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The longer you work at creating things, whether it's software, websites, essays or paintings, the greater the odds you'll hit a day where you don't feel like doing it anymore. Up until then, you may have heard others describe burnout, but you just shrugged it off as superstition, or perhaps believed yourself immune. But the day it hits you, the world seems suddenly grey. What was once fun and challenging feel stupid and annoying. Or perhaps the things that used to motivate or move you don't resonate at all. You feel nothing for them. It all just seems like so much more crap to deal with. If this sounds familiar, or you fear that this day is in your future, this essay is for you.

In my experience, what most people consider to be their "best" people are often the root of most problems. It's the difference between troubleshooters and troublepreventors.

Let me explain...

Here's an issue thats really bugged me as a web developer for so long. But not only me. You'll find numerous instances of where developers have ranted and criticised the diversity of rendering engines that are available. IE5, IE6, IE7, Firefox, Safari, Opera and Netscape are the main ones that come to mind, and each one is uniquely different. Sure, thats fine when it comes to functionality and UI of the program, but does it also have to extend to the way Hyper Text Markup Language is rendered in each browser?

There are many reasons to let geeks work the way they want to work. Today they work in every industry. They are the knowledge base, blood and sweat equity of many businesses. They work harder than most. They work longer than most. Their job isn't a separate "thing they do" while they look forward to going home and relaxing. Geeks *live* what they do. They eat, sleep and breathe it. They are your systems administrators, your IT team, your programmers, your web developers, your designers... and sometimes even your customer service and sales people. Anyone who understands how to leverage todays technology to increase intelligence, productivity and efficiency; anyone who stays up nights working to get better at what they do; anyone whose job is their life - is a geek. These are the most important asset your company has. For this reason, its important to give geeks what they want. Best part is, if you do, they most likely will not leave your company to work for someone who will.

There, I said it, now we have to live with it.

For those of you who know me, you know that I am a man of my word. I am not a good person, but I am honest and virtuous. Maybe, kinda and sorta don't exist in my vocabulary, and that's sorta one of my best features. Maybe it's why I'm kinda the best at what I do? Entirely possible.

Sometimes it takes a real man to listen to someone's pain. I get to do it on a daily basis, oftentimes not by my own admission. Today's life-threatening terrorist force comes not from the Middle East, but from your very own computer screen. It's called Facebook, and it's going to ruin your life - if it hasn't already.

I'll explain how Facebook works in the most honest terms you'll come across:

So as you might see to the left; if you have an iSight, you can see that it was turned on and can be viewed remotely locally. All i am doing is displaying it back to you but What could someone else do with this? It is actually very simple to do. If you have the development tools installed you open up the Quartz Composer, create a video input, and a billboard. Then you just drag a line from the video input to the image option on the billboard.

Export it to a QuickTime movie and embed it into your page. I am going to research this a bit more over the next few days to find out if there is a way to make your iSight block this sort of connection attempt.

Adobe - Came from name of the river Adobe Creek that ran behind the house of founder John Warnock.

Apache - It got its name because its founders got started by applying patches to code written for NCSA's httpd daemon. The result was 'A PAtCHy' server - thus, the name Apache.

Like everyone else, I grabbed the 2.0 release of Firefox yesterday. I won't regurgitate all the neat stuff about it, but I will point out this one very useful feature: if you accidentally close a tab you can bring it back from the netherworld by hitting Shift+Cmd+T (on a Mac) or Shift+Ctrl+T (on Windows).

Gmail has an interesting quirk where you can add a plus sign (+) after your Gmail address, and it'll still get to your inbox. It's called plus-addressing, and it essentially gives you an unlimited number of e-mail addresses to play with. Here's how it works: say your address is theplayground@gmail.com, and you want to automatically label all work e-mails. Add a plus sign and a phrase to make it theplayground+work@gmail.com and set up a filter to label it work (to access your filters go to Settings->Filters and create a filter for messages addressed to theplayground+work@gmail.com. Then add the label work).

You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for as long as you live. How you take care of it or fail to take care of it can make an enormous difference in the quality of your life.

Most of designers have an ability to notice sites with good design or at least site's parts which they like. Probably some of them want to save those sites for future when they'll need some sort of inspiration. There are different ways to do that.

Now, I should say that I believe in Web standards, of which validation is only part and an often over-emphasised part; but validation is still important for standards, and the things I've seen written against it are rather silly.

I have often thought about how I work with people, and how people work with me. My work is a bit odd, and I'm a bit odd and people don't always know what to expect.

So here's a guide to what you need to know before working with me (in the context of me doing interface design and information architecture work for a project):

because...

• One mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life. (Michael Sinz)
• Once you get started, you'll only stop because you're exhausted.
• It often takes another experienced person to really appreciate what you're doing.
• Conversely, there's some odd people who pride themselves on their lack of experience.

A television/gaming rating system is a method of giving viewers an idea of the suitability of a television/gaming program for children and/or adults.

United States

The TV Parental Guidelines system was introduced on January 1, 1997 in the United States in response to public complaints of increasingly explicit sexual content, graphic violence and strong profanity in television programs. It was established by the Federal Communications Commission as a voluntary-participation system, with ratings to be determined by the individually-participating broadcast and cable networks. It was specifically designed to be used with the V-chip, which was mandated to be built into all television sets manufactured after 2000, but the guidelines themselves have no legal force.