What Jobs is saying, is that he’s finally found a way to reach the masses of computer noobs that Mac has been aiming for all along. The problem with the original Macs is that they required someone to actually use a computer.

Now that he’s turned computers into toys, he can finally get “Grandma.” But this doesn’t really change anything in the computer world.

It’s something to brag about for sure, on a marketing level. On a features level, he succeeds only by not having them. Kind of like how McDonald’s succeeds by not having a steak dinner.

…so true – I think the device is great, for what it does well – a fun shiny toy for playing with some great apps, social, reading, and for getting a generation of nonusers to pick up a device related to the computer in some distant leg of the gene pool. Certainly not going to revolutionize the computing world IMHO…

Related posts:

1. burning and itching…ok just burning

I like to think of myself as:

The Designer

The designer understands that he is there to do one thing and that is to solve problems. Rarely is there any glory in solving problems. You might spend 240 hours building a website only to watch users spend the five minutes needed on it and leave. It shouldn’t sting because if they leave completing the tasks they came to do then you have done your job and that is the satisfaction a designer gets.

At times there is praise for their work, but that is usually from other designers. Their best work is the stuff that goes unnoticed. Their best work gets out of the way and lets the user do what they need to do without complications. The invisible doesn’t get recognized because it is never seen (thank you Captain Obvious).

What is so hard for people to grasp about designers is their love for solving problems. People tend to think that designers like to create beautiful things (the artist), but they really want to create beautiful solutions. These people are very rare.

I personally find solving problems the most fulfilling aspect of web design, software development, and really anything tech’ish. You can slap together any solution, but there’s an art to putting together something that does it both elegantly and efficiently. Unfortunately, as the article author blatantly notes, there’s little glory in completing such endeavors – on many occasions I’ve tried to gloat to the wife about a self proclaimed masterpiece in C#, or web apps that made me crack a smile upon completion of again, my own brilliance (i would argue) – she laughs at me in pity and I realize then how alone I am in the world.

Thankfully, I’ve found a few online communities of like minded individuals that I can communicate with – work can on occasion moderately fill that void – but it would sure be nice to find some living breathing humans within my zipcode on the same level… maybe?

And just to be clear – I haven’t earned the title of designer in my opinion, yet at least. I have a long way to go before I can say that confidently. In all honesty I’m probably more a hybrid mix of 5 parts designer and 1 part hack/artist, trudging desperately away from the latter with hopes of learning to harness my own creativity far more than everyone else’s (ie freebies, tutorials, whatever). Sure, I can get caught up making things look pretty, or focusing on mastering new techniques, but I really do have an intense desire to understand why they work and how to improve upon them with my own style rather than simply pumping out copy cat designs. I guess ultimately I’d like to give back usable work full of value and originality.

Now that I’ve finished an undergrad in software engineering, I suppose it’s time to dig deeper into the fundamentals of design…

Related posts:

1. frustration

In the words of Theodor Seuss Geisel, Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened. Rest in peace forums…

Related posts:

1. Face off: cjfay
2. Forumation

Sometimes though, usually by surprise, I’ll hit something that for a moment takes me to another place – breaks my stride – forces me out of the clouds of commotion and into a place more thoughtful. The last time I remember this happening for me was after watching Into the Wild, the Sean Penn true story film trailing a young and unsettled man’s journey out of society and into the depths of Alaska, where he ultimately dies alone of starvation. Some claimed he died an ignorant death sensationalized by the movie and the media – mostly the Alaskans. For whatever reason I identified with the character’s desperate fight to find a breadth of air worth breathing – his transience, and free spirit – probably because I embody very few of these qualities by nature and envy those who do. At least in those moments when I’m aware of it, which again, are few and far between.

Recently – well today – I came across a link that was posted by a fellow Envato forum user regarding a client he had worked with. The link was not to highlight the site, but more of a subreference to some other topic, and found my spidering habits took me there without thinking. The site looked normal at first, was Flash based, and in all took about 10 minutes to load. Fortunately most of the loading happens in the background and I was presented with an interesting horizontally scrolling visual dialog of a musician – Orba Squara – and his 10 day journey across the country to ‘Play some new music’. I found the transition of places, comments, and people unfamiliar yet comforting – it was refreshing, and for a few minutes helped me to remember that life exists outside my vortex. There seemed a true fascination with life and an appreciation for experience – something I preach and live little. You can check out the site here.

Maybe it was just me, the song I was listening to right then, or the positioning of the sun. Who knows -either way, I enjoy these unexpected moments and figured I’d share the link…

Related posts:

1. Forumation
2. I car-bombed fergie’s london bridge

So I figured I’d combine the testing of my newly upgraded Wordpress 2.7 install with a blazingly interesting blog post. OK, maybe blazingly interesting could be applied to many things none of which include the post you are now reading. Regardless, I type on….

What is today you ask? Well, today happens to be new years eve – a day laced with anticipation for change, clashing violently against the drumming realization that tomorrow will bring with it much more of the same. Or, if you’re an optimist in need of some motivation, a great opportunity to shed a few pounds.  I like to think that I fall in the middle somewhere, subconsciously willing the new year to thrust me out of redundancy in a shockwave of adrenaline while the other [more dominant] half criticizes the pointless insignificance of it all – mourning the loss of opportunity. As someone once said – ‘people look forward to the new year for a new start on old habits’.

Jennie and I concluded the year high with the completion of the Twilight series – yes, she and I both red them – together – out loud. It was remenecent of my pre-marriage ‘dark period’, where countless days dissapeared into the reading chairs only found at the Tucson Barnes and Nobles on LaCholla (think Foothills mall). I’m pretty sure they would have banned me if I had waited even a week to switch from buying/returning books to just folding the page corners and returning the next day.

For Twilight we couldn’t afford the same luxury, with kids and all that,  so instead we each found a copy and read out loud – night after night, book after book, and just finished a couple days ago. Ironically, I had never even heard of the series until a radio dj mentioned how good it was, only to find out mid-second book that it was some cult teeny-bopper sensation. Oh well, the world will never know that chris fay was shamefully impassioned by it all (oops…is this blog on?) Can we say 5th book please?

Christmas eve was an interesting mix of holiday cheer and emergency room mistletoe. Hayden had consumed an unknown quantity of xtra strength Tylenol, resulting in the force-feeding of charcoal covered pudding. I couldn’t blame him for only getting half of it down – the appearance was something evil in nature, eclipsed only by it’s slightly altered appearance on the way back out over the next few days. Fortunately, in the end his blood tests showed no traces of the drug and we were sent packing home in high xmas spirits.

Jennie’s mom arrived a couple days ago, providing some much needed rest more for Jennie than anyone else – I took advantage of the free time to swap my server and desktop machines. I should have known it wouldn’t last long to have my newly built server spec’d higher than my personal workstation. The swap was inevitable. I was even more surprised how easy it was to move the drive my Linux server was on to the new (old workstation) hardware – literally just plugged it in and it booted right up. Well, technically it failed to boot at first until i realized I still had my RAID drivers enabled – turned them off and it was uppity up and away.

I won’t bore  you with any more details of the year past, and instead will leave you with a decidedly optimitsic quote from who else – Operah – “Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.”

Happy new year everyone…

Related posts:

1. Token annual post
2. Bad training wheels
3. Spam it

We the people say “Over our dead bodies!!”

NWO replies ” Ok fine with us”

And police forces all around the globe light the night with tasered bodies EVERYWHERE.

WTB the ultimate undeniably inevitable collapse of this FARCE of a world society in which the cornerstone of its foundation is the way of get/greed once and for all plz. And no,I don’t want any fucking fries with that.

No related posts.

Going from a Suzuki gsxr 600 to a 125CC scooter will surely be demoralizing – as will be the glares I receive on the road to work in the morning – but I’m left with no choice and ultimately find it a better option than buying a second gas gusler.

A message to those driving in the KC area: please don’t kill the little guy on the red scooter, he will haunt you in your sleep.

No related posts.

I was a bit worried about our appliances though, considering neither Jennie nor I thought to measure the space (the fridge already in there was frick’n huge!), and fortunately most of them went in without a hitch – that is except the fridge. Fortunately for us, and less than fortunately for dad, the trim and a bit of the counter top was all that need to be modded for it to slide gleefully into its final resting place. Dad, you’re an Egyptian magician.

I’ll leave you with this picture of us, post unload into the new house, and I think Jennie’s stance says it all…

No related posts.

With Hayden growing older and a new baby on the way it became evident that the apartment lifestyle, as wonderful as it were in my bachelor and early marriage years, was simply not going to cut it for us Fay’s. After a few weeks of digging, searching, looking, complaining, searching, hopelessness, and more searching we finally found a house a block away from the house I grew up in before moving to AZ. I can see my old elementary school from the front porch (not sure if that’s a good or bad thing), and all in all I’m looking forward to the transition – though I’m not excited about the additional dollar dollar bills I’ll have to throw down. We’ll have some pictures up soon I’m sure…

Related posts:

1. ….busy
2. Liv’n the dream….
3. Job confirMation

I was not however, spared from a frigid dip in said river. We had come so far – almost the entire trip had blissfully passed without so much as an innocent splash of river warf on our clothes and inside our canoe. We had become uber men, quasi canoe super beasts, ready to battle any and all rapids that mother earth could toss our direction. It was in the peak of our vainglorious narcissism that she catapulted the head of our man canoe into a stump, then our glorious tail into yet another stump. In less than 10 seconds we were sunk, bobbing down the river in 40 degree water, clutching to the canoe, a wetbag, and our dignity. 

After finally escaping the clutches of the river we had so dominated earlier, our frustration was quickly replaced by yet another realization that our pullout was less than a mile down river. Not only had we capsized, but we did so in the final stretch of the 24 mile trip. Oh how close we came to total domination – congrats to G&B for achieving such canoe mastery and avoiding a fate of humiliation and noobitude. 

For a more visual representation of the trip see our home page for pics and the videos section for some live footage of the debauchery.

Related posts:

1. Floaters
2. Return to Earth