In an attempt to make more things and become a better <whatever I’m trying at the moment>, I look to inspiration from other smart people. Mike Monteiro’s words this morning struck me as sound advice. Particularly this passage:

“We have more processing power, affordable tools, and combined intelligence right this very minute than at any point in the history of design. We are using it to build shit. It’s time to aim higher. Let’s find problems to solve that actually improve people’s lives. Whether it’s figuring out a better way to access medical records, figuring out how 14 year olds can stop carrying forty pounds of textbooks back and forth to school every day, or a reservation system for the communal rooftop farm in your building, there has got to be something more beneficial to society than the next Facebook clone.”

While it may be a new year, ripe with new opportunities, it’s still the same job. Keep working, better yourself and better your community.

I was curious to find out where it appears and discovered this thread on reddit.

I discovered at least 4 different shades.

Dock.app – backgroundTile.png

Dock.app – defaultdesktop.png

AppKit.framework – NSLinenBackgroundPattern.png

Safari.framework – ReadingList-BGLinen.png

It’s interesting that the Reading List variant isn’t 256px by 256px, but rather 300px by 300px – a non base-two size. It’s also worth noting that the iPad uses the darkest texture for the canvas in Safari, while Lion uses the second lightest version.

From a poster idea I had back in October. Never went anywhere with it.

I work on the web every day. My job title is “Web Project Coordinator” and while this implies that I’m focused on the web I find myself both professionally and personally doing so much more.

On some days I shoot and edit video, others have me designing a layout for a site or coding some JavaScript. I even manage a few servers and help edit objective-c for an iPhone app! Not to mention my past IT support role has perpetuated my title as ‘computer guy’ around the office and at home.

I freely admit this is a 1st world problem and there are far greater difficulties facing the universe, but on an individual level I find the feeling of not being proficient in one particular area to be a serious mental drain. Why do I feel like a jack of all trades and a master of none?

Some days I feel like a fraud, that everyone I work with (and for) have been duped by smoke and mirrors. That if they ever found out how little I actually know I’d be branded as a fluke, a huckster. Part of me knows this isn’t true. That I’m smart and well received by those I work with, but man because of the Internet I feel like such a moron. Why is this?

It’s because I read. I read a lot.

I pursue Twitter and Google Reader to find out what’s going on all over the world. I read about Adam Lisagor and his awesome video work or Neven Mrgan and his splendid design chops. Boing Boing fills me with oddities to delight the senses and bizarre people I would love to meet.

Guys like Merlin Mann and Jeffery Zeldman make me feel like a sloth with their intelligent and witty writing. Don’t even get me started on Mike Matas‘ photography or Brent Simmons‘ helpful articles on coding. How about Michael Lopp’s awesome guide to being a better geek?

I digress, but you can see how after daily observances of a plethora of cool things one can start comparing themselves and asking, “Why am I not that successful? Why are these people so awesome?”

But I think I’ve figured it out.

I was having a discussion bitching to my wife on the ride home from work. I was withering in fake pain about how I don’t feel like I’m strong in any particular area and how I worry about my future. My wife, as smart as always, pointed out an obvious fact.

I’m comparing myself to 5 different people – of course I’m not going to be as good in each profession as these folks have chosen. I’ve been trying to stretch myself in so many different ways because I’m excited! I want to do everything I read about because it all sounds so interesting.

I realize now that I can’t try to do what 5 separate people have accomplished. I can dabble here, and try something over here, but at the end of the day I need to relax.

My wife reminded me that what is important is that the people I work with enjoy what I can do for them and that I continue to develop as an individual without the pressure to be as good as everyone on the Internet. I often forget that these folks are great at what they do and that what each one of them does is diverse and specific. People rarely blog about their shortcomings – about topics that they’re not proficient in. They talk about their successes, their passions and what cool things they’re doing.

So anytime I’m down in a funk, that I feel like no one would hire me and that I’m some sort of goober, I just need to remember that even thought the Internet can bring so much information to my fingertips that it does nothing to filter – to remind me that I need to take things in one at a time. Admire these things I see and hear, enjoy them, but ultimately be at peace with who I am and where I’m going.

At work we just wrapped up a 12 week walking program called “Walk to Madrid“. The goal of the program was to encourage employees to take a more active role in their physical health. Departments and individuals formed teams of 5 to 10 people and kept track of how many steps they took each week using the provided pedometers.

Teams would select a captain to keep track of their steps and submit them to HQ every week. The program had both a competitive and collaborative set of goals. The first was each team competing to see who could walk the farthest toward our Madrid Campus and the second was to see how far we as a university could walk toward Madrid.

We also setup bi-weekly awards and milestones along the way to encourage teams to go just a little further.

We set out with the idea of maybe getting 200 people involved with about 20 teams total. We purchased water bottles and pedometers and prepared for people to sign up.

After a few weeks (with only really one simple article in our university-wide newsletter) we had over 900 people say they were interested. It total we had around 95 teams – 75 of which actually completed the entire 3 month program.

Entire departments signed up – causing us to split 30-40 member teams in to more manageable chunks. We even had 3 teams from our Madrid campus sign up!*

My role was helping to manage the data from each team and to update the website weekly with the most current results. I created a Google form for each team that was shared with the team captain. Since teams could be between 5 and 10 members we averaged the progress for each team to even things out.**

Each week I calculated the average into miles and updated a chart that used a Google Spreadsheet as a database. It was quite the undertaking and while I could have automated the entire process I felt that it was necessary to at least glance over the incoming steps.

Let me share some stats with you.

• 95 teams and over 900 people
• ~75 of which finished
• Average weekly miles per team - 28.9 miles
• Total Miles walked to (and past) Madrid –  28,287.13 miles
• Total in Steps –  56,574,275.3
• As an entire organization we traveled between St. Louis and Madrid 6 times.
• The total distance traveled is greater than the circumference of the Earth at the equator.

During the weekly updates I would also check to see which teams were the first to past a given milestone. Each week I would unveil a new milestone ‘badge’ I created. We had planned out over more than 20 milestones between St. Louis and Madrid, but only had the chance to use about half.

The 1st place team got as far as the Atlantic Ocean (off the tip of Delaware). I made more graphics that never got used for milestones out past the coast.  Here’s a few of them:

At the end of this crazy experiment we hosted a simple celebration in the recreation center. Around 75 people stopped by and the Vice President of Human Resources spoke a few words.*** We gave out medals to the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th place teams. First place got snazzy little runner-topped trophies and took the “Stanley Cup” trophy back to their office to proudly display – until we crown a new 1st place team!

I made a little slide show that ran in the background of the festivities highlighting some of the awards and milestones reached. You can view a Quicktime version here.

It was quite the success and I got to take part in something that helped people become more aware of their physical health and the reflective nature of walking. I’m looking forward to doing it again next year – bigger and better.

Addendum: As I was writing this I discovered that our student newspaper covered the program. Sweet.

*Three of which made it into the top 5 teams. Those Europeans walk A LOT!
**Which means, potentially, that we walked further than the publicized distance.
***And publicly committed us to doing this again next summer!

Nearly a year ago I hired a bright young man by the name of Will Sutton. Over the course of the following months Will and I made this – the official Saint Louis University iPhone App. (Which you are most welcome to download at iphone.slu.edu)

Will initially started from scratch, learning Objective-C and his way around XCode. Even more impressive was the fact that he really never used a Mac much before.

Like a fish to water he quickly had a rough prototype up and running. It was serviceable, but very, shall we say, rickety.

Then we were alerted to the existence of a great open-source app framework created at West Virgina University by then student Jared Crawford.

Will set about updating the framework with SLU specific data sources. We had to meet with legal, create icons and vet our data sources for reliability. With Jared’s awesome framework we were able to quickly turn around a tight first release of what I’m sure will be a vital asset to any SLU student.

Meanwhile the IT department was preparing to launch a mobile portal for some of the very same services. Like some superhero wonder group we joined forces and released our apps simultaneously. Being web-based their app has a much larger reach, but our app allows us to perform some hardware specific feats.

Our next step is to squash a few 1.0 bugs, update the app for the new Retina display and start adding additional features like dining information and athletic reports.

You can read more about the apps from this nice press release.

I’m totally digging the Hipstamatic app for the iPhone. It’s a recreation of a camera developed in the great wilderness of Wisconsin in the early 80s by two brothers. The whole story is being kept alive by the older brother of the two Hipstamatic creators.

The app is very slick and plays a great homage to the cheap all-plastic cameras of yore. With the tiny viewfinder, different films and lenses and the always different results it’s a blast to watch your photos ‘develop’.

The best thing about the app for me is the high-pitched whirring of the flash when you turn it on. Perfect.

Nearly a year ago I wrote a blathering rant about how the common aspect ratios of video is largely irrelevant on the web. To quote myself:

Television has set the standard of common resolutions and aspect ratios for years, but not everything seems as smooth as it should. For one as we are becoming increasingly more web-centric in our distribution models why are we sticking by these ancient limitations of size and shape.  Isn’t there something inherently more flexible with the web? Let’s challenge those norms and create something new with video.

And then today I saw these:

Interesting, no?

Update: I clicked around a littler further and found the blog of the creator of the second video. On Jesse Rosten’s blog he shares very similar thoughts regarding nontraditional video.

Gruber:

It’s a demo of a concept. I’d wager money that we’ll never see an actual product from Microsoft that works like this.

I think the Courier demo is really, really neat. Watching that video makes me want one, now. Unfortunately it will never be as cool as what we’re seeing in these videos.

That’s a big difference between Apple and other tech companies. They demo a product a few months before it ships, in it’s near final form. Microsoft announces products years beforehand and by the time it arrives it’s behind the curve.