

Friday, September 25, 2009
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
How to Remove the Navigation Bar from Blogger Blogs

The top navigation bar on Blogger/Blogspot blogs is less than appealing to the eye and it can help users bounce away from your site quickly. Want to know how to remove the nav bar?
1. Login to Blogger/Blogspot
2. At the dashboard, select "Layout"
3. Select "Edit HTML"
4. You'll reach a screen with the template's CSS code
5. Press Ctrl + F to bring up your browsers Find function
6. Search for "#header-wrapper"
7. Just above this line of code, insert:
#navbar-iframe {
height: 0px;
visibility: hidden;
display: none;
}
8. Select "Save Template" and voila! Goodbye navigation bar
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Cory
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6:59 PM
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Labels: blogger navbar, blogger tricks, blogspot navbar, remove, remove blogger navbar
Uh What?

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Cory
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6:42 PM
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Sunday, September 20, 2009
XPLANE: A Website Gone Wrong
For a company that, "...collaborates with companies to create understanding," the XPLANE company website and blog are a mess to navigate. If you're going to proclaim you create understanding, having a website that left me confused and annoyed certainly would not lead me to believe the mission statement.
- Looking for their blog? Good luck finding the link on their homepage. I just happened to sign up for their newsletter and a link to the blog is located on that page.
- Looking for a link to their Twitter account? Good luck.
- Check out the sitemap. It looks like there is a lot of structured information behind that atricious homepage. Why doesn't the homepage have a link to "Services"? What does "Work" mean? It's too vague and requires the user to take a guess as to whether or not they'll find information about XPLANE's work, the work they've done for clients...? Who knows.
- Speaking of "Work," I'm using Chrome to navigate the ole internets, so this might work in other browsers. Still, that shouldn't be for me to worry about as a user. Don't make me think. Mouse over the "Work" link on the homepage. Look in the bottom left corner of your browser. You should see the URL of the "Work" page, but it's nowhere to be found. I looked down there to help me a) figure out where I'd be going within the structure of the site and b) figure out what they mean by "Work". If you mouse over the "Projects" section, you will see the URL of this section of the site in the bottom left corner of your browser. Consistency, where is it?
- Click on "Work." Once you get there, notice the word "Work" is blue and it's a link. Notice the words "Approach", "Solutions", "Clients", and "Store" turn blue when you mouse over them and they too are links. Mouse over the "Enefgy case study" text. It turns blue and is a link. Mouse over "We design results through visual collaboration." It's blue. But is not a link. Consistency, where is it?
- With the blue consistency in mind, click on "Solutions." More blue text to the right - "We Create Understanding" and the text below, "Internal Change Communications" down to "Launch Programs." From my prior experience, I'd assume the blue text on the left is clickable, are links. I wouldn't assume the blue text in the body is clickable because of this prior experience as well. Too bad I'm wrong. Mouse over Internal Change Communications and the whole damn box turns blue, is clickable, is a link. Consistency, where is it? PS why is this information two levels removed from the homepage?
- Overall, a user is required to click too many times to get to information he or she needs. The site should be flatter.
- As for the blog, why the yellow highlight when you move over a link? A link that is merely bolded, black text - blue anyone? Why the link at the top of the post? Why the block of bolded black text at the bottom of each post? It gives me the same feeling I have when reading something in CAPS LOCK - IT'S OVERBEARING.
Posted by
Cory
at
1:03 PM
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Labels: bugged website
Saturday, August 22, 2009
6 Questions a Writer Should Ask Himself

- What am I trying to say?
- What words will express it?
- What image or idiom will make it clearer?
- Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?
- Could I put it more shortly?
- Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?
Posted by
Cory
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11:47 AM
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Labels: books, george orwell, language, questions, writing
Buffalo River National Park, Arkansas
Tuesday I'm heading home. I've yet to take a day off this year, which is really ridiculous now that I've thought about it, but this trip to Arkansas will be followed by a trip to New York City to see the other side of the family. I'm looking forward to seeing the family, floating and fishing the Buffalo River. It will be a bit eery, though, since the family cat Squeaky passed on Wednesday. He was around for 16 years - picked him out of a woodpile in Arkansas in '93/'94 and he traveled the West with us before returning to Arkansas. Alas, he had a great life.



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Cory
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9:32 AM
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Labels: arkansas, buffalo river, fishing, floating, national park
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
We're all prostitutes

Posted by
Cory
at
8:33 PM
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Monday, July 27, 2009
SEO 101: How to Pick a Professional Search Agency

- go to hoovers.com
- notice hoovers is in a highly competitve space - business leads, sales leads, company and executive information and profiles
- take one of the keywords they like to rank of the first page of google results for - company information
- while at hoovers.com, press ctrl+f and then type in company information
- how many times does that word appear on the page?
- 0, none, zero, zilch, never
Monday, July 20, 2009
Empty Apartment

Posted by
Cory
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7:35 PM
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Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Information Overload

Posted by
Cory
at
10:09 PM
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Labels: information overload, journal
Monday, June 29, 2009
Ignore Everybody - 39 Keys to Creativity

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Cory
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8:33 PM
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Saturday, June 27, 2009
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
HR Departments...
Or anyone in a department that has arbitrary control over some facet of a business...this quote...it's exactly how I feel about an HR department:
Question: Do you think there’s a position for CTOs (chief taste officers) in companies?
Answer: Probably, but then here’s the tricky part: who do you appoint to find and hire them? You have to understand elegance first to find it.
Posted by
Cory
at
8:24 PM
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Sunday, May 17, 2009
Philadelphia Union Logo FTW
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Cory
at
10:01 AM
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Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Emptying Out My Head: X's and O's

I came across this link on Twitter: http://www.toxel.com/inspiration/2009/05/06/school-of-art-and-design-creativity-test/. Using X's or O's, draw as many things as you can using said "shapes." It'd be cool if I could pull out an internet pen, start drawing on my screen, attach that image to this post and then boom, release it to the world. Alas, I cannot. So, the word association game. Write a sentence. Any sentence. There are a lot more than 27^140 options. Take the last word. First thing that pops into your head, run with it. Hand in hand. Create the next sentence. Ready? Go!
Posted by
Cory
at
6:40 PM
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Sunday, May 3, 2009
Debt:From The American Scholar
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Cory
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9:09 PM
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Labels: debt, Quotes, the american scholar
Friday, April 17, 2009
Wal-Martization
I stood in the doorway, torn between staring at the television screen or walking into the room to do nothing. I couldn't recall exactly how I found myself caught in the invisible web that had managed to spin itself within the confines of my doorway. He's looking at the TV, but there aren't any thoughts going through his head. I guess I'm no different than the majority of the television viewing audience these days.
Rad - as his friends jokingly called him, a reference to the skater days of the eighties - finally found the fortitude to wrench himself away from the pull of commercialism and nothing. He took a step back to gather his thoughts, which had fallen out of his ear and onto the hardwood floors covered in cat hair. Cow the cat had a shedding problem. HAD a shedding problem as he unfortunately fell do his death the previous week. Rad assumed old age had something to do with Cow's inability to right himself midair because as everyone knows cats are the ultimate flip-floppers.
After gathering his thoughts Rad realized he needed money if he planned on actually buying something at the book/music/video/DVD/instrument/t-shirt/video game store. One of your everyday "Wal-Mart"-type stores - it's a monopoly at its finest. I know I put that five dollars somewhere. Where or where can my five dollars be? It's a good thing it's a unitary five dollars, otherwise I'd be here all day looking for each dollar bill. Ah ha. In my pocket. He always held out hope that he'd find something exciting in his pocket searches - just like everyone else. A long lost friend perhaps.
The heater kicked on. It sounded like the house was about to take off. That means jacket weather Radcliffe reasoned. Why else would the heater punch on unless it were cold outside? Rad made his way through his chaotic room. He saw stability in chaos. So too does the Second Law of Thermodynamics - entropy is always increasing, why not help it out by tossing his clothes on the floor? I'm a tree hugger. His mother didn't buy the argument. Too bad. He always offered it to her at bottom of the barrel prices. Remember, Always Save!
The walk-in closet that doubled as Rad's stowaway area - he like also to think of himself as a clothes abolitionist - was cold. Oddly enough, each time he walked into the cabin of his room he always caught a chill. It made putting on clothes that much more fun after a long night of sleeping in a room chilled to the core by his incessant ceiling fan. Rad wondered why ceiling fans had to be classified as such. Anytime fans came up in everyday conversation the location of the fan could usually be figured out by the context of the conversation and if not, who cared that the fan found a home up on the ceiling? They both pushed air. A proper good job when compared to pushing rock for instance.
Why do I have so many jackets? It's as if I'm a female but without the shoe collection. I guess that wouldn't make me a female then. Gotta match, gotta match. That's what my ex-girlfriend always said. Let's see. I'm wearing a bright green shirt with a stern looking Russian man on the front. He's pointing at you. Just like Uncle Sam. Wait...no couldn't be. "Have you joined the volunteers the shirt reads?" He bought the shirt because he found the picture and the caption to be funny. Not funny he he, but funny ha ha with a tinge of fear. It doesn't look like this guy would take no for an answer. It's a good thing it's the "volunteers."
Faded blue jeans. Dumb blue shoes - I apologize. Rad's a connoseur of corny jokes. Except that all seem to taste good, so maybe he has a problem. Bright blue shoes with a golden yellow swoosh. Golden yellow. McDonalds. Commercialism at its worst. I'll wear this khaki jacket. Does that match? If only a fiddler on the roof were handy.
Radcliffe stood in the doorway, on his way to the multi-talented book store. The television spoke of insecurity. Order this product and you'll have the best band-aid money can buy. Where did I put my five dollars?
Posted by
Cory
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11:28 PM
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Baby Jesus thought it was Halloween and dressed up as a bunny
I sat at my table at work looking at the clock and wondering what I would do this weekend. No plans had yet been made, but I wanted to do something, anything. My phone rang and at the other end sounded good news, an opportunity to gather with some friends, watch a basketball game or two and drink some beer slash liquor. Press 7 to delete the message and begin to pack up my laptop. By now the building has emptied itself of occupants with the exception two or three of us. It’s so quiet. It’s so The Office. Organize the stack of CDs, move the sugar laced walnuts to their position in the phalanx, place my notepad on top of it all, like a makeshift tin roof and finally zip up my laptop. Which way to I need to go in order to escape the rush of the rest of the convicts on their merry ways home? Okay, I go to the end of the highway and turn right and I’m almost there. Liquor store? Next to Subway, in the mini strip mall located at the edge of the suburban compound. So many choices I feel rushed and pressured to make a decision quickly. Vodka? No, I’m not in college anymore. Rum? Hmm, maybe. Tequila? No, no drugs for me tonight. How about gin and tonic? Good on the stomach with the inclusion of those bubbles. Yes, yes, gin and tonic the hedge hog it will be. Oh, didn’t even notice this section - whiskey. By far, the whiskeys are the best dressed. The Jack Daniels line is fabulous. Certainly can’t pick it up at Target or Wal Mart or HEB. Nope, we’re talking boutiques baby. Keep moving. Just make it to the cashier. Stop. New seasonal beers have just arrived. Nope, just gin and tonic. Thank you, you too. I arrive and the dogs greet me with slobber and wagging tails. A platter of 150 chicken nuggets from Chick-Fil-A sits on the table, or as my dad says Chick Filla. Hilarious. Pour, sizzle. Pour, ice. Shake. Wash, rinse and repeat. For best results, use the gin and tonic conditioner. Greetings. Time to take a seat. It’s a blow out. Wash, rinse and repeat. Beer is a great conditioner. I decided to walk over to the nuggets, who haven’t been ravaged or opened for that matter. Commercial break. Pop, the sound of a plastic gong opening. It’s the sound of delicatessens. Ranch and honey mustard. Tag team champions of the world I tell ya. Grab, dip, pop and repeat. We make the trek down the street to play Rock Band, raze hell and retreat once we’ve over stayed our welcome. I see a friend from a previous job. We step outside and catch up. Time to rock. The bottle of gin sits on the table looking like a groupie. Tonic left him. Just me and you buddy. It’s a sabotage. Beastie Boys. I can’t stand it. Time to play the drums. This is hard. Much harder than the last time I played drums in a band. The gin is working it’s surround sound magic and I’m floating. Eventually, the hosts disappear. Time to make our retreat. We walk back to the house and talk about who knows what. Time for me to head home. I’m tired. I open my laptop and sign in to Facebook. I wonder if any plans have been made yet. Nope. I’d like to do something tomorrow, anything. I don’t pack up my laptop before falling asleep. I don’t even remember falling asleep. I don’t even unpack myself. I wake up the next morning fully clothed. I wonder if there are any plans for today?
Posted by
Cory
at
11:26 PM
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Friday, April 10, 2009
C R A P Design
Website usability is design. Robin Williams' four basics of effective graphic design fits flawlessly with effective website design:
Contrast. "If the elements (type, color, size, line thickness, shape, space, etc) are not the same, then make them very different.
Posted by
Cory
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12:03 PM
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Labels: design, robin williams, website usability
Karimanifesto

Excerpts from Karim Rashid's manifesto on how non-professional designers can incorporate design sensibilities into our lives. I came across the list in a book I'm reading called A Whole New Mind:
Posted by
Cory
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11:12 AM
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Labels: design, karim rashid


