If I could ask the world a single thing, I would be ask others to be present.

I often find this a sometimes insurmountable feat in my own life. At work, I am too busy trying to get through the never-ending firestorms of “must be done” to be present in the lives of my colleagues and friends. At home, I am too busy trying to do a number of things that I feel need to be done or playing with the mass amounts of technology I surround myself with, rather than spending quality time just being with the people around me.

Do you ever feel the same?

As a side note, I do sometimes make strides.

Disable the Visual Editor

Add the following line of code to the “functions.php” file in your theme:

add_filter ( 'user_can_richedit' , create_function ( '$a' , 'return false;' ) , 50 );

Disable Quicktags and Media Button

The Quicktags (b, i, link, b-quote…) are in the HTML Editor and the “Upload/Insert” media “button”. (My friend Paris has thoughts on the accuracy of calling it a button that he wrote the Button It Up plugin to address.)

Add the following code to the “functions.php” file in your theme:

add_action( 'admin_head', 'hide_admin' );
function hide_admin() {
	global $post_type;
	remove_action( 'media_buttons', 'media_buttons' );

	$hide_editor = "<style type=\"text/css\">#ed_toolbar { display: none; }</style>";
	print($hide_editor);
}

From the article:

“We have more processing power, affordable tools, and combined intelligence right this very minute than at any point in the history of design. We are using it to build shit. It’s time to aim higher. Let’s find problems to solve that actually improve people’s lives.”

“How horrible for a client to have gone out and found a good designer and then get handed work that looks like something they would have done. Clients deserve your best work, not their best work. Really good clients, the ones I want you to work with, would rather be challenged than pandered to.”

“Ninety percent of design is communication. Half of that will be done in writing. A designer who can’t write can’t defend their work. And work that can’t be defended will die.”

“You should start projects because you feel like you are going to either explode, or vomit, or both. You’ve gotta have that kind of burning desire in your stomach to do it.”

Kate Bingham Burt

if (‘designer’ != ‘google’) {
window.location = ‘http://google.com’;
}
else {
answer = question + designer;
designer += frustration;
}

Or correspondingly,

if (google_search_easiness > web_designer_willingness_to_answer) {
location.href = ‘http://google.com’;
}
else {
question = prompt(‘What’s your question’);
}

Love, Capitol Hill…

And from Broadway:

Think of the possibilities.

“As we struggled with this decision, many thoughtful people asked what they could do to help. Here is the simple answer. If you want interesting and unique local shops to survive and eventually thrive you must do your shopping there. Go to your local shops BEFORE you go online. Go to them with the understanding that you may not get the same diversity of selection, but what you DO get is so much more important. You get expertise, passion and equity in the growth of your community. Locally owned business are the first to donate to your schools. Locally owned business are the first to reinvest in your neighborhoods. Locally owned businesses believed in your unique tastes and values enough to risk it all. They invested both in their own dreams and in the belief that you value your community’s uniqueness. Please shop local. It’s really, really important.”

Well said.

“But the worst moments were when people came on to our property. These individuals would just walk down the driveway, always looking like rejects from the cast of Night of the Living Dead, never moving very fast, but always advancing with singleminded purposefulness. Few were actual haters; most were just crazy. We kept the sheriff’s deputies busy until they finally suggested we might want to get our own security, or perhaps our own police force. Which we did.

And:

“I chose not to give up. I wanted to give up, badly. Instead I got fit. If you take a punch at me now, I can assure you three things will happen: 1) You will break your hand. That’s the beauty of spending just a half hour a day on your muscular-skeletal structure – it turns into kryptonite; 2) I will fall on you. I’m still working on my core and balance issues, so after you slug me I will tip over and crush you; 3) My Seals will spray mace or their own homemade concoction of jalapeño spider spray directly into your eye sockets while you are on the ground. As a pacifist, please accept my apologies in advance — and never, ever use violence against me or anyone else again.

Here Comes Trouble: Stories from My Life is scheduled to be released tomorrow.