Cameron Moll's Blog, page 28

Don't Touch the Screen

Don't Touch the Screen:

Billed as "a podcast for webnerds with kids," Charlie Park explores a side of web development life that we rarely discuss: what those of us with families do the other 16 hours of the day.

I'm fortunate to have been the inaugural guest, and you can listen to audio from the interview here. (Pardon my rambling the first 7 minutes, I won't be offended if you need to skip ahead.)

Charlie is also co-hosting a session at SXSW 2011 with Joshua Porter, "The Life of the Startup Parent," on Friday, March 11th at 2:00 PM.

Unit Interactive's 4½-Day Workweek

Unit Interactive's 4½-Day Workweek:

Andy Rutledge, writing about his firm's four-and-a-half day workweek:

We have rules for Fridays. No project launches, no discovery meetings, in fact no meetings of any kind. Friday is when the pressure valve is opened, not tightened. Working smartly, most of our project work is accomplished in just four days. There are exceptions, but Friday half-days here are often when folks use the structure of office time to work on personal projects, to write articles or blog posts, or to catch up on things left behind by the sometimes overly-structured activities of the work week.

The Four-Day Workweek

There's something not generally mentioned by those advocating a four-day workweek: tuning out the rest of the world on day five.

Lots of us webbies have either promoted the idea of a four-day workweek, or have sought after it, or both. Not a 4/10 workweek, but four days of normal working time and three days of non-working time. Carsonified was one of the first to promote the idea, and recently Ryan Carson wrote once again on the topic. 37signals joined in a little later. And of course, there's the four-hour workweek, which — let's be honest — turns out to be pretty ridiculous if you've read the book.

For about 6 months now I've been working a four-and-a-half day workweek. Monday through Thursday Suzanne homeschools our four sons. Then, most Fridays I take them for a half-day and teach them material that usually includes Spanish, music, sports, and creative activities. (We're currently building oatmeal box pinhole cameras for our creative activity. HTML 101 is up next.)

Here's what's challenging about the fifth day: Unlike holidays or weekends where you can rest knowing much of the working world and those in your social circle are also at rest, on Fridays nearly everyone you know continues to blog, tweet, discover, research, promote, and connect. Whatever you intended to fill your time with on that fifth day is, inevitably, at odds with feeling left behind and out of the loop.

I have no problem turning off Twitter on the weekends, for example. But I struggle to do the same on Fridays. Scanning the online activity of other four-day advocates suggests they may struggle, too. (Or they may simply chose not to disconnect.)

Is the inability to tune out enough to negate a four-day work week? No. Working only four days definitely has positive gains. Is the inability to tune out a bad thing? Not necessarily. I just think we're not being candid about it.

I needn't offer any advice for tuning out on day five. It's no different than tuning out and focusing during any other day, workday or not. Just be prepared to wrestle with this when adopting a four-day workweek.

That is all.

Pictogram Movie Posters by Viktor Hertz

Pictogram Movie Posters by Viktor Hertz:

These are just terrific. From the photoset page:

These are currently not available as prints, but if enough people show interest, maybe we can sort it out.

Viktor, let's sort it out.

Open Source Ampersands

Open Source Ampersands:

Single-character webfont kits that contain, you guessed it, only ampersands. The fonts are from the Google Web Fonts Directory and were packaged by Mark Pilgrim with the help of Font Squirrel's @Font-Face Generator.

Method & Craft

Method & Craft:

The About page summarizes this new site by Phil Coffman, Noah Stokes, and Trent Walton quite nicely:

We like to think of Method and Craft as the DVD extras of design: the stories behind the work, who made it, how they did it, and the techniques people have developed throughout their professional career.

Love the design. Wish I'd thought of the name.

Intel Core i5 Promo: The Chase

Intel Core i5 Promo: The Chase:

Not sure how I missed this when it debuted 2 months ago. It's brilliantly targeted at technophiles, featuring an extended chase scene across all kinds of media and mediums.

Matchboox

Matchboox:

Books that come packaged inside a matchbox.

/via @insideoutmag

Moleskine PSD

Moleskine PSD:

Worth downloading (free) if merely to see how the image was created, layer by layer. Be warned, it's a pretty complex, processor-intense piece.

Vacant

Vacant:

I like this stencil typeface by Mike Jarboe. A lot. I don't know what I'd use it for, but then I've said that about a lot of things I ended up using.