RobGoodlatte.com

Flow Theme for WordPress

Rob Goodlatte — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 17:59:51 +0000

Liquid layouts are decidedly out-of-fashion. Fixed-width, centered layouts have become the dominant design pattern for the Web, and for good reason too. Fixed-width layouts allow designers to define strict proportions between columns, and keep line-lengths under control.

But, setting a fixed width isn’t the only way to maintain a reasonable measure. There’s a very reasonable alternative that is rarely explored — variable type size. Cameron Adams toyed with the idea as an experiment, but I’ve found few examples of this technique used on an actual production site. To that end, I’ve developed a proof-of-concept WordPress theme called Flow.

Flow scales the type size of the main content area in proportion to the browser width to preserve a consistent measure of around sixty-six characters, as prescribed by Mr. Bringhurst & Mr. Rutter. The sidebar column, present on the home page, is set at a fixed 12px font size so it always remains secondary (scaling it would result in nearly un-readable type at small sizes).

Test drive Flow at the example blog and let me know what you think of this experiment. I hope you don’t mind scrolling.

Download

Installation

Open flow.zip and upload the extracted folder to wp-content/themes/. Then activate the theme in your Admin panel.

Features

Facebook Connect Ready
Flow was designed to work with Facebook Connect. Just upload the WP-FacebookConnect plugin to your plugins directory, activate it, and follow the instructions on the plugin’s settings page.

Widget Ready
As much as I hate them, this theme supports WordPress widgets. This was by far the #1 most-requested feature for my previous theme. Go nuts with calendars, blogrolls, and feed importers.

Built-in Widon’t new in v0.2
Shaun Inman’s fantastic WordPress plugin, Widon’t is built-in for article titles. This prevents multi-line titles from leaving a single word by itself on the final line.

Update 2/27/09: Fixed issues with search and formatting of list items. If you’re using the theme, please update to v0.2. Thanks to Eugene for the help.
Update 3/4/09: Updated to v0.2. Fixed small display issue with archive formatting.
Update 3/5/09: updated to v0.4. Now licensed under GPL.

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Rob Goodlatte — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 14:30:30 +0000

Sometimes you’re just flat-out wrong. That’s the case with my assertion that faking confidence is a viable strategy for one’s life and career. It’s complete bullshit — I tested the theory myself and watched it fall short.

The funny thing about faking confidence is that you wind up convincing yourself that you’re always right, even when you’re wrong. The confidence game becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy — it’s right because, damnit, it’s right.

I’ve come to realize that self-confidence is not, in and of itself, a quality worthy of pursuit. True confidence is a byproduct of a far greater quality — authenticity. Faking confidence may alleviate tense social situations or win arguments, but it’s not a long-term solution. Rely on the confidence mask too often and you become arrogant, distanced, and self-absorbed. You become the over-confident jerk whose mannerisms you copied.

Authenticity, for me, means matching my actions and words to my passions. Worrying about projecting confidence is a dangerous, and ultimately irrelevant diversion from more important pursuits.

Photo by Matt Callow under Creative Commons.

No Confidence? Fake it.

Rob Goodlatte — Mon, 26 May 2008 12:30:26 +0000

One of the greatest career and life lessons I learned in college was one I picked up freshman year from my friend Dave. He’s a guy who projects confidence in any situation, in the face of any intimidating social environment. Awkward introduction? Not for Dave. Anxiety-ridden job interview? Dave wouldn’t even sweat.

This isn’t to say Dave’s abundance of confidence was always a blessing—he rarely relinquished a position in argument and often entered into pissing matches. But to a younger and more timid me, Dave’s seemingly limitless reserve of self-confidence was a quality I deeply envied.
…

When we hang out with our friends, their mannerisms, postures, and other behavior tend to rub off on us—psychologists call this “the chameleon effect”. Just by hanging out with Dave, I began to pick up behaviors such as making eye contact, maintaining taller posture, using hand gestures, and speaking assertively. I still didn’t possess the internal confidence I coveted, but I began acting as if I did. I slowly recognized that my change in behavior affected how others perceived me. My ideas were taken more seriously and others placed more trust in me.

I soon began “faking it”—deliberately acting more confident and self-assured. At first this was un-natural. Acting confident required a lot of conscious thought to think out exactly what to say and how to say it. Internally, I still felt awkward and anxious in high-pressure situations, but I did my best to hide my fear under my newfound confidence armor.

Over time a strange thing happened: I stopped having to make an effort. I began asserting confidence without thinking about it, which had to uncanny effect of boosting my self-esteem. By pretending I was confident I became confident.

Why am I writing this? Because I’ve known too many designers, programmers and artists who possess unbelievable talent, but slip up in job interviews because their speech and physical presence don’t communicate confidence. There’s a natural tendency amongst creative people to self-criticize — a fantastic motivator for improvement — but this can be self-defeating in situations where you must talk about your work. Just put on the façade. Confidence is an amazing social currency, but the secret is: you can be your own mint.

To borrow a line from Jim Coudal: the meek won’t inherit the earth, the creatives will. But we creatives must shed our meekness if we want to break through the limitations we place on ourselves.

Photo by *miQ under Creative Commons

Platform Atop a Platform

Rob Goodlatte — Mon, 12 May 2008 10:01:35 +0000

This morning Dan, Justin, and I rolled out a big new feature for StrawPoll—the ability to run your own Twitter polls.

Simply log into StrawPoll with your Twitter username and password (which we don’t store), post a question, and we’ll take care of the rest. Using the Summize API, we monitor Twitter for replies to your question—transforming your Twitter account into your own polling robot. We pull in your background image and color settings from Twitter and, with some quick color calculations, create a color palette based on your settings. Check out my page and Justin’s for an example.

This is a side project we’ve been working on for the past couple of months while we weren’t in class, writing papers, or taking finals. Try it out here—We hope you like it.

Photo by Kagey B under Creative Commons

Passionless Pre-Professionals

Rob Goodlatte — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 10:45:16 +0000

In two weeks I’ll be graduating college—leaving academia after 16+ years in the system. For the first time in my life, there will be no more classes, professors, tests, or grades—no artificial benchmarks of success. If I fail, I’ll get back up and try again; if I succeed, I’ll receive the real benefits of my success, not just the letter “A” on a sheet of paper.

To me, this is extremely liberating. But I’ve noticed others in my graduating class, friends included, who look to the “real world” with trepidation. A few don’t yet know what they want to do with their lives. That’s okay—we’re still young.

But many more know exactly what their career will be, yet have absolutely no passion for what they’re about to pursue. For these passionless pre-professionals, college was simply an economics equation to be optimized: earn the best possible grades in order to get the highest paying job. But hey—most of these people will make great money in careers like investment banking. Mission accomplished, right?

Maybe. But…

What if you pursued the thing that interests you the most…as your career?
What if work could be a source of happiness?
What if you could feel like your work is the very reason you exist?

Too many of my peers are discarding, or never discover, their passion in life. They’re playing the academic game: trying to optimize their outcome by earning good grades. It doesn’t matter if your job interests you—just do it well and make a lot of money.

Unfortunately, many educational institutions encourage this behavior by treating grades as incentives. As early as elementary school, my parents incentivized good grades by rewarding me with allowances and video games when I brought home A’s. When I reached high school the incentive for maintaining a high GPA changed—now the goal was to get into a good college. But after I got into that great school, I started to fall off the track. Suddenly it was junior year and I found myself pursuing a major I hated. I stopped caring, stopped going to classes—I didn’t want to play the academic game anymore.

I took a step back from the rat race and thought about what makes me tick. What I found was simple: I enjoy creating. Whether through design, programming, or writing, I find fulfillment in bringing new objects into the world. To that end, I started creating Web applications on the side, began writing about design, and sought out freelance clients that gave me more creative freedom.

I called these “side projects”. But in reality, school was the side project.

When I started looking for a job last year, my GPA was in the toilet. But I had a portfolio filled with self-started design projects, a blog with my ideas, and an enthusiasm for the subject of design. I had no problem getting great job offers despite my bad grades.

You’re the only person who decides how you’re going to spend your life, so invest the time to discover your passion. Don’t accept the path laid out before you by others—just figure out what you enjoy doing and do it.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life”
—Steve Jobs

Photo by sgis under Creative Commons

WISER up for a Webby

Rob Goodlatte — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 00:08:46 +0000

I’m extremely proud to announce that the site I built for WISER has been nominated for Best Student Website in the 2008 Webby Awards. This not only provides me with a great sense of validation, but more importantly highlights the fantastic work and mission of WISER.

The students behind WISER are an incredibly inspiring bunch—not because their mission of education and equality is so lofty, but because they’re actually making it happen. They’ve already raised over half a million dollars to build the first boarding school for girls in Muhuru Bay, which is scheduled to open next year.

As a nominee, the WISER site is also up for a People’s Voice award in the student category. I would really appreciate if you voted at http://pv.webbyawards.com/.

The Paradox of Perfectionism

Rob Goodlatte — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 18:26:46 +0000

Stop being a perfectionist—just throw it out there and see what happens. It’s simple advice, but something that I’ve been ignoring for too long. Not every blog post will be your opus, not every design will be your masterpiece. Stressing over every detail and clinging onto the project until it’s “perfect” only constructs a barrier in your creative process.

Moreover, the perfectionist’s creative process is so tiresome that he or she will lose motivation fast. If each blog post takes three hours to be written, formatted, and thought-out perfectly, you’ll publish less often and you’ll discard a lot of ideas that could’ve been great. This is the paradox of perfectionism: your best work is produced when you’re not striving towards perfection. Being a perfectionist is so de-motivating that you’ll wind up producing less and never create the masterpiece that realizes your full creative potential.

Your best work is produced when you’re not striving towards perfection

This is not to say you should lower your standards towards quality. Just lower your resistance towards putting your work out there, even if it’s not fully realized. To that end, try to remove other barriers towards creating. Figure out what part of your process takes too long and find a way to reduce that time or cut it entirely. Then you’ve got more time to spend on the essential elements of a project, and you’re not too worn out to continue onto the next project.

Thanks to Bryan Veloso for motivating me to write this post.

Photo by brentbat under Creative Commons

California Here We Come

Rob Goodlatte — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 20:07:59 +0000

In about a month I’ll be moving to Palo Alto—land of buzzwords, venture capitalists, bubbles, and most important: opportunity. After graduation this May I’ll be packing my bags and traveling 2,800 miles to join my forty-niner friends on the left coast.

I’m excited to announce that I will be joining Facebook’s product design team in June. Speaking of opportunity: this is a company that is changing socialization and the way people communicate and a product that isn’t afraid to re-invent itself along the way. The product design team is at the core of this: the team designs and builds new features for Facebook’s audience of millions. I’ll be diving right into the deep end, so I’m both excited and nervous about this new chapter in my life.

I had several options for my post-college career, but Facebook won me over with a few factors:

Design Process:

Facebook’s notion of design is as holistic as my own. Design is not about decoration but problem solving. As such, product designers are given far more responsibility over their projects than at other companies I considered. At Facebook, product designers craft whole solutions to problems—from concept, to interface, to implementation.

Code Speaks:

If you’ve got a great idea at Facebook you don’t have to persuade management to give you the green light—just build it and let the code speak for you.

The People:

I’ll be working alongside the most talented people in the business, who also happen to be cool—an amazing coincidence. I had a great time hanging out (read: getting drunk) with some of the product design crew at SXSW and can’t wait to work with them in June.

And yes, I do enjoy playing that song when traveling to CA. Yep, I’m a dork.

Photo by SlightlyNorth under Creative Commons

A Golden Age for Independent Developers

Rob Goodlatte — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 12:00:29 +0000

Apple’s new iPhone SDK will change the cell phone game. It’s hard not to draw parallels to the introduction of the Apple II and the Mac—we’re seeing the birth of a new mass-market platform, potentially even larger than the desktop software market.

The early days of the PC were a great time for independent software developers. Software wasn’t bloated, and it was feasible for one individual to release an app critical to the platform. Times have changed. Solving interesting desktop software problems routinely requires large development teams, and widely distributing independent for-profit desktop software can be tough to impossible…

The Web solves the distribution problem, to a degree. Software distribution is now free, but attracting attention remains difficult. Customers have to stumble across your website, and there’s no uniform way of finding your app amongst a sea of competitors.

Two recent platforms are changing the landscape of software development. The first is Facebook. Facebook solves both the distribution and the marketing problem by allowing applications to spread virally through the news feed, profile boxes, and notifications. And the system is policed well enough to create a true meritocracy—the interesting, sticky, and well-produced applications spread rapidly while spammy and useless applications falter.

Facebook applications must be simple enough for potential installees to quickly “get” what the application is about, so the simple apps often find the most success. This makes Facebook a dream-come-true for independent software developers. An indie developer can bang out an application over a weekend and have a million users within a week. And thanks to caching provided by Facebook, complementary servers from Joyent, and even generous venture funding, the economic hit to trying your hand at Facebook development is effectively zero.

The new iPhone SDK is the newest game-changer on the block for independent developers. Powerful APIs do much of the difficult work for you, leaving you to focus on the core functionality of your app. And since this is mobile, that core functionality must be tightly focused and simple. We’ll see many more single-serving apps that bloated all-encompassing software suites—that’s a great thing for indie developers.

The iPhone SDK solves the distribution problem as well, but not as well as Facebook Platform. An application directory is great, but directories can’t distribute apps as efficiently as socially-enabled distribution allows. If, for instance, Apple recommended applications based on apps your contacts use, rapid person-to-person distribution of apps would accelerate distribution for great applications.

Yet Apple’s decision to handle billing and credit card processing solves the biggest problem of them all—how do I make money on this? Billing is the last big barrier indie developers face, and is often the one that scares us away. Apple is putting everyone on a level playing field by controlling the billing process. There are no excuses left for not writing that killer app you’ve had in mind.

I couldn’t be more excited about the iPhone SDK. I’m learning Objective C for the sole purpose of building iPhone apps, and I encourage any designer/developer to do the same. This will be the next software gold rush. The iPhone SDK, along with Facebook Platform will usher in a golden age for indie developers.

Photo by Mugley under Creative Commons

Introducing StrawPoll

Rob Goodlatte — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 13:51:14 +0000

Today I’m pleased to introduce StrawPoll, a tiny polling application for Twitter. The premise is simple: each day, we ask an interesting question. Reply to strawpoll and tell us why you voted the way you did. StrawPoll tallies the votes and displays the most recent reasons for each response. To get started, all you need to do is sign into Twitter and start following strawpoll.

For example, today’s question is “Better superpower: flight (1) or invisibility (2)?”. To answer, simply reply to @strawpoll with a message like:

@strawpoll flight because you could travel anywhere for free

That is, your reply must be formatted like “@strawpoll ”, where is one word or number, and your reason can be as long as you’d like (less than 140 characters of course).

The application was designed and developed by myself and Dan Romero over this past weekend. For those interested, some of the illustrations were created by John Woodcock for iStockPhoto. The site only works in modern browsers that support transparent PNGs and Javascript (that means no IE6!).

Check it out at StrawPollNow.com and be sure to follow strawpoll on Twitter.