Copyright ©2008 Pixels and Code, LLC. All rights reserved.
Musings on Design and the State of the Web. Read it here, or grab our RSS feed and read it anywhere.
Posted by Bob on 2008-08-01 18:52:50
Pixels and Code is proud to announce the “birth” of our latest client site, PurseN.net for our good friend, Hardeep.
With one web site already to her name (Teenie Tiny Tots Kiddie Catalog), Hardeep came to us with a new product and a new project - a catalog site for her new line of purse organizer inserts and accessories.
It’s been several long months of design iterations, and a lot of waiting while their product was produced, samples were photographed, retouched, catalogs printed, etc. But last night, we were up until 3AM putting the finishing touches on the site. More minor tweaks today, and at 4:45PM, PurseN’s site was officially launched.
We are proud to have worked on this project, and we know that this is but the first of many evolutions of the PurseN site. As their product line grows, and as their comfort level with the e-Commerce process grows, we’ll be back in the trenches making this site look and work better than before.
So, thank you, Hardeep, for the opportunity to make your site. Best of luck at the product launch in NYC this weekend. We know you’re going to be a huge success!
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Posted by Bob on 2008-07-15 00:36:20
My recent post entitled “It’s (Not) Easy Being Green” has received a little bit of attention of late, probably helped on by the fact that it was cross-posted on the Professional Artists League site. A commenter over there pointed out something that I knew, but never think about:
While you are sleeping comfortably in your bed every night your office space is sucking the chill from the polar ice caps. Let’s run a test; shut down your computers and hit the lights. How many little green, red and blue little lights are on your back-up drives, printers, monitors, computers, speakers, copier, power strips, ipod dock, (I can keep going) etc. If you see those lights you are using electricity when there is absolutely no reason. Set up your power strips where you can actually reach them. Use your big toe to kill the juice and let the polar bears live. You will also enjoy a savings on your utility bill of $100 or more in as few as 12 months.
Excellent point. I prided myself on my efforts to recycle, keep the thermostat turned up a notch or two, rely on natural light, etc. But sure enough, even though I turn off my monitors and shut down my laptop each night, my printer, scanner, desktop speakers, wall warts, phone charger, Bluetooth headset base, external hard drive, etc. are all still alive, winking and blinking silently in the darkness, draining power unnecessarily.
So in addition to all the other little things I try to do on a daily basis, I’ve moved my power strip to a position under my desk where I can switch it off with my big toe (per the commenter’s suggestion), and I also have turned off the printer and scanner, which aren’t used that often anyway.
Any other tips toward greening up your office that you’d care to share would be appreciated.
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Posted by Bob on 2008-05-16 12:34:12
One thing that I’ve been trying to do here at Pixels and Code is run as close to paper-free as possible. For a few years now, my wife and I have shredded and recycled all of our waste paper. I’ve simply transferred that thinking to my office space.
I do print things out for later reference, but when I’m done with those items, they get shredded and recycled. Bank statements and receipts get scanned, stored, and then shredded/recycled. Junk mail, especially credit card offers or “convenience checks,” immediately goes through the shredder.
And how do we recycle the shreddings? Several different ways: mostly, they go into large plastic garbage bags (which we reuse later), and are taken to the recycle center down the road and emptied into the “Office Paper” bin. We also have recently learned that shredded paper (the non-glossy, white office paper is best) can be used as mulch in your yard or garden. Just be sure that you don’t add it to your vegetable garden - any lead, ink, etc. can leach into your veggies, and that does no one any good.
Lastly, since I work from my home currently, I have little to no vehicle/gas expenses. I rely on natural light as much as possible, and keep the A/C off, relying on the ceiling fan and small desk fans to keep me cool.
Being “green” in the workplace really isn’t that difficult. It does require a change of mindset if you’re not used to it, but in the end, it’s worth the small amount of effort required.
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Posted by Bob on 2008-05-06 13:07:18
... I should probably put a little more work into this blog code. It’s bare-bones, no-frill stuff right now. There’s absolutely no back-end—I’m posting this directly within PhpMyAdmin. That won’t do for long-term use.
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Posted by Bob on 2008-05-06 12:15:05
I’m starting to get quite a bit of mileage out of CodeIgniter and JQuery these days. I have three concurrent development projects going on right now that all use CodeIgniter, and there’s a little bit of JQuery in all of them. Prior development projects had used a simple PHP framework that I found and modified heavily for my purposes, and I actually have another dev project that uses that framework still in the works.
CodeIgniter is fast becoming my framework of choice, though, and the other day I had the fortune of mixing CodeIgniter and JQuery together for the first time, with varied results. It really just boiled down to a matter of server paths and base URLs and what-not, but I had a devil of a time getting the jquery functions on a particular page to work. Seems that without a little bit of jiggery-pokery, JQuery and CodeIgniter do not get along well, especially if you separate your public HTML directory from your CodeIgniter system folder.
But, it’s all about the little victories. Today I got a cantankerous little JQuery function working that animates a CSS-based chart. Simple stuff, really, but for some reason, the code decided to buck me for a while.
That’s one reason we do this, though, right? For the little victories? Those little “aha!” moments, when the code works and the design flows and bird sing and flowers bloom, and all is well with the world? Yeah. Those are great.
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Posted by Bob on 2008-04-16 22:33:44
The whole point of this blog is to have a place to discuss web design, web standards, web development, or really anything I want to talk about at the moment. Mostly I’ll post boring treatises on the state of the industry from my mostly unschooled point of view, but occasionally you may find a gem or two—a link to a new site or service, a YouTube vid that I found amusing, or what-not.
So, that’s about it for now.
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Posted by Bob on 2008-04-15 12:34:56
Welcome to the newly-released Pixels and Code (.net—yes, that elusive .com domain will be mine one day, oh yes it will...) Previous visitors to Pixels and Code will recall that I posted a note stating that the design displayed there at the time was only temporary.
Well, I finally took time to work on a new design. It’s pretty gaudy and a little garish, but I like it. It’s built on a CodeIgniter foundation, with the 960 Grid System for CSS. I’m enjoying both of these frameworks, although for some reason, I’m having a little bit of a time wrapping my head around some of CI’s conventions.
So, take a look around. There’s not a whole lot here at the moment. There’s this blog, the ubiquitous “About” and “Contact” pages, and our Services page, which is pretty standard for a web company site. If you see something you like, drop me a line. If you hate it, well, that’s fine too.
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Copyright ©2008 Pixels and Code, LLC. All rights reserved.