Modern Nerd

A cure for apathy: switch off your phone, retreat from your inbox, and tell me you’re not moved by this short video by Everynone. The simplest things in life can be beautiful beyond words.

To Whom It May Concern

You are not a ninja. Each time you use the word ‘ninja’ in vain, another one moves into your attic. Ninjas train. Ninjas battle. Ninjas don’t check email.

You are not a rock star. Rock stars paint on silence. Rock stars trash hotels. Rock stars use Internet Explorer 6. Rock stars just don’t give a shit.

An artist? Please. Artists see. Artists reflect. Artists bleed Tyrian purple and lapis lazuli. Artists send light into the darkest heart. Artists don’t get real jobs.

The sign of a life well lived? When your job title becomes the least interesting thing about you. And if it isn’t? Perhaps you need a hobby, a break, or a more humble title.

Sincerely

Nick

Zen Kitten, the site design that once graced my Put Things Off blog, is now available as a WordPress theme. See the demo site or make my day and buy it now for only $69.

Put your content first

Ever thought that many blogs would be better if they weren’t so… bloggy? Ever felt that web publishers who spend hours creating content only to litter their site designs with crap are missing a trick?

Zen Kitten is a departure from the done-to-death feel that many WordPress themes follow: the cluttered widgets, multiple sidebars, and bunched up text you’ve seen elsewhere have been dumped in the litter tray.

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Bonus features

Zen Kitten features a healthy bunch of theme options, giving you the chance to swap out the plain text header for your own image or logo, as well as tailoring the homepage to list posts from categories you choose.

To make your posts stand out, the theme sets your post titles in a refreshing open source typeface called Titillium Title. In addition, Zen Kitten uses the new WordPress featured image uploader to quickly and easily add thumbnails to your content, which are automatically resized to appear on your homepage, category pages, and below the post titles on your subpages. We think it’s pretty nifty.

Check it out and feel free to get in touch to voice your thoughts or ask for help.

Your email address says a lot about you. If, like me, you work remotely away from life’s inconveniences — like traffic and other people — your address makes more of a first impression than your clothes, your car, or your pallid complexion ever will.

I’m only slightly ashamed to admit that, whenever someone new emails me, I take a few seconds to examine their email address, consider their thought process, and judge them as a human being. Here’s what goes through my mind:

tomandjane@smiley-happy-couple.com

I share a house and a business with my partner, but I’d never share an inbox with her. It’s up there with his-and-hers bidets. Some things are best dealt with alone. At least they’re happy, I guess. Or hiding something.

johnsmith1988@i-am-not-a-number.com

Look, John, I know that picking usernames has been a lifelong drag, but don’t just tag a number on the end. Especially not your birth year. You’re better than that.

thewaltonfamily@thewaltons.com

You have a family email address? Who has a family email address? Do you sit around the HappyStation 2000 after dinner composing emails together and updating your family webs-? Wait, you have a family website? Who has a family website?

cuddlebunny@pass-me-a-bucket.com

I have a glowing red button on my desk for cutesy addresses like these. Nothing dramatic. It just deletes them.

info@aaaaaaaaaaataxis.com

That won’t get you to the top of Google, my friend. The internet doesn’t work like the phone book.

mrbigshot@freemail.com

What’s that, my good man? You’re a marketing director with a passion for helping iPhone developers breach new and exciting markets, build strong corporate images, and explore and project consistent brand values? And you’ve got a Hotmail address?

anyone@aol.com

I’ve spent 10 years trying to ditch my asinine prejudice against AOL users, but I still struggle to take aol.com addresses seriously. If you’re an AOL user and you feel hurt by this, I can only apologise and say that I’m trying to grow out of it.

My wariness harks back to AOL’s former role within the People’s Republic of American Internet Providers; an age where AOL subscribers were considered Web simpletons by many, because most of them believed that the aol.com website was the entire internet. A bit like Facebook users today.

jamesathome@definitely-not-in-the-office-or-at-a-bar-or-in-the-park.com

What’s that, James? You’re emailing from home? Thanks for letting me know. Why not get specific next time you’re registering an address and hint at which room you’re in? Or what year you think you’re writing from?

For your consideration

If you’re using a day-to-day email address that contains anything other than your own name or business name, I suggest that you consider updating it. Or don’t. You can always make your first impression next time.

While some delight in having been first to learn of Michael Jackson’s death or hear about the man who married his pillow, I’ve never seen the appeal. For me, news websites often seem optimised to distract the bored, not to inform the healthily curious. A rapid news cycle coupled with perceived demand for breaking stories only encourages reporting of half-truths about live events, or coverage of items that aren’t really news at all, like snow in mid winter, or learning that Sarah Beeny is pregnant.

Since switching from a diet of web-based news to the digital paper format that The Times offers iPad users, a funny thing has happened: I’ve started reading the news again. Not just glancing through titles, skimming the first few paragraphs, scrolling to the comments section to imagine the people who post there in their underwear, then jumping aboard the hyperlink express, but actively reading. For the first time in years, I feel informed again.

I was delighted at developer Marco Arment’s plea that someone launch a news site reporting on last week’s news, where ‘mentioning any event that happened less than seven days ago is strictly prohibited’. Lengthening the news cycle provides a natural filter against the barrage of updates offered by live Web reporting. Following events in a digital newspaper format — where yesterday’s news is presented in a concise format that you can read from beginning to end — has made news reading productive and enjoyable; I now linger over content when it’s delivered each day instead of checking up on it like a virtual babysitter. It’s how it used to be. You know, when news was something you savoured. And paid for.

Some of you will think me madder than a duck’s udder, but I’m happily paying £9.99 every four weeks for The Times’ new iPad app. I think it’s brilliant. Instead of sifting through a homepage of content that buries old stories as it’s refreshed throughout the day, you download a separate digital edition of the paper every morning then browse at your own pace. The format is fresh, the interface well thought out, and the content thoroughly enjoyable.

How wonderful it is to feel that you’ve finished the news again. How glorious to read the morning paper from cover to cover once more. No more whack-a-moling your way through ever-changing online layouts in the hope of a hit. No more returning an hour later in case Boris Johnson’s invaded Belgium on a giant inflatable goat and displaced the leading story, resetting the game and giving your morning meaning once more. No. Now you can read to the final page and then get on with your day, because there’s not going to be any more news until tomorrow. And I think that’s a good thing.