Scott Bush

Some peo­ple don’t eat out. Oth­ers invest. Para­noid peo­ple keep cash in their mat­tress. How does this guy save? Coupons. That’s right. Not only does he clip’em, he proudly adver­tises the fact on his license plate. Spendin’ coups, baby.

No, this isn’t about a hor­ri­ble car acci­dent. I was dri­ving down the road the other day and I saw some­thing I’d never seen before: a mini-car under­neath a huge semi truck that, I assume, helps to steer. Either that or the guy was just dri­ving along in his Smart Car, got run over, and found him­self sud­denly part of much larger vehicle.

Pretty cool design. But I shouldn’t be suprised; it was a Boe­ing truck and that’s one orga­ni­za­tion known for its inno­v­a­tive designs. But what I am most pumped about was that the “dri­ver” (if that’s the right term) was wav­ing back at me as I took his photo. Sweet.

After a dearth of design-related posts, I finally have a use­ful tid­bit to write about. “What!?” I hear you shout. Why, it’s the use of tiny icons that indi­cate to vis­i­tors what a link will actu­ally do. Some sites (notably Wikipedia.org) employ this tech­nique and I decided I wanted to do so on a site I’m work­ing on for my for­mer employer, CESNW. I’m work­ing a Learn and Serve project site for them.

Why would this be impor­tant? It’s another infor­ma­tion layer for users as they nav­i­gate. A link could potentially:

• Go to a new page within the same site;
• Go to an exter­nal site (say, Amazon.com from a blog page);
• Down­load a PDF, Word doc­u­ment, or other file; or
• Open your mail client to send a mes­sage (the

  mailto:

  link)

Why not show the vis­i­tor what’s going to hap­pen when they click the link? “Too much work,” you say. Pshaw! Not with CSS and some crafty selec­tors. Sim­ply develop some cute icons for the link types you want to call out, then add anchor selectors (

a

) that search for tell-tale strings like

.pdf

or the

http://

pro­to­col that pre­cedes exter­nal links. That’s all you have to do, as com­pli­ant browsers (IE 7, Safari, Fire­fox, etc. but not the ill-mannered IE 6) do the rest.

I found a cou­ple of good sites that explain all this if you want more details. I’ll imple­ment this on my site when I’ve fin­ished doing so for the oth­ers I’m work­ing on.

A heart­felt con­grat­u­la­tions to our good friends Jacob Humphrey and Margielize Vil­lac­eran, who tied the knot in a beau­ti­ful cer­e­mony Sat­ur­day, 9 June. It’s been a nine-year courtship for the two, so I’ve no doubt that the mar­riage they’re begin­ning will be a happy and sta­ble one.

One of the best things about a wed­ding are the friend­ships they renew, and this was no excep­tion. We saw our friends Matt and Kristina, whom we’ve not seen for over half a year; Erum Thomp­kins (for­merly Dewji) and her hus­band Michael; Margielize’s friend Ellia, whom I’d not seen in eight years; and, of course, the reg­u­lar con­tin­gent of friends. A spe­cial note to Jacob’s brother Micah for giv­ing one of the best toasts I’ve had the plea­sure of hearing.

Here’s a brief inter­view I imag­ine Andy Sum­mers hav­ing with his per­sonal trainer:

Per­sonal Trainer: “Okay, Andy, let’s hit it hard this week. We’ve got a lot to work on. You’ve got a paunch, you eat ter­ri­bly, and your skin is pallow.”

Andy Sum­mers: “No thanks.”

This took place in 1988 and Andy’s not looked back.

All jok­ing aside, The Police were incred­i­ble. Sure, Andy Sum­mers looked a lit­tle worn out rel­a­tive to band­mates Stew­art Copeland and Sting (who looks bet­ter than he did in 1988, if pos­si­ble), but he played that gui­tar like a pro. I had wor­ried that these aging rock­ers would destroy their legacy with a crappy, geri­atric per­for­mance but I was glad to be com­pletely wrong.

I was lucky enough to be invited by my friend Tara, whose coworker bailed on the sec­ond show at the Key Arena on Thurs­day, 7 June. We were directly oppo­site the stage on the far side, but we had an obstructed view of the stage and the three huge screens above it. These were cru­cial to the show, as they dis­played cool ani­ma­tions based on The Police album cov­ers (Ghost in the Machine was the best) and close ups of them singing and play­ing. Sorry for the poor qual­ity cell-phone cam­era shot.

Musi­cally, they were awe­some. It was a ver­i­ta­ble hit parade. The good thing about a reunion tour where the artists aren’t push­ing a new album is they don’t foist a bunch of new stuff on you that you don’t want to hear–nothing but net, baby! Here’s the setlist:

1. Mes­sage in a Bottle
2. Syn­chronic­ity I
3. Spir­its in the Mate­r­ial World
4. Voices Inside My Head/When the World is Run­ning Down, You Make the Best of What’s Still Around
5. Don’t Stand So Close to Me
6. Dri­ven to Tears
7. Walk­ing on the Moon *
8. Truth Hits Everybody
9. Every Lit­tle Thing She Does is Magic
10. Wrapped Around Your Finger
11. Bed’s Too Big With­out You
12. De Do Do Do De Da Da Da *
13. Invis­i­ble Sun
14. Walk­ing in Your Footsteps
15. Can’t Stand Los­ing You *
16. Rox­anne
17. King of Pain
18. So Lonely (1st encore)
19. Every Breath You Take
20. Next To You (2nd encore)

The aster­isks above indi­cate my favorite songs. Can’t Stand Los­ing You was an expe­ri­ence. I’ve lis­tened to The Police Live! album (from 1995) hun­dreds of times, and always sung along with Sting when he invites the audi­ence (in Boston) to sing: “We’ve shouted enough for one evening… now it’s your turn!” So when this song started and Sting sang the first part of the refrain, then held his hand to his ear to invite us to sing, I was pumped. Sure, I can’t sing, but it was so loud in the Key that no one knew.

Walk­ing on the Moon isn’t one of my favorite songs, but it was done with so much energy and enough dif­fer­ence from record­ings I’m used to that it really shone. De Do Do Do De Da Da Da is just one of the best Police songs, and see­ing it live was no exception.

Open­ing act

I shouldn’t for­get to men­tion the open­ing act, a group called Fic­tion Plane. Never heard of them? Nei­ther had I, which is sur­pris­ing because the lead singer is none other than Joe Sum­ner, Sting’s son! They were a pretty decent rock band, sound­ing a lot like a cross between The Police and U2.

Who remem­bers the “Kon­ami code” from the good ol’ Nin­tendo days? Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Select, Start. I was wear­ing my “know your roots” tee-shirt—the one with the big 8-bit Nin­tendo con­troller on it and thought about that code for some strange rea­son. Maybe because it gave you unlim­ited health/lives/weapons/powers or what­ever the game hap­pened to offer by way of power-ups and I could totally use that right now.