Time to take a single post break from all the sarcasm and give props to some sites that I have come to reliable as sources of great design and techie information. Yes folks, this post is meant for my fellow geek readers! *boo hiss*

CSS Tricks
This site is pretty cool and Chris, the guy behind it, is a former resident of Madison. He’s a CSS and Wordpress nut much like myself, except he’s much more experienced (yes I’m willing to admit that, take a hike!). I’ve been in contact with Chris and he’s been very responsive and helpful. So much that I decided to be nice and put a permanent advertisement on all my single post pages, so check him out.

Smashing Magazine
Now this has got to be the coolest design and freebies magazine on the web! I learn a lot of cool stuff, get a lot of free toys, and more from these guys. If you’re a designer and don’t know about Smashing, I suggest you get your buttocks in gear and do just that. Check out their site, subscribe to their news feed, or follow them on Twitter. You’ll be glad you did!

Well, not really. But I have updated the look of the posts on my site. As you can see, I now have some funky little icons and some new formatting around each post. I think they are pretty sexy. What do you think?

However, I am not stopping there. Actually these little post design tweaks come from my new Jabloggy theme, which I hope to implement sooner than later. I finally came up with a “Web 2.0ish” design that I am fairly happy with and am looking forward to sharing it with you.

Making myself happy with the design has been my biggest challenge. I filled my virtual trash can with oodles of trial and error designs before this one. Hopefully I can stay happy now for a little while. But really, I think by this point, anything is better than the current Jabloggy design. Am I right? Or am I right?

Ok, first of all, I’m not suicidal, for those of you worried.  For those of you hoping the opposite, suck it.

What I refer to above is one of the best lines in the former Nickelodeon cartoon Rocko’s Modern Life.  For those of you who remember it, you’d be jealous to know I received the Volume 1 DVD set of Rocko’s Modern Life.  After watching them all I totally forgot how much I loved (and now miss) that show.  It was good dirty-ish humor from my generation.

Those of you that have no idea who Rocko is, you’re either too old, too young, or your parents made you watch the wrong channel.  While you poor babies were forced to watch the evening news or Full House, us lucky kids were enjoying wholesomely gross animation of a wallaby (Rocko), a cow (Heffer), and a turtle (Filbert).  Neener, Neener.

WTF is up with this so-called Mac user dudette (yes I know it’s a dude, your point?)

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-10140575-17.html 

I feel the “expert” was “paid under the table” by the “fearless” “leaders” at Microtard.  What a great world of honesty we live in.  Excuse me, I think I just threw up in my mouth…

Today marks an exciting day.  A day that I will remember forever.  The day that I become a man (again).  Yes… today… I update the design of Jabloggy.  *audience applauds (if I’m lucky)*

Jabloggy Challenge for 2009

With the launch of the new site, I want to issue a challenge to my 2 or 3 readers.  According to my highly advanced website statistics device (the Jastatty 5000), the majority of my readers are using what we developers and designers refer to as “A POS”, “Inevitable Exception”, and “The Gay Browser” (no offense to my alternative lifestyle readers, if I have any left after that).  Yes folks, I refer to that hunk of poo created by our enemies at Microsoft, the one, the only, Internet Explorer.  

My challenge to you Internet Explorer users is this: DOWNLOAD A BETTER BROWSER THIS YEAR.  I want to see the numbers for Internet Explorer go down and the numbers for Firefox, Safari, and every other browser on the market that doesn’t suck go up.

To help you out, here are some links to get you rockin’ and rollin’.  These browsers are more secure, load pages faster, and load websites more accurately than Internet Explorer.  Basically, these are all browsers from heaven while IE was born in a cave in hell.

• Mozilla Firefox 3 – more secure, more plug-ins, faster, and more reliable
• Apple Safari – available for Windows and Mac users.  More secure, loads pages very quickly and very reliable
• Google Chrome – still in beta; only for Windows right now.  Google’s first attempt at a future browser.  Very promising from what I’ve heard

There are lots of other browsers out there, but these are the main players that are currently taking market share from IE.  

Thanks for listening, and good luck to all of you IE users out there!  I’ll be watching you (on the Jastatty 5000)!

UPDATE: In addition to the design changes on Jabloggy, I’ve also made it so you guys can now leave comments without being registered.  Hopefully I will have some more time to keep adding new things.

Hey everyone.  Sorry for the downtime today.  Apparently some little coward decided he was bored and had no friends so he decided to hack a slew of blogs, Jabloggy included.  My friend over at Gimp Radio was also hit.  He’s still trying to get back on his feet.

As you might notice, all the content and archived posts are gone.  This is because I decided to just blow away the old site and start from scratch.  I have been meaning to upgrade my blogging software anyway, and I have a copy of most of my old posts anyway.  Over time I’ll do my best to restore as many as possible.  But until then, welcome to the “new” site.

Apple announced that it will hold a special event on September 9th to make some new product announcements.  Speculation so far is that it will be some kind of mix of the following: new iPod nano, new iPod touch, new MacBooks, new MacBook Pros, new MacBook touch, new iTunes 8, and I think that’s it.  What of those things could it be?  I guess we’ll have to wait and see…

That, my friends, truly is the question here. For those who are totally petarded when it comes to technology, I’m referring to the 2nd generation (version 2.0) of the iPhone, which was announced on June 9th at WWDC in San Francisco and will be released on July 11th worldwide.

Sure the new version kicks more ass than the 1st generation iPhone. It has 3G technology (faster cell network), GPS, a raised headphone jack (if you own one, you know this was a slightly frustrating on the 1st gen), and a new plastic-ish back that comes in either white or black (16 gig model; 8 gig only in black).

But that’s kinda where I feel the new-ness of the 2nd generation iPhone ends. Everything else that it’s getting is software-based, and all 1st generation iPhone owners are getting the same software upgrade, iPhone software version 2.0.

So am I happy with my 1st gen iPhone yet? Definitely. Do I see the need to upgrade to a 2nd gen yet? Not really. Maybe I’ll consider it when my contract is up next year, and by then it’s possible the 3rd gen will be right around the corner.

Anyone else own an iPhone? What’s your opinion? Leave some 1st generation iPhone love in my comments if you feel so inclined.

So it’s been the usual crazy busy around here since I last posted. As you can see by my photo (courtesy of my iPhone) I have put up a few Halloween decorations, marking the first holiday we’ve decorated for at our new place. I admit it’s a little lame, but I’m also short on Halloween decorations, but far from short on Christmas decorations. I will probably post a photo of that when the time comes (which isn’t too far off, woo hoo!).

In the world of development, Local Sounds has been taking top priority as we are getting closer and closer to releasing the wiki, the store, a new Local Sounds site, and an updated MadCityTube.com! All before Christmas (and Thanksgiving hopefully!)!! So if you were wondering about any progress on the widget (oh you know where this is going..hmmmhmm), I regret to say it hasn’t seen any change. November or December should see some progress though, and an updated version.

Also, the best and biggest news of the week: Mac OS X Leopard comes out tomorrow! It looks to be great, and there’s been plenty (and all) good reviews this week from critics who received advanced copies. Now the only thing I want to double check is, will the Gruvsonic widget work on it??? We’ll find out!

Lastly, I’ve finally found the time to update my Portfolio page! Check it out for a handful of other client sites that I’ve done. Enjoy.

Happy Halloween!