Is there a place for permanency on the web? If you walk into any library, you’ll find books older than any computer. There are archives of newspapers that go back decades. We have access to photos as old as the art of photography. There’s some sense of permanence with the archiving of these items. Everything […]
Author Archives: Michael Arestad
On being a friggin cyber designer
I live in mild terror of a single question. It usually crops up when I meet someone for the first time. It’s not because the question is a difficult one for most people. In fact, it’s one many people enjoy answering. What do you do? Well, shit. I guess it’s time for me to attempt […]
The shape of WordPress shapes the web
I’ve been thinking a little about the design of PowerPoint, WordPress, and WordPress.com lately. More specifically, I’ve been thinking about Edward Tufte’s criticism of how the design of the PowerPoint software is to blame for the Challenger disaster. I saw Edward Tufte speak about information design a few years ago and one of the points […]
Designing with OSS: Getting started
As few months ago, I decided to make an effort to see how much of my job I can do using only OSS (Open Source Software). I wanted to share my experience so far and welcome any tips/help you can share with me. This first post is about how I got started with a new […]
WordPress commit
This weekend, a whole new set of committers were announced at the first ever WordCamp US. I was among those #blessed with commit. What the heck is commit? For those of you who don’t hang around making Internet all day, commit is just a term for the ability to send code somewhere. In this case, it […]
WordPress Dark Admin concept
I spent a couple evenings a week or so working on an updated design for WordPress. I just wanted to see where I could go with it. There’s no current plan to implement it (other than maybe spinning up another MP6 and fiddling with things). It’s far from feature complete, but I think it’s at a […]
How to unfuck permissions
When working with npm (Node Package Manager), I picked up the horrible habit of throwing a sudo in front of npm install or npm up. Usually, I only did it when I got an error. This is bad. It becomes a headache at some point. Here’s how to unfuck the permissions of the folder: Do […]
Why I’m a Designer Part 1.5: Design Emergencies | alternatekev
“Users hate the new placement of the button for the feature we shipped last week. No one can figure out where to find it and they’re throwing bricks through our windows.” Desktop Software Designer: “We can hide under our desks until the next release literally ships to physical stores 12 months from now. People will […]
Lessons learned from my quadcopter
I’ve always kinda wanted a drone, but assumed they were all big and crazy expensive. I didn’t want to fork over that kind of cash on something I know I’d crash immediately. A little over a week ago I purchased my first drone, the Hubsan X4, for $36 thanks to some encouragement from a […]
Adios Vagrant, hello again MAMP (Pro)
I’ve been using VVV (Varying Vagrant Vagrants) for a bit over a year now with a few helper scripts for WordPress development primarily, but alas it’s time to end our relationship. The upkeep time isn’t worth it. It’s caused my computer to crash on a few occasions now. I’m not saying it’s bad by any […]