. And it’s not enough to include a greeting on just any ol’ paper: it needs to be a yellow Post-It(R) or similar brand of sticky note! Researchers believe that people interpret the handwritten note as a request for a personal favor, which provides a compelling reason to comply with the appeal.

I’ve seen these notes on both outside of the envelope and inside. Pluses and minuses for both methods:

Outside of envelope

• Compels person to open the envelope (plus)
• Could fall off en route (minus)

Inside envelope

• Won’t fall off en route (plus)
• Won’t be seen if envelope doesn’t compel person to open it (minus)

Whichever method used — the sticky needs to look like real handwriting. I’ve seen some that looked more like a printed message than handwriting even though the note contained a “handwriting” style font.

First thing — don’t use Comic Sans for the font. It’s old and we all recognize it. Why not just scan a real note with someone’s handwriting?

How content and design play together…

• In the game of chess (kind of hard to shake this analogy when you’re trying to avoid “Content is queen/king.”), the strategies and the moves equate to content. They fascinate chess players and chess fans. The board with its squares keep the content on track.
• Apple’s product designs for its Macs and iPod garner much attention for their beauty (design), but their insides also do the job well in managing all of the documents, music, and other files (content).
• Few race cars look as cool as a Porsche, Corvette, T-bird, Mustang, Miata, or pick favorite car. Advertising overtakes the look of the race cars and they look weird on the inside after someone tricks them out for racing purposes (design). But the speed, control, tires, etc. (content) matter more than the car’s exterior (unless you’re the advertiser, of course).
• MySpace is ugly (design). It’s hard to use until you get the hang of its features. Other social networking sites look better, but MySpace leads the crowd (or is in the top three). Yet, people from many target markets (teen, musicians, businesses) flock the site for what it offers (content). Plenty of sites rely on simple designs with little color, and they succeed.
• A movie can have beautiful cinematography (design), but no one will see it if they hear the story (content) stinks.

Moral: Content and design need each other, but 99.9% of the time — without content, design can’t do much. Google’s home page practically has no content (or design), but people know what to do.

As a deaf person — I hardly watched TV while growing up (pre-closed-captioned times). The pictures weren’t enough to keep my interest — only in cartoons.

Posted inspired by Just Creative Design‘s big giveaway. So I’m a glutton for contests — only fun ones, though. Just try it with the text sucker on NetDisaster. Take out all the text and see what design tells you.

• AllTop resources for many categories including gaming, oddities, design, ego, and much more. Guy Kawasaki and crew are behind it and its inspiration comes from Popurls.
• Color illusions that play tricks on your eyes. This explains how one works. Boing Boing points to more from R. Beau Lotto.
• Job search widgets, gadgets, and tools. Note: Not safe for work… unless you don’t mind them knowing you’re hunting for a new job.
• StrangeUSA: Everything strange including haunted buildings, places, urban legends, cemeteries, weird places, cool places, and ghost towns.
• $5000 Prize Giveaway involves a graphic design group writing project lots of cool prizes. The folks responsible for this site and CssCollection donated three gold subscriptions good for one year at GetAbstract.com worth $299 each.

You can save $7.95 and get The Nightshift Code and Chocolatier 2 for 1200 PlayGold each! Hurry, because the offer ends March 6, 2008, 12:00 P.M., PST!

500 PlayGold is worth $5 with no expiration date.

Part I covers mostly planning. Part II dives into the details.

**Buffets**: Set up a few separate buffet tables so that there’s not one long line to one table. Also make it possible to have two lines per tables (on each side). If there’s a chef serving station, try to break it up from the other tables as it can take longer to get through this.

**Vendor management**: DJs, photographers, button makers, tattoos — these are the vendors. Most of them require 50% payment to save the date and the rest at or right before the event. This is a lifesaver for two reasons: You ensure you have them for the date, and you spread out the bills instead of paying for everything at once.

If they make you sign a contract, verify there are no catches. Someone I know tried to get a sports venue. The contract stated that if a bigger event comes along, they can cancel at anytime. Just what we need — a cancellation after ordering invitations. That would be a big “No” unless you like playing with fire.

**Programs**: If your event uses a program, ask for program samples. For a wedding or bar mitzvah, ask the temple for samples or request making copies. Search the Internet — I found a few this way.

**Internet**: The Internet isn’t just for buying stuff and finding vendors for your event. It’s a great place for ideas, examples, and pictures. I used the image browser to look at New York and Broadway-themed cakes for ideas.

Our cakes turned out wonderful except for an unfortunate misspelling of one word… which was our fault as we wrote it down wrong — check your spelling and ensure your handwriting (better yet — type it) is clear for anything with print including invitations, programs, and cakes!). It’s wise to have a minister, rabbi, or other official to review the program or anything related to the service.

**Decorations**: Weddings generally use a florist to manage the table decorations. Theme parties use decoration to represent the theme. In my family’s event, the theme was New York and Broadway.

Each table had a four-sided New York skyline cutout placed on a round mirror, a mini-sign with the title of the musical that had a stick holding it inside the skyline, and items related to that musical. The skyline also had a number on it to represent the table number. The Oklahoma! table had mini cowboy hats, horses, and western confetti. The Phantom of the Opera table had two roses, two masks, and two Eiffel towers.

Notice in both photos there are also New York skyline candleholders. No one took them home! They were for the guests. Since I couldn’t be there to give direction, I would’ve suggested putting them ON the plates or by the exit for guests to pick up. Now I’m stuck with over 100 of these things.

I bought most of the decorations online at New York and theater specialty stores and party stores. I also bought ticket-sized envelopes online (very hard to find) and lucked out in finding.

Doing a bris? Throw all these out of the window and just run around like mad. The good news — it’s over in a week.

What the hey? This blog may cover a variety of things … but planning a party? I used a lot of technology to make the party planning almost effortless. Anything with technology qualifies, right?

**Sign up for a reminder service**: When I planned a big event, I lucked out and found a Web site that sends e-mails on milestone dates (one year before the event, nine months before the event, six months, and so on) that explained what to do in that timeframe.

**Invitations**: Most events come with an invitation in two parts: One for the service (like the wedding ceremony) and one for the party. Try to put both parts on one invitation (unless you’re inviting a lot of people to one event and not the other). That way, you don’t run into a situation where someone grabs only one part of the invitation and not the other and gets stuck not having the address to the other event.

**Manage guests with a spreadsheet**: One of the biggest problems is figuring out how many will come as vendors generally need this number to prepare. I haven’t found a formula that works (i.e. expect half to attend, expect 60% to attend). In this spreadsheet, I created columns for:

• Number of invitations: This column typically has all 1′s).
• Number invited: One invitation might cover a family of five.
• Number of adults.
• Number of children: Especially for occasions where children have their own food. stations — if not, you may not need this unless you need to account for babysitting.
• Out of town: This can help with determining how many will attend as out-of-towners are less likely to attend than in-towners. It also helps you track how many treat baskets you might need should you decide to do one. Treat baskets contain a welcome letter, drinks, food, flyer with weekend agenda, etc.

(more…)

My laptop has Office 2007 on Vista (let’s not argue about Vista or why it’s on my laptop). I used Word without a problem and the next day, it started misbehaving. First, it wouldn’t recognize the mouse. Then it wouldn’t let me select other tabs in Options even using the keyboard.

Naturally, I went to Microsoft’s Knowledge Base (KB) and originally found no solution. So I posted a question in their forums after verifying no one else asked the same thing.

Frustrated and in need of using Word on the laptop, I went back to KB and found the answer. When you enter keywords into the KB, it lists a few possibilities. I didn’t see this list originally, but found exactly what I needed this time selecting “word 2007 vista mouse.”

I didn’t think to use “mouse” since Word had other problems besides the mouse. Anyway, here’s the KB that resolved the problem. I noticed my laptop received updates overnight and rebooted. But I couldn’t imagine it breaking Word and nothing else (should’ve known better, eh?).

Of course, be careful when messing with the registry. Deleting one item in the registry did the trick. Hope this saves someone prolonged frustration.

Mix a little Tetris with some SimCity and bake for an hour to produce Sims Carnival SnapCity. Chicken Little will think, “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!” This time the little chicken is right as blocks fall down on your city of which you’re the mayor. Like Tetris, you can rotate the blocks before they land.

The “Carnival” in the title misleads as the only time the game comes close to a carnival is having a circus as one of its buildings. Electronic Arts calls a series of games “Sims Carnival,” which currently only contains this and Sims Carnival Bumper Blast. They don’t share anything except their names and their publisher.

The SimCity part enters in building roads, neighborhoods, and buildings; fighting fires, tornadoes, and epidemics; and reaching goals for every level. As the mayor, I grow the city while fulfilling goals and following requests from the Chamber of Commerce. Somehow I manage to keep crime, fires, and disasters under control doing all of this.

A big job to be sure and it takes time to get the hang of the game with so much going on. While I’m sweating bullets in protecting the city, a CNN-style news ticker scrolls along the bottom of the screen with the goings on in the city. It’s not critical to read the ticker — kind of tough when multitasking — but it has entertaining headlines such as “Local teen wins at contact origami,” “Spelling bee winners poetry collection to include anacreontic,” and “Local marathon runner runs away from fire.”

Most of the grids in the city take on a specific color with yellow representing industrial regions, blue indicating commercial districts, and green designating residential areas. When the blocks completely fill a colored grid, the grid turns into buildings. Also build roads, destroy buildings and roads, and construct different buildings.

While building the city, suddenly I notice half my buildings burning down. Oi! My eyes can only look at so many things at once and watching for disasters proves tricky. So prepare for a fire breaking out, a robber breaking in, or an earthquake breaking down buildings.

The game is less about winning and more about having fun building a city and meeting its needs. Some special buildings have cool animations to bring them to life. When you put in an airport, planes start flying across the city. Install a subway and escalators move. It’s a shame all of the buildings don’t come to life as it’s one of the best features.

Replay any level by clicking on the Welcome screen containing buildings of all completed levels. This game has a high replayability factor. While levels require putting in a specific building, Sims Carnival SnapCity gives players room to choose what buildings to add.

Another clever feature comes in puzzle zones. Most levels require building at least three of these, which turn into a building of the player’s choice. Puzzle zone grids contain stars to set them apart from a standard grid. After filling the squares in a puzzle zone, I get to pick a building from a list of three to construct.

Moving around, placing parts, and paving roads don’t work the way I want at times. I like to think I’m good with my mouse, but the game tries to debate that. At least, the buildings “disappear” when the mouse moves nearby to make it easier to find empty grids.

Adventure mode contains five levels with five rounds each for a total of 25. Skimpy. Reaching level 5-5 is such a non-event that I thought I didn’t finish the level fast enough. But the game doesn’t have a time limit. Despite the not having a time limit, accomplishing all the goals in the latter levels doesn’t come easy — it’s hard multitasking work.

Adventure mode presents goals and titles for every level while Creativity mode lets players build a city from scratch including naming the city. It starts slow, but as the city grows — it’s better than having a dollhouse come to life. Personally, I hated playing with dolls and dollhouses, but not SnapCity.

Many of the menu items and icons don’t have labels. Move the mouse pointer over them for a few seconds — like a tooltip — to see their labels. This creates unneeded barriers. Looking at the icons alone doesn’t clearly give away what the button or menu item does.

Sims Carnival SnapCity could be Puzzle City‘s fraternal twin. “A fun twist and change of pace for Tetris fans without Sim City‘s complexity” describes both games, but the quote comes from my Puzzle City review.

It’s disappointing the adventure mode ends after just 25 levels, which doesn’t take long to reach. Perhaps, Electronic Arts will provide add-ons to enhance the game and its animations. After all, the company provides many add-ons for its Sim series.

Though it takes a few levels to get the hang of the game and its controls, once it does — Sims Carnival SnapCity easily captivates and makes it hard to stop playing. The sky can’t fall as there are no skies, so Chicken Little would be happy here in SnapCity.