AIfIA is holding its first Leadership Seminar on March 21 in Portland. It's a full-day event - presented in conjunction with the ASIS&T IA Summit - that promises to tackle "the toughest problems faced by the designers of today's information systems." The AIfIA web site has complete details on the seminar, speakers and topics.

I posted a variation of this as a comment over at 37signals earlier, but it should live here...

I missed the speech, but I read it in it's entirety. I am generally pleased with the care-based agenda proposed, but I'm also aware that things change - regardless of a given administration's political affiliation - and that many plans lay to waste.

The thing that has irked me over the course of the past few months has to do with the negative, two-faced rhetoric that has been spewing from the mouths of the Hollywood elite, various media outlets and the weblog community. Hey - here's a brilliant idea - quit bitching and whining. You're doing no one any good and it's annoying. Think about it - what other resolution-based options are there really?

If we leave the situation be, will the world will be better off? If we negotiate this away, will the world will be better off? If we take action, will the world be better off? I we suddenly reduce the need for fossil fuels in this country, will the crisis in the Middle East disappear and the world be better off?

I don't know the answers to any of these questions, nor pretend to... I do, however, tend to agree with this line of thinking:

"Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike?"

"If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option."

So what better options are there really?

Well, I finally spent the 15 minutes it took to unpack and install a second hard drive to the server that runs this site. I was contemplating using it to upgrade my TiVo, but the 60GB drive that came with it seems to be enough (for the time being).

Speaking of, today's Super Bowl will be the first major event that I'm relying on TiVo to work its magic on. Now if only I could program in a Raiders' win...

I'm proud to announce the birth of yet another XHTML Strict and CSS compliant design of mine - egoncastle.com. I've been working Barry, with the VP of Egon Castle Group, since just before the beginning of the year, developing the companies corporate identity and mapping the company's message and market offerings to its targeted visitor base. Page designs came naturally once the identity was finalized, and at the end of the process three design options were presented. After little deliberation, egoncastle.com was given a face.

Despite the compressed timelines, this site was a joy to work on in the same way that fin-now.com was - the client was engaged in the process and was able to articulate his needs and vision. As always, leave me your comments, questions, and/or constructive criticism before you go.

Enzimedzine is accepting entries for their Girly T-Shirt Design Contest until April 1, 2003 (although their site says 2002 at post time). I really enjoy participating in these sorts of contests for the simple fact that I'm not sure what I like more - creating designs to enter or looking over what others came up with once the contest ends. Either way, contests like this are a welcome release.

Rusty Foster (of Kuro5shin fame) has written a nice article that focuses on information architecture and the roles that organizations like the AIfIA are playing to strengthen the field.

Another win for big media means a sad day for individual content producers and Internet publishers. The US Supreme Court has chosen to uphold longer copyrights, ruling that the 20-year extension on copyrights included in the 1998 "Sonny Bono" act was not unconstitutional. While this is a huge victory for big media companies, the writing is on the wall - existing copyright laws are inadequate for this day and age and need to be turned on their heads. Expect more from Lawrence Lessig and crew in the future.

Just got my first roll of Lomographic Supersampler film developed and I'm fairly happy with a few of the results. I'm going to get started snapping away on roll number 2, making sure that there is plenty of natural light available when I shoot...

My family and I decided not to travel cross-country to Phoenix with all of our Christmas gifts in tow, so it's off to good old Kalamazoo, MI today to exchange presents. Talk about an extended holiday season...

With a few turns of the screwdriver (i.e. removing unsupported name attributes from the site's anchor tags), co][nz.org now validates as XHTML 1.1. Another step closer to global domination...

Stumbled upon a web development help forum in my daily web wanderings and thought I'd share. CodingForums.com bills itself as a one stop shop for help with HTML, CSS, Javascript, XML, PHP, etc., etc. I had a look around and found the questions and answers to be fairly compelling, in spite of it being a somewhat unmoderated forum. Evolt.org has a similar interface buried in their site, but it's not nearly as active. May the two should meet?

OK. So I'm trying to move a couple of domain names from Network Solutions over to Register.com. No sense having all of my domains scattered around umpteen registrars, right? Right.

Not that it hasn't been said four billion times already, but Network Solutions absolutely sucks as a registrar. I went to change the administrative contact information on one of the domains I am planning on migrating only to find that the password I had for that particular account wasn't working. No problem - I'll just change it. Nope - the administrative e-mail points to an e-mail account I haven't used in quite awhile. No problem - I'll just change that. Nope. You need your password to do that. But what about the challenge question you asked me when I signed up? Give me the challenge question! Nope.

So I call Network Solutions. I wait on hold for an hour. I explain the situation to a no-doubt-gifted-but-not-feeling-so-today phone rep. Twice. "You'll have to fax in your request for a password change".

*blink*

Fax? What? Ok - I have one of those 80's business relics at work. So I fax a form in to change my password. Two days go by. I get a phone call. "You'll have to dial our 800 number and give them this code to continue the process.". Ok, so I do that. I wait on hold for an hour. I speak to yet another no-doubt-gifted-but-not-feeling-so-today phone rep who informs me that something went wrong with the password reset, I'll have to fax the form again. Ok. So I did.

And now I'm here. Waiting. What are you up to?

I received a Lomographic Supersampler 35mm camera for Christmas, and have nearly finished off my first roll of film. Rumor has it that Walgreens isn't the place to go to get Lomography prints developed unless you request their "Overnight, double print" service (due to the color correction that gets applied in the one hour development process). Good to know.

Not only does Erin Malone have a nicely designed portfolio site, she also has a number of useful IA samples and process documents from her life as an IA at AltaVista, among other places. Good to use if your just getting started in the IA field or for general reference. Take a look.

While I'm on the subject of 'IA Best Practices', I just heard that 37signals has a new research report out - E-Commerce Search Report. I haven't dropped the US$99 to download and read it yet, but I'm guessing that it's worth every penny - especially if you're in the process of or are planning on implementing or enhancing search on a site.

I've been working feverishly (both literally and figuratively, as I've been battling a head cold since New Years Day) on a corporate identity and website design for a new Chicago-based financial consultancy, with an aggressive launch date of January 24th. Luckily, I've presented and obtained signoff on the identity piece, which leaves just the website comps to design and present by this Wednesday. There's nothing better than being busy! Well, maybe being busy and not being sick...

Seems as though my flukey Linksys router has cheered up a bit. While I can't rule out my service provider entirely, things have been stable ever since I applied the latest firmware upgrade.

Happy New Year, all. While I spent most of the day today recuperating from a massive New Year's Eve induced hangover (thanks Eric), I did manage to crank out a batch of my famous chili...

Shane's Famous Chili
1 - 2.75 lbs lean turkey burger
2 - 14.5oz cans diced tomatoes
1 - 8oz can tomato sauce
1 - 12oz can beef broth
1 - 14.5oz can chili beans
1 - 14.5oz can kidney beans
1 - 10oz can black beans
1 - large yellow Spanish onion, diced
2 - heaping tablespoons of Jif peanut butter (smooth)
1 - packet of your favorite chili seasoning

Brown the ground turkey. Place browned ground turkey and all other ingredients in a large pot. Stir well. Bring chili to a boil and then simmer for 1.5 hours, stirring every 15 minutes. Garnish with jalepenos, cheddar cheese and sour cream.

If you end up making it, let me know what you think.