A Rain of Frogs

I don’t know how many of you saw it, but there’s a new design for this site coming shortly.

What makes this design unique is not the design, but how it was created. It’s the first website design I’ve ever done that wasn’t mocked up in Photoshop beforehand. In many ways it was a weird process. In many others it was very liberating, since I no longer worried bout pixel precision and concentrated on presenting information.

The fact that I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted probably helped too. I knew exactly what I was looking for in terms of color scheme, general layout, etc. I knew exactly what content I wanted on the page. I knew exactly what graphical elements I wanted to, though this hasn’t worked out quite the way I want yet. I’ll have to organize a shoot to get exactly what I want for that.

I haven’t dived through the site and styled comments, or anything other than the basic page layout. But I’ll get there. I’m pretty proud of the new layout. It’s fast, flexible and efficient.

There’ll be another post when the design goes public. Until then, we’ll have to suffer the grey rain we’re experiencing now.

I didn’t write a new rain yesterday. I had written, for my big community site, a fairly significant deconstruction of a report released by an “environmental” group, and it pretty much sapped any desire I had to write anything else.

No matter, I am back today, here to share with you more deep and inspirational crap dredged up from the bottom of my soul.

Earth Day 2005
First and foremost, Happy Earth Day! Indeed, it is earth day. Be sure to check out http://www.earthday.net for all your Earth Day Needs. It’s a surprisingly pretty site with lots of interesting information. Earth Day was started in 1970 in hopes of rattling the political establishment and forcing environmental issues into the national spotlight. It’s now celebrated by millions of people worldwide, perhaps an indicator that the environment is finally sinking into the global consciousness.

5 rounds with a designer
Onward and upward, friends! This week a pair of well known design bloggers got into a major spat. One was accusing another of ripping off a third designer, and the accused got pretty snippy. Well, as could be surmised, it was all staged – apparently an attempt to set the stage for an article about the difficulties of originality in a design environment where everything has already been done. I don’t believe it for a second. I think they were so embarrassed that people were actually paying attention to their childish snipings that they concocted a story to cover both their asses. I refrain from mentioning their names because I don’t think they need any more attention.

Box?
There’s lots of originality to be had out there, you just have to pull your head out of your ass far enough to notice. For years I’ve heard the term “Think outside the box.” You can’t possibly believe how stupid I find that phrase. Many who know me know that my counter-phrase is “There is no box.” Think about it.

I think it’s time to declare war on unsolicited direct-marketing mail. Seriously. I live in a town in southern Ontario which probably has one of the most aggressive anti-junk mail programs in the province, and at least 75% of what appears in my mailbox is advertising.

About 10 years ago, the city instituted a program in which residents could post a notice on their mailbox specifically stating they don’t want to receive junk mail.
Residents could call a number with the city and report any advertisements which made it to the mailbox. Advertisers were fined heavily for any infraction. This put the onus on the advertisers to ensure that junk mail carriers didn’t violate the bylaw. This almost immediately ended the barrage of junk mail residents were experiencing – a barrage which at one point saw some people putting three recycling blue-boxes full of junk mail out at the curb every week.

For a while, residents were blessed with emptier mail boxes, filled only with bills and newspapers. Then the advertisers got smart. They started putting the junk mail INSIDE the newspaper. Yes, our two local newspapers went from a thickness of 1/8 inch to a thickness of 1-1/2 inches in a matter of a few years.

We now get more junk mail than we ever did before.

What we need is a moratorium on unsolicited advertising. Ads on television. Ads on radio. Ads on billboards, the sides of buildings, the backs of cars, the shirts of teenagers everywhere, in our newspapers, EVERYWHERE. Don’t even start me on the problems with internet advertising. How many trees die in the name of unsolicited advertising?

This problem goes beyond conspicuous consumption into the realm of gross negligence.

Is anyone else stunned by the media’s ability to make an entire news story out of a headline that says “It’s black smoke again!” That’s like making a story out of a headline that says “Nothing happens, again!” Ironical, isn’t it.

The Canadian minority government is in danger of collapsing in the wake of a financial scandal. I personally think they should all be lined up on a wall and stoned. Not for the scandal, but for putting conservative leader Stephen Harper in a position to become Prime Minister.

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On a slightly less cynical note, I’ve got some questions for the general public regarding the 100 worst environmental crimes currently being committed in Canada. We’ll expand to America soon enough, but for now, I am curious what crimes are being committed against mother nature right now.

This isn’t past environmental issues. Current ones, like Stelco in Hamilton Harbour.

Any help would be fantastically appreciated. Ask your friends, neighbours, family. What I’m aiming to do is create a list of the 100 worst environmental issues facing Canada right now. I’ll itemize and publish the list here on Rain with your help. It’ll become the basis for something else in the future, but for now the most important thing is finding the bad stuff.

Irony is freaking cool. It’s like poetic justice wearing Prada.

Whip out your camera phone and take a snap of this:

A diabetic near death due to insulin shock is being rushed to the hospital. Mere meters from the ramp to the emergency room, the ambulance carrying the diabetic man is t-boned by a transport truck, instantly killing him.

Irony?

If the truck was carrying anything other than insulin, it’s merely coincidence. But if the truck was filled with insulin, what we got here is a case of irony, and proof that the divine has a seriously warped (but damned funny) sense of humor.

Sort of gives you faith that universe will unfold as it’s supposed to, doesn’t it?

On the other hand, if I hear one more Poptart (think Lindsay Lohan or Hillary Duff) use the term (and I use the term “term” loosely here) “ironical” one more time, I am going to engage in a little divine comedy of my own.