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FountainDecember 14, 2006
It's time for a redesign. After 2.5 years of trusty use, Wintermint gets a much-needed rest.
Welcome to "Fountain", Mezzoblue v6! It's been long enough since I last did one around these parts, that I completely forgot how much work it is. It was a bit of a sprint to get this one done in amongst all the general craziness of this time of year, but here we are.
Design Notes
Two of the biggest ideas behind Fountain are the photo & colour matching, and the way archiving works. I'll explain those in a little bit, I just wanted to quickly cover a couple of other points first.
The width is now non-800x600 friendly. Long-time readers might remember that back in 2003, this site sported a similar-width design. While wide screens have gained a lot of ground in the past 3 years, I'm still of the general philosophy that narrower widths are better, due to the fact that almost no one browses full-screen. The fact that this design is now almost a thousand pixels wide is simply where the design took me; I ended up with the design that fit my requirements, and it happened to be large. That's how it works sometimes.
Never fear! Liquid layout aficionados, I've got you covered too. Way down at the bottom of the About page, you'll find a toggle to kick in an alternate style sheet that will make glorious use of your hugely wide browser, or eat my lovely photos to accommodate your puny wee browser. Either way, you're set.
And, at the moment, IE6 users are not going to like things very much. You can blame Apple for that. (No, really. My Parallels-enabled Macbook is in its third week of being out for repair.) I'll come back and patch up the IE6 issues as soon as I can, but I kinda wanted to launch before the new year, so, the PNGs are going to stay ugly for a while. (Have I mentioned that IE7 is out? Cause IE7 is out. You dinosaurs you.)
Okay, now on to the good stuff.
The way archiving is done with this new design is a little different from normal. Let me resort to an analogy to describe it: think of how an issue of a magazine works. It's a series of articles on different topics published during a specific range of time, bound together in a single volume and given a cover image that draws attention while distinguishing that issue from past issues.
So this site works a little like a series of magazine issues. Each post on the site is bound up as part of a collection, along with other posts published around the same date. That collection is then given a photo, and a colour palette derived from that photo. All posts within that collection take on the photo and palette as core design elements, which visually groups them together.
Traditional weblog posts are usually organized by chronology, and perhaps categories. This idea of collections provides a much more visually obvious method of organization. The posts within don't generally relate to each other by subject matter, so chronology is more important, as each collection covers a specific time frame. This is not actually an unfamiliar way of organizing, again going back to the magazine analogy.
Each collection's window of time is arbitrary, and dictated more by whim than any set schedule; this is the web after all, technology enables me to play it loose, so why not take advantage of that. Instead of monthly archives, this collections idea lent itself to yearly archives. As soon as I committed to doing it that way, reverse chronological order stopped making sense, and thus my yearly archives are listed in chronological order.
Don't look for any topical connection between the photo and the collection, there usually isn't one. The photos are meant for visual interest rather than any sort of commentary.
Is any of this relevant in the age of RSS? I sure think so. People still have to visit the site to comment, or if someone links to it, or coming in off Google. And hey, it may be possible that mental connections develop between the content and the visuals, enabling easier retrieval of older posts. (Okay, so that's tenuous thinking at best, and probably not at all likely.) Mostly this is just a fun way of keep the visuals fresh over time, and a non-standard way of tying in my Flickr account. That's all.
Colour Schemes
There is now no set colour scheme for this site; as the photos change over time, so too do the colours. Each collection gets its own photo, and a colour scheme to match. The colours are sampled directly from the photo, and various light/dark combinations are automatically produced. Once I have a base list of colours, I give them a name and plug them into a PHP file, then some simple scripts do the rest of the heavy lifting for me.
Sampling colours from photos is an idea that works well in print design, due to an implicit enabler — once a page is printed, it never changes. On the web, this is a much more elusive practice. Thanks to content management systems and rotating image scripts and daily updates and the like, there are a number of reasons why it's not practical to consider applying this concept to an entire web site. One great example of this being done well in the past is Nazarin Hamid's Absenter, a beautifully sparse photoblog.
The obvious question here is, with a continuously-changing colour scheme, how diluted does the brand identity become? There are certainly plenty of other unifying factors that diminish the difference in colour, from typography to layout to logo. Ultimately this is a personal site though, so I'm not so concerned about brand, and willing to take the risk for the sake of trying something new.
I think it's fairly obvious, but I took a lot of cues from magazine design when putting together this site. The layout, typography, and photo-derived colour schemes owe their existence to flipping through back issues of some of my favourite cooking mags.
The archiving idea was also a magazine-inspired derivation, but I can't say I would have made the connection if it hadn't been for recent archival experiments by Shaun Inman, with his Heap, and Khoi Vinh and his interest in illustrating archive pages. While I doubt anyone could make the case that our respective archival methods are closely related, the fact that these two gents set out down the road of extending our basic ideas on what a weblog archive page should look like proved useful to my own thought process, so hats off.
Photo Credits
Yep, the photos are all my own. Each links to its respective Flickr page for further description and metadata as warranted.
Comment Avatars
Once upon a time there was a centralized avatar service for weblog comments called Gravatar. The people loved it. It was great. When it worked. But it stopped working.
Maybe it will come back one day; I decided not to wait for one day. I've kludged together something else in the meantime. When you comment, if your URL matches that you've listed in your Flickr profile, you might just be recognized on this site with your Flickr avatar.
For now it's entirely manual; I grabbed avatars of people who have listed me as a contact over on Flickr, who are actually somewhat likely to comment on this site. Please, please don't do things like ask me to add your avatar here, this is only temporary, until I can get a more automated method working in the meantime. (I might manually update the list periodically, but only from those who count me as a contact on Flickr, that I actually recognize as commenters on this site.)
Wrap it Up
Okay, I'll finish the summary here, but obviously there's a lot more to talk about. You have questions/comments, maybe?
Congratulations on the redesign, as usual it's inspiring, clean, functional and downright cool :0)
Great Job!
It's beautiful and featureful. I'd be inclined to say it's perfect!
Very nice. Great to see more experimentation with the weblog form.
The Jeremy Keith button doesn't seem to have any effect, at least for me at the moment. Then again, I am (I think) on a nightly build of Camino 1.1 (Version 2006120822 (1.1a1+)), OS X 10.4.8.
Paul, there were a few differences between my test server and this one, but it should be fixed now. Give 'er another shot.
Great redesign, I love the way you've organized the archives!
On IE6 the site is quite unreadeable, but you are right… it's time to move on.
"On IE6 the site is quite unreadeable"
Hmm. It ought to be mostly functional, only with uglier images. I am using conditional comments to achieve this though, so if you're running IE6 and IE7 on the same machine, you won't see it properly in your copy of IE6.
Very nice redesign, especially love soft colors and touches of red here and there.
Very, very smart. Love the collections colour scheme concept (and choice of photos), as well as the "Recent Entries" being so prominent.
I'd consider moving the "Remember Me" thing to under the name in the comments section, by the way - you have to tab past submit to get to it with a keyboard, and it's rather out of the way of the mouse (the mouse being, usually, over the "Name" textbox when you start writing a comment).
I think it's wonderful, well done mate.
Excellent work, love the detailing (the keyline round the page, the 'view on Flickr' mouseover on the photo, the colour scheme on the archive listings).
For the moment I prefer wintermint, but I'm sure this one will grow on me. Congratulations on getting it live.
Here's a simple way for you to automate your Flickr-tars collecting - http://dmitry.baranovskiy.com/topic/avatar-from-flickr
Also, the 'Jeremy Keith button' (HA!) doesn't work for me – FF2.0 on OS X.
"Here's a simple way for you to automate your Flickr-tars collecting"
That would be the automated way referenced in the post. Haven't got it working on my server yet, but will certainly try a little harder now that this is up.
"Also, the 'Jeremy Keith button' (HA!) doesn't work for me – FF2.0 on OS X."
Does for me. Shouldn't be a browser thing, it's PHP-driven. Are you accepting cookies? Did you wait for the page refresh?
Hmm, second time lucky! Definite PEBKAC, my apologies Dave.
…and the new deisgn is already growing on me :)
looks great Dave, well done.
site seems entirely readable to me in IE6/WinXP. The only issues seem to be the pngs and presumably some float issues: the comment numbers/avatars, 'the zen of css design' link hides behind the book image, and the previous post link is hiding somewhere too (those last two points just on this page strangely)
oooh I like it. I was in the middle of implementing the archives in a similar way but you beat me to it. Really beautiful, although I was a big fan of of v5 and v4 too.
Wow. The new design looks fantastic Dave. I'm very impressed. Nice work.
This is a really beautiful redesign! It would be a nice refinement if it skipped down to the Reader Comments section when you click on the comment link.
thank you, particularly for the design notes part. this new layout is very pleasant to the eye, and functionally wonderful as well.
congratulations! :)
Looks fantastic Dave! Although I loved wintermint it's cool to see a refresh and I love that you challenged the normal way of doing archives. Good work as always!
Dave, I'm in awe. The colours and photos all work together so well, and the photos themselves are all fantastic!
One problem though: http://mezzoblue.com/archives/2003/09/01/jaws_petitio/ appears (to me at least) to not load the style correctly. (Kudos on the error message and backup style though.)
Some really nice ideas here. Personally, I'm particularly interested in the way you are linking into Flickr (I love the way that site opens up so many ways to exploit the data - I've had my own stab on a slightly different tack).
I also appreciate the aesthetics of drawing the color scheme from the header picture; very sympathetic.
Good stuff.
Looks very nice!! A bit wide for my taste though—I'm working on a 12" PowerBook and I don't like large/fullscreen (browser) windows and I find websites that try to force me to a certain window size always a bit annoying …
Looks very nice - I like the Flickr integration.
I can barely finish designing something before I'm sick of looking at it. The ability to continually refresh your design with a new image and complementary colour scheme sounds like designer utopia to me. Long live Fountain!
"due to the fact that almost no one browses full-screen"
What makes you think this? Most Windows users I know browse full screen. I'm not contesting you, just curious as to why you think most people don't browse full screen.
Looks very nice, nice "pastel like" colors. It actually breathes a very calming atmospohere.
You mention something about the screen sizes, and that people do not browse with full screens. Really? I myself always have a full screen, what is the point in not seeing all there is to see?
Funny, I was just wondering whether you would do a redesign soon. :)
I loved Wintermint, but the new colors are wonderful and the details are delicious as ever. Thank you.
Nice one Dave..
One thing, can you add overflow: hidden; for your Phark image replacement on h1 a:link, h1 a:visite. This'll stop the focus:halo from going off screen. Cheers.
Looks great! I love it that you incorporated your own photography! Now you can get more lenses right? :)
Congrats Dave! Your new design looks great. It's better then previous version. I love the color/photo themes. Nice job! :)
Very nice!
I really love the redesign, Dave, and the archive idea is really inspiring. Congratulations on a job very well done.
This is a very interesting redesign Dave. I like your various flickr implimentations, and can't wait to see the avatar script working full swing.
I love the _idea_ of pulling your colour scheme from the header images, but in practice i'm not very fond of it. Perhaps this is due to the fact that i have only been a visitor to your site for about two years, and wintermint is the design i have come to know and love. I'm sure it will grow on me.
Well done. I like the new colors and the user-friendly placement of navagation elements.
Thank you for sharing this story with me !
Nice, I like it a lot. It's a nice upgrade.
This is refreshing. Great job on the re-design. The fact that you have a Jeremy Keith button makes it that much better.
It's nice. I've found a couple of missing images in this article while browsing the archives however:
"due to the fact that almost no one browses full-screen"
I agree with Burns, I don't think this is the case.
I have a 24" widescreen at work and yes, I don't run browsers maximised. At home I have 2 19" TFTs and I tend to have my browsers maximised for general use.
Lovely layout. Very fresh.
Hi, I love the new layout!! But I thought I should let you know that when I clicked the Ladybug image to go to the Flickr page, I got Pumpkins instead!
Wow. I followed the RSS feed to the topic not knowing what it was about and saw the theme change. Looks great :-)
Looks awesome– I love the incorporation of your images into the design rather than a flickr badge.
Awesome redesign. I love the simplicity of the design and the ease of reading. I remember when you briefly redesigned your site a while back and then switched back to Wintermint. I think you should avoid that this time no matter what the critics might say. People fear change, but this new layout is more useful and most people will probably see it that way.
Good job.
I like it, but… is there a reason it looks like this: http://www.bentbacktulips.co.uk/images/mezzoblue.png in Opera 9?
I like it! I really enjoy how you've incorporated your Flickr photos in the site, it adds a level of richness to it.
Well done!
Dave, the redesign looks great! I really like how you've incorporated your photography into the design as I think it showcases your photographic skills. Your Flickr stream has always been nice, but now even more people will get to see your photos.
Looks great. I knew something like this was up when I saw that header photo on Flickr with that sneaky description….
Great ideas, great execution - I'm looking forward to browsing the site just to see what you've done!
I love the new color, the mezzoblue label in the left and the navigation. Great work.
Just marvelous, Dave. Great work.
Minor thing: for the current set of posts, the header image Flickr link goes to pumpkins instead of the ladybug.
Very nice! I'm with you on cribbing from magazine design, especially the way good magazines generally feel more like they're designed to hold up to rebrowsing over time. I still think we can bring a lot more of that to the web.
I like the idea of mnemonic collections of articles a lot. It actually feels less arbitrary than monthly groupings (which might have 20 posts or might have none) and makes it easier to remember if you're coming back looking for an older article.
Wow. In one little word. I think I like your new design quite a lot.. :-) and colours changing is marvelous.
Dave, I've long been an admirer of your work from afar, but I couldn't avoid commenting on the wonderful redesign. It looks great.
Love the magazine feel to this design, as a publisher I feel right at home. Sure I'll miss the blue, but this layout just 'feels' right.
Kudos for adding psudo leaders to the recent entries, nice touch.
Re: various points about browsing full screen.
Okay, I exaggerated, SOME people do it. But I suspect it's probably a dying practice with ever-larger screens. Either way, with only 3 or 4 out of 50 so far saying this, evidence is good that I'm not far off.
"I love the _idea_ of pulling your colour scheme from the header images, but in practice i'm not very fond of it."
Yeah, we'll see how that goes. There are certainly concerns about the long-term disconnect that shifting colours will cause, but I think there's ample precedent in other mediums. Just not on the web. (Could you imagine if all the dancing shadow iPod ads were the same colour?)
"Is there a reason it looks like this: [..] in Opera 9?"
No; Opera 9 on OS X renders it just about flawlessly, I didn't think the Windows version would be so different. Something else to test when the MacBook comes back, I suppose.
Thanks all for the great response so far! I felt pretty confident with this one, but it's always nice to hear confirmation.
I have also been thinking about going for the 1024 crowd for a couple of things… bold move but the extra space is great.
Fantastic design Dave, that overlayed border effect is a smooth touch.
Great design - clean and crisp with some fantastic photos. I normally read via RSS, but this gives me a reason to come to the site. And I prefer it to wintergreen. The colour matching with the photos is very nice.
Your site looks very nice and ordered. Well done! The Flickr integration is a good idea.
I agree with Burns and Jake. I think there are many people browsing in full screen mode so they should not be forgotten.
Everything looks great! I like the layout and flow of the new site. Only one question: What was the reason for using images for the nav? I imagine it's so the layout doesn't break… just wondering.
Another datapoint on full-screen or not: at 1680x1050, all my applications (browser, email, chat, IDE, photoshop, main text editor) are fullscreen, while all my utilities (explorer, notepads for short-lived notes, command lines) are windowed. That removes the feeling of clutter, while still giving the benefit - where needed - of seeing below the current window.
I'm sticking with your fixed-width design, though, as the lines get _too_ long in the liquid design. (I'd recommend setting a max-width in ems for your main text with the liquid design.)
Also, I don't know why, but I find the 5px padding in this text area subtly disconcerting. I keep trying to remove the spaces that I accidentally included. I'm not a frequent commenter here, but I'll probably write a @-moz-document rule to get rid off them.
Err, and then I'm so busy noting little nitpicky things that I completely forget to say what I wanted to comment on in the first place: I love the new design! *g*
I'm not a designer myself, and usually I don't care too much about how a site looks, but this look just really grabs me. Nicely done!
Beautifully done. Great idea of tying a colour scheme with the photography. Why not? It's not like this is printed on paper or anything. I like it. Break that dead tree paradigm a little bit more.
Glad to see you re-imagining what your site can be. There doesn't seem to be too much constructive criticism so I guess I'll be the first.
Feels a bit lonely and inefficient with all that space around it, especially when the main content starts halfway down the visible page as a result the the large header block (screen res 1440x900). The small triangle representing the selected page seem a bit aimless as all they are doing is pointing to the picture. Your brand block feels as though it was cut and pasted from another design. Doesn't make use of all that empty space.
-Recent Comments and Image Block-
The height and dark color value acts like a visual magnet that competes with the most important content. I like the magazine idea but I feel that your interpretation leaves out the order of importance factor that mags use to arrange content on a page. The "Recent Entries" section should have a less important position than the main content. I love the idea of the color scheme tied to the picture, no criticism there. The page title tab below the recent entries section feels a little to tall and wide for the text contained within giving it a baggy feeling.
Looks a little content-less. You've allocated a lot of real-estate to a mostly empty column. On a single post page the text looks generic and doesn't do a very good job of focusing one's eye from section to section. I realize it's a good place to leave open for notifications (your book and conferences) but maybe wrapping the post content around the unused space would make more sense.
-Main Column-
Feels very clean with an efficient use of space and design to hi-light your excellent content. The only thing I would add is a more of a visual break between the comments and article.
Design is fresh and visually appealing. I like the pics creating a hierarchy for each section. The links are a bit confusing as twice I was taken to Flickr when I thought I was going to a full article listing of that section. The idea behind the grouping is a good one but (as you stated) is totally arbitrary to the posts within. I feel this makes it more difficult to navigate through the archives. I liked the old version with the excerpts.
Didn't realize I was going to Google's site for your results. I realize that the results are site specific but it is still a jolt. Would much rather see the results embedded into your site. Google is a little overkill.
All in all, I feel that Fountain lacks the personal quality of Wintermint, and instead feels more like a standard template that you tried to fit your content into (really big house and not enough furniture). I hope this will be taken in a positive way rather than as an insult (which is not my intention). I have nothing but respect for you.
All I have to say is WOW. This is beautiful. And I love the seasonal color/photo themes.
"There doesn't seem to be too much constructive criticism so I guess I'll be the first."
All fair, and one or two of them are bugging me too. It's never really done, I have a laundry list of things that will continue to change. So, I guess just keep watching.
-"It's never really done, I have a laundry list of things that will continue to change."
I'm the same way.
-"So, I guess just keep watching."
Of course.
The layout's colors are gorgeous, and it shocked me because I'm so accustomed to the blue and red scheme. It works really well, and I think a fresh Mezzoblue every so often will be a lovely change.
PS: I especially like the little dotted line that runs along the sides. At first, I thought it was an error, but I noticed it came from the top of the page. Nice touch :)
Looks awesome. I love it. My only piece of constructive criticism is that your avatar should be looking diagonally down at your comment, instead of diagonally up.
Yo, I ran into Molly last night… heard you were driving down to Seatown today. I'll buzz you in a bit…
Great work, beautifully done. I had actually gotten into the habit of viewing your posts in my feedreader rather than on your web page because I didn't like the old layout. Just too overwhelming with blue. I love the new layout, though. One of the best I've seen in a while. Great ideas, great work and good luck wrt/ the inevitable unforseen issues!
Good design is certainly not dead in the age of RSS. Although I do read a lot of posts through RSS, when it's (a) a really interesting post or (b) I know the site is well designed, I'll open it up in a new tab just to experience it that way. (Needless to say, your posts usually fall in the first category, and always fall in the second.)
To second a lot of other people's comments: I really like the changing colour schemes and tying them into rotating pictures. The whole magazine theme is very cool.
Beautiful work as always Dave. Keep it up!
Hi D.
I think it looks neat! Well done!
It looks more in tune with the Bright Creative Website, even reminiscent of the latter!
It's refreshing seeing this old classic with a sleek new design. Love the Absenter style colour themes too. Nice work!
Really good Dave. It's both soothing and enjoyable.
Great redesign Dave. I'm very interested in photography too, so I love the collection based archiving method.
Ah! And the Jeremy Keith button… LOL
Very nice, love the issues idea - taps into the fact that humans don't actually change with the calendar. The things we write and post change with the phases of our daily lives and not the calendar.
Nice work, Dave; I like it!
Very inspiring idea with the archives - very fresh. I was so used to Wintermint I actually did a double-take at the monitor when I saw the re-design. And that Jeremy Keith button is friggin' hilarious.
FYI: new design has some problems in Konqueror (latest version, Linux)
I got quite a shock this morning Dave, wasn't expecting a redesign since the old one has been in existence for so long; great job.
Love the new design, Dave! It feels very clean and crisp. It's really a joy to read.
Don't count out full screen viewers, though. I always browse full screen. For two years I've been a web development / design tutor and in all that time, I never saw a student not using the complete window for browsing, except when prompted to test at different resolutions. That's a bit over 100 people.
I agree with PZ (c#70), this is one particular site that I prefer to come to in order to read posts, signing up to the RSS feed serves as more of a notification that I need to come check something out. Plenty of interest makes me want to visit again and again while keeping text and the surrounding area incredibly readable.
I'm a huge fan of using photography as a base for design, so I love what you've done here, beautiful work.
Unrelated to the new (v. nice) design..
The relative URIs become relative to the wrong domain in the RSS feed in Bloglines. I've used the AbsoluteRSS plugin for WordPress.
Absolutely amazing in every respect. Not that we expected any different.
Suggestion: I would put a navigation bar on the bottom of the archives pages in addition to the one on the top. It would make browsing a lot easier.
Wonderful work, Dave. As it's been said plenty above me here – the idea of grouping posts to a photo's color palette: awesomeness. It doesn't hurt that the photos are excellent launching points. Nicely done.
Hi Dave!
Did you have a look at http://pavatar.com/ regarding the avatars?
Shaun Inman also uses colorpalettes linked to on-the-fly created stylesheets with a php script, they are calculated on hue or opacity or something. Maybe you can use his script or a modification of that one?? With php you can create images like png etc. so maybe Shaun knows a way to automate the process? Like eg set a range of hues and translate them to a CSS hex format?
I thought wintergreen was one of the most brilliant blog designs I'd seen, so this underwhelms me in comparison. I love originality on the web, and I truly wanna credit you with the boldness of these new implementations, but from a usability perspective it feels more like a step down. On the other hand, managing to incorporate something like this and at the same maintaining as logically structured archives as previously would make you nothing short of a genius.
The color scheme thing is excellent in every way, especially as it's a way of doing something slightly different that won't impact usability and the way we browse your site to the same extent as the revamped archives.
Visually I preferred wintergreen, but that doesn't make this anything but an awesome and original piece of work.
Too bad the layout doesn't respect the default browser font settings… It's pretty small on my 130dpi (1680x1050 15") screen. Turning on the 'liquid layout' and enlarging my font size one step helps a lot, it's much better readable that way (and looks prettier too :)), but the browser doesn't remember that accross sessions.
So it would be great if the stylesheet would take that into account. High-res screens are getting more and more common nowadays.
Guess we already knew it from reading The Zen of CSS Design, but you are indeed a great writer. Thanks for taking the time to go through your (awesome) new design. One can learn a good deal stopping by Mezzoblue.
Greetings from Denmark!
Nicely done, Dave. I especially like changing image / color scheme.
Obviously Google Reader does not give this article justice and luckily I still click through and visit sites although I'm late to the party.
I love the look but more so the simplified content and navigation. It seems that the blog community is going in a simplified direction as can also be seen with the simplebits.com redesign.
Thanks for sharing and consistently producing great content and design.
Where's my blue? This is ^@#$% gorgeous … sorry no other way to say it …
The color scheme is nice, and what i think is the most brilliant idea is to change photo / color scheme by date … and they all look great …
Lucida seems to be the next "in thing" …
Wow, I must admit I'm quite impressed. And that in itself is impressive, seeing that I'm not the kind of guy that is this impressed very often. I love the layout, typography, and especially the changing color scheme. The "Ice" color scheme is my favorite thus far.
Re: Comment #81
I too usually come to sites rather than read them in the feed reader, I just wasn't too fond of the old one's design. I'll keep reading the posts on the page now though. The new layout is absolutely gorgeous.
Dave, I really love it. 10/10.
Love the new design Dave. Stunning photo too! I would use my own photos on my site if I could take shots like that! Are you going to change the favicon colour to match the new design?
Great new design. Seems 960 pixels-ish is the new 760 pixels-ish. I'm a big fan of using the extra space as space, rather than cramming in a third or even fourth column. Humans can't take in too much info at once. A main column for your primary info and a secondary column for 'other info and sub navigation or some such' is my personal preference. Of course there are always exceptions. I'll have to make the jump to 960 width I think. It's nice and open, has a real comfortable visual feel to it.
There's a little problem with comments' content overflow. Example:
Very nice and clever design, though :)
Design looks great, very clean, very functional. Not a fan of the liquid layout though, at a resolution of 1650x1050 it looks a little awkward, especially the header.
Just a quick note, so this doesn't slip you by: Did you want to make your .ico file also match up the new colour scheme for the logo? Currently it is using the blue scheme from the previous style.
Other than that, very nice work. The whole making new colour schemes as you change the images may or may not work out in the long run, but only time will tell.
All the best.
I like it, I like it, I like it a lot…
Esp. like the photos changing with each collection / issue. More photos, please.
Love the new design. I agree it was time for a change. I like the way it is easy to read, yet it looks very professional.
Oh wow Dave, this is absolutely incredible. Wintermint was for a long time probably my favourite web layout I've seen, but this… this is sheer sex.
And as always, the typography is enough to give Herman Zapf a hardon. That's a nice change from a lot of websites, I'll tell you that much.
Nice work mate :)
Why dont change the name to Mezzogrey on this site. I dont see so much blue round here. But why have they change to a new design? I like the old design better.
Dave, I hope this will encourage you to write more! Why don't you share some of the cool CSS techniques you used here? :D
Like others, I was a big fan of the previous design, but this one looks beautiful too!
re browsing full screen, working, as I do, in an office still populated by Windows laptops running at max 1024 x 768 resolution, one doesn't have much choice to do much else. However, I suspect your target audience has better options at hand, on the whole…
Where is the link to http://mezzoblue.com/projects/ gone, btw?
It's pretty sharp. I like it. Nice one (must get round to a bit of a re-design myself, actually).
Truth be told I was never a big fan of the orange and blue colour scheme of Wintermint.
I really like this new design because it's so different from the previous one.
Especially the large Flickr link is a nice idea,
Nicely done, Dave! I actually like the fact that you've made a bit more work for yourself (having to manually group posts, select a photo to represent them, and pull a color scheme out of the photo). If the web's future includes more site-specific art directors to take us at least a step or two away from templated homogeny, it'll be a bright future.
Dave, I quickly scanned the comments but couldn't find anybody asking about what platform you're using.
Are you still with Movable Type and this is just a visual refresh?
I've found that larger sites on MT often face significant slowdowns over time. I ask because your site seems pretty speedy.
"Are you still with Movable Type and this is just a visual refresh?"
It's a bit of a hybrid, but MT does most of the heavy lifting for me. I moved a lot of the archive functionality outside of MT itself and into some PHP scripts I built.
I'm only about 1 step removed from directly querying the MT MySQL database, that would be the next logical move if what I'm doing starts running too slow, but so far it seems to be alright. I think I could speed up the yearly archive pages a lot with some relatively basic SQL queries, but I'm putting that off unless I have to.
I like the new look - very easy on the eyes, extremely clean, no clutter or mess in the way.. Good job.
Where is the Zen in it…
I understand that sometimes you want to move on but at least give the past a place on your site…
I could be wrong but i can't find it.
Ok it looks nice and clean and has a more open touch than the wintermint design.
But the site seams to mis something.
i can't really point a phinger.
But still i believe that your last design was better. (i mean worked better)
Maybe i'm wrong.
I'm wrong most of the time and maybe that's the case…… wright now…
I like how you worked flickr into your header image :)
Very clever design for the header area! I also love the typography… very clean and, well, readable for lack of a better word. You're still the master!
Nice one Mr S. I struggle no end to settle upon a colour scheme when I have to commit to a design, and your generated method puts my efforts to shame.
It's an insipred concept that works perfectly and is so well executed that I suggest you should deliver us style-deficient grunts a palette generator _grin_ (well only half a grin, I'd love such a tool and use one if you did). More than that your move to introduce visual cues to categorising of archived posts has to be commended, but at the same time I wonder if an alternative sort order - yes, by date :-O - may still have merit ?
Anyway, as you say in your introductory post this is your personal site, and judging by the feedback I'm not alone in thinking that you are by turns informing us, inspiring us and taking design risks. It won't always work, otherwise there'd be no risk involved and we'd never innovate. But I think that this is a superb implementation of a great idea. Dave's Dynamic Themes++ :) Kudos.
Small technical point re IE7 on WinXP. I run my screen resolution at 1280x1024 on a 17" monitor under XP-Pro SP2 - fully patched at time of posting. When I resize said browser, no I don't run it full-screen either, with a browser size of 1024x768 I get a horizontal scroll-bar. Interstingly, or maybe not :) this does not happen when I run the OS at 1024x768 resolution. I'd not be suprised if this is a "bug/feature" in IE6/7 as I've seen it elsewhere; or perhaps it's the MS IE Developer Toolbar that I use to do it. If you care to investigate it further then I will gladly run some tests and document the results.
Please keep up the very good work, this is the sort of stuff that reminds me why I go to work. Thank you.
Dave -
Once again your genius shines through! This new look is awesome! Thank you so much for always sharing your talent and knowledge with us. Have a great Christmas holiday!
Thanks again!
Hey Dave - I was wondering about the color sampling: Are you doing this on-the-fly, or do you have some code that you run to sample a pic, create a palette and then dump it in a db (or something similar)?
Regardless - how do you do the color sampling? Care to share a code snippet?
I liked the concept of archiving you presented. It was very visually appealing. Still, I am not sure it's the most usable thing, though. Nothing beats a search box (which you have) to get to old content.
uauhhhhhh!!! It's a very good work or re-designs! congratulations! ;) The past design was grate, but 2.5 years are a lot ;)
Thanks you show all the talent!
I grew so used to the previous design that I thought I mis-typed the url, until I looked at the address bar :p Good stuff, I'm itching to see what the colour scheme will look like with another photo!
Hi Duncan / All,
I've no idea what Dave is doing to derive the colour scheme, but perhaps like you, the method and concept that he outlines excited me enough to have a dig around the web in search of some aides and tools
I have no affiliation with any of the sites that these links refer to; and if it's bad practice to post them then I apologise in advance. They are so good that they may be well known to many, but they were new to me today and I was thrilled to find them; so I wanted to share
Colour scheme from image, returns 10 hex values split into "dull" and "vibrant" hues
Colour scheme from a selected hue, returns 12 hex values, six "sympathetic" and six "contrasting"
Palette generator, provides visual sample and writes CSS rules based upon a given colour. Outputs 12 values
Hi Rocketeer,
If you check out the archives then select any of the items in that collection then the CSS will change to reflect that archive image's colour scheme. I'm liking the 2002 style a lot which I think is muted but not flat
I really like the new design - although I'll miss the old layout a bit, I think this is a step in the right direction (also the idea of "issues" is a lot like ALA)…
Oooh am I late commenting…
Just a quick comment about your hypothesis that people may end up remembering more easily if they're on the right track to finding an older article. (quote) And hey, it may be possible that mental connections develop between the content and the visuals, enabling easier retrieval of older posts. (Okay, so that's tenuous thinking at best, and probably not at all likely.) (unquote)
Actually I've found it quite true on Karl's own La Grange http://www.la-grange.net/ - his code is mostly hand-made (although slightly automated), thus older pages stick to the presentation they had when first published. No fancy CMS there. And when I'm browsing his older posts, I kind of remember the way some of them looked, so I know more easily if I'm in the right period.
Although his approach is far more differentiated than yours, so I'm not sure yours will work. Time (heh) will tell.
You're rocks… Nice redesign… inspiration for every designer… Thanks…
Hey Dave, great concept and execution.
I love the color scheme and all the subtle details.
I'm borrowing some ideas, like different styling for each collection (which in my case would be terms of my taxonomy, I run Drupal) for my 2007 redesign.
Keep the great work!
It was really nice template but this one is cool to;)


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Free Oklahoma Wildlife Expo to Feature Hundreds of Activities
The third annual Oklahoma Wildlife Expo, to be held Sept. 28-30 at the Lazy E Arena just north of Oklahoma City, will feature more than 200 hands-on activities, including many brand new attractions that will make this the biggest Expo to date.
"This will be the best Expo yet," said Nels Rodefeld, information and education chief for the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation and one of hundreds of Department employees and other volunteers working to make the Expo happen. "Not only will it be the biggest yet, but there will be so many things to try that anyone who comes will need to take a whole day — or maybe two — to see everything."
"Visitors to the Expo can come with the highest of expectations, and I am confident we'll exceed those expectations," Rodefeld said. "To top off all these great activities, the Expo is absolutely free. You can even win great prizes, like a John Deere Gator courtesy of P & K Equipment, if you keep up with Expo updates on wildlifedepartment.com. Just log on for more information about how to win in the coming weeks."
The Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation is partnering with a wide range of other state agencies, private individuals and outdoor-related companies to host this huge event. The Expo is designed to promote and perpetuate appreciation of Oklahoma's wildlife and natural resources and provide hands-on learning opportunities for all types of outdoor enthusiasts.
Expo hours will be from noon to 6 p.m. Friday, and from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.
Written by Michael Bergin. Michael is the associate editor of Outdoor Oklahoma. His favorite activity at the Expo is the dog training.
Bald Eagles Soar off Threatened List
The national symbol is flying strong once again.
On June 28th, the bald eagle was removed from the U.S. Threatened and Endangered Species List.
In 1995, the bald eagle was nationally upgraded from endangered to threatened in all of the lower 48 states. At that time, there were around 4,450 breeding pairs. Today, bald eagle pairs in the continental U.S. number 9,789.
"Oklahoma has over 100 bald eagles that live here year-round, including 49 known breeding pairs," said Micah Holmes, information supervisor for the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation. "During the winter, Oklahoma is host to anywhere from 700 to 1,500 eagles statewide. The numbers peak in January and February with the highest concentration of birds located at lakes. Popular viewing sites include Kaw, Texhoma, Tenkiller, and Great Salt Plains, just to name a few."
Between 1985 and 1990, the Department's Wildlife Diversity Program assisted the George M. Sutton Avian Research Center with the release of 90 eaglets in eastern Oklahoma, including 59 birds in 1990 alone.
Since those efforts, bald eagle populations in Oklahoma have increased each year. While zero pairs of nesting eagles existed in the state in 1990, Oklahoma currently has 49 nesting pairs.
The Wildlife Department hosts Eagle Watches every winter at 17 sites around the state. These events have been taking place for more than 15 years. Bald eagle watches are coordinated by the Wildlife Diversity Program.
Although these birds have been removed from the Threatened and Endangered Species List, they are still protected by both federal and state laws. These acts generally state that the U.S. prohibits the harming, purchasing, killing, possession, and transportation of migratory birds, their eggs, parts, and nests, unless allowed by permit.
"This is a major conservation milestone for everyone who loves the outdoors," said Holmes.
For more information about bald eagles, or to see opportunities for eagle viewing events in Oklahoma, click here.
Written by Lesley B.
Carson. Lesley is a wildlife diversity information specialist and enjoys watching the eagles that nest on by her house every winter.
Book showcases the many species that benefit from the multitude of water.
The torrential rains of the past few months may have caused some major inconvenience and heartache for humans, but not all species within Oklahoma feel the same way. All this moisture has created a utopia for reptiles and amphibians (herps) throughout most of the state. You may have heard the unique calls of the great plains narrow-mouthed toad (Gastrophryne olivacea) radiating from your garden pond or seen other signs of herps around your yard and been curious what species you've encountered.
The Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation recently published A Field Guide to Oklahoma's Amphibians and Reptiles. This book is a detailed resource and can help you identify the many herps you may see. Excellent pictures and descriptions make this book a 'must have' for any outdoor enthusiast. This field guide makes it simple for families to share and educate children of all ages to the wonderful world of herps here in our great state.
Written by Buck Ray. Buck is a natural resources biologist and enjoys collecting and identifying reptiles.
The WILDLIFE DIVERSITY PROGRAM monitors and manages the state's wildlife and fish species that are not hunted or fished.

subset: commoncrawl


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The Internet is the most important information tool in the world today. It is a superhighway with literally tens of millions of people logged into it everyday. Indeed, the Internet has benefited mankind tremendously in the past couple of decades. It has made invaluable information and knowledge accessible to anyone anywhere.
With the Internet, the world has shrunk into just a click of the mouse. Everybody can communicate and reach out to anybody–cheaply. It was only a matter of time before entrepreneurs realize the full potential of the Internet in the world of business and money making. Prior to the Internet, a business needs physical or tangible merchandise to sell to consumers; but today, through affiliate programs, entities can make money out of websites in the Internet.
So you might ask what affiliate programs are and how do they work. Well, to fully appreciate the concept of affiliate programs, you have to think of it as some mutual relationship much like that of an Egyptian plover bird and a crocodile. The plover bird feeds on other organisms parasitic to the crocodile, while the crocodile provides intimidating protection against the bird's predators.
Affiliate programs work the same way; it is basically a mutual cooperative venture between your website and another entity's website that is already in the business of selling products and services over the Internet. In this venture, you direct your website visitors to your partner's website; thereby, increasing the number of people becoming aware of your partner website's products or services and effectively increasing the chances of people buying from your partner. As a reward, you are paid commissions. In short, you are performing as a marketing agent or referral arm for your partner website.
Affiliate programs are a great way to earn online. But conquering the world of affiliate programs needs patience and dedication. Finding the best affiliate program for you means knowing which affiliate program will give you more benefits and lesser disadvantages. Here are a few pointers to consider in finding the best affiliate program for you.
Research, Research, And More Research
If you pile up all the websites in the Internet offering affiliate programs, you might be able to construct the first stairway to the moon. And a chunk of these websites offer nothing but crap. It is therefore important to do a lot of researching about the affiliate programs you want to join. You can look for information over the Internet and by contacting other members of the affiliate program you are eyeing. It is always good to be a hundred percent sure than to be fooled by someone you have not even met.
Think Commissions
You are joining affiliate programs and agree to invest some of your time and efforts as a marketing agent of some online entrepreneur with the hope that you are to be paid with good commissions. Different affiliate programs widely vary in terms of the commissions they pay. Some programs pay higher commissions as an incentive for affiliates to work harder. There are also programs that do not pay well. Still, some other programs do not pay at all; so beware of cheating affiliate programs.
The Matter With Products Or Services
In the olden times of real world merchandising, every merchant or trader has a unique product or industry to sell. That was why they used to hate Jacks-of-all-trade. This philosophy also applies to online shops, and therefore the affiliate program you might wish to join.
An affiliate program website has a better chance of raking big money online–therefore, bigger commissions for you–if it offers a specialized product that targets a large population of potential users. So look for affiliate programs that sell a few specialized quality products, instead of a program that offers everything under the sun.
A Word About Experience
Experience is an invaluable gauge for a particular affiliate program's performance and reputation. Make sure in your research that the affiliate program you intend to join is experienced in handling its business with its customers and its affiliates. More often than not, an experienced affiliate program provider is aware of current trends and what system should work or not.
An experienced program is an assurance in itself that it will not cheat its affiliates. An affiliate program is not like multi-level marketing where being first is always the best position; quite the contrary, long existing affiliate programs which you join very late in the game may prove to be your best choice.


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The perlon watch strap has been around since the 1960's, and you can often see them on vintage watches. This is a true sign of a functional watch strap. Perlon straps are also incredibly durable. Made from braided perlon, this makes the straps 100% waterproof.
Technical information:
Material: Braided perlon nylon with an incredibly durability and 100 % waterproof.
Length and thickness: The strap is about 1 mm thick and 27 cm long. The length is easy to adjust by moving the buckle over the strap.


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Gilmat Decoration, 2017-11-04 20:40:13.If you want a coffee table for small room, how it looks like? Absolutely, you want it in simple design, minimalist cut and become a space saver. However, you want the coffee table in excellent look right? Then you will never regret purchasing acrylic coffee table. This coffee table is made of acrylic. Just like how acrylic is, this coffee table has very stylish design to fit small room space. It is transparent, minimalist and an excellent space saver. You will see this table has modern design too.Indeed, acrylic furnishing is one of the most ideal pieces you can find in the market for the small room interior. This acrylic coffee table has been popular in recent years to complete the small home or office to complete the furniture set. It is because of its transparency where it can fool your eyes. Your eyes may see it and may not see it. So, anything you put on is like floating. It is an incredible coffee table design. Acrylic is a durable material too to build this table design.Acrylic coffee table has stylish concept to fill your home interior decoration. If you have simple, minimalist, modern to contemporary home interior decoration, this modern acrylic coffee table will instantly fit to your room. You will find this table looks incredible to complement your room. You just need to find this coffee table with design and shape you like. The designs of the legs are varying as well as the shape where square and rectangle shape are the most popular option.You can look at the photos of acrylic coffee table square then you will see how this coffee table can enhance your home or office room space. You just need to ensure the room interior decoration fit to this acrylic coffee table design or just the opposite. If you want more, then you can paint the wall interior in white to make this table invisible. There are many tips and tricks to fool your eyes to make this table invisible.You can look at more pictures of acrylic coffee table then you will find ideas, tips and tricks to make this table look excellent in your room space. You can make it invisible. You can put green flowers or plants on this table to create more refreshing accents. Besides that, the flowers look like floating as the table can be invisible. It is so awesome coffee table design to pick.
Gilmat Interior, 2017-09-16 15:19:18.The bladeless ceiling fan is a brilliant revolutionary idea created by designer Nik Hiner and Richard Halsall, his business partner. The idea of the bladeless fan is to reinvent the standard, conventional counterpart. Together, Nik and Richard established Exhales Fans with Georgetown, Indiana as their base and began their project through their funding page in Indiegogo for the hope to raise enough money their innovative idea. However, the bladeless ceiling fan with light isn't created yet. And since it is still a project without any product commercially sold yet, remember that there is still no bladeless ceiling fan review.One of the reasons why Exhale Fans came up with the idea of making bladeless ceiling fan was how they found the ceiling fan industry had had blinders on when it came to changing the fundamental, essential thing that moved the air. What people knew—and still do until today—was that fans had blades… or so they had been told.With the 19th-century bladeless turbines from inventor Nikolas Tesla, they began working on what they would later use as the fundamental of their bladeless ceiling fan. During the same time he started working with the turbines, Nik and his wife were planning to buy new ceiling fans for their own home. They kept getting frustrated with their options, even after many trips to the store. Nik later came to the realization that he could actually use the similar base technology as the bladeless turbines he was working with, but in reverse. He built the first prototype in his garage, followed by many advancements and prototypes.There were many changes to the original design of the bladeless turbines for the bladeless ceiling fan to optimize the efficiency only at low rpm, with 300 rpm at maximum. Note that Tesla turbines were designed to create very high rpm, exceeding 50,000, to have forced air to enter from the outside. Therefore, the Exhale Fans had an improved input area, larger space between discs, in addition to a motor adapter in cone shape. All of them differentiated Exhale Fans from its inspiration.Compared to a standard ceiling fan, a bladeless ceiling fan ensured an improved effectiveness while maintaining its small form factor. Standard ceiling fans still use brute force to mix the air in the environment, building large high CFM air movers. They can reach up to 72 inches in diameter too. On the other hand, bladeless one could be only half of size.
Gilmat Door Design, 2017-09-14 16:53:34.Do you know that you can actually hang barn door track system for your interior yourself? This DIY project is actually not too difficult, as long as you have the skill as well as the barn door track hardware required for the work to succeed. The installation usually will not take longer than a half day to finish.To hang an interior barn door track system, you can purchase a barn door track kit so you have all the materials come together as one, thus saving your time and effort. In general, you need mounting board, drywall anchors, cutting oil, sliding barn door hardware and system, and paint. For the tools, prepare drill bit, awl, socket wrench, level, drill, metal cutter, safety goggles, work gloves, tape measure, and router with half-bit.Start the barn door track installation project from attaching a mounting board in the same length as the track, but a little wider than one. It's to keep the track to your wall, adding support for heavy sliding barn door. Use lag bolts, spacers, and drywall anchors to hold the board. You can paint the board beforehand, depending on how you want the board to look. The next step is to use joint brackets to join flat steel track following the manufacturer's instruction. Cut the track with length as you wish—for instance cut it twice the door width to allow the barn door to open whole width of door space.The next step is to measure followed by drilling holes using a metal cutting drill in steel barn door track in a place where it will be attached to the wall and mounting board. Use a punch or an awl to make a place for drill bit. This way, you will not end up slipping on the metal as you are drilling. Continue by applying cutting oil to the hole so you can keep it cool.Now is the time to install the barn door track and spacers. Use lag bolds to install the spacers and track to the wall and mounting board. Be sure the track is level perfectly and don't forget to measure the system beforehand. And lastly, attach the rollers to the door following the manufacturer's instruction, using supplied nuts, washers, and carriage bolts. Tighten using socket wrench. Get help from someone else to attach the rollers and bottom roller guide, followed by hanging the door on its track.
Gilmat Interior, 2017-09-13 14:41:58.Outdoor console table and other few things in the outdoor space can be very inviting to your guests when they are enjoying your patio or at an outdoor party. Whether it is in the patio, near the crystalline pool or at the verdant flora of the charming planters, this console table will be very inviting. This table can enliven as well as enhance your home outdoor space. It brings relaxing atmosphere. Your outdoor space can be more completed with this table.This outdoor console table wood can be an inviting show since you can use it as stylish storage. You can keep bottle of drinks, snacks, spirits, chilled drink dispensers, fresh fruits and others that you use them for the party. This outdoor console table can make all of them reachable. So, you don't need to run back between your patio and home. This can be a very inviting storage. Moreover, this table is designed for all-weather, attractive and durable. It makes the table has a very long life.This outdoor console table can be used as storage and trendy decor for your outdoor space at the same time. You can find the table made of wood or metal. It doesn't matter either you select wood or metal console table as both of them are wonderful choice. You may need to see how the table top is designed and shaped, even for the legs. The designs of the table will influence how it can be very inviting. In the market, either wooded or metal, you have a wide selection.Outdoor console table also comes in various sizes. This ensures you finding the best one where it is not only from the design but also the size. The right size means a lot to furnish the outdoor space. If you have larger size, it doesn't mean you can also pick this table with larger size. No, it is not about the space but it is about aesthetic. In the small space, still you are offered with some choices.One thing that you will not forget is about the position of outdoor console table. Indeed, where you place the table will determine whether or not it becomes an attention for your guests. The right position where the table is placed can surely draw more attentions. If it is not rightly placed, then it can even disturb the view. Therefore, finding the best one and place it in the best position is also important.
Gilmat Bathroom, 2017-09-15 08:07:24.Bathroom window curtains do not only work to keep your privacy. But it can work as accessory that can beautify the bathroom interior. So, in picking the right shower window curtains you need to consider some things like the materials, colors, patterns and designs. If can find the right one, it means you can dress your bathroom window awesomely. Curtains are the perfect idea to decorate your bathroom window as well as create impressions for the bathroom interior decoration.First of all, from the materials of the bathroom window curtains, you will consider waterproof curtains. Curtains made of waterproof material are the perfect choice to dress your bathroom windows. You know, the curtains may get drops or splashes of water when you are taking a bath. Bathroom is a room with water. If you don't take waterproof bathroom window curtains, then the curtains can be stained after certain period of time. Even it can be damaged easily as it gets water in often time.Then it is about the designs, styles, and colors including the patterns of the bathroom window curtains. Here is why you will say the bathroom is a room for your privacy. You can personalize your bathroom window by the designs, styles, patterns and colors of the curtains. It is good idea to consider the look of your bathroom interior decoration when you are going to pick the best curtains. The expressions of the curtains come from how it looks like.To complete the expression of the bathroom window curtains, you can add valances. Valances can be the right accessory to add to your bathroom windows. Curtains will only cover your window while valances will be added above the curtains. It will make the look of the curtain more wonderful and warmer too. The valances come in a wide selection just like the curtains. So, it is good idea to find the valances that can beautify the curtains too.Then by adding bathroom window curtains, you will not only dress your window but also dress your bathroom interior. The curtains even can be your favorite decors in the bathroom as it can be the focal point of the bathroom interior decorations. You can compare your bathroom that has been dressed with curtains with before. You will see the curtains play a high role in creating bathroom interior design as what you really want. Here, you need more ideas to decorate the window and curtains.
Gilmat Pools, 2017-09-13 16:10:41.Do you have swimming pool in your home? Not many people have swimming pool but actually swimming pool can be one of a-must part of your home. Now, we provide you with the information related to the pool especially the one that is called as lap pool. What is that? Have you ever heard about that? If you don't, let us talk about it in more details.Well, now let us define what lap pool is. It can be defined as the usual swimming pool that is built especially for the purpose of health or fitness. So, it will be suitable for you who love to exercise everyday in your own home. This kind of swimming should be narrow and long. The length of the pool can be more than fifty feet. How about the shape of the pool? The shape is rectangular like the other swimming pool own by most people.Lap pool can be the best solution for shallow or even narrow residential where the owner of the home want swimming pool for their health purpose. By having your own pool of this type, you can do exercise frequently in your own privacy in your backyard. The pool is also called as fitness pool or exercise pool. Then how are the lap pool designs? Here are the answers.Like what have been mentioned before, the existence of swimming pool including lap pool can be the functional and decorative element in the home. Besides used for the health purpose, it is also okay to have beautiful designs of the fitness pool. The first design is by having exercise pool with spa for the private house. The second design is the used of the blue tiles which can perfectly complement the floor made of wood. The floor can also be matched with the design of mosaic wall. The next idea is the used of glass material to add the modern impression to the pool.How about the lap pool cost? Talking about the cost of the lap pool will be interesting topic. It is quite difficult to know the exact cost of the pool. Why is it so? The cost of this type of swimming pool depends of the exact dimensions of the pool. Adding the width or even the depth of the pool can really add the total cost of the pool since larger pool will need more labor, materials, and higher cost.
Gilmat Door Design, 2017-09-16 14:03:11.The sliding glass doors have become an essential part of many modern home designs as they help blur the borders between indoors and outdoors. Modern architecture, as we all know, tends to incorporate the view outside into its gorgeous interior design. While it is truly dramatic and awe-striking to the eye, it isn't something that comes without any consequence. With privacy put at stake, installing sliding door curtains is always necessary to maintain it without sacrificing the aesthetic appeal.One of the easiest solutions to provide privacy is to pair your sliding glass doors with some beautiful curtains. The sliding door curtains can be as simple as those that can be slide on easily in an instant to provide all the personal space you may require. Living rooms and dining rooms can make a perfect place to hang this sort of glass sliding door curtains, considering privacy is rarely a paramount in those rooms. However, it does not mean they cannot make a great choice to improve the interior as well as to spice up the room with patio sliding door curtains.The sliding door curtains can also make an excellent solution for you who live in a sunny location. As you will want to dim down the ambient natural light or reducing its intensity, hanging curtains can provide a practical and beautiful solution. You can thus use drapes to control the amount of natural light entering the room, so you can keep the space truly appealing and inviting throughout the day. Assess the direction where the natural light comes from in different times of the day will help you in choosing the right curtain to hang.Privacy and light regulation, however, isn't the only advantage the sliding door curtains offer. They can even help improve the look of your house. For example, you can make the corner next to your sliding glass door noticeable by hanging an L-shaped curtain there. Try to be more creative in choosing the sliding glass door treatment, such as using illuminated curtain pelmets. Alternatively, evoke the refined atmosphere and sophisticated look by using drapes in the same hue as your couch cushions or decor.Last but not least, sliding door curtains can also transform the glass doors into better insulators. Therefore, they can aid in shedding down the energy consumption of your cooling or heating systems. In general, though, hanging curtains for your sliding glass doors is always a stylish and practical solution for a better living in style.
Gilmat Door Design, 2017-09-17 02:59:43.Surely it will not be so comfortable if you have a shower door made of glass that looks ugly, right? Unfortunately that is a thing with such high possibility due to the fact that those water splashes may cause marks on the surface of the door that lead to ugly look of the door itself. So, just in case that you want to maintain the best look of the door itself at all times, you have to understand these following tricks. They are pretty easy to do so that you will be able to do them all by yourself.One of the best options that you can do by yourself in order to keep the beauty of the glass door of your shower is to squeegee the door every day. Despite of the fact that it may not be the best option in term of its needed time to get done, the result is great. Clearly you will have to make it as a habit right after using the shower. Do it every day right after shower and the glass door will be perfect.Furthermore there is a thing called as Magic Eraser that will really be useful in deep cleaning your shower. It may be needed if you have just neglected your shower for several times. The use of Magic Eraser will clean those mineral deposits and also soap scum. Once you have done using it in the door, you can actually use it to clean your hardware and faucets and deliver their shine.A thing called as dryer sheet is another useful thing that you can use to clean the door of your shower if it is made out of glass. In doing so, you have to get the sheet in a bit damp state then simply use it to scrub the surface of the glass door of your shower. This will definitely help you out in delivering a shine into the surface of the door itself.One more thing to be the solution to the ugly looking door of your shower will be the pair of old t-shirt and Pine-Sol. Simply mix the Pine-Sol in a spray bottle with water. Spray the mixture on the surface of the door then wipe it down using old t-shirt. Be sure to remember that the best composition for the mixture consists of 1/8 cup of Pine-Sol and also ½ gallon of warm water. Those are the tricks to keep your shower door made of glass clean and shine beautifully.
Gilmat Pools, 2017-09-17 16:17:50.Any pool decks are often a part of the whole backyard area, including the pool itself with other features, such as kitchen, dining and seating area, outdoor fireplace or fire put, and even water feature such as fountain or pond. When you are working on your pool decks designs, the pool area must be a part of the whole outdoor package. With many pool decks pictures you can look up, small chances you will run out of inspiration. Even so, as for today, we will help you with these tips to determine the right layout and location to optimize your outdoor living experience.If you have a large lot, there are more options to choose for where to place the pool and pool decks. You can build the pool away from the house, establishing a separate activity area, with a larger deck surrounding. With larger properties, you can also benefit from the ease and opportunity to go for a freeform design. Natural curves, after all, are more attractive in design as you have a backdrop of landscaping rather than geometrical, rigid shapes.Alternatively, you can opt for pool decks with a concrete surface treatment to complement the natural landscaping. After all, neutral earth tones always work greatly to blend the surface and the surrounding landscape. Consider choosing patterns for concrete to mimic natural materials such as slate, stone, flagstone, etc. Luckily, today's stamped concrete can makes it highly possible.But it doesn't mean you have limited options if your pool decks is about to be constructed on your smaller lot. Typical residential lots will require that the pool to be placed closer to the building, or even adjoined. Therefore, the pool can become a part of the structure and architecture of the home. This will require the pool and deck to use more geometric lines, such as an oval or rectangular shaped pool so the pool can become a silhouette of the home.As for the pool decks, they are ideally to complement or match the materials and colors of the home's exterior. With the close proximity of the home, the pool area is best to harmoniously blend with the structure instead of trying to blend with the landscaping. Use similar materials in color, shape, or texture for your garden edging or nearby walkways or paths to make it easier in incorporating the landscaping with the design of your pool deck.
Gilmat Interior, 2017-09-14 13:32:56.Farmhouse dining table is one of the furniture in your dining room that could attract the attention and at the same time giving a rustic feel to the room. The traditional dining table could be one of your choices in choosing and decorating the dining room. When most of people are interested in modern kind of furniture, you could choose something different to give a great aesthetic touch in your dining room.Choosing a rustic or country vibe feel in your dining room would be a great choice. Dining room would always be associated with gathering and warm feeling to talk and discuss with your member of family. Creating a warm nuance is needed and important. The nuance could be perfectly created by having the farmhouse table. There are many kinds of farmhouse tables that you could choose to decorate your dining room, it all depends with your taste and also preference.The dining table could be in a conventional style with the table and also chair that come in a set, but the point of having a farmhouse table is the bench. When you look out for the farmhouse dining set, you might notice that almost every type would have at least one bench to complete the set of the dining table. This is the interesting part of having this unique table. The bench would give you the warm and country like feeling of sitting in a bench. Moreover, the bench would take more people to sit in it.Talking about farmhouse table would not be complete without noticing the essential part which is the wooden materials. The wood will be the major concern when you already choose this traditional type of dining table. The natural color of the wood will definitely help your dining room become warmer and also have natural beauty. The wood will always be the favorite among all of the other materials because it has a lot of benefits.When you choose the farmhouse dining table, the wooden materials is one thing that you should deal with. Choosing the right type of woods will be your further job. The wood will go well with every other furniture in your dining room. It also has a great durability and the quality of craftsmanship. You don't need to worry about how to maintain the wooden materials because basically you just need to keep it clean in a nice way.
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Hubble Captures Galaxy in the Making
Images from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have provided a dramatic glimpse of a large and massive galaxy under assembly by the merging of smaller, lighter galaxies. Astrophysicists believe that this is the way galaxies grew in the young universe. Now, Hubble observations of the radio galaxy MRC 1138-262, nicknamed the "Spiderweb Galaxy" show dozens of star-forming satellite galaxies as individual clumpy features in the process of merging. Because the galaxy is 10.6 billion light-years away, astronomers are seeing it as it looked in the universe's early formative years, only 3 billion years after the Big Bang.


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As I wrote about earlier, Tuesday night was a huge night for the Democratic party and liberals. Not only did Obama get reelected, but there was a huge repudiation against many GOPers who had spoken out about their pro-life positions in ways that were shocking (but consistent) with their extreme ideology.
Rachel had an epic takedown of some these politicians in her show on Wednesday night:
Here's where the Republicans ran into trouble — they had to justify what their supposedly "pro-life" views looked like when applied to actual people. It didn't go over so well. From Rachel:
Where they were in power between the 2010 elections and the 2012 elections, Republicans governed very, very, very aggressively on this issue [of restricting access to reproductive choices]. They governed so aggressively on this issue, it was unprecedented.
What happened then, though, which maybe the Republican were not counting on was that Democrats decided they were going to make the Republicans explain themselves. Democrats decided they were going to hold Republicans to account for what they had been doing in terms of their governance and their philosophy on this issue, and what they planned to
keep doing if Americans elected them again.
And when Republicans started having to answer specific appointed questions about their issue on abortion, some creepy stuff happened this year. We learned a great deal, very specific, very creepy detail of what Republicans really do believe about this issue they've been so energized about.
Yes, who would have guessed that the "gotcha" moments for these Republicans would simply be to have them explain themselves on this issue?
In all honesty, though, I'm not surprised. Asking hard questions is now my preferred way of talking to people about reproductive choice, as I'm no longer that concerned about persuading people to my side of the issue. What I want to hear is how pro-lifers justify their ideology being applied to someone else. It's all fine and good to say that "life begins at conception!" — but what does that LOOK like in our society? What are the implications of that statement in terms of the law?
The other line of approach I'm taking when it comes to discussing abortion is to say this: There is no such thing as no abortions. There is only such a thing as no safe abortions. Think about that. Does the "life" portion of being pro-life apply to the lives of women who die from unsafe procedures? If the ultimate goal of the pro-life movement is to reduce the amount of abortions that are taking place every day, why isn't there more support for women to have access to contraceptives?
The best article/essay I've read on that question is this one: How I Lost Faith in the "Pro-Life" Movement. So much of this essay has resonated with me, because I, too, once counted myself in the "pro-life" ranks. PLEASE take the time to read this article, no matter where you fall on the issue — it's going to be one that I read over and over again.
From her conclusion:
The reality is that so-called pro-life movement is not about saving babies. It's about regulating sex. That's why they oppose birth control. That's why they want to ban abortion even though doing so will simply drive women to have dangerous back alley abortions. That's why they want to penalize women who take public assistance and then dare to have sex, leaving an exemption for those who become pregnant from rape. It's not about babies. If it were about babies, they would be making access to birth control widespread and free and creating a comprehensive social safety net so that no woman finds herself with a pregnancy she can't afford. They would be raising money for research on why half of all zygotes fail to implant and working to prevent miscarriages. It's not about babies. It's about controlling women. It's about making sure they have consequences for having unapproved sex.
But I am very sure that there are other dupes out there. If you're sitting there reading this thinking "but I really am in it to save unborn babies," I am sure you're not alone. After all, I was one of you.
If you are one who has been a part of the pro-life movement because you really do believe in "saving unborn babies," it's time to cut your ties with the movement. You may be an honest and kind-hearted person, but you've been had. You've been taken in. It's time to let go.
This is an important enough issue that these difficult conversations need to keep happening — on my part, I'll keep asking the hard questions.


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There has been some speculation that the Miami Dolphins could cut or trade the loser of the quarterback battle between David Garrard and Matt Moore. According to Ben Volin of the Palm Beach Post, a league source told him that it could be possible that either Moore or Garrard is "expendable" if they don't perform well enough to win the starting job. That would leave Miami with one of the two veterans, rookie Ryan Tannehill, and last year's undrafted signee Pat Devlin.
On a quick side note, Devlin has actually looked pretty good. Originally I figured that he would just be cut or put on the practice squad, but he's shown tremendous development since last year. It's possible that Miami sees him as a viable third option and doesn't feel the need to hold on to two veterans.
So, would it make sense for the Dolphins to cut whichever veteran loses out on the quarterback battle? I think it would. Should Miami do it? That I'm not so sure about.
One of the nice things about having two veterans like Garrard and Moore is that you have excellent depth. In the case of an injury, whoever is the backup would be able to play at a very similar level. If we only had one veteran we might have to put in Tannehill. Tannehill has come along really nicely so far, but do we want him under a lot of pressure this year? Is it worth throwing him in there to learn?
Honestly, as I'm typing this I am becoming more and more convinced that cutting or trading the losing quarterback could be a good idea. Not only will it save the Dolphins cap money and eliminate any fan-driven controversy of who Miami should start, it will also allow us to put Tannehill in there. He really has looked good so far in camp, and I think that after a little more time (which he would get as a backup) he could do well. We wouldn't expect the world from him his first year, but we could still see some flashes.
Cutting the losing QB would allow the Dolphins to focus more on Tannehill and Devlin, and it would give them more reps in practice. Sure, it would be nice to have a lot of depth at quarterback, but that won't be too important.
Whichever quarterback does end up winning the starting job should only start for a year or two, so it seems like overkill to keep two of them.
And one last point I'd like to expand upon: Fan-driven controversy.
Let's say (just for kicks) that David Garrard wins the starting job. As you all know, Matt Moore is a very popular guy in South Florida nowadays. Wouldn't every Matt Moore fan be calling for Garrard to be benched after his first interception? They don't care who performed better. You have a potential controversy brewing in that situation. It probably wouldn't be on the same scale as it was for Tim Tebow last year, but it would be a pretty big controversy nonetheless.
The same thing would go for if Matt Moore won the starting job. As soon as he started doing poorly Garrard's fans would be calling for him to be benched. It wouldn't be as big of a controversy, but it would be enough to cause some problems.
Cutting the losing veteran would eliminate any controversy that might arise. It seems like the best option to me.
What do you guys think? Let me know below.
Email me at firstname.lastname@example.com. I'm also on twitter @PaulDSmythe.


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New Stars Uniforms Coming September 14/
According to an administrator on the Dallas Stars' official message board, we can expect to see their new Rbk EDGE jerseys on September 14. So I've added that date to the countdowns in the sidebar. Thanks to Josh for the tip!
While we're on the subject though, I ran across a fan design on that same message board that I thought was kind of funny.
It's a play on the Minnesota North Stars logo with a "D" for, you guessed it, Dallas. For those of you who don't know your hockey history, the Dallas Stars moved from Minnesota in 1993.
Anyway, thought it was a funny design and felt like sharing it along with the news of the unveiling date.


text: Congratulations to Professor Podgor, Mr. Trombley, NACDL, and all of you who are participating in this wonderful and groundbreaking program. This is really great, and it is in the best tradition of our great profession. This program also reminds me of something that Judge Stanley Sporkin said several years ago. In a trial involving the S&L crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s, Judge Sporkin was reviewing all the fraud involved, especially in the legal documentation, and in a fit of exasperation asked, "Where were the lawyers?" Well, when people look at the problems facing white collar criminal defense lawyers and all the issues associated with white collar criminal statutes, and ask the question where were the lawyers, we know where they were: at Stetson University trying to do everything they could to make themselves better, to train other lawyers so that they can better represent their clients. The term "white collar crime" was first used by the


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To upload a document or pdf to your website, please use the following steps: 1. Login to the admin area and click on ITWEBMASTER 2. Click on the tab marked GRAPHICS 3. There will be three fields for you to fill in: - From the DIRECTORY dropdown menu, select DOCUMENTS -Location of the uploading file- Click on BROWSE and find the file that you have saved and press OPEN - File Name (include ext.): There must be no spaces, dashes or symbols in the file name 4. Click UPLOAD FILE You will see a message that you file was uploaded successfully to the directory. If not, check your title and ensure it is in the proper format. 5. The document will now be available in the the directory of current documents, located under the GRAPHICS tab, if you scroll down. 6. The url's of each of the documents is located beside its name and is available for you to copy and paste.
To place a document on your page, type the name of the link as you would like it to appear on you page, highlight it, click on CREATE OR MODIFY LINK(), click on the PRE-DEFINED LINKS drop down menu, select the document you want to link and press INSERT LINK
Uploading and Inserting Graphics on your WebsiteTo place a graphic on your page, click on the INSERT/MODIFY IMAGE () icon- click on BROWSE to select the graphic you your computer you would like to display- click on UPLOAD, once uploaded look in your graphics library- select the graphic you wish to display, and press INSERT.


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Find Our Latest Video Reviews on YouTube!
If you want to stay on top of all of our video reviews of the latest tech, be sure to check out and subscribe to the Gear Live YouTube channel, hosted by Andru Edwards! It's free!
Friday November 10, 2006 4:00 pm
2006 Holiday Gift Guide: Canon EOS 30D
The 30D is an evolutionary upgrade from the EOS 20D and shares many of the same components/features such as the 8.19-megapixel CMOS sensor, shutter speed (1/8000), and autofocus system. New to the 30D is the 2.5" LCD with a greatly increased viewing angle as compared to the 1.8" LCD on the 20D. A deeper burst depth allows you to take more pictures in rapid succession before the camera writes to memory and is a welcome improvement when shooting in RAW mode. ISO speed is now adjustable while looking through the viewfinder and should make shooting with changing light conditions a much easier task.
Price: $1,399 (Compare Prices)
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One girl's twistedly fantastic interpretation of what the hell is really going on in those tribes.
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Angie: Such As
Next up on our journey to the Philippines is 20 year old Angie Layton from Utah. Angie is a pageant girl who has won all sorts of fascinating ribbons and bows and rhinestones from various Miss Teen USA pageants. She is incredibly cute, but she's 20 and you know how I feel about underage contestants on Survivor. I don't like them! I don't condone them. I don't want to watch them. I'm not interested in them. And I just can't take a person seriously until they can legally buy their weekly rations of 14 bottles of wine at the corner liquor store from the one-eyed guy named Joe who blasts Skynyrd every time you walk in the door.
The youngest of five children, Angie likes to work out, scrapbook, and hang out with her "peeps". Since the only other reality show scrapbooker I know is named Danielle and is about to unleash a bucket of pig's blood into the Big Brother house, Angie now has two strikes against her. One for being a child and the second for using card stock to commemorate the many grocery store openings she's attended. Oh wait, I forgot about "peeps". Strike three!
The Survivor contestant Angie compares herself to is Fabio because she thinks all dumb blondes are underestimated. *crickets* She hopes to meet lots of "hotties" on the show and is like totally bummed that she can't bring a camera with her to document her "journey" for her scrapbook. *stares blankly*
Alright, let's just get this over with. Please to enjoy:
Just kidding. Here's the real video (which is remarkably similar to the one you just saw!)
She looks like she's 12. Come on Survivor! The poor girl can't even remember where to put her consonants let alone know what the word "strategy" means. She says she "agreed to do Survivor" (that's code for recruitment) yet she says she's always wanted to do it. You know what? It's pageant fluff. "Experience", "journey", "once in a lifetime" fluff. She's a very pretty girl and I think the male fans are going to absolutely love her, but I'm not expecting anything remarkable out of this chick at all. She'll find someone to follow and call the shots for her - most likely an older male - and it'll probably get her pretty far in the game. Maybe she'll surprise me and be a vindictive villain, but I'm not holding my breath.
So, what do we think of Angie? Does the underage thing bug you as much as it does me? Comment it out bitches!
14 comments:
Ugh...i couldnt even finish watching her pagent video without feeling ill, not a fan, bored of her already.ReplyDelete
Why do I feel like I've just had cake with too much frosting. Ugh!ReplyDelete
Looking at it from a man's point of view, she will be just fine, let someone else do the strategy thing. ;-)ReplyDelete
OMG you scared me! The "Such as" blog title and that pageant video combined with not scrolling far enough to see the real Angie video...I thought she really was that stupid pageant girl. Looks like an all boobs, no brains type.ReplyDelete
She sounds like she might be a whiner. As in, "Waaa. There's no food." And such as. Bleck. I'm hoping she's annoying, which would mean a man wouldn't let her glom on so she won't last long. Unfortunately that would require all the men to think with the big head, and we know how that goes.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousSeptember 16, 2012 at 7:51 PM
What the hell?? I love your clips and look forward to your blog every year but I can't watch in Canada now?? HELP!!!ReplyDelete
ps thxx love you bitch ;)
- DIabolicalSeptember 16, 2012 at 8:39 PM
I haven't seen the video but I'm not liking Tits McGee at all.ReplyDelete
Young, dumb and full of gum.
- AnonymousSeptember 17, 2012 at 9:21 AM
How come you gave up on the BB14 bitchy blog? The last entry was Aug 31....miss u there!ReplyDeleteReplies
Because I was in California for two weeks. I've been tweeting and facebooking updates though. I've also been on the Big Brother Gossip Show every Saturday.Delete
- AnonymousSeptember 17, 2012 at 8:38 PM
Well Sweet Butt, meet Air Bags Angie on account of her titalicous tatas. And if I want to listen to a child whine I'll unplug from BN and tend my offspring, the ones I didn't eat for breakfast.This one is sure to drive us all bonkers. Curious that the video buffered on a still shot of her head tilted back, eyes rolled back in her head and mouth open. The very next words from her lips, "I'v done a few thinGs." I bet you have and I can just wager my goblet she'll use all her feminine wiles to further her game. Maybe not a snoze fest, but we are certain to tire of the horrendous screeching that is sure to come from this one.ReplyDelete
I once knew a girl who spent $500 on scrapbooking material at a garage sale, she was a crazy idiot much as is this scrapbooking pageant princess. She is going to get chewed up and spit out.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousSeptember 20, 2012 at 12:59 PM
Welcome back Lala! I too am looking forward to another season of Survivor, but especially your colorful commentary on it!ReplyDelete
Survivor must love the Mormon contestants--I swear they get at least one person from Utah every season since Tyson. They're all weird, and some of them are actually entertaining. I have a feeling that Angie, though good eye candy, will be this year's passive, gullible, clueless female contestant. The next Cha Cha perhaps. We'll soon find out.
Well, they had to cast someone in the role of Stupid Young Blonde. Entirely worthless to society... but for Survivor, it might be entertaining to watch her suffer. AFter all, she COULD give us another Cool Beans and Touche moment...ReplyDelete
Ya'all don't get it. The producers show you people who will factor into the show a lot now because you will see them at least halfway through. Yes, she is a hottie (how does silicone fit in the Mormon lifestyle?) and not exactly a strategist but she will around for awhile. Angie will see at least Day 21. And think back a few seasons to Natalie(?) - same mold but won it all.ReplyDelete


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Warming Trends: Butterfly Chair, Stove & Chaises
It's slowly warming up across the country; soon we'll be poolside and BBQ-ing in the backyard.
- Los Angeles, CA: Bright Butterfly Chairs - $150
- Los Angeles, CA: Retro Outdoor Stove - $500
- Coral Springs, FL: Italian Side Tables - $900
- Lawrenceville, GA: Red Market Umbrella - $904
- Los Angeles, CA: Outdoor Teak Chaises - $2000
Shoppers, check out the Classifieds for many more listings. Sellers, gather up your goods and list them in our Classifieds to turn them into a little extra spending cash.
Go To: Classifieds Main Page
(Images: As linked above)
Apartment Therapy is not the seller of these items. This is an edited selection of our favorite offerings from our Classifieds. For more information, see How it Works. Happy Scavenging!


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Mapping the context and communicating your concept with a (moving) storyboard.
Think of a solution that contains a smartphone or a tablet. Envision the working of the service/product in a storyboard.
Show in the storyboard:
- What the user experience looks like
- How the service works
- What the context is
- How user interface generally works
Upload your storyboard, and a description.
Optional: Capture your storyboard in a video and provide it with a voice-over.
Deliverable: image and/or video and a short text


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It's been almost a year since we moved into our new home…but it feels like I'm just now getting started making it my "real" home. For instance, the week we moved in I had my sewing room/game room painted a beautiful color turquoise. The only problem is… it's a horrible color turquoise! No matter how many times I say, as I go up the stairs to the sewing room , "I love the color! I love the color! I do love the color!"… I do NOT love the color. In fact, I don't even just sort of kind of a little bit like it. I loathe it to be exact.
I paid a painter to paint it. Catch my drift…??? It's just not worth it to me right now to PAY again to have it "fixed"… so I keep trying to come up with more ways to fill the room with fabrics and items that will absorb some of the Taco Cabana blue that's splattered everywhere.
The latest attempt ….. PILLOWS! And not just pillows… ZIPPERED PILLOWS!
You are going to LOVE how fast and easy these are! The crazy thing is that this zipper technique makes making the pillows with a zipper FASTER than making them without… don't you just love me for saying that!!!!
Here's how I made these fun little ditties…
(I'm basically doing the same thing I do for my LINED ZIPPER POUCHES… only I'm not lining these. If you're using stuffing instead of a pillow form, then you'll want to line your pillows….so just do exactly what I did for the pouches. Only- call it a pillow instead of a pouch!)
Now for more photos…. the pillows' selfies…..
What a difference a pillow makes, huh!?!
The breakdown:
Cost: I used fabric I already had and pillow forms I already had, so my only cost was zippers. At about $2.50 each, the cost is $7.50!!! LOVE that!
Time: Trust me when I say that you can make these pillows in about 15 minutes per pillow… after you've cut them out… maybe even faster if you time yourself!
I hope you'll try this out… the worst thing that will happen??? You'll have one very large zipper pouch for traveling!


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Mirela's Matryoska Room
Name: Mirela
Location: Curitiba, Brazil
I've created this matryoska bedroom for my dear niece Mirela. My sister and I decided on a bright and colorful room for her.
I used many different fabrics (all from the Sweet Nothings collection by Riley Blake), created some cute paper art for her door and walls, and worked on displaying all her prints and special objects (like her first little dress). I also did special Roman curtains and a fabric piece to hold her favorite dolls.
She loved everything, it was very sweet to see her reaction.
Source List:
- Furniture: IKEA and www.tokstok.com
- Prints: Lauren Alexander, Leo Little Lion, Boule de Neige, Parada Creations - all from Etsy
Thanks, Lahna! Readers, visit Lahna at her blog, Casa com Amor (House with Love) and see more of Mirela's room.
(Images: Lahna Winter/Casa com Amor (House with Love))