Not too long ago, I started making websites profesionally. After a lot of toiling, I discovered the key to making sexy websites: read, read, read! I always do my best work after having read many design blogs and articles, so I want to share the wealth with y’all (and thus hopefully make your learning curve more shallow).

While there is a trend of specialization developing in other industries, it seems that the web design and design industry favors those who have broader abilities (nevertheless, this is a debate they’re having in the financial world as well). For this reason, I try to keep constant tabs on the latest in general graphic design, branding, writing, and various programming technologies that are relevant to the web. Reflecting that blend, here are (IMHO) the most important websites that beginning web designers/web developers should thoroughly browse:

Greenies: For those just starting out

• Web design from scratch - The BEST place to start if you’re just beginning to make professional websites. This site has a wide variety of topics, including the entire design process, graphics, and branding.
• W3Schools - Check out their HTML and CSS tutorials in parallel with Web design from scratch (knowledge of HTML and CSS is super important because it gives you complete, pixel-by-pixel control over your designs). W3Schools’ tutorials give you really straightforward explanations and examples, and beat the pants off of reading huge books since they convey their information concisely.

The (barely?) Initiated: beyond the basics

Graphics Creation

• You Suck at Photoshop - You need some graphics skills to make sexy websites, and Photoshop is usually the weapon of choice for graphics work. This link is geared towards beginners (and is hilarious).
• PSDTUTS - More advanced tutorials for when you stop sucking at Photoshop

Logo Blogs

• Logodesignlove
• Logolog

Branding Blogs

• Ideas on ideas
• Brand New

Design

• CSS Remix - For inspiration from CSS-based designs
• Toxel - General creative design inspiration (covers creativity in the virtual and physical realms)
• Design Meltdown - A site focusing on web design
• Some designers include description and rationale behind projects in their portfolios (like Mark Boulton). These can be pretty useful to go through.

General

• A List Apart - A very popular website “for people who make websites,” with an emphasis on code.
• NETTUTS - From the same people who brought you PSDTUTS, these guys give you a lot of tips on more advanced things you can do with HTML, CSS, etc.
• Freelance Switch - About the business of being a freelance designer, writer, illustrator, farmer, or whateverer.

How to keep up without perpetually having 20 Firefox tabs open

These resources are by no means an exhaustive list, but are certainly good starting points. If you haven’t set up an RSS feed reader yet, you should strongly consider it - it’s the easiest way to be in the loop on all of these websites (I use Google Reader). Of course, there’s way too much good stuff on the web about making websites, so BEWARE: you may become info-whelmed.

If you know of some good sites that I’ve left off my list, drop a comment and help us all!

In the New York Times article, “It’s a Flat World, After All,” Thomas L. Friedman writes:

“These are some of the reasons that Bill Gates, the Microsoft chairman, warned the governors’ conference in a Feb. 26 speech that American high-school education is “obsolete.” As Gates put it: “When I compare our high schools to what I see when I’m traveling abroad, I am terrified for our work force of tomorrow. In math and science, our fourth graders are among the top students in the world. By eighth grade, they’re in the middle of the pack. By 12th grade, U.S. students are scoring near the bottom of all industrialized nations. . . . The percentage of a population with a college degree is important, but so are sheer numbers. In 2001, India graduated almost a million more students from college than the United States did. China graduates twice as many students with bachelor’s degrees as the U.S., and they have six times as many graduates majoring in engineering. In the international competition to have the biggest and best supply of knowledge workers, America is falling behind.

“We need to get going immediately. It takes 15 years to train a good engineer, because, ladies and gentlemen, this really is rocket science. So parents, throw away the Game Boy, turn off the television and get your kids to work. There is no sugar-coating this: in a flat world, every individual is going to have to run a little faster if he or she wants to advance his or her standard of living.” 

While I agree with Friedman about the world’s flatness and the danger of America becoming mediocre, I disagree with his message that we must work harder. Don’t get me wrong — I’m not afraid of hard work. My objection lies in the fact that Mr. Friedman’s recommendation reflects our society’s short-term mentality that working “harder” (by studying for more hours, sleeping less, etc.) will get us ahead; what he critically neglects to discuss is the consequences of “working harder”: the increased stress and drastic decrease of quality of life that is becoming a reality for today’s students.Instead of changing how hard we work, we must totally overhaul our education system so that it encourages interdisciplinary approaches to solving problems, as well as creative thought and reasoning. Right now, Bill Gates is right – science and math education is obsolete in this country. These subjects need to be taught in a more practical manner if this country wants to increase production of scientists and engineers! The main problem with science education today is that it leaves kids wondering, “so what? why should I care?” (I certainly felt this way throughout much of the coursework for my chemistry degree at Boston University.) It’s pedantic to the point of disgust. School should be just as fun as picking up the Game Boy, so fixing the education system will automatically draw kids away from playing games excessively.

Science in high schools and undergraduate universities is no longer empirical. It is textbook-based. Even in the laboratory for science classes, there is little room for tinkering and scientific adventure because everything is dictated by a stifling lab manual procedure that doesn’t communicate the importance of the particular experiment being conducted. The exception is independent research projects, which only a fraction of science students actually pursue; and that too, you usually start it late in your undergraduate career. Before many science students even reach that point, they leave because they were not given any opportunity to apply what they learned in class to a real scientific problem.

Additionally, the humanities cannot be forgotten – as the world becomes flat, appreciation for humankind is vaporizing. It’s okay that we need to work harder to produce more scientists and engineers to compete in the world, but not at the cost of our human element. Scientists and engineers are notorious for their apathy towards language, literature, and the rest of that “fluff.” What they miss is the fact that the humanities help you learn how to interact and communicate with your society — a skill that is important regardless of your career path. Not only that, but you develop an appreciation for people as individuals (in practical terms, your reasoning and ability to analyze a person’s character are strengthened). We have to get away from our divisions of study into individual subjects, and present an interdisciplinary approach to learning science – perhaps pairing biology with poetry, or engineering with music. These approaches will not only increase the retention rate of science and engineering majors, and allow students to enjoy science more, but will also allow them to appreciate science within the broader human context from which it originated. THAT will help interest more into science and engineering; not throwing away the game boy, or “working harder.” If science students are going to be spending so much time to learn all that is necessary to become scientists, their educators need to make it worth their efforts and sacrifices.

Adapting to a flattened, globalized world is a bigger problem that transcends the lack of parental guidance: the root lies in a flawed and impractical education system.

Many of us frequently leave our computers on overnight for many reasons: the convenience of not having to wait for our computer to start in the morning, the backup program that runs in the wee hours, or the hope that your dream girl (or guy) will send you an IM while you’re dreaming. But how much does this luxury cost? To answer this, I did a little calculation:

• My laptop’s adapter is 65 Watts (0.065 kW)
• If you leave your computer on overnight for 9 hours or so, you’re consuming 0.065 kW * 9 hours = 0.585 kWh (kilowatt-hours)
• The electric company we use charges 15.5 cents/kWh. At this rate, leaving your computer on at night costs 0.585 kWh * 15.5 cents/kWh = 9.07 cents a night
• To put this in perspective, that’s $2.81/mo or $33.11/yr

So, it costs you roughly 2 dine-out meals a year to keep your computer running overnight. I have a suspicion that the monitors consume the most power, as one of our monitors uses 55W (maximum). If you need to leave your computer on, at least give the environment some lovin’ and shut off the screen :).

What makes the strawberries in Stonyfield’s Strawberry yogurt have a dull red color, rather than the vibrant, intense red found in regular strawberry yogurt like Dannon? The answer appears to be the absence of a common yogurt food coloring, carmine, derived from ground-up beetles. Sure, this fact might make you freak out, but hey — if you’ve been eating it all along and nothing has happened to you, why does this knowledge change anything? They probably use minute amounts of carmine anyways!
The article I’ve linked is from 2004, but the ingredient still seems to be current — the last time I went to the store, I did find some carmine in Yoplait’s Strawberry Yogurt.

I just watched Chak De, a newly released Bollywood movie about the women’s national Indian field hockey team. Usually, I really dislike watching Hindi movies because most of the ones I’ve seen have been awfully cheesy and were poor imitations of film from Hollywood. But, I liked this one quite a bit. Admittedly, it had some cheesy things - e.g. the exaggeration of how much India hated the main character for losing the field hockey World Cup for India; and how much the girls on India’s team fought among themselves.

The movie is about a fictitious Indian field hockey player, Kabir Khan, the Indian field hockey team’s captain. Long story short, Indian fans and media blame Kabir for India’s loss in the field hockey World Cup. The movie focuses on how Kabir tries to win back respect from India by coaching the women’s national field hockey team into a victorious one. On the whole, I really liked it for these reasons:

1. A serious look at women in Indian society – women coming from more traditional Indian families don’t have the same freedoms women in American society do. Though the belittling of Indian women was exaggerated in the film, Chak De addressed the important cultural issue of women’s roles and empowerment in Indian society. The field hockey team was the vehicle for this examination, as the women on the team are constantly marginalized and left unsupported by their families and loved ones – all because they’re on the women’s field hockey team, and that nobody takes women’s field hockey seriously.
2. An attempt to curtail Hindu aversion to Muslims – Kabir is a Muslim who lives in India. He is intensely nationalistic, and seriously devotes himself to the women’s team out of love for his country, and to help women gain respect in Indian society. By making such a character a Muslim, the writers of this movie seem to be trying to soften anti-Muslim sentiments brought about by the bad blood between India and Pakistan. This isn’t the only time I’ve seen something like this though – Zee TV’s SaReGaMaPa, a show similar to American Idol, has some Pakistani contestants who were given the opportunity to discuss the fact that the only reason there are hostilities between Indian and Pakistani people is because of the peoples’ respective [corrupt] governments. There is no reason why Indian and Pakistani civilians can’t get along, he said.
3. Shahrukh Khan’s acting - Khan played the women’s field hockey coach very well. He (almost) believably whipped the team in shape because of the “hard-ass” quality enshrined in his character. Also, he delivered some great pep talks to the team, some of which used the context of his past (i.e., regarding his role in “making” the men’s team lose the World Cup seven years prior) very powerfully.