¡Soy Contento!

Today we're launching a new website for one of our productized systems, now called Contento in homage of it's Mexican origins. It's a CMS system and altough we still have a lot of work to do on the polish, it has quite a nice admin interface compared to alot of things we've looked at.

I'm hoping this will be the first of many launches during my stay in Norway. One of our most defined goals for 2008 is to get several of the many systems we have running for our clients made into a real product.

Any comments about the name, logo and site are welcome.

Our work

Getting together a decent portfolio of your work is always hard. First you need clients, then you need to make sure the projects are actually launched and then you need to sit down and take the damn screenshots. Today I started to play around with ViewBook which at least helps with the last part.

Large view

LO fuckin' L

I got Californication from Daniel (legal copy of course) and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. I don't think I've enjoyed a series this much since Deadwood and one of episode 4's themes hit right on a sore spot for me lately. Blogs and the rest of the Internet have really hurt the art of writing. Look at online newspapers today whose journalists have turned into idiot translators without any respect for fact checking at all. In Norway they've perverted the language so far that "karakter" no longer means a grade, it's now been anglicized into personality (from character). People don't take time to write properly anymore, to sit down and read over what they are trying to say and gather their thoughts in any sort of structure. I don't mean to say that I'm a good writer, but at least I try, pouring a few hours into my Less is More paper which to date has gotten not a single productive criticisms, probably because it's more than 2 paragraphs long.

My old BBS, fix.no, no longer has any articulated discussions like it did back in the old days and online I can only think of a handful of sites which don't simply reproduce Reuters tidbits or have been disintegrated into a list of "first" comments mixed with error laden troll posts. Information is moving too fast now and scanning an RSS feed doesn't do it for me. I want less, but better information instead of Google News. This isn't just a rant from some 30 year old about the good-old-days, I really do think we are providing a setting for making people more stupid.

Life of luxury

After spending a week in Oslo working 12 hours a day it's nice to kick back and relax at my mothers place. The average Norwegian lives a life of luxury thanks to our massive oil exports (#3 in the world) and pathetic population numbers (#114 in the world). Combine the wealth with our wonderful weather results in a great deal of this luxury focused indoors and it's great to just sit back and enjoy it. The house is always warm and full of great little comfy-corners to sit in. In addition my mom makes great food, full of calories and Norwegian flavors. Later today I'm going hunting for dear with an uncle and my kid-brother and I can almost imagine myself as a real Norwegian and not a Mexican lost in scandinavia.

Update: No hunting, but I spend several hours out in 3 degree weather, constructing a small garage with my brother for his 4x4. It feels good to actually construct something tangible, something made of wood and nails and that will one day fall apart from decay and not because someone fucked up the server or forgot to do a backup. Long live the physical world!

What is web design?

A list apart can sometimes be a bit tedious and arrogant, but today they have an article which perfectly sums up what we, in the web industry, struggle to explain to our clients. Web design is not the same as poster design. It's not about finding the right color palette and slapping on a logo and some stock photo.

Web design is the creation of digital environments that facilitate and encourage human activity; reflect or adapt to individual voices and content; and change gracefully over time while always retaining their identity.

This will become my mantra from now on.

New colors for kabin.no

Things are starting to roll on the buisness side of things now and I've been in and out of meetings these last 3 days and hopefully we'll start working on something very soon. In the meantime I've been helping Copyleft Software with some design work for a client of theirs, kabin.no

Basically I'm redoing the color schemes to help with readability and to make sure that there is a logic behind the color palette. In this case I'm using two thirds of a triad based on their logo and I did it using a nifty online application by Adobe called kuler.

Snow!

Today I woke up to falling snow. The Norwegians (the real ones, not like me) where all pretty unimpressed by it, but I found myself standing like an idiot at the bus stop watching it fall for 10 minutes, amazed at the fact that this stuff just falls out of the sky. Can't wait till I get back on a board again!

Speaking of busses I bought my first monthly bus-card yesterday. 720 kroners! For 1500 pesos I can probably hire someone to drive me back and forth to my job on their car every day for a month. This place is so expensive it's silly.

The rising sun

Today I watched, for the first time in years, the sun rise. It came up from behind a building as a white, dead disc behind some clouds. As it rose into view it lit up and caught fire forcing me to turn away in a display of power to the Norwegian winter cold. It reminded me of the essence of the Norwegian spirit, of how we seem to get excited for very brief moments when something special happens in this very dull and gray country we've built.

The spectacle lasted for about 10 minutes before disappearing again, but in some mythical way it must mean that summer will come again in a few months time.

It's dark!

I have yet to see the sun in Norway and I'm starting to think the big golden globe in the sky just packed up and left this godforsaken land. I hope I can soon get used to this climate because it's a little before 5 p.m. and I feel like it's 9-10 at night.

I'm getting things into swing here now with several leads and mini-projects getting off the ground. My only problem is that writing a quick proposal takes forever due to the fact that my Norwegian sucks even more than it used to. I think I might need to take some classes together with my wife when she gets here next spring.

I'm a tourist

Today I managed to get off the bus two stops past where I should and had to walk back. I feel like a total tourist in my own country where people just talk in and out of the office without saying hello and some bread, ham and cheese sets you back 400 pesos!

It's cold!

I guess I'm stating the obvious, but Norway didn't seem so cold and dark this summer. After a 16 hour trip from Mexico I managed to drag my 50kg of stuff to the tram station and made it all the way to the office using public transport (which costs more than a taxi back in Mexico).

We (refers to Leo&Daniel from now on) ended up in an apartment with Ole, Mia, Vidar (who I haven't seen in 10 years)   and others. I managed to stay up until 2-3 which means I should be able to get rid of the jet lag by Monday.

Going away party

4 lambs legs, some bottles of wine and 30 friends showed up yesterday to see me off to Norway this Friday. It seems that the 10 kilos of rosemary and sun-dried tomatoes legs went down well, along with the potato and asparagus soufflé and liters of gravy.

Leo (the other one) came over with his jaranas (micro guitars) and a donkey's jaw and we played son music (from Veracruz) till late at night.

Today I said goodbye to Hans Petter and bought 20 cigars for the cold months ahead.

Less is More: A guide to simple, user-centric, bullshit-free web development

I've finished my paper on the Less is More web development method. I think it covers most of the important points I have to make on the subject. I'm passing it around now, hoping that someone, somewhere will have feedback so that I know how to improve it. It borrows on things I've picked up in other workplaces (alterbrain and abargon especially) as well as the 37Signal book Getting Real and 10 years of personal experience.

Download it here

The first goodbye

Yesterday the "Chuperamigas" invited me to a late dinner to say goodbye. I'll still see most of them this weekend, but Fiorella is leaving tomorrow for a vacation to Europe so I won't see her until March. This weekend there's a couple of parties and Hans Petter is coming in from Xalapa. Things seem to be getting a little hectic now before I leave and I'm not sure how sane the plan is.

The official program:

• Today - Kaya
• Fri - Pata Negra (Omar party)
• Sat - BiPolar (Noemix party)
• Sun - Dinner thing
• Mon-Wen - Acapulco to install a couple of webcams
• Thur - Lawyer stuff
• Fri - Pack and leave

This week I managed to actually sit down and write my paper on the Less is More and I hope to get a little feedback before publishing it.

Leave a comment so that I know someone reads this...

10 days and counting

Expectations for the trip back to Norway are still high although the weather in Oslo is beginning to worry me a bit. So far I've managed to get though 3 minor crisis dealing with the move involving my father, my wife and my bank account without backing out of it. I've begun to realize that I have a fair amount of fear hidden somewhere in my subconscious and it seems to be seeping into the planning stages of the experiment.

For anyone not up-to-date, on the 16th of November I'm heading for Oslo to live and work with the head of Copyleft Software for at least 3 months. The goal of the stay is to finish several software products which are suffering from usability and design issues. As a side-project I'm also going to try to get a small off-shore business running, selling to Norwegian customers the work we can do in Mexico.

My going-away party is set for next Sunday and the plan is to invite people over to my place for some food and maybe a bit of beer/wine. I made this adorable invitation:


In other news my blog is now in English and moved to Google. I've probably lost the older stuff unless Paola V. can provide some sort of backup I can input here. I've managed to restart my "book" project about the "menos es más" method. It's now called Less is More and looks to become more of a long article rather than a book (is there an official limit or definition to what is considered a book?). I'm hoping to have a draft ready to bring to Norway and get someone to help polish it before uploading it somewhere.