She won, Rebekka won

It's 2010, three years after I've created Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir's website. When I go the job interviews or meet potential clients, I still mention this website as the best I've done. Quite honestly, take the photos out and it looks terrible. I sure know, since I've done it.

What makes it the best I've done is her photo and the context in which I did it. I was out to gain experience on the web. My knowledge was primitive. The only things I had on my side was my will to move forward and Rebekka, otherwise she'd never let me do it.

Anyway, as a web designer, I had to write a little about her website. However, this post really is about her, because she won the People's Choice Award in The Power of Self competition. Actually, she tied with Hilary McHone. That means, for each of them, $1000 in cash, a reception in New York City and international publicity.

At this point, you should just go admire Rebekka's work on her website.

Posted via email from Long Nguyen

Lechat Clothing’s website

Lechat Clothing's website features collections of a young talented fashion designer, Flavie Lechat, from Montreal, Canada. You can follow her on Twitter and on Facebook.

I was very happy to be able to work on her website. It presented new challenges for me, both in the way it looks and in the way it works. My process for this project was also unusual.

Generally, in my design process, the navigation is the first thing I start working on. It's basically the structure of the website. It's the tool that makes sure that visitors aren't lost. Despite the importance I put on that element, the navigation became the last thing I worked on.

My first step was to put a photo in the browser and keep it as large as possible. Then I added the thumbnails in such a way that visitors would be able to have an overview of the collection without too much scrolling and also without losing sight of the current fashion piece being displayed.

Only after I was satisfied with the way the photos were displayed and the way people could navigate through them, I started to think about adding the logo. It was also time to add the navigation which I tried to keep discrete, so I hid it. Yes, indeed, I made a conscious decision to hide the one element that I consider the most important on any website.

To summarize all that, the website is actually only the logo and the navigation. The rest is simply fashion, Lechat Clothing's fashion, which was the starting point of the entire project. In some way, it's like what I have previously done for photographer, Mélanie Elliott. 

The result of all that is a beautiful website that my client is happy to own and her fans are also impressed and excited.

At this point, there are three things you should do:

1. Visit Lechat Clothing's website and let me know what you think in the comments of this post.
2. Follow Flavie Lechat on Twitter and Facebook
3. Follow me on Twitter and Facebook

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Dreams

Usually, my dreams aren't plausible. Usually, I'm in a desert, flying, running for my life or just dead. 

Lately, I've been having dreams of events that could really happen. For example, I dreamt that a client sent me an email because he couldn't access the account for his website. It's a very simple dream, but it could very well happen. I know it can happen, because a few days ago, I moved his website from one server to another and accounts information has changed. 

Premonitions? Maybe. I hope so. I'm one of the people who would like to know the future, especially if I'm the only one who can do it.

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Stereotypes: math and gym, nerd and jock, body and mind

I spend a lot of time in the past today. I had to do some self cleaning.

In movies and television programs, it is made clear that a high school student can not be good at both intellectual and physical activities. The jock is captain of the sport team and he sucks at anything that requires brain cells. The nerd is a library rat who spends his days in books and he sucks at sports.

In high school, I didn't really fit in either of those stereotypes. I wasn't captain of any sport team and not even of any chess club. I also didn't spend my time in books. In fact, I remember that football, ping pong and foosball were a big part of my life back then. 

In any particular classroom, I always divided my attention between the class itself, another class's homework, getting bored or simply daydreaming. There was and there still is hardly ever only one thing in my mind. 

In gym class, it was pretty much the same. I remember being the goal keeper when playing soccer and my attitude towards the ball was "Get this thing away from me". It worked, because I remember my hands always hurting like hell for daring to stop the ball from entering the net. It would probably have hurt much less if I knew anything about tai chi back then.

Looking at my final grades, math and gym are the two things that stand out, because they happen to be my top 2 grades. The best part is that I didn't really make any effort. Those are genuinely two things that I am good at. I suppose that is what's called a well-balanced body and mind. 

As I am writing these lines, I realize that the fact that I practice tai chi today makes a lot of sense. 

Today… Until this little trip to the past, I've never thought of stereotypes. I don't believe anybody in my entourage thinks about it either. We're all different, we've all matured, more or less, and we either accept each other or we don't. 

We can all bring something into each other's lives.

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4 A.M.

It was 4 A.M. Lex Hanh was driving in the deserted city of Montreal. He didn't know why he was out at 4 A.M. He knew that he wanted information. He also knew that whatever he was about to find out wouldn't help him sleep better. Yet, there he was; driving. 

It was all about a little bit of snow and a light. He was looking for human presence. 

Four hours earlier, that light was turned off which is a pretty good indication that someone was there. However, the little bit of snow is the biggest mystery. It was in a place where anyone going through would hit it and yet, it was untouched. It retained the shape that the wind gave it. 

Why was Lex really out at 4 A.M.? Snow and light? It doesn't make any sense.

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Une amende de 214$ pour avoir jeté son billet

La stupidité est humaine. Sinon, c'est de l'avarice. http://tr.im/IhIW Rien n'empêche que ce soit les deux aussi.

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An efficient Facebook homepage

After 2007, Facebook started screwing up their homepage. Since then, the best move they've made, from a design point of view, is to make the page wider. Even so, the layout isn't optimized. 

For example, currently, on the left column, nothing is happening under the filter list. White space can be powerful in design or it can be wasted as it is in this case. The second column is just the feed. It's fine as it is for now.

The last column is filled with various types of information and they are all displayed in the wrong order. Wrong means that the objective is to make money also known as making people hate Facebook rather than to make people praise Facebook for whatever relevance it could possibly have. 

The first item of that column is the number of requests. First has also been synonymous to "very important". The thing is that there's absolutely nothing important about invitations to useless applications, groups, events and pages. Especially events where you're just one of hundreds and thousands of guests who were just checkboxes to the people who sent the invitation. If anyone really wants you anywhere, they'll invite through much more personal behaviours. 

The second item is the Suggestion box. I have always thought that, on Facebook, the word Friends should be replaced with Acquaintances. Most suggestions are about acquaintances with whom you haven't been in touch for a while or about a Page that a friend has become a fan of. I find that when you're really a fan of something, you'll make the effort yourself to find that page and click on "Become a fan". As for reconnecting with "friends", the suggested people are pretty much people who are in your list for professional reasons.

The third item is the Sponsored box. I don't have to explain this, nobody wants it.

Now, we get to the fourth item. The Event box. This is the single most important item of that column and Facebook decided to put it in fourth position. It's a terrible place, because you have to scroll to see everything. Furthermore, none of the events are really more important than birthdays and yet, these are at the bottom. This entire box should be moved up.

The last item is for connecting with friends. For all I care, this one can stay where it is or be removed.

So Facebook's homepage is flawed and you can hope that the next update will be better or you can complain that it sucks. There is a third option which is change it yourself. All you need is to use Google Chrome and install Facebook Fixer and Events at top. Facebook Fixer will be accessible through the Settings on Facebook. This script has many options and one possible result is what you see below.

I am suggesting Google Chrome as a browser because it's pretty much the fastest that currently exists and it natively supports the installation of scripts. With Safari and Firefox, you will need GreaseKit and Greasemonkey, respectively.

If you want to dig a little deeper in the world of scripts, you'll find that you can do much more, like remove ads for almost every websites and change the appearance of every single websites.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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L’autre 10%, un autre blog à lire sur la toile

Critiquer un autre blog n'est pas quelque chose que je fais bien souvent. D'ailleurs, même écrire sur mon propre blog n'est pas quelque chose que je fais bien souvent.

Toutefois, parfois, on tombe sur des perles rares comme L'autre 10%. J'ai gardé un oeil ouvert sur ce blog depuis qu'il a été créé en avril dernier. 

L'écriture est absolument un délice à lire. Les sujets sont abordés avec un approche tout à fait unique avec un mélange de sarcasme, de mélancolie, d'humour et de sérieux. Les articles sont publiés de manière régulière. L'orthographe, la grammaire, la structure, la ponctuation et toutes ces bonnes pratiques qu'on nous a enseignées au siècle dernier sont appliquées de manière impeccable. Ce n'est certainement pas du contenu qu'on trouve sur Twitter ou Facebook où la majorité écrit avec qualité complètement atroce.

MS, l'auteure de L'autre 10%, pourrait écrire un roman et elle serait digne de trouver son nom aux côtés de Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Gustave Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant et plus encore. Où sont les femmes dans la littérature? Les seuls noms qui me viennent en tête sont Emily Brontë, Mary Higgins Clark et J.K. Rowling, mais pas plus que ça.

L'autre 10% est l'un des rares blog que je lis. Désolé, c'est une exagération. L'autre 10%, c'est le seul blog que je lis. Et ceux qui me connaissent assez savent que je déteste lire.

Les geeks, ajoutez le fil RSS de L'autre 10% dans votre liste, et les autres, en bas de la colonne de droite, abonnez-vous. 

Maintenant, dégagez de mon site et allez lire L'autre 10%. C'est exact, je vous chasse d'ici.

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Untitled

via tweetie

Posted via web from Long Nguyen

Huge fire

I just got home from a party and this big ass fire is what I saw on the way. It's a building that's just been built. 

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