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Early on in the book the above equation is referenced. For me it summarizes a key problem I have with most companies and their products but also one of the problems I have with the vast myriad of "design" companies out there. I'll elaborate on this specifically in another piece (soon).

As with his other books, all of which I also highly recommend, there's loads of keen, thoughtful advice that could help turn around companies that might be struggling in the current economy, but also help those who are thriving be even better, stronger and more mindful of their global impact.

That was a fairly simple process overall and using a bit of PHP, jQuery and Ajax magic, I built the form so that it works whether Javascript is enabled in the browser or not. Unobtrusive progressive enhancement - it's good. You should try it.

Where I ran into a problem though was that all of a sudden bots were going to town on the form and I was getting all kinds of spam through the form, despite work put into preventing that at the start - eg. ensuring the form would only accept local requests from the same domain, using secret server-level key validation, etc.

Ultimately what proved to cure the problem: give the fields unusual names. If you have a field that collects a person's name, don't name it "name" or an email address, "email". Bots look for that and can easily exploit it.

Truth be told: I knew this. Maybe you already do too, but an occasional reminder never hurts.

It takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that.

In a roundabout way I think that passage perfectly sums up the state of the web industry for me in 2009 and is a perfect lead-in to mention issue number 284 of A List Apart which features an article on the topic of Burnout by yours truly.

It was a challenging article to write simply because it was so deeply rooted in my own personal experiences and I hope readers take note and are interested in continuing the discussion further because, obvious or not, the web and design industries are intrinsically ripe for extreme cases of burnout.

My thanks to Carolyn Wood, Krista Stevens, Erin Kissane, Zeldman et al.

Thanks to Ethan, I discovered a gem of an open source project called MSMTP which was just what I needed; the exception being that I couldn't figure out how to use it with multiple domains. Until last week that is.

Of course it's really easy.

Installing and Configuring for Multiple Domains

MSMTP provides two ways you can configure the software using a simple and well-documented configuration file format. It's all plain text so it's easy to create, edit and back up.

Installing the Software

Installing MSMSTP requires the following packages which can be installed using the aptitude tool on Ubuntu. Installation on other *nixes may vary.

$ aptitude install msmtp msmtp-mta ca-certificates

Configuration

Once you have everything installed, you need to create a configuration file either in /etc/msmtprc or by creating a user-specific one in your user's home directory. If you need mail services for more than one domain, I suggest using the global configuration option.

I'm going to assume you're reasonably comfortable working in a Unix environment from here on out though if you know what you're doing you can do all of this just as easily using ExpanDrive and TextMate without having to touch the Terminal.

$ sudo nano /etc/msmtprc

Once the nano editor has opened a new blank file for you, enter the following and replace the example configuration as needed. I'm including examples for two domains so you get the idea.

# Account: domain1.com
account         domain1
host            smtp.gmail.com
port            587
auto_from       off
auth            on
user            hello@domain1.com
password        PASSWORD
tls             on
tls_starttls    on
from            robot@domain1.com
maildomain      domain1.com
tls_trust_file  /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
logfile
syslog          LOG_MAIL

# Set a default account to use
account default : domain1

# Account: domain2.com
account         domain2
host            smtp.gmail.com
port            587
auto_from       off
auth            on
user            hello@domain2.com
password        PASSWORD
tls             on
tls_starttls    on
from            robot@domain2.com
maildomain      domain2.com
tls_trust_file  /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
logfile
syslog          LOG_MAIL

Repeat as necessary to add more domains. Save your changes by typing Control-O and pressing Enter. Then type Control-X to exit the editor.

Virtual Host Configuration

Assuming you're using PHP with Apache as your web server, you can add the last two lines in the example below to each virtual host to specify which configuration account you'd like to use to send mail.

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerAdmin webmaster@domain1.com
  ServerName domain1.com
  DocumentRoot /home/user/sites/domain1/
  DirectoryIndex index.html index.php

  # MSMTP configuration for this domain
  php_admin_value sendmail_path "/usr/bin/msmtp -a domain1 -t"
</VirtualHost>

Replace domain1 with the correct domain obviously. This should correspond to the account names specified in the /etc/msmtprc file.

Alternatively you need to instruct your middleware or framework to use MSMTP instead of Sendmail/Postfix to send mail and pass the same account parameter whenever called. Most have some form of configuration option to allow this.

That's it.

If anyone's looking for me, I'll be burying my wallet in the back yard.

I've had a bit of time now and simply, for me, the right thing to do is completely wipe the slate clean.

Over the years Wishingline's become more than just me and as I hinted at, I don't entirely recognize it anymore. Simply - circumstances change and people change. As a result companies change and adapt too.

As I suspect is true of most companies who've got a few years under their belt, they've had their fair share of great successes, a few crushing defeats and a handful of fits and starts, but looking back, and dispite some mistakes made along the way, I feel proud of what I've accomplished and for taking some big risks. I don't feel like I've failed by any means - or I at least need to keep reminding myself of that.

It was a risk when I left a stable job and struck out on my own. It was a risk when I decided it was time to grow the company and move into the office space the company occupied until last week. It was a risk when I brought in not just one new fulltime employee, but two, especially over a fairly short time period. And of course (for various reasons) it's a risk I'm taking now closing the door on Wishingline.

When all's said and done though, it's the right thing for me to do.

Uncertain Weather

What the future holds for me is still very much uncertain. I have a good idea what I don't want to do, it's now a question of what I do want to do. I haven't eliminated the possibility of freelancing or something similar, but if so, the circumstances under which that happens will be very different based on everything I've experienced and learned. And if so, it'd be under a different banner; but who knows. I might not return to the freelance/small agency world at all.

If I haven't been particularly active here, on Twitter or Flickr of late, it's because I've been working on tying up loose ends and exploring possibilities, including what exactly to do with this site. Honestly I've been feeling like a bit like a lost puppy and still have some important questions to answer before I make the next big decision.

As much as I'm still pretty emotional about everything that's happened this year, and though I'm closing one door, I'm opening another. This is an opportunity. I don't think it's too pie in the sky to say, but life is just too short to spend stuck in a rut, doing something that doesn't make you truly happy or leaves you feeling like you're not living up to your full potential. Carpe diem, as they say.

Change, Change, Change

Over the next little while I'll be starting to dismantle the business side of the Wishingline site. I'm debating what to do about this notebook though and whether I should keep it up as-is, do some fancy redirects to move it up to the top of the domain, move it to an entirely new domain or... I don't know. I haven't sorted out what all the possible implications are of doing any of the above but whatever I end up deciding, I'll do what I can to not break the internets.

Software

• Adobe Creative Suite CS4 Design Premium (boxed copies of CS3 Design Premium full version + upgrade to CS4 Design Premium) - $750 SOLD
• FontExplorer X Pro 2.x (two individual licenses available) - $40.00 CDN each - ONE left
• TextMate (two individual licenses available) - $25.00 CDN each - ONE left
• Daylite 3.x Productivity Suite (3-user license) - $300.00 CDN bundle

Hardware

At this point I don't have much need to keep a second iMac around in the office since there's already two other Macs and a PC at my disposal. The iMac is one of the current aluminum models (though prior to the last hardware minor update a few weeks back), approximately 6 months old and includes the obligatory AppleCare extended warranty.

Detailed Hardware Specifications

• 24" glossy TFT widescreen active-matrix LCD display
• 2.8GHz Intel Core2 Duo processor
• 4MB shared L2 cache at full processor speed
• 800MHz frontside bus
• 4GB (two 2GB SO-DIMMs) of 166MHz DDR SDRAM
• 500GB 7200 RPM internal Serial ATA hard drive
• Apple slot-loading SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
• AirPort Extreme Wi-Fi wireless networking (802.11n)
• Bluetooth 2.1+EDR
• Built-in 10/100/1000BASE-T Gigabit networking
• Built-in stereo speakers, microphone and iSight video camera
• Apple Keyboard and Mighty Mouse
• Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard + iLife 08 software bundles

$1,800 - SOLD

If you're interested or have a question about any of the above items, get in touch by sending an email to springcleaning {at} wishingline.com. Everything is first-come first-serve and once something is gone it's gone. Shipping is not included and will be determined on a per-item basis as required.

As before I only ask that people link back to this post instead of redistributing the individual download archives or wallpaper images themselves.

• Download - Set 3 (596KB Zip File) NEW
• Download - Set 2 (442KB Zip File)
• Download - Set 1 (557KB Zip File)

Yahoo! has a terrific set of guidelines that can be used to squeeze the most performance out of your site. This, along with a talk from WWDC last year piqued my interest in learning more - especially any simple things I could put into practice in my client work as well.

First on my list was experimenting with minifying and concatenating Javascript and CSS files. This is easily done with the YUI Compressor or other similar utilities. The trick is automating everything when changes are made. For example, generating minified versions automatically when deploying files to your site.

Second on the list was moving the site's CSS, Javascript and images to their own subdomains, allowing browsers to download assets faster since most are limited to two connections per server. By splitting things up browsers can use more than just two concurrent connections, thereby loading the site faster.

1 domain = 2 concurrent connections. Ok but not great.

4 domains = 8 concurrent connections. Zippy!

Unfortunately it wasn't until this past week that I had a chance to look into this one.

I started with two simple goals:

1. Provide separate URLs for Javascript, CSS and images.
2. Make the code change across the site templates simple.

Setting up subdomains in Apache is simple and adding the necessary DNS entries and virtual subdomains to accomplish the first goal took less than 10 minutes.

On the other hand, being smart about how to handle putting those subdomains into the template code elegantly was a bit trickier. Sure I could just hard-code the URLs into the site templates - but that kind of sucks. I had a better idea.

The Notebook site has been running on Movable Type since 2003 and a better way to accomplish this would be by using template tags. And so I did, though it meant creating a special plugin for Movable Type to do so.

Enter MediaURLs for Movable Type 4.x, a new plugin that allows users to specify a series of URLs for serving CSS, Javascript and image assets each from their own domain or subdomain while providing a set of corresponding template tags to make applying those changes DRY, easy, and fast.

Each of the four setting options provided by the plugin settings (shown above) are optional and should be fairly self-explanatory. A simple example of how to use these is included in the documentation.

The general "media" option was added at the last minute for the sake of simplicity - to allow the use of a single generic domain/subdomain to serve any type of asset - for example, serve all CSS, JS and images from a single secondary domain.

The MediaURLs source is being hosted at Google Code and will be regularly maintained. This is really only a first release and I'm open to suggestions for further improvements. Enjoy and happy optimizing!

In every sense: mission accomplished.

I was largely offline while in Austin. I didn't bring my MacBook and it was often challenging to get connected on my iPhone since roaming data rates are insane (thanks again Rogers and AT&T). The often spotty wifi access didn't help either. Despite that, being somewhat disconnected much of the time was refreshing - I think we'd all benefit from doing it more often.

Bigger, yes. Better?

Although I didn't expect it to be bigger this year given the current economic climate, SXSW Interactive indeed was. Whether the conference itself was better than previous years though is still largely up for debate. Reports seem to indicate some good, a little bit of awesome and a whole lot of "meh" which isn't really any different from previous years.

I honestly spent more time connecting with friends, both old and new than I did going to panels. I can count the number of panels I attended on one hand, but the ones I did were all enjoyable. Not mind blowing but enjoyable nonetheless.

It's Made of People

SXSW has definitely become much more important to me (and many others) for the things that happen outside the conference sessions than in them. So much so for some that they didn't bother to even get a conference pass this year, something that I would hazzard a guess will increase a bit more next year.

As this was my third year attending, having time to reaquaint with old friends I may not have seen for a year or more was great and getting the opportunity to meet so many more again proved to be well worth the cost of spending a week in Austin. Still, there were many faces missing this year and people I didn't have a chance to find or chat with.

Now that the 2010 dates have been announced (March 12th--16th), if you're thinking of attending, you mind want to consider skipping the conference pass and just hang out in the hallways or at Halcyon or Gingerman. I know I am. That's where you'll likely find a lot of us anyway.

More photographic evidence of my time in Austin at SXSW is available for your viewing pleasure at Flickr. On a side note - if you didn't get a chance to see Gary Hustwit's new film Objectified, do yourself a favour and make a point to.

Now that I've been back for about a week, caught up on work, the big iPhone OS 3.0 announcement and everything else going on in the web/design world, I've started to dedicate some time to reconnecting with a few of the things I've had sitting on the backburner or that will help me build up the momentum I need in planning what's next.

First up: writing more and getting back on my book reading bandwagon. Two blog entries this week alone so I think I'm off to a good start.

Identity Crisis

A while back we received a RFP for a project that would have lasted six months to a year if not longer. It was complicated and well beyond my comfort zone. Ultimately we declined to respond but while reviewing the project specs I realized something that I felt had been staring me in the face for some time, something I just hadn't seen until then - Wishingline had a major identity problem.

Although recognized primarily as designers by other designers (and developers), to the outside world, Wishingline (and me by extension) were developers or some sort of hybrid. Not what I had in mind. That project RFP and the resulting conversation with the client confirmed it.

Insert panic attack here.

After walking home that night and mulling over the situation I had a pretty good idea where that perception problem came from. It turned out to be partially, if not entirely my own doing. Looking back through some of the more technically minded entries in the notebook and our previous enterprise application work made it abundantly clear.

I'm a designer first and foremost but I like to tinker. I'm innately curious and have always liked to know how things work but I'm not a developer. Building or fixing things comes naturally and I've always found that characteristic allowed me to be sympathetic to developers, resulting in better decisions and ultimately better sites or applications.

Development experience also meant I could bring more to the table when working with clients. What I didn't realize at the time though was the cost of that knowledge and what it ultimately meant in relation to the type of work that showed up on our doorstep.

My involvement in the development side of the web increased out of interest and necessity but also from the type of work that Wishingline was already involved in - a considerable amount of application design (Rails, Sproutcore, iPhone, embedded web widgets, etc), rarely from the commercial website part of the business.

At this point I have about zero interest in doing any more web app design work. Those are problems I'm just not interested in trying to solve now. It's too easy to get caught up in the minutia and technical details which can quickly suck the life and momentum out a project.

For now I'm only interested in focusing my time and effort into things I can get behind 100%. To some extent that means getting back to my roots and focusing much more on design rather than mucking about in code or someone else's app framework.

The Intangible Web

The intangibleness and the seeming repetitiveness of the web is something I've struggled with for some time, leaving me feeling like the web is just too much of the "same old, same old" to be really interesting. I know that's not really true but constantly being handed the same basic problems to solve over and over or being pigeonholed into one design aesthetic hasn't helped bend my opinion to the other side.

Anna, Ned and I talked about this quite a bit in the office - how we could make the web more interesting (for us at least) by introducing more tangible visual elements and interaction into our work without resorting to Flash. We looked at potentially building actual "set pieces" and working more with real objects that we'd photograph and use as building blocks for site designs. Unfortunately we didn't get the opportunity to put this into practice, but I'm not done with that idea yet.

I come from a largely traditional design background: paste-up by hand, processing my own film, print (litho, screenprinting, letterpress, flexo) and the like. I've used more than my fair share of Letraset and Rubylith.

I've always been passionate about typography but being as focused on the web for as long as I have left many of my typographic senses dulled. I've been chipping away at that problem for a little while now but I need to step that up, if only for myself. It's not that I'm sick of Lucida Grande, Verdana or Georgia... Ok, maybe a little.

I also miss working with my hands instead of being glued to a desk and computer screen - whether this means sketching or working with real materials (paper, ink, film, traditional photography, etc) instead of doing everything digitally in Photoshop. Analog is where it's at. I made a record for crying out loud.

Personal Projects

Like Jon, internal projects at Wishingline have been constantly sidelined. It's a problem when the client vs internal/personal work division is almost always 100/0, and one which has weighed heavily on my mind for a long, long time.

A perfect example is the main Wishingline site which hasn't been significantly updated in nearly 5 years and in desperate need of attention. There's also a big sketchbook of creative project ideas that's been sitting on my desk untouched for nearly as long. Paying the bills is all well and good but without a striking proper balance between client work and personal projects it can be difficult to stay engaged.

Simply put, a big part of why I started Wishingline in the first place, aside from the flexibility of being choosey about the for-hire projects I would work on, was to be free to work on these "fun" projects; to dedicate a portion of my day to reading, writing and doing whatever would allow me to stay creative, motivated and engaged so that the "work" projects don't somehow become a burden. That hasn't worked out quite the way it should have and in the end I'm the only one who can do something about it - and so I am.

Taking Back The Reins

Time is one of the few (only?) finite variables in life and the reality for me was that I didn't want to look back and feel like I wasted an opportunity by trying to "tough it out" in a situation that wasn't working. I have a wife and a young daughter and need to consider how what I do for a living affects those relationships too.

I've had the opportunity to work on a wide variety of projects with some smart people - many I've enjoyed for one reason or another, but there's also been some real duds. There's been times where I found myself severely overbooked and overwhelmed too. Sometimes it was my fault but other times it was entirely out of my control. Stress is ok in small doses but long-term, relentless stress is really, really bad even if you're getting paid for the overtime. Trust me.

Perhaps naively, I almost always put client work first. That proved to be wrong. It's important but only if it's the right work or if it doesn't occupy every waking moment of your life, in the office or out. Maybe that sounds selfish but personally I don't think so. I'm honestly too close to really be objective anyway.

Let's be totally clear - I'm not saying I'm done with the web or design in general. Far from it, but I need to redefine my place in it by better understanding what I want from it and by hopefully contributing something back to it that I (and others) think is truly interesting, engaging and worthwhile.

More on exactly what that means soon.

The exact wording I used in trying to explain this to the few people who were told prior to now was "closed", but more and more in mulling that over I thought "hiatus" would ultimately to be a better choice. "Crazy talk" some have told me so I'll give you a moment...

Uh, what?

Let's not have any illusions, it's hard work running a business and Wishingline for the last 4+ years has been exactly that. It's hard doing it by yourself as a freelancer and just as hard if not more when employees and other management responsibilities are thrown into the mix. The provincial and national government bodies here in Canada don't make that any easier either. These things can constantly weigh on your shoulders (they certainly have mine) and deserve as much attention as the clients paying the bills.

Owning and managing a small but successful design agency (I can't stand that term but it'll do) can mean wearing a lot of different hats and juggling conflicting responsibilities. That balancing act can be exhausting, especially if many of those frequently conflict with your individual needs.

When it comes to "work", I'm a designer first and foremost but also happen to have some background in a lot of other areas thanks to a solid and varied university education, previous jobs and generally being exposed to nearly every possible side of "the biz" at one time or another.

Even though I've had the opportunity to work on some interesting projects, particularly some of the more recent projects, I haven't been feeling particularly creatively satisfied or engaged. Unfocused. Remember all those hats I mentioned a moment ago? Yeah, exactly.

Ultimately I think there's little point in doing something where your passion is wavering, doesn't provide sufficient purpose or from which you're not deriving the right level of personal satisfaction. Some people might be able to get away with that but I'm not one of them. It's not in my DNA.

For the last few months I've hummed and hawed over what to do, in part because of the implications to the business, clients, family, and the two talented and exceptionally smart people working with me in the office, but the reality was that, for beter or worse, change was inevitable. Thankfully there's been no crying and no staplers, chairs or computers thrown in my general direction. At least not yet.

...Next

What that change ends up being is entirely up in the air right now. It might be a small change or it might be something more significant. For now it means that Wishingline is back to being just me while I tie up loose ends on a few projects and sort out what to do with the office, furniture, computers and such. Beyond that I have a few ideas and opportunities to explore though I'm in no hurry to rush into anything. I need to regroup and recalibrate first.

The one thing that's for sure is that SXSW officially starts tomorrow and I'll be down in Austin, TX for the next week, celebrating my birthday (today), shaking hands and kissing babies, uh, I mean hanging out with friends and undoubtedly letting off steam. I'll have some nifty hotdog squiggle buttons with me along with a handful of copies of the new release from George, so please do say "hello".

Shout outs

Wishingline's clients deserve a very special thank you for their extreme patience and understanding through the current transition period. Ensuring they are taken care of and projects either wrapped up or in a state where they can be passed on has been, understandably, a huge concern. Thank you also to friends, dotcomrades and family for their unconditional support and encouragement.

Did We Mention It's an Actual Record?

Even if the quality of digital audio is technically better, there's something magical and innately satisfying about the vinyl medium, particularly 180g (heavy duty) vinyl. The larger canvas for artwork is more impressive and simply more "fun". Ultimately, The band (of which I happen to also be a member) decided to go the vinyl route for this recording for two main reasons:

• The characteristics of the medium fit well with the songs themselves. They're loose, a little raw and were largely recorded live off the floor in the studio
• It was a challenge - it was a totally different experience than producing a CD

To put it another way and to take a page from Radiohead's playbook, the band wanted a real artifact despite the recognition that most people would experience the music in a digital format such as on an iPod or their computer. Analog simply has more character than digital in pretty much every respect.

About the Packaging

The sleeve was illustrated by our good friend and exceptionally talented illustrator John Martz under direction from the band and Wishingline. The fine details in John's illustrations, such as the subtle textures and hand lettering that might otherwise be lost if printed at CD size shine through and are further enhanced by the "reverse board" process suggested by our new friends at Vinyl Record Guru who were fantastic in guiding us through the entire production process.

Tidbits Learned Along the Way

This was a good learning project for us and even if it wasn't all practical learning, we certainly picked up a few tidbits of vinyl trivia. For example - there are no vinyl pressing plants in Canada anymore. The last one closed down in early 2008. Now everything is handled out of a few locations in the US or Europe.

We also learned that vinyl sales roughly doubled in 2008 over 2007 (1.88 million vs 990,000 units) in Canada whereas CD sales slid a further 20%. Although still a niche market, that tidbit validated the band's decision to produce the record on vinyl only.

Where Can I Get One?

Limited to a mere 300 copies, you can pick up one direct from the band at ournameisgeorge.com for the low, low price of $20 + shipping. Each copy will be individually numbered and will include a special code that can be used to download a digital version of the record in lossless AAC format. Sorry - no MP3s, but anyone who purchases a copy will of course be free to convert the AAC files to MP3 or any other audio format they want.

So, what are you waiting for - get 'em while they're hot!