Note: This was originally intended to be solely a review of The Simpsons Movie, but instead became a stroll down memory lane, which I suppose is both appropreate and required, given the subject matter.

One December evening two decades ago I sat down in the cool blue glow of the television with my brother to watch The Tracy Ullman Show. During the show, a just-shy-of two minute animated short appeared. I didn’t know it at the time, but I had just met one of the most constant and reliable companions of my life. Read the rest of this post »

It is a web designer’s duty to communicate as clearly, accessibly and articulately as possible. I will admit, as the Internet has become ever-pervasive into our daily lives designers are working harder than ever to make this dissemination of information as digestible as possible, and for the most part on most “credible” sites one visits are mostly successful in this venture. It is on occasion that I happen upon something that makes me sit back and wonder what was going through the minds of the people that created what I am looking at. Case in point: go to any number of retailers online and make a purchase. When prompted to enter your credit card information, I give it a 50/50 chance that in the area concerning the expiration date, selecting the month requires going through not a list of numbers, but of the actual names of the months. I don’t understand this practice. I have never seen “August 200x” on a credit card, debit card, ATM card, any kind of card. I have found myself actually counting on my fingers to arrive at the correct month. Why? Not only does it take more time to construct a form with the names of months vs. the numbers, but it takes up more real-estate on the page making it not only inconvenient in the usage but also in the execution.

I propose this: all web designers, developers, back-end coders PLEASE, do not use the name of the month in the expiration date field. Use the numbers instead. It is faster, easier to design around, and an easier experience for your audience.

-d

While showing the lovely and epic Menomena video for “Rotten Hell” to a friend, I suddenly remembered back to my early high school days and to the musical stylings of God Lives Underwater. I looked them up; it has been a while. Apparently the headman of the four-man show died as a result of a coma brought on by pain medication for an abscess tooth. Bummer.

Anyway, since the themes of Music, Food, and Theology are intent on being at least temporarily recurrent, here is “From Your Mouth.”