Have you ever heard this statement before:

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result

I’ve heard it time to time from different sources. Sometimes, people will begin it with “The definition of insanity is…” Well, I just read it on a popular blog, and I can’t help but think that it’s the dumbest statement in history. It doesn’t even almost make sense.

Let’s look at the actual definition of insanity (from Answers.com):

1. Mental illness or derangement. No longer in scientific use.
2. Law.
   1. Unsoundness of mind sufficient in the judgment of a civil court to render a person unfit to maintain a contractual or other legal relationship or to warrant commitment to a mental health facility.
   2. In most criminal jurisdictions, a degree of mental malfunctioning sufficient to relieve the accused of legal responsibility for the act committed.
3. 1. Extreme foolishness; folly.
   2. Something that is extremely foolish.

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, that’s called PRACTICE, and practice certainly doesn’t sound nearly as bad as insanity.

Hey, I like to look good in front of the camera. So, I found this article, How to be more photogenic, to be helpful. via

Google just introduced a new meta tag.

<META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOODP”>

This tag tells search engines not to use the Open Directory Project description of your site as a snippet shown in search results. Why? Because for the most part ODP sucks way bad. Ironically, Google is the only search engine I’ve seen do this.

Did I mention that I hate the ODP? The project needs to be scrapped and started over… With NO human editors.

It’s out. It broke all records, and everyone’s seeing it. Critics are mixed, but is Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest really all that? Okay, I won’t even pretend for a second that there was even a slight chance that I wouldn’t love this movie with all my movie heart. There’s two things in this world that can make a great movie: Pirates and Zombies. And Dead Man’s Chest hits the pirates thing so hard on the head that it has to die and regrow a new head to come back again. Anyway, what I’m getting at is that the movie is good. Very Good. So good, I had to see it two times before I could even talk about it. I’m talking 5 out of 5, instant all-time classic good.

Pirates, More Pirates, Pirates at sea, and even Pirates under the sea
The movie’s got pirates. It’s got daring pirates. It’s got small pirates. It’s got pirates with birds. It’s even got half-dead, damned sea creature pirates. Okay, the last movie had pirates, but this one’s got more pirates. And it’s not so much that you get more pirates, but that you get to see pirates in their element and in every other element. You get a deep look into what a pirate really is (something like a bottle of rum and a barrel of fun).

There’s Depth Too
The fun sucks you in, but it’s the depth that drowns you. Characters like Will and Elizabeth that were really quite one-dimentional in the first movie spring to life in this one. They become multi-faceted and show, well, character. Even characters from the first that had tons of depth like Norrington and Gibbs reapear and show even more depth. Even Jack Sparrow is presented with more light. He’s sadder and more desparate than the last film, although you shouldn’t expect the role of Jack to steal the show this time. In fact, I found that everytime Norrington was on screen, he was stealing the show. His character was so dynamic that I gave myself tiny high fives anytime he opened his mouth.

The Little Details
The tiny details in this movie made me curl up in a ball and kick my feet high above the theater’s seat (much to the distress of those sitting around me). From the fireflies floating outside of the voodoo hut at the end of the river to the massive size of the beached Black Pearl, Dead Man’s Chest’s details slapped me around like a monkey handler in a running circus. From the first moment that Jack blasts his way onto screen until the very last, heartfelt “Aye,” tiny details gang together and give this movie unstoppable momentum. Honestly, I think I have to see it a third time just to feel satisfied.

Should you go see Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest? Yes, at least twice and once on a weekday. In fact, while my third viewing will be to watch for details, I want go back and see it a fourth time just to say I saw it drunk on rum. I wouldn’t advise being drunk on rum the first three times you see it. To sum up the movie and my feelings in one word: Awesome.

Oh, and stay after the credits for another hat-tipper.

Here’s a great look at the six most feared but least likely causes of death (via). Dying in a plane crash is number 1. Yep, apparently you should be more afraid of eating too many hamburgers because the site also lists the actual most common ways of dying.

Most Feared Deaths

• Airplane crashes
• Shark attacks
• Being murdered
• Falling to death
• Terrorist attack
• Natural disaster

Most Common Deaths

• Tobacco (435,000 deaths, 18.1 percent of total U.S. deaths)
• Poor diet and physical inactivity (400,000 deaths, 16.6 percent)
• Alcohol consumption (85,000 deaths, 3.5 percent)
• Microbial agents (75,000)
• Toxic agents (55,000)
• Motor vehicle crashes (43,000)
• Incidents involving firearms (29,000)
• Sexual behaviors (20,000)
• Illicit use of drugs (17,000)

MSNBC has a fun little quiz with some of the more tricky questions asked of those seeking to become citizens of the US. I was suprised that I got all of them correct (yes, 100%). I guess that makes me a real American as opposed to the cheddar cheese eating type. Via

In honor of my mother who scored a Spiderman on the hero quiz, here’s the trailer for Spiderman 3. It looks very cool.

I’m not sure what today’s sound is, but I swear it’s a chainsaw. Even worse, it sounds like it’s on my floor. You get used to it after the drilling and the fire alarm.

What beats the noise of drilling from yesterday? Why, the buzz and strobe light of a twenty minute fire alarm test (the alarm is directly above my desk) on top of the drilling and the hammering from directly below my desk.

Sometimes, life is cruel. I can’t wait to go home.

This morning, I was able to further appreciate the sound of the drilling that is clearly coming from the exact spot one floor beneath my desk chair. In fact, I’m quite certain that I can feel small vibrations from the drilling. The resulting effect is very similar to those massage chairs seen in a Sharper Image catalog. Considering that those chairs, can go for almost $4,000 USD, I would consider the drilling to be quite a steal, as I paid nothing for it. It could be even argued that I’m in fact getting paid to enjoy the pleasant vibrating motions, although I would like to point out the distinct lack of a cup-holder.

Since the drilling sound is exaggerated by the headache I have this morning, I give the Drilling From the Floor Below a hearty 4 out of 5.

Oh damn, the drilling was just replaced by the hammering sound of (you guessed it) a hammer. So, much for my gentle massage chair.

Here’s a quiz that’s too much fun not to take. Answer a series of questions and the Hero Quiz will tell you what type of hero you are. Via Romance Writer Cynthia Eden

Of course, I scored 88% Jack Sparrow. It could be no other way.

There’s plenty of talk about where navigation should be, what it should look like, how it should perform, and so forth. Well, I’ve finally articulated in my mind an idea that I’ve had for a while. Navigation is dead. Really, it’s for the crows. Why worry about what kind of navigation you’re giving your users when you can give them something better: Search. In fact, why put more focus on navigation than you do on search? Hey, Google replaced navigation with search, and look were it got them.

Three Methods of Search

1. Let Someone Else Do It
   Ummm, can’t we just use Google’s site search? Yea, but then you’re sending you traffic away from your website. You get less control over the process, and what happens when parts of your website aren’t publicly accessible or isn’t indexed by Google? On the upside, it’s super cheap and easy to implement. Oh, and it mostly works well.
2. Custom Script
   That’s an ideal solution right? Well, they’re often difficult to write or find, and they can be inaccurate or excrutiatingly slow, but you do get all the control back.
3. Search in a Box
   Hey, did you know Google sells a standalone, turnkey box that handles search for you. Simply, hook it up to your webserver and go. However, from $1,995 to $30,000, it’s pretty expensive. You do get a lot more flexibility, power, and ability to customize.

Okay, so I don’t have any answers. I do know next time I spend a lot of time thinking about designing a website, I’m going to tackle this search thing head on.

Anyone out there have some brialliant intra-website search solutions?

Andy Rutledge has a great article discussing the unimportance of logos. No really, a designer is talking about how little importance the logo holds. I can’t agree enough. While the logo has it’s place, a super-huge, animated, flashy logo justs destroys what the focus should be on (hint: content). Actuallty, whenever more effort and time is spent on a logo, it destroys that same focus.

Here’s how Andy puts it:

I believe that the logo is the most abused, misapplied, misconceived, wrongfully distracting element of design and business today … Seriously, the logo is just the simple mnemonic that can be used to mark (brand like a cow) products and marketing materials so that people know who made them or who is trying to say something to them. The logo itself only articulates what the brand already broadcasts. That’s it … Regrettably, more than a few clients I’ve worked with want their logo and their website to say things about them that are entirely inaccurate – as if doing so will fix their shortcomings … No, this new logo will not fix your crappy company

Sigh, I just want the world to know that it’s all about the meat and potatoes (or something like that).

Ok, let me throw one more thing into the mix: 99.9…9% of the time the logo should be on the top left of a website. Here’s an article claiming that .9…9 = 1. Was that too subtle?

I hate this new format war. Mostly, because it’s completely conjured up to milk consumers out of money… Anyone remember DivX players?

Anyway, here’s a nice detailed look at why both formats will fail: 10 Reasons Why High Definition DVD Formats Have Already Failed

Here’s a great article written by one of the designers on how one of my favorite games, GoldenEye, was made. The author actually attributes much of the games success to not following the “right” way of making games.

From the article:

The level creators, or architects were working without much level design, by which I mean often they had no player start points or exits in mind. Certainly they didn’t think about enemy positions or object positions. Their job was simply to produce an interesting space. After the levels were made, Dave or sometimes Duncan would be faced with filling them with objectives, enemies, and stuff. The benefit of this sloppy unplanned approach was that many of the levels in the game have a realistic and non-linear feel. There are rooms with no direct relevance to the level. There are multiple routes across the level. This is an anti-game design approach, frankly. It is inefficient because much of the level is unnecessary to the gameplay. But it contributes to a greater sense of freedom, and also realism. And in turn this sense of freedom and realism contributed enormously to the success of the game … I should mention that the entire team was very green. 8 of us had never worked on a game.