UPDATE 12/4/06: It looks like the site was just updated. And the new design looks great. I still do not see why the site had to go down for several days, but atleast it was not weeks.

One of the web designer blogs I have always admired the most has been Simplebits.com. Recently however the site has been coming up as unformatted html. At first I thought it was a problem with my browser cache, but after clearing the cache nothing. Then I assumed it must be the server and it will be fixed in short order. I was wrong.

I was shocked today when I visited the site and saw a new note stating that "This site is intentionally (but temporarily) un-styled while we build a new brand and site design." Dan Cederholm has done great designs for very large companies, and the only way he has to design a new site is to work directly on his live files?

This is a really cool little app that lets you pre-define window sizes and placement, and then apply those pre-sets to any open window.

When I first installed Windows on my new system I thought how cool it was that Windows would install without needing to additional drivers at install time. It seems that the ASUS P5B-E, and I assume most other Intel P965 motherboards allow you to make your SATA hard drives look like IDE hard drives. While this seemed like a good feature to me during installation, it soon started to cause me problems later.

For the past few years I have been working at a wholesale printing company doing pre-press, graphic and web design. After using several design products for that time it seemed like the right time to jump in and buy the Adobe Creative Suite 2.

This seems like a good time because Adobe is just setting up to release Creative Suite 2.3. Which now comes with the new Acrobat 8 and Dreamweaver. Even though I am hand web coder I have been looking into Dreamweaver and it seems like it is a pretty good hand coding enviroment with some WYSIWYG features thrown in.

Along with Acrobat 8 and Dreamweaver you also get Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, GoLive, Version Cue, and Bridge. I have been using most of these applications for awhile now, and they all rock.

Anyway, hopefully there will be some more graphic design related content up here from now on as I play around with these apps.

Well it would seem that the hard drive crashed on the server hosting this site the other day, and the most recent backup the web host had was a month old. I guess I can not get too angry seeing as I do not have any backups either. :)

Only a couple of posts were lost, so hopefully I can find draft copies I made before posting and at least get a few of them back up.

Luckily Drupal allows you to mark posts with any authored on dates you like, so I can pre-date the posts so they more closely match the original post date.

In the past my systems have been purely focused on getting the most gaming performance for my money. This time however I am working, and playing games a lot less. So my priorities in life, and in turn the requirements of my computer systems, have changed. Now having a stable, quiet, and powerful system are all equally important to me. So in this, and subsequent posts, I will focus on how each component helps me meet these three criteria.

The first time I built a computer I actually thought it was cool to put more fans in it. Five 80mm Panaflow fans are better than three... right!? Well now that's all changed, one of my main focuses, this time around, was making a system that was as quiet as possible while still providing enough cooling to keep the system stable. When you are sitting quietly developing a website, programming, or writing the last thing you want to hear is the high pitched wine of several computer fans.

Not much has been happening around here for the past week or so, I have been spending most of my computer time trying to decide what components I want in my new system. So I thought I would share some of the movies I have seen, and music I am listening too.

Music: Ratatat Classics

Ratatat is not Rave or Jungle, but they are very good. Their sound is kind of a mix between alternative rock and electronic music. There are no vocals which make it perfect for listening to while working.

This is the first album I have bought in a long time that is original, and good. Just a good disc and I would recommend it to anyone. Because it is a mix between rock and electronic I think that the overall sound can appeal to a diverse audience.