The Sad State Of Refrigerator Doors

Have you taken a good look at your refrigerator door lately? Now, if yours' is like most peoples', it does an excellent job of keeping the cold in, and the warm out. That's not the problem I want to address [By the bye, if that is your problem, get that fixed as soon as possible. Besides making the storage of food at best problematic, it keeps your coolant motor running, which can lead to overheating, burnout, and, worse, fire. You may not be the only person who can prevent house or garage fires, but a lot of it is on YOUR shoulders].

No, the issue here is the quality of your children's drawings posted on the fridge (Of course if your child is a budding Matisse, or better yet, the next Warhol, please ignore the rest of this posting). I'm not saying your child is untalented. First of all I don't know. Secondly, the problem is probably not his or her fault. You see, funding has been cut for education in many American school districts. When budgets are cut, what money is available just doesn't go as far. I'm not here to judge what is important, and what can be eliminated when times are tight [oh, wait a minute, I am...sorry], but my votes would involve sensible reductions in military spending, as well as a tax system that brutally punishes the rich [after all, years of tax breaks for the wealthy have done nothing to demonstrate what The Great Communicator called "trickle-down economics", and his running mate correctly identified as "voodoo economics"], and increases in all varieties of, among other things, education. That would include education for the arts [Do you see where this is going yet? Hang on, we're nearly there...]. Arts education would not only improve those refrigerator artworks, but encourage creative thinking in many areas of life [As this is a Presidential election year here in the US, maybe it's a good time to press any candidate you may encounter on his or her policy towards education. Thank you].

But, since the better part of the currently maturing generation missed out on the whole "arts education" experience, maybe Your Host can throw together a few places for tips that can improve the appearance of your blog [and don't think I'm playing superior; I plan to go over this very location with a fine-tooth comb over the next week or two. It's Spring, (or Virtual Spring, anyway); let's all do some Cleaning and Maintenance!

Color Theory And Reality:

http://www.webreference.com/new/color.html - Actually a series of articles about color coordination and color theory. Understandably written, well worth your time.

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/620/li1.htm - Another perspective on color coordination, from an Arabic newspaper. [In English].

http://www.sitepoint.com/article/color-for-coders - More technically oriented than the first two pieces, it's very useful for its illustrations of color in use [The illustration that tops this article is from this site].

Blog layout/design:

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/01/31/10-principles-of-effective-web-design/ - State-of-the-art insights, from a source for cutting edge style.

http://technorati.com/videos/youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DmF_mWi6r-9I - A YouTube driven course of design principles.

http://www.lukew.com/ff/ - Functioning Form is the blog of web theorist and designer Luke Wroblewski. I'll be honest; he goes over my head. But if you want to consider the Future of The Web and Blogging, this is a good starting place.

Have a marvelous Passover, a Happy Easter, or a Nice Weekend. And please offer a SUBMISSION or two, for goodness' sake! We are offering 250 EC credits for your submitted articles that make it to the blog. So take some of my credits! Please!

-Mike Riley

While We're Waiting...

First of all, I want to thank EVERYONE who's helped make this a successful launch! Whether you were drawn here from the posting in "AFTER MIDNIGHT", or from one of the ads on various web sites, thank you for taking a few minutes to look things over. I hope you'll be back for repeat visits!

As the "Welcome" message at the top of the right-hand column says, I'm welcoming submissions on this site. As noted, please send them to the e-mail link in the message, and please put the word "Submissions" in your title line. You don't need to be an acknowledged expert, but I would hope you'd at least know what you're talking about. Hope to hear from you soon...

While we're waiting, here are a few links to sites that say they can help your writing skills:

Read a valuable RSS Feeds & Blogging Tutorial at Web Site101 Small Business Ecommerce Tutorial.

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2005/12/30/tens-tips-for-writing-a-blog-post/[Problogger.net has plenty of help for newbies; check it out]

http://www.instigatorblog.com/5-blog-writing-tips-to-get-more-comments/2006/10/04/ [though written from a monitization perspective, there are still good tips in this entry]

http://scalzi.com/whatever/004023.html [John Scalzi has a "Damn The Torpedoes!" style, but his points on writing are all well taken]

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/writebetter [Dennis Mahoney's post requires reading to glean all his insights. Good reading is a key skill in developing good writing skills...]

http://tojou.blogspot.com/2006/10/tips-for-blog-writing.html [An older link, still working as of writing, for more tips]

If you feel that none of these are helpful, a good Internet search should connect you with something you'll find useful.

-Mike Riley

Pet Peeves

For about two years now, I've put together a mildly-successful blog (AFTER MIDNIGHT; look for widget/link on right-hand column), along with some riduculously-UNSUCCESSFUL ones [why dig up the past?}. I don't know that I have the right to call myself a blog "expert", but I do know what I like - and don't like. I believe my "likes" are a matter of personal taste; my "dislikes", however, hopfully reflect fixable issues with the blog in question. Here are some of those "pet peeves":


*Spelling/Mis-used words: This one goes back, no doubt, to my school days, when points were taken off writing projects for misspellings. In the "SpellCheck" era, such mistakes are just INEXCUSABLE. Besides, a correctly-spelled postings makes its writer look more intelligent and in control of the topic. A simular peeve is the mis-use of words ("their" for "there" is one example). This is a harder matter to correct; perhaps a future posting will adress this?


*Illegible Blogs: This usually comes down to one or two issues; either the blog's color scheme does not allow for easy reading, or the type face is too darn small. A blog's color design is a key part of its overall "look". It usually comes down to the taste of the blog's creator. As such, criticism of such matters can come off like criticism of the blogger's first-born. But you're doing the blog for a reason. You want it TO BE READ. A survey I saw not too long ago noted that black-on-white is the easiest read of any color combination [flying in the face of this fact, AFTER MIDNIGHT is white-on-black. But the contrast shows the copy quite well, I believe. At least no one has complained about it yet]. As to text size, I think this shoes the problem nicely. As a blogger in his 50's, I really can't read the smaller type faces easily. If I can't read it easily, why would I struggle to try?

*Blogs that take forever to download: I do most of my blogging and reading of blogs at work. Here, we have T1 lines, bringing the Internet into our computers at near top speed [I don't know the technology well enough to explain it. Let's just say it's DADBUM fast]. Yet many blogs take forever to download. Usually, these blogs are over-laden with widgets or other gimmicks. Again, it's a taste issue; but people don't want to wait for your page to download. Reduce the number of widgets, and your download speed will almost certainly increase.

I know I've only mentioned three "peeves". Frankly, though, those are the main issues I have with blogs. If I'm interested in the topic, I can usually sit through observations on it, whether or not I agree with the blogger's viewpoint. If I'm not interested, I probably won't read it anyway. If we as bloggers can try to address these areas, though, it would almost certainly make blogs better.

-Mike Riley