Personal Entries ~
Get the Fear Out
Our doorbell rang at 10:00 last night. Ashley and I looked at each other. “That’s weird, who in the world would be at our door this late?” I said. We’re not the type to have people over at all hours of the night. Since most of our friends have kids now, everyone packs up at 8 or so to get home before the tantrums begin. But either way, no one shows up on our doorstep this time of night.
I went …
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Being a Good Neighbor
I’ll admit it. I’m not really a social person. We’ve lived in our neighborhood almost 6 years and I can count the number of times we’ve talked to our neighbors on my hand. And by talk I mean had a full conversation. So yeah, not a lot.
Several weeks ago we put our house on the market. Too many kids, not enough rooms; you know the drill. We’ve outgrown this place, unfortunately. And in preparation to sell it, we needed to finish replacing all the doors and trim we had started …
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DesignersMusic.com: Find & Share Great Music with Other Designers
First off, let me say that we're psyched to finally be able to share this project with you. We believe that side projects don't work unless you're passionate about them. Well, guess what? We love music and we love design. They go hand in hand, really. So we decided that there should be a place where designers can find new music recommended by other designers: DesignersMusic
Go play with it now …
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Challenging the Status Quo
Felt like a poem of sorts today. Enjoy:
Don’t give up. Don’t give in. Don’t subdue that voice in your head that keeps telling you to ask “why” and “how” and “if.”
We’re the disrupters, the button pushers and the strange ones who don’t take “It’s always been this way” for an answer. Because maybe – just maybe, there’s a better way.
And if we don’t keep pushing to find that better way, who will?
Don’t give up. Don’t give in. And don’t ever stop challenging the status quo.
Inspired …
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Keep Trying to Get Better
I would guess that 90% of the people you meet deal with the same problems they’ve dealt with their whole life. Maybe they’re workaholics (lifting my own hand). Maybe they have anger issues. Maybe they’re lazy or maybe they lack self esteem.
We all have personality traits and tendencies that we’re not proud of, but that’s no excuse to accept them.
The first step is admitting you have a problem, right? Or maybe in this case becoming aware that you need to change something. Depending on what the problem …
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Dirty Spy Rock! - Free Music
One night, as I sat in the office/studio, I was overcome with the desire to write a song. A spy song. I grabbed my guitar and began to pound out the sneakiest riffs and rhythms I could muster. Yes, yes, this would do.
If I were a spy this music would play every time I was chasing a car around the winding Swiss mountain roads, or single handedly besting the brutish thugs of my arch nemesis.
Spy dialog motto: it doesn’t matter what you say as long as you sound cool …
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Do We Serve Ourselves or Our Clients?
I fired one of our first clients last week. It was messy and no fun for everyone involved. I also managed to get a lecture from the president of that company on how to run my business and better serve the needs of my clients.
While the initial reaction for any of us would probably be thoughts of a Chuck Norris roundhouse to the face (in slow motion, of course), the whole incident made me think hard about what 47m is at it's core, and what it truly means to serve …
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Dear Small Businesses: Some Advice
I would wager that the majority of web designers end up doing work for small to medium-sized businesses. And I'm sure we all have a fantastic story of how ludicrous they can be sometimes. After a few "interesting" experiences, I've had this one rolling around in me for a while. Small business people; we love you, but pay attention, alright?
We Understand it's Your Baby
If anyone can sympathize with a small business owner it's a small web design shop. We know you busted your tail, working night and day to …
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Speaking at the ExpressionEngine and CodeIgniter Conference
I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be doing a workshop at the ExpressionEngine and CodeIgniter Conference in Leiden, Netherlands October 22-23, 2009. I’m really excited about this trip because 1.) I’ve never been out of the country and 2.) The group of people at this conference are amazing. Honestly, I’m quite humbled by the lineup. How did I get to be invited again? I can’t even list them all here, but include household names …
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Secret Passageways!
This post has nothing to do with web design. In fact, the link I’m about to give you is to a horrible flash driven site. This company specializes in building secret passageways into your house! So, take a break you hardworking web designers/developers/ninjas and check out how you can finally get that secret lair you’ve wanted since you were 9. The staircases are my favorites. What’s yours?
Minimizing Distractions on Your Mac
So this little blog popped up a couple of weeks ago called Minimal Mac. Yeah, yeah Macs are minimal; we all know that right? Steve Jobs hates buttons, blah blah blah. Ok, but how about when you're using them day to day?
As we've become more involved in the community I've been finding myself more and more distracted as of late. I'm trying to work, but there's a new RSS feed I need to read. Or a new email that just came in. Twitter just never stops. Ever. …
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Write it Down
Continuing on our theme of planning and making goals, I want to talk for a minute about why it's important to write things down. I'll be the first to say that I have failed miserably at this over the past year. In my never ending attempt to "de-clutter" my life I've tried to put everything in the computer and rid my desk of all those pesky pieces of paper. Well, I think I may have been wrong on a number of levels. For now we'll focus on why you need to …
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Be Thankful
I've been trying to come up with something to write about for a couple of days now and just realized that there's nothing wrong. If you think about it, we usually write when we're upset about something or when there's a problem we're trying to fix. Maybe we like to vent or rant all the time, but I thought it might be nice to take some time and tell you what's good in my life. Not that my life is better than yours! I'm just finding the good in what I've …
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It’s Hard To Hit A Goal You Don’t Have
Jon and I were talking earlier today about goals and I thought I’d share some of those thoughts with you. Many of us have these vague and vaporous ideas we like to call goals. That’s me included. We call them goals, but really they are just dreams at this point. Why? Because we have no plans to make them reality.
I’m defining a goal this way: “A goal is a desire to achieve a result measurable in concrete terms.”
“I want to see the world.” That’s a dream. “I want …
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Speaking at Front-End Design Conference
It’s official! Mr. Dan Denny (aka webdesignfanboy) is putting together the Front-End Design Conference, a single day event with a focus on content, presentation and behavior.
Not only are we talking about a design conference near the beach, but there are some primo speakers lined up. If you don’t count me, that is! Yes, I’ll be doing a presentation as will Kevin Hale of Wufoo, Fabio Sasso of Zee Design Studio, …
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Annoying: People That Don’t Get Back to Us
Hello and welcome to a new segment on the 47m blog! Annoying: a place where we get to vent about things that really tick us off. I think it will be very therapeutic for everyone!
Today’s topic is “people that don’t get back to us.” We get quite a few job requests that come through our site and I’d say about 30% of them never respond back to us. I don’t understand why. I mean they contacted us first! We’ve just shot them an email back to setup a time to …
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Selfish Sucks
Just a quick thought. I’m in the middle of a rather nasty family emergency where one person has been mind-bogglingly selfish. Like he is the only person in the world selfish. It’s really bad.
I can’t go into details, but I would like to ask you to please take a moment today to think about others and how your actions affect them. You never know how far reaching the effects are. If we all did this everyday, the world just might be a better place.
Bookmesh - Social Networking for Book Lovers
Ever wanted to find friends based on the books they love? Then Bookmesh is the place for you. We’re incredibly excited to announce that it’s finally ready for some beta testers, and you’re invited.
You can make your own collections, write reviews and blogs, send messages and even post your own manuscripts for others to read and rate. It’s really pretty awesome. But of course it’s brand new and needs some testing before it goes public. If you’re interested, post a comment and we’ll …
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Top 10 Tips for Successful Startup Businesses
We're coming up on our second year of calling 47m our full time job so I thought I'd share some things we've learned along the way. I'm attempting to shorten my Top 10 lists...not by number but by content. Otherwise it wouldn't be a Top 10 list now would it? So without further ado, the slimmer Top 10!
1. Don't Go in Debt
Ten years ago you needed a detailed business plan and a hefty loan from a bank to start a business. But web based businesses have changed everything. You …
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Technical Limitations = Your Fault Every Time
I went to Food City to buy some groceries today, tried to slip through the self-checkout because I was in a hurry and guess what they don’t accept there? Their own gift cards. Seriously? So I have to cancel my order and walk 5 steps to a register with a person behind it. And then guess what? I use the exact same credit card processing machine and the cashier never touches my card!
Ok, let’s back up a bit. I have to give them a bit of credit. The self checkout …
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Popular Articles
BestChristianDesign is helping give churches inspiration for their next project. Good call, guys.
Seth Godin reminds us to enjoy and take advantage of the uphills.
Stop announcing your new project. Just do it.
Rock and Roll people, Rock and Roll.
To all you staff designers out there, here’s a link for you. (via @ryanlascano)
Fascinating look into the music business.
Derek Sivers posts some great advice about balancing your life.
Troy McNeil
Things I Said
@ryanirelan Hate that, too. Was hoping it would grow on me but too many panes all over the place. Too much like my desktop :D
I've noticed I'm not noticing my spelling errors. I need more sleep.
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