March 27, 2009

(Apparently) I’m the Authority on Navy Blue and Black

Filed under: smallaccomplishment, storytime — Lindsay @ 7:16 am

I was a funny little person when I was younger, and the internet is a funny little thing right now. On the internet, in one corner, we have plenty of places to put our opinions, stories and content; this is “user-generated”. In another corner, we have search engines and hungry info-vores trying to make sense of the world; and they struggle to determine the quality of what they find, and assess their trustworthiness in the answer. You can take whole courses with people like this to figure out the answer to those questions.

I grew up in a family of women that believed you didn’t wear white after Labor Day, stockings or socks with sandals, or navy blue or brown with black.  I was always told “You have to look nice when you go in public, you never know who you will see or meet!”  So it is no surprise that, back in Spring of 2007, when my friends Christo, Mariano and Jeff launched the First Time Project, that I had some funny stories to contribute to their site.

The information you put into the internet, like this blog post right here, has an interesting way of sneaking up on you later in life. Whether it be a few days later, or a few years, you can never be sure what will be taken seriously and what will be taken out of context. In this situation, someone posted on ChaCha.com, a mobile answers text service, the question:

“Does black match with blue?”

to which he got an answer:

“As long as the shade of blue is lighter than navy blue, blue/black look great together.  Try wearing blue jeans with a black top!”

and if you look at the fine-print, the answer’s source is none other than this story, that my parents will not let me live down for the rest of my life. Now you can join them:

I befriended Adam when he was dating a girl a year younger at our sleepover camp in connecticut. I was always the “friend” but then Adam surprised me one day and dumped his girl and asked me out. On our second night of dating we had our first kiss, it was underneath a tree between girls’ camp and guys’ camp. You may be thinking that kissing on the 2nd night of dating is too fast for 12 or 13 year olds, but we were at camp, and one day at camp was the equivalent of at least a week.

I had one problem with my first boyfriend, he wore navy blue sweats and a black tshirt to breakfast in the morning, and he wore that color combination again at night. Like I said, even though it was only in 1 day, it’s camp, and it’s the equivalent of a week of navy blue and black.

We only had 1 kiss because I quickly dumped him on our 3rd day. My parents won’t let me live down the fact that I dumped my first bf because he wore navy blue and black; I guess the moral of the story is that I’m as shallow as they come (see my next sentence). He started dating this girl Amanda shortly after, but she had a really bad hair dye job and a hairy upper lip. total downgrade Adam from toronto, total downgrade.

What we learn from this situation is two-fold:

  1. The correct information was taken seriously, and now I am the apparent authoritative source on matching navy blue and black
  2. Wait, WHAT?
March 21, 2009

Working with Photoshop: Uncheck Embed Color Profile Save for Web & Devices

Filed under: css, learnings, photoshop, tools — Lindsay @ 6:56 pm

I’ve been working on my design portfolio this week and was, yet again, playing around in Photoshop. When designing a background image that is not plain white or black in Photoshop for your website, you want to make sure that you also set a background-color to take into account different browsers and sizes. If you set a background color, the image and the background color, no matter what the browser size, will seamlessly blend together. Your CSS should look something like this:

body {
    background: rgb(112, 255, 205) url('../Homepage.jpg') no-repeat;
    color: rgb(102,51,0);
}

The url finds the image, and the rgb or hex code is the background color.

As I was designing oogeeyot,(UPDATE 7/31:  I’ve totally redesigned the site, and it is no longer using these images) I noticed that the color in the image and the color in the background, although set to the same rgb value, were looking differently in Safari. The color discrepancy was not apparent in Firefox. Here’s how it looked before:

http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.59b4a58b

After doing a quick google search I found this thread to be really helpful. Basically, the key is when saving your PSD as an image file, uncheck the box that says Embed Color Profile. With an embedded color profile, Safari tries to read the colors from the image, rather than taking the picture at face value.

UPDATE:  Based on Ann’s comments below, and talking to other web designers, the best thing to do is Save for Web & Devices, choosing which GIF, PNG, or JPG fil you need for image quality.

March 1, 2009

HAMB SF: Why the Idea is Benched (Part 2 of 2)

Filed under: afaa, learnings, smallaccomplishment — Lindsay @ 5:38 pm

In the past two posts (1, 2) I’ve described HAMB SF and alluded to the fact that the idea has stopped just short of execution.  I wanted to use this posting to explain why I believe I’m not in the right position to move forward with HAMB.

Lets first start with the Legal Implications.  While no state *requires* that you have your personal training certification, you should be certified by AFAA, ACSM or NBFE. Since this type of business involves potential injury, you need to purchase personal training insurance, as well as issue waivers of liability to your clients.  I also wanted to form my business under an LLC; this is a prudent way of protecting your assets in the case of a negligence suit with any of your clients.

So there are a couple hurdles to forming an LLC for this type of business.  First, forming an LLC costs $80 in California, and mandates a minimum tax of $800 per year. This makes it difficult to keep costs low for the client.  Second, from case People v. Pacific Landmark, LLC, 129 Cal. App. 4th 1203 (2005), we learn that an LLC consists of a at least two members who own membership interest. This means, without a partner, you can’t form an LLC.   Finally, the PT insurance mandates that you must be an independent contractor, or operating as a sole proprietor.  So all together, I couldn’t form an LLC, regardless of whether I could find a silent partner or whether this legal construct could protect me and my assets in a tortious suit.

After I came to this realization, I called AFAA and spoke to a representative about how trainers conduct their business in this state.  While my notes are confined to a single page in a small notebook, the implications are huge  The major rule is you must document everything to support your case in the event that you are taken to court.  After getting all the proper tax permits, establishing your business with the city, purchasing liability insurance and issuing client waivers, you must collect as much paperwork as possible.  Add in your clients’ informed consent, policy forms, documents of the time and details of each workout, as well as invoicing and payments, the task became much larger than I had anticipated.  You cannot let anything remain as verbal agreement.

When I told her that I was interested in doing the workouts outside, she said that it would take extra work.  I needed to check with the city about what I can and cannot do in the parks, and she questioned whether the insurance would cover outside workouts, especially when the equipment (park benchs, play sets and gyms) could not be certifiably safe.

All in all, there was a lot more work to do than I had anticipated.  Two workouts a week might turn into hours and hours of preparation; not just preparing for the workout plan, but for documenting the entire workout.  And, in the end, all of this extra legwork can’t guarantee that you won’t be taken to court or found guilty.  Obviously, the real question is “What is the likeliness someone will sue you?”  The answer might be slim to none, but that’s not a risk I want to take right now.

So rather than give myself a hard time for backing away from this challenge, I decided to learn from it.  First, as I mentioned previously, I don’t need to make money from my certification to benefit from what is has provided me.  Second, because I did the due diligence needed to decide on the viability of this idea, I’ve learned leaps and bounds about incorporation in the state of California and about how trainers do run full-time businesses.  In the event that I do want to come back to this idea, I will be fully aware of the work that must go into making this a successful venture.

Finding a Place for my HAMB Background Image

Filed under: geeks, twitter — Lindsay @ 12:33 pm

In my previous post. I wrote about HAMB SF, my idea for a neighborhood workout group in Russian Hill and Nob Hill.  I showed you a couple of the website designs that I played around with, all using this basic image:

The Original HAMB SF Background Image

The Original HAMB SF Background Image

If you are not familiar with San Francisco, the left building is Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill and the right building is the Transamerica building downtown; I can see both of these from my apartment.

I have yet to write Part 2 of my post on HAMB SF, but you might be able to guess that the project idea is on hold for various reasons.  That being said, I wanted to use this background image and some of the other photoshop collateral I created for something else.  Since I don’t really use MySpace, or care to, I needed another venue where I could post a customized background.  I decided on Twitter.

I removed the HAMB header and added a few clouds, as well as a notation that attributed the background to me.  Here’s how the background looks alone:

My San Francisco Twitter Background

My San Francisco Twitter Background

I had to change the dimensions of the file, as well as increase the depth of the hill at the bottom to adjust for different browser sizes.  Of course, depending on how a viewer’s browser is adjusted, the background may look a little off.

Here’s how it looks when the sizing is just right:

My Background on Twitter

My Background on Twitter