the singular

The Secret Revealed

2008-12-14T19:22:00.005-05:00

For the last few years my wife and I have searched in vain for a TV show I watched as a child. I only had the vaguest of memories about; a boy, a train, a black cat, an old man... We googled with all out mite and never got the answer we were looking for. Perhaps it was our lack of Google prowess on such matters. But every six months, without fail, some cartoon the kids would watch or some piece of music or random sound effect would trigger some distant memory of this old show and off I would go again, in search of the faintest glimmer of an answer to what had become my greatest mystery.

Tonight was just such a night where a certain phrase in a show the kids were watching set my mind adrift, back to the days of that boy, the old man, the cat, the train... So I went to search once again, hoping that this time I would have some luck. And wouldn't you know it, within minutes I was presented with another blogger who was on a similar mission who had found his answer just a few months ago; The Secret Railroad!!!

Now that I have a name I stand a chance of getting my hands on some archive copies to that I can show my kids what I watched when I was their age. Wish me luck!

I <3 my Droplet

2008-07-24T11:40:00.001-04:00

Sometimes we web guys move towards the odd, the sublime and sometimes the ridiculous. I'm not sure which these Droplets fall under but it is one of those indulgences that only another designer can understand. Well I ordered four of these droplets, one for each of the kids and one for myself. Don't know why really, I just love them. Perhaps it's the character of their designer, Gavin Strange, that drew me to them.

I have known of and on occasion talked with Gavin, an accomplished and renowned designer of all things colorful. Gavin has even had a write up in the Apple Pro profiles section of their website so that tells you how serious his work is taken. But Gavin, as I see it, is quite a humble guy on the web. I follow his on-goings on Twitter and he is just a regular guy.

When these Droplets were released in a limited run a few months back I missed out by a hair. So when the official launch happened last week I was quick to snatch up my four gleaming little buddies. The hardest part will be giving the other three up to the kids.

flickr needs more code

2008-04-26T11:09:00.000-04:00

Man do I EVER wish that flickr would inject a class or id in there images tags so that I could take some control over them. I would at least like to float them so the don't appear as a block level element followed by a paragraph of description.

Ideally I would like to wrap my description around my flickr images. Oh well, you can't have everything.

The Saturday coffee... mmm

2008-04-26T10:14:00.001-04:00

Like Pavlov's dog, my mouth waters when I here the sound of my morning java trickle from my carafe to my coffee cup. It's an almost unexplainable joy to see that steam rise up, the wafting aromatic sent of dark roasted beans, the brown and beige tones swirling together as the coffee and cream combine. Coffee is truly one of those adult routines that really warrants excusing ones self from the rest of life for 10 minutes or so.

What makes a Saturday coffee any different than the rest of the week? My days are all the same more or less. I work from home so a Saturday coffee should feel no different. I guess the bussle of having the kids about, the cartoons on, the smell of cooking breakfast... a Saturday coffee allows me to tune out the commotion for that 10 minutes. Peace.

Don't you want one now?

Brain dead or thoughtless?

2008-04-26T09:34:00.002-04:00

Hmm. What is this telling me? I don't know how I should take that really. As funny as that seems, my collective thoughts having no items, I am actually a bit perturbed about the real consequences of the real problem... my rss feed is not working.

I used this bit of php to make it all work (which I have used something similar in the past for rwupdates.com) but this time around I have failed to make it work. I'll have to keep plugging away on my spare time in the next few weeks. So for now, if you've tried to subscribe to the rss feed on "the collective" page and are getting no results, bear with me while I work it out. FYI, the rss feed on "the singular" page is fully operational.

These eyes two separate views shall meet

2008-04-25T16:09:00.000-04:00

My wife just got me up from a 10 minute power nap (handy having her around for that) from which I was having the strangest dream/experience. Obviously you can't get into too deep of a sleep in 10 minutes time so I am sure I must have been half in, half out (the twilight zone if you will) when my semi conscious brain realized it was only visualizing from my right eye. The left eye was blacked out. Of course to my semi conscious brain this translated into being "blind" in the left eye, which got me worried. So, half awake, half asleep, I opened my left eye, arousing my brain into a slightly more conscious state allowing me to come to the realization that I was not blind. I just had my eyes closed... both of them.

I thought nothing more of it until my wife woke me up minutes later. It became somewhat interesting to me that one eye could be fully engaged in the dream world while the other stayed behind in the conscious one. I'll have to look into that more someday, but for now it was just an interesting experience worthy of some square footage on the web.

Back to work then?

Time gets away from me

2008-04-24T11:32:00.000-04:00

So I'm sitting here building a web site for the soon to be relaunched, revitalized, rebranded PUMP Communications (for which I just built the most wicked nav system for) when I realize it's Thursday! I should have made at least one trek to Mississauga (where the Presentation Plus lair resides, home of PUMP Communications) this week and Friday is just not a good day for it. I went to Mississauga last Friday and it took me nearly 2 1/2 hours to get back to Kitchener at the end of the day.

I guess I could stop in for a few hours for a meeting, set up another OS (we're all moving to Leopard) and duck out before the general masses consider leaving their day jobs and head out to the cottage. That would be such a disruption to the usual work flow though. I guess I will play it by ear.

The not-so-partisan box to stand on

2008-04-24T07:24:00.000-04:00

Day 2 into the new collective thought storm and I am already imagining the possibilities. For starters I need to write an xml file so I can offer a feed for the collective page. Then I have a few ideas from there. Nothing big.

So I need a platform to bark from. One that is not so "tied", if you will, to any given company (I own a few and work for a few more)n and this site, adammerrifield.info, is perfect for that. It allows me to pimp everything I do for everybody without appearing to be a "partisan" of one company of the other (I got in trouble for that once). So why is this important? Well I work on a great number of projects and many of them are for other companies. I don't talk about them on my "other" sites more because it would look inappropriate. I don't talk about from "their" sites because they don't have a place for me to do so nor would I have such standing.

Here I can be just Adam Merrifield; guy of many talents. Speaking of which, I have to run. I have a website to build, one to update, 5 graphics to get done, a theme to market...

An intro to all that is, was and shall be

2008-04-23T13:14:00.002-04:00

Well today marks a new day for me and the scattered contents of my brain. I am a web designer dabbling in web development, who can draw a mean icon or logo and who has more to say and write then your average politician. I have things to say, things to teach, things to get off my chest and so much of it is too eclectic to keep in one place... until now that is.

Today marks the day that I can pool my collective thoughts into this... thought storm. Interesting? Probably not. Connected? Only by a common author and common web of interest; web, design, code, internet, photography, imagery, Macs, productivity..........

So what's the point. None really. I just thought it would be a cool little mirror into my daily internet activity. From my own standpoint it serves as a gauge as to where and when my brain is at any given moment. Will it be embarrassing? I don't expect I will tag too many porn sites in del.icio.us, but there might be the odd view I will express, totally unrehearsed, not researched and uneducated that I will likely come to regret in the hours that ensue. Luckily you will get to capture it all here.

Without further adieu, welcome to AdamMerrifield.info.