I haven't posted here in quite a while, so I'm late to publicly wish my brother and new sister-in-law congratulations on their recent marriage. We all had a lot of fun, I was honored to be part of it, and the kids even took part (hey Jeremy, where's the box with the rings you're supposed to be carrying?).



Also, instead of a first dance, the new couple fittingly rocked out instead:

I just felt the need to give some positive feedback to Raynham Hardware. Our basement, like many people here in our area, took in water. In the past we've never even had so much as a puddle, so we didn't own a water pump to take care of it, and everyone we knew who had one was using it or had lent it out.

Finding a utility pump was hard — every single store was sold out. But Raynham Hardware had some and saved the day for me (and, seeing how fast the pumps were selling, many other people). I wondered how this one little store was the only one for miles with pumps, and it turns out that they had an employee drive to New York this morning to get a bunch. I can't thank them enough, other than to give them my business going forward.

Ace is the place with the helpful hardware…

Random thoughts from 25-35 year olds (via jchausse) had some pretty funny things in the list.

There is a great need for sarcasm font.

It really pisses me off when I want to read a story on CNN.com and
the link takes me to a video instead of text.

Whenever someone says "I'm not book smart, but I'm street smart",
all I hear is "I'm not real smart, but I'm imaginary smart".

That's enough, Nickelback.

Also, it had the third "beer pong" reference I've heard in three days (the others being during a visit to my brother's new house and the latest episode of This American Life). The sad thing is I don't even know what beer pong is, which should tell you what a quiet college life I led.

Buzz Andersen on Benjamin Franklin's Daily Schedule:

When you're a person who works alone, and whose fortunes are completely dependent on your own day-to-day productivity, it can be very easy to fall into the trap of working all the time... Franklin's plan is an inspiration to me because it reminds me why I went down the tough road of being an indie developer in the first place: to live a more balanced, reflective life.

I think I need to try harder to take a page from Franklin's playbook. It took a while after going out on my own to not work all the time and get into a good work/life schedule. But lately I've been slipping and working too much, and I think it's time to reign that in...

An eventful few days makes Brian & Hilary future spouses and future homeowners. Big congratulations to both of them!

Almost a full year after officially starting my own business, I've finally found the time to launch a site that's more than a single page of info.

You can visit the site at kieranchapmandesign.com and then hire me!

I have a decent-sized CD collection (about 800 or so) that I rarely use. Pretty much everything I listen to has been ripped into iTunes, so my CDs are just a cluttered eyesore taking up space in my office.



I couldn't justify selling them, since I want to keep them in case something happens to my hard drive, not to mention it wouldn't be fair to the musicians to sell the CDs and still keep the music. But I wanted to get them out of my office since I rarely (if ever) use them.



I bought some storage boxes by Disc Storage Solutions (which, for some reason, were extremely difficult to find online). The discs are put in sleeves -- two per sleeve -- and stored in the boxes. I ended up using two 500 CD and three 200 CD boxes; they hold half the CDs they advertise for me, since I'm also storing the CD artwork (instead of two CDs per sleeve). Now they're taking up very little space in the basement, rather than two large shelves in my office.



Of course, now that they're boxed up it's more difficult to browse through them. I bought Delicious Library, a CD/DVD/game/whatever cataloging app for the Mac. You just scan the CD's barcode using your webcam and it adds it to your library -- complete with artwork -- or you can also enter them manually (for compilations, bootlegs, and those barcodes that just won't scan).



Delicious Library works great, though I wish it had other browsing options: for example, there's no way to browse your CD collection by genre. But overall it's much better than having a wall of CDs.

What do I do on a Sunday evening after the kids are in bed? Why, optimize one of my personal websites for iPhone viewing...for fun! So now if you view a Sinko podcast on your iPhone or iPod touch, the layout will be optimized for your smaller screen.

And yes, I know:

I was a huge Lego fan growing up, so Gizmodo's article about the Lego company's Memory Lane -- the secret vault with almost every Lego set ever manufactured -- really brought me back. It was actually cool seeing Space Galaxy Explorer and castle (two of my favorite sets) again...I guess the Lego nerd is still in me.

Last week we took our first family vacation (to the White Mountains area in New Hampshire) and had a good time, despite some rainy weather. Some photos will eventually end up in my Flickr photostream, but if you're into looking at people's vacation slides (and who isn't?!) you can view them here.

I wanted to officially announce that I have left my job to do consulting work full-time. So if you have a need for user experience, user interface, and/or web design, please feel free to contact me. In the coming months I'll be updating this site to better reflect my services, but in the meantime I'll be taking some much needed vacation time.

If LinkedIn is your thing, here's my page.

You old BMX `zine makers out there (both of you...) might get a kick out of seeing the old issues of FAT Magazine -- the original printed versions from the 80s and 90s -- making their way online. Issue 16 has a few photos I took of Jim Cavanaugh and Rich Upjohn (page 15) and a mini-review of my old `zine (page 74).

Jill is officially starting her business today, and her "real" website is now live at jillchapmanshiatsu.com. Have a look, and if you're in the area, sign up for a treatment!

I have a new site for my music podcast Sinko: same URL, different look.

I was originally using Apple's iWeb because it was simple and worked well with Garageband (which I use to create each podcast) but uploading was another story: with each new episode iWeb recreated the entire site (which had to be uploaded), and it doesn't share common images used on the site. The new site is not only easier for me to update, but also has better archive browsing (including viewing podcasts by music genre) and the ability for you to leave comments.

The one change that may affect you (if you're a subscriber) is the RSS feed. The new URL is sinko.kieranchapman.net/rss.xml, so update your iTunes and other feeds as needed.

Just a little announcement that the site I built for my friend Craig's comic book went live this week: Check out The Perhapanauts.




 

I decided to start doing Sinko again: a weekly podcast that's basically a 5-song "mix tape" based on a theme or artist. Check it out if you're interested, and you can subscribe here.

While talking about Sesame Street...

Amelia: Why does Oscar always tell people "Get lost"?
Me: Because he's a grouch.
Amelia: Well, he should say "Get lost, please."

While digging around old files for this site, I came across two somewhat creepy photos of me. First is one I created years ago for reasons that escape me now, and it sorta looks like Jeremy:



The second was a creation that Jeff did, combining me and Jakob Nielsen:



(If you know me and know who Jakob is, you know why this is funny beyond just the goofy morphed photo.)

Speaking of Jakob, I somehow missed this page which is pretty funny: Jakob Nielsen’s Usability Fighting Styles.

Not to bore anybody with all 80+ photos from our vacation in the Bahamas (out of the 240+ I actually took), I put a few select shots on Flickr.