Soapbox time.

One thing that has always irritated (and alarmed) me is the increasingly large population of people who have resorted to using instant messaging and texting lingo in everyday situations (also known as Netspeak). While I can understand the desire to shorten words like “your/you’re” to “ur” or “for/see/why/you” to “4/c/y/u” when using Twitter or text messaging, I am absolutely astounded at people who use this style of conversation in places where it shouldn’t be used.

Case in point: While I was in school, a friend of mine was writing a letter to her professor asking about office hours. It went something along the lines of “i was wondering when u were going 2 b in ur office so i can stop by and get the notes. plz let me know, thx.” I honestly couldn’t believe it. A professor? You’re sending an email like that to the very person who is trying to educate you? That’s almost as bad as sending an email like that to a boss or client.

Don’t even get me started on the fact that many people cannot use English properly to begin with (I always die a bit inside when I see someone use “you’re/your” incorrectly, let alone “there/their/they’re“), but on top of that, soon people won’t know how to spell most words in the English language. “Thank you” will soon become “thx,” “because” will become “bcuz,” and anything ending with the letters “ks” will soon be replaced with the letter “x.”

Granted, I don’t always use proper capitalization or punctuation when chatting through IM or text, and I make my fair share of spelling mistakes. I do, however, know how to spell the words I learned in grade school and how to properly use them. And when writing emails to people outside my immediate circle of friends and family, I ALWAYS make sure to use proper capitalization, punctuation, and spelling. Why look like you never made it past fourth grade?

Again, while I generally do not have a problem with people using this sort of conversation style in character-limited mediums (though I myself can never bring myself to type “ur” – I tried it once and almost cried), I simply cannot believe how widely used it is becoming in mainstream media.

I wonder how much money I could make from a Netspeak rehab program?

I’m not a person who normally gets addicted to television shows, but there is one show that I’ve been watching non-stop the past couple of weeks – Big Bang Theory. If you haven’t seen this show yet, I highly recommend it. I don’t think there’s ever been a show where I’ve laughed repeatedly throughout every single episode. Of course, the nerdiness of the show appeals to the nerd in me, and I’m sure I find most scenes of the show hilariously funny because I can actually relate (or know people exactly like the characters). However, my favorite character, hands down, is Sheldon, the scary-smart genius who has no idea how to relate to humans or society. Below are a few of my favorite Sheldon scenes.

And my absolute favorite which had tears rolling down my face (premise: Sheldon found out Penny bought him a Christmas present and because social convention dictates he give one in return, he goes shopping at a bath store. In order to give Penny a gift of equal monetary value, he purchased 10 different gift baskets and plans on feigning digestive problems so he can escape for a few minutes to Google the monetary value of her gift to him in order to choose the gift basket with equal value):

This post is a week (or two) late in coming, but I wanted to write about the first annual Ignite Fort Collins that I attended a few weeks ago. I had been to one Ignite before (in Boulder) and had a lot of fun, but was super excited to see one coming to Fort Collins… I was even able to convince Steve to go along with me (the promise of free beer helped). After a tasty dinner at Cafe Mexicali, we made our way over to the Drake Center.

I have to say… the Fort Collins event was a lot classier than the one I had been to in Boulder. There was live musicians playing the cello and violin, a fancy bar area, and a table with cheeses, fruits, and vegetables. Of course, Steve and I immediately made our way to the bar area to take advantage of the free beer.

While we were killing time before the presentations, I noticed a woman who I had met a few times before through work-related functions, so I went over to say hello. It turns out her husband was Brian Schwartz, whom I had read about that morning in the Coloradoan regarding his new book, 50 Interviews: Entrepreneurs, in which he interviews 50 different entrepreneurs (duh) asking them anything from whether they started with a business plan to how much they started with. I was able to grab a signed copy from him for my boss (who was one of the people he interviewed) before I left.

After some introductions and announcements, the presentations started. I enjoyed nearly all of them, but the ones I enjoyed the most were “Money Saving Advice from a Cheapskate” by Ryan Wanger and “Public Speaking or Death” by Tanis Roeder. I have to admire anyone brave enough to get in front of 150+ people and talk (about anything). I have a few great ideas for presentations in my head, although I’m not sure I’d ever be brave enough to get up there and talk for 5 minutes. Although maybe after a few beers? :)

The next Ignite Fort Collins will take place on August 27, so mark your calendars. Tickets are free but sold out extremely fast last time, so be sure to get them early. Follow twitter.com/IgniteFC for more information.

I had the opportunity to attend the 4th annual Ignite Boulder a few weeks ago and had a wonderful time. For those who have not heard of Ignite, I would highly recommend checking out their website. In short, however, Ignite is described as:

“A night of presentations on a variety of topics, with a twist. Each presentation has 20 slides, that automatically advance after 15 seconds.”

I think my favorite of the night was “My Mom Just Joined Facebook. Now What?” by Ryan Wanger, but “‘Ye Olde Prince of Bel-Air’, a medieval translation” by David Mason followed in a close second.

The first annual Ignite Fort Collins will be happening on May 28th, and tickets go on sale tomorrow morning at 9:25 a.m. Hope to see you all there!

For the past couple of months, I have been busy designing and developing a website for my friend Ryan’s band, Ephesus. The site has finally launched – please check it out!

As this is one of the first sites I have designed myself in a long time, I wanted it to be good. When I get in designing mode, I find that what looked great to me the night before looks like crap the following morning. I have no formal training in design other than all the books and websites I’ve read, and what may take a professional designer 6 hours may end up taking me 3 days. I don’t mind, though, as it’s always a great learning process. The one thing I’ve learned from every design project I’ve done, though, is that things can always be better. I’d like to use the Ephesus site as an example. Here is the first mockup I sent Ryan back in early January:

Not very pretty, eh? It looked great to me at the time (after 4 hours of messing in Photoshop, at least). After sitting on it for awhile, I came up with mockup number 2 in early February:

Better. I still felt like it was missing something, although I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I put the design on hold for the time being while I worked on the content/functionality of the site. Then one day in late April, it hit me. I knew exactly what it was missing, and I came up with this:

Now, that’s more like it. As I was driving home one day, I realized that I needed to incorporate more “hand drawn” elements into the template to go along with Ephesus’ signature hand-drawn guitar logo that I used in the background. I also wanted to incorporate some Polaroid photos to go along with their jacket art on their CD, and doing this allowed me to free up some room at the top and position the sidebar differently. Of course, I’m sure even this layout could be loads better, but I’m pretty happy with it, considering it’s my first major design in about 2 years.

Lesson learned (in case you didn’t get it above): things can always be better!