Using a combination of Web programming technologies, including Python, Applescript, Perl, PHP, and MySQL, Dan Vine has come up with the ultimately cool (and so far free) online tool that shows the benefits of browsing websites on OS X (hint: it’s a pleasure). For the next 24 hours, here’s a link to what Deckchairs on the Titanic look like.

It’s not what you think. I’ve been writing out by hand the addresses of all my clients, colleagues, friends, vendors, and other buddies on envelopes. I’m sending out a few hundred MANOVERBOARD 2004 Calendars (as I do every year now) and I should have produced a nice database for the project instead of tying my hand up in knots.
Alas, if you’d like to receive one of these beautiful calendars, please email me with your address and how many you’d like (under 3 per customer please) and I’ll send it out to you pronto.
Some observations:
1. People do not include their snail mail addresses on their website if they are sole proprietors. MANOVERBOARD doesn’t either, at least right now.
2. What does one call “snail mail addresses” without calling it that? What were they called before email?
3. I know that typing has played a “hand” in my hand hurting from writing.
4. Printed calendars are still very cool. If you’d like to send me yours, please use the above link. Thank you.

Maybe it’s just me but is anybody else having a hard time working right now? All I hear all day is Christmas music and all I see are large blow-up snowmen and all I feel is cold and chill wind. Helicopters are flying over head constantly. My brain feels crashed out in a land located somewhere between The Wiggles and Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.
Oh yeah, we ditched our TV.

The whole family has a bit of a cold. The whole extended family has something. That’s not interesting.
What is are some are some of the blogs I’ve noticed recently, which are really nicely designed. Take a look?
Jamie Oliver, chef guy
Karlotta, pretty
Blog for America, okay design with good blog links
Raelity Bytes, dig deep with this one

I’m very happy to announce that, after about six weeks of redesign, MANOVERBOARD.com is now relaunched.
Unless you have an extremely good eye, you won’t notice much of a difference, which was the entire point of the exercise. The new site, which features new client case studies, new copy, and slightly updated navigation is done entirely without tables in XHTML and CSS.
What does this mean if you’re not a Web designer? It means the site is available to those with visual and hearing disabilities. It means that the entire site is built with structural markup so PDAs and cell phones can see the site easily. It means that the site loads in about 1/2 the time as it did before. It means that it adheres to advancing Web standards and it is very easily managed and updated.
Much thanks go to Michael Barrish for his patient and brilliant XHTML/CSS assistance.

We put up the new homepage for the Barneys New York site, which looks exactingly fresh, outrageous, mischievous, and maudlin.
When I used to paint , I worked often with circus imagery, with the disorienting glare of lights and sad carnival delight, and to this day, I’m still strongly attached to the beauty of circus arcania. But I never actually want to go to the circus ever again.

Since I was about 5 years old, I’ve been slowly collecting stamps. The vast majority are American and for the past 10 years, I’ve only been collecting the Commerative Stamp Yearbooks that the United States Postal Service issues each year. This year USPS released its 2003 book early, which I don’t understand because it’s now November 4 and it made me wonder if I’m missing the Christmas-time stamps. (The latter has always been problematic for me.)
Some observations:
1 The LOVE stamps are bright and boring.
2. The most beautiful stamps of 2003 are from the American Filmmaking: Behind the Scenes series. Designed by Ethel Kessler, these black and white, square stamps depict, using a surrealist pastiche, the production processes that go into making images move.
3. I can’t believe the U.S. Government approved a Cesar E. Chavez stamp. This did not get released at my local Post Office.
4. The First Flight stamp, recaling Orville and Wilbur Wright’s flight 100 (Kitty Hawk was on December 17, 1903!!) years ago, is quite refined, lovely, even. I’m still shocked that we’ve only been flying for one century.
5. There is a stamp honoring the Korean War Memorial. I always thought this realistic sculpture in Washington was treacly but the stamp makes it look very cinematic, moving even.
6. The stamp of Audrey Heburn does not do her justice. Her neck is very long, however.

I know that there are web designers out there that live to be validated by the World Wide Web Consortium, which inelegantly provides standards for web developers, browser manufacturers, and others to help ensure a relatively democratically visible Internet. I’m all for it! Standards is small news to the advanced web designer, but for most people the W3C may appear less than useless and I’m all for promoting its “interoperable technologies.”
Today I can say that this here site is fully XHTML 1.0 Transitional and CSS2 Validated. What this says is that the site upholds the somewhat strict standards being developed for the Web and that the presentation of the site (its colors and effects) are separate from its content (the headlines, graphics, and text). It also means the visually and aurally challenged have a shot at reading the site. Find out more by clicking on those little validating links at the bottom left of this page.

The redesign is getting there. At least it’s not completely ugly.
I’ve purchased the new Lost in Translation soundtrack today at Virgin Records, which seemed an apropos place to buy it, as I never understood why a media store would be marketed as “Virgin” — it’s not funny and it’s not a great name. Perhaps it’s a British neologism? In any case, I purchased it just to have the new Kevin Shields tracks on it; Mr. Shields is one of my all-time favorite early 90s musicmen, and the main composter of the once-great My Blood Valentine. He’s a Brit and yes, it’s nice to have him back, after a million rumors about MBV’s “new album” over the past ten years.