Mondrian cake at Blue Bottle coffee, SFMOMA. One of my favourite artists!

My parents are visiting at the moment, so I’ve had a busy week! It’s a challenge to fit work in around spending as much time with them as possible. I hope I’ve been doing a decent job at it, though. I certainly don’t want to upset any clients!

This week has seen us go to a Giants game, an incredible talk by Even Ensler (sign up to be part of the One Billion Rising!) and of course lots of shopping (the Aussie dollar is still strong!).

So I haven’t been hanging out too much online, but here are some great things I found anyway…

• Jessica Hische explains the Dark Art of freelance pricing. Must read for freelancers!

• There’s only a few days left to sign up for the amazing Website Launchpad course. Get up and running with your website in a matter of weeks!

• Where’s the fold? helps you to see where the “fold” (the area able to be seen without scrolling) on any website is, at any screen resolution.

• It’s a no-brainer to have a form on your website to opt-in to an email newsletter (or something similar). But where to put it? Check out this list of the top 10 places for inspiration.

• Smashing Magazine laments the lost art of design etiquette between designers and developers. Since I’m usually doing both of these things, it’s not a huge concern for me! But when I do work with someone else, these guidelines are super important.

• The new WP101 Tutorial Plugin is a subscription plugin that puts WordPress tutorial vidoes right on your dashboard.

• The creator of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, discusses why it’s important for your company to have a creed. Do you have one?

• Some superb examples of playing with your food.

• Responsive web design is certainly the hot topic of the Internet at the moment. Here’s an inspiring round-up of some great responsive designs.

• Are you selling software or a web application through your website? Then you probably want to use screenshots to illustrate your product. Get inspired with these examples of using screenshots in web design.

• I love these RGB artworks that look different as the lighting changes. Genius!

I’m off to enjoy more of this Indian Summer we’ve been having. See you at Hardly Stricly Bluegrass this weekend?

Squaw Valley with Lake Tahoe in the distance

I’ve had a good week, but wow, it has slipped by fast!

Last weekend I was up in Lake Tahoe, at Squaw Valley ski resort cheering on my friends who were taking part in Tough Mudder NorCal. It was incredible, and I was so proud of everyone. They all finished, and boy it was a tough course. If Tough Mudder is coming to your city, think about taking part!

So, onto the variety of websites I’ve been digging this week…

• ProBlogger outlines some new productivity tools to simplify your online life.

• Surreal light illustrations. Love these!

• This is a great round-up of why spec work is bad. If you’re a designer, or have worked with designers, you need to read this!

• Creative illustrations with a twist, mostly featuring storybook characters.

• Struggling with getting traffic to your website? Here are 4 creative and easy ways to attract more visitors.

• I ove these cutting-edge batteries, may with unique and inspired methods of charging.

• There seems to be a few new lorem ipsum (dummy text) generators doing the rounds at the moment. The newest one I’ve seen is Samuel L. Ipsum – placeholder text from Samuel L. Jackson’s character in Pulp Fiction. You can choose from Classic (NFSW – lots of swearing!) or Lite (curse-free).

• Are you learning CSS? This Online CSS Sandbox is a great way to mess around and see the results.

• Learn how to turn a milk jug into a sandwich box – brilliant way to recycle!

• I often get asked where to find help for WordPress. If you’re always wondering how to get help, Digging Into WordPress has put together a guide for WordPress support.

• This photograph of the southern lights from space, taken from the International Space Station, is incredible! And I thought it would be a once-in-a-lifetime thing to see them from Earth…

• Something funny to finish – the 10 best Amazon reviews ever. My favourite is the one from the Lego security checkpoint. Hilarious!

Alright then, see you next week!

Mirror Lake, Yosemite National Park

Hello, Friday! I hope you’ve had a great week. Mine has been busy but really fun.

This afternoon I’m heading up to Lake Tahoe with a bunch of friends for the crazy NorCal Tough Mudder event. Can’t wait – it’s going to be incredible!

Here’s some of my favourite links from the week for your Saturday morning breakfast reading…

• This sketchbook features photos of walls that you can graffiti on, the privacy of your own home.

• Mari Kasurinen has the best use for My Little Ponies to date – make them into pop icons like Darth Vader and Edward Scissorhands.

• Here is a guide to visual design for everyone. I love it!

• Learn how to write a better about page for your website.

• This series of shrink-wrapped objects is surreal.

• Struggling with creativity? Leo Babauta has the answer – the Little But Really Useful Guide to Creativity.

• Tips for designing your website’s introductory text.

• Gala Darling has released her Radical Self Love Manifesto. With option to print out in poster form!

• ‘Like’ isn’t just ambiguous on Facebook. Check out the Guide of Likes! Hilarious.

• Problogger features 52 types of blog posts that are proven to work. Never be stumped again!

• Ever wanted to preview premium WordPress themes before forking out for them? Now you can!

That’s it for this Friday! See you next week…

Half Dome at night, taken from Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park

Well, I’m posting this a little later on a Friday than I normally would, because my week has been so busy! It was a short week already, as Monday was Labor Day holiday, and I was away last weekend in Yosemite so it took me a bit longer than usual to get back in the swing of things.

I’m never too busy to read cool stuff online, though! Here’s what I was digging this week…

• First off, a bit of fun. I love these propane bottle Lego heads. Now that I’ve seen one, it all seems so obvious! Of course!

• I loved Seth Godin’s piece on how education hasn’t changed to keep up with the changing world. So true!

• Ever get bored with the same old “I’m currently out of the office…” message? My friend, you need the best vacation responder ever! I really want to try this one…

• ProBlogger shares some really valuable blog proofreading tips.

• Everyone’s talking about it, but are you still confused about responsive web design? Webdesigner Depot comes to the rescue with a roundup of all the concepts. Now you know what to talk about!

• There is a constantly redrawn line in the sand between designing and coding. But how do designers learn code? Check out Frank Chimero’s tips.

• F*ck Yeah Headlines is great – every day, artist Eric Wedum finds a news headline and illustrates it – without reading the article!

• For all you neat freaks, here’s a whole collection of things organised neatly. Ahhhh…

• I LOVE Lauren Carney’s new drawing of tattoos escaping a woman. Beautiful!

I’m really looking forward to this weekend, as I plan to spend a lot of time on my business. Woo hoo!

Bree, AKA The Blog Stylist, graciously agreed to write a post for me about spicing up your blog. Bree loves technology and writing lists, and while she used to be a beauty and website editor for Cosmo magazine, she now travels and blogs. Her blog is a simple and stylish guide to blogging, and she has a new project called Bloggers Domain, which is an amazing compilation of tool and resources for bloggers.

Take it away, Bree!

If your blogging mojo has gone MIA, perhaps it’s time to liven things up a li’l with a dash of creativity. Here, eight ways to do just that. And the best part? They’re all free!

1. Lose the plain fonts!

One of the quickest and easiest ways to freshen up your blog with little effort is to change its fonts. There are numerous sites that offer web-friendly fonts you can use, but if you’re after a free selection, check out Google’s Web Fonts. They’ve got a pretty good selection to choose from (241 font families) and you can also download them for use in Photoshop and more.

2. Import images from other sites

Use Flickr? Pinterest? Instagram? You can easily incorporate the feeds from these sites into your blog by installing the relative WordPress plugins. Having the pictures appear in your sidebar not only gives your readers something else to look at, but provides other ways for them to connect with you off your blog.

3. Try a new colour scheme

You don’t need to be an artist to come up with a new colour scheme. With tools such as Color Scheme Designer and sites such as Colour Lovers, finding new hues is as simple as point and click.

4. Make use of free .psd files

If your design skills are lacking, don’t spend hours trying to create something from scratch in Photoshop for a post. There are plenty of free .psd files available to download. Just look towards sites such as 365psd

5. Take advantage of creative commons content

There’s a plethora of content available online you can use within your posts. Not only will you save some time writing, but you’ll make your posts more interesting by embedding all kinds of work. Try Vimeo for videos,Slideshare for slideshows and Scribd for documents.

6. Create a screencast

How-to videos will always be popular, so try making one for your readers. Show them how to do something online (such as creating an account to a new social-networking site or using a certain function in photoshop). Record the process with open-source software such as CamStudio.

7. Get your readers interacting

The comments section is obviously a good spot for your readers to give their feedback or share links, but for something different, try incorporating a widget. From the ordinary such as polls to the new and different (Rafflecopter for running competitions) there’s no shortage of ways to get viewers to participate in your community.

8. Create a favicon

A favicon (favorites icon) may be one of the tiniest design elements of your blog, but as the saying goes: It’s the little things that count. Create one in a matter of minutes using a site such as Genfavicon.

Thanks Bree! Do you have any cool tips on ways to spice up your blog? Add them in the comments!

A Banksy artwork covered with plexiglass in Chinatown, San Francisco

Hello there! This week has been great! I’ve been settling into a rhythm of regular work, getting some exciting new projects on the horizon and gearing up for a long weekend away! Monday is Labor Day here in the US, and we’re going to skip town and head to Yosemite National Park for the weekend. I can’t wait!

To tide you over, here’s some cool stuff for you to check out online…

• Are you just starting out with your web business, or thinking of getting started? Delay no longer! Serena Star Leonard’s awesome Website Launchpad course will give you all the tools and inspiration necessary to get it happening.

• Also for newbies, FTP can be pretty intimidating. There are files everywhere, and it’s important where you put stuff to avoid bringing your whole site down. Eek! Thankfully, wpbeginner has a handy guide for using FTP for beginners.

• The Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus lets you look up words in an entirely new way. So engrossing!

• Have a look at your September blackout horoscope, courtesy of Austin Kleon. Mine says “eat a sandwich.” I just might!

• 31 wacky couches on Web Urbanist. I’m not sure I can see any of these in my home!

• Karol Gadja shares the No B.S. Truth About Popups. I have to say, I totally agree! I’m also going to attempt to institute a no linking to sites with popups policy. Friends don’t let friends use popups…

• Seth Godin laments the current state of web typography, and looks forward to the future.

• 10 things to do after installing WordPress. How many of them have you done?

• Smashing Magazine shares some innovative techniques to simplify sign-ups and log-ins.

What cat doesn’t like an empty box? And who doesn’t like a cat in a box?

I can’t believe it’s Friday already! This week has been awesome, though. Plenty of work to keep me busy, fun outings with friends and getting my hair “did.”

And of course, fun links. A lot of the things I was liking online this week were to do with design, so I thought I’d theme this Friday Favourites appropriately. Here goes!

• Do you have a clear process for your design work? If not, build a better one.

• Smashing Magazine covers how to become a web design expert, but the article works equally well for being an expert in anything!

• UX Magazine reminds us to think outside the box, but don’t forget the box exists!

• Some useful resources, tools and services for designers.

• Are you confused about all the different methods for displaying fonts on the web? Behold, The Web Designer’s Guide to Font Replacement Methods! For the record, I like using Google web fonts as they’re free and easy to integrate. Also, unlike Cufón, you can still select text. Which do you prefer?

• I want to try some of these! 10 WordPress plugins to enhance your blog’s typography.

• Increase the value of your design services for clients with these tips from designm.ag.

• From the Scanner Files, Smashing Magazine defends web design generalists. Yay!

• There are so many designers out there. So why not communicate what makes you different?

• Webdesigner Depot has some great tutorials on creating common elements in button design.

• Get inspiration with inspiredology and inspirationfeed. Then go out there and make stuff!

Bring on the weekend! What do you have in store?

Recently, I attended the annual WordCamp San Francisco conference. While WordCamps are run around the world all year, the San Francisco WordCamp serves as the main annual conference. WordPress founding developer Matt Mullenweg delivers his State of the Word address, and many other speakers and WordPress nerds from everywhere converge for a three day long geeked-out lovefest.

This was my first time at any WordCamp, so I’m stoked that I get to live in San Francisco and get to go to THE WordCamp, right here.

I had an amazing time, learned a lot and was very inspired. Most speakers I saw were very engaging (which is unusual for a technology conference!), and topics were as varied and fascinating as tummeling, using comics in your blog, and version control for designers.

I enjoyed a lot of the weekend, but I wanted to cover some of the highlights in this post:

Sara Cannon – Responsive Web Design

Responsive web design was a hot topic of the conference, that’s for sure. But what does it actually mean? Well, Sara Cannon showed us that responsive web design refers to the adaptability of a design to various screen sizes. While many of us use a plugin like WPTouch to create an iPhone-friendly theme for our WordPress sites, this is becoming more and more problematic as more devices are released on the market.

So how do we know what screen size to optimise our site for? This is what responsive design addresses. Through adding a few lines of code to your theme’s CSS file (specifically, the @media attribute), you can specify how your site behaves when scaled to different sizes.

An example of responsive design is Twenty Eleven, the current default WordPress theme. To see responsive design in action, go to the Twenty Eleven demo site and try resizing the screen way down to iPhone size. Notice how all the elements scale down so the site is still usable and readable at various sizes? Awesome, huh?

The Food Sense website, a beautiful example of responsive web design

Sara demonstrated a couple of WordPress.com themes that already have this functionality built in, and this reminded me that sometimes, we develop a theme from scratch when it isn’t really necessary. Twenty Eleven is already jam-packed with loads of the cool features available to the latest version of WordPress. A lot of the time, we can just use the default theme and customise it to do what we want (via, of course, the creation of a child theme, as Jane Wells pointed out in her Sunday afternoon session).

If you’re interested in checking out some sites that use responsive design, head over to Media Queries.

I found this stuff really exciting, and it’s full of possibilites for creating light-weight solutions for optimising your site’s design for multiple devices. Awesome!

Chris Coyier – CSS Psuedo Elements

Chris Coyier was one speaker whose talk was universally enjoyed. Chris works for Wufoo and runs the CSS-Tricks (check out the responsive design!) site. He was very charismatic, used humour and also spoke in a language that was easy to understand. Chris spoke about CSS pseudo elements, which are :before and :after tags you can add to your CSS to put things before and after certain elements.

An example of using a pseudo element, an oversized quotation mark, in a blockquote (example is from Chris’s presentation)

Pseudo elements should only be used for design elements (such as an oversized quote mark at the beginning of a blockquote), not content, to remain SEO friendly.

Matt Mulleweg – State of the Word

Matt Mullenweg‘s talk mainly covered the results of the first WordPress survey, accompanied by some of the best slides I’ve ever seen – all appropriated from mid-20th-century album covers. Matt revealed some amazing statistics, such as the fact that 14.7% of all websites are currently running WordPress (and this number is growing)!

Matt also spoke passionately about WordPress, and other open source platforms, combining form and function in a kind of infinite feedback loop. “Function follows form perpetually.”

You can watch Matt’s talk here:

I had an amazing time at WordCamp, and I would recommend that anyone with the slightest interest in WordPress – check out an upcoming WordCamp in your area, and get to it!

The developers recognise that WordPress can be intimidating for rookie users, and they are going to be including more user-friendliness in the future. This is also what I’m trying to address with my blog and to my clients. Are you intimidated by WordPress? Do you want to delve into customising your site a bit more, but find the very thought frightening?

I’m looking at working on a “WordPress for beginners” product. Is this something you’d be interested in?

The BEST coffee in San Francisco…

Woah, this week has gone by so fast! There have been many new and exciting work opportunities, jobs for awesome regular clients and lots of madness. I’m working on a post of reflections on WordCamp San Francisco, which I attended last weekend, so look out for that early next week.

But for now, here are some of the things I liked online this week…

• If you’re stuck for a colour palette to use for your next project, why not check out swatchspot? It’s a random colour palette generator that allows you to lock in certain colours you like. Hours of fun!

• One of the exciting things discussed at WordCamp last weekend was that in the next WordPress update (3.3), permalinks will no longer have performance issues when set to /%postname%/. Luckily, I won’t have to change anything, because I have already been using that structure! Yes, I knew it would cause some performance issues, but I have a caching plugin installed and don’t have a load of traffic yet so I didn’t think it would cause problems. Anyway, this is great news for everyone who wants pretty permalinks but had concerns about performance.

• These ferocious tire sculptures of wild animals are incredible. I’m always impressed at the amount of work that must go into a project like that… I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure I’d have the patience!

• Mashable shares their top tips for small business homepage design. The first tip? Keep It Simple. Didn’t I tell you?

• Smashing Magazine reminds us about typographic etiquette. Mind your smart quotes and em dashes!

• More typography… check out this amazing typographic packaging.

• Yes, you can now have your Lorem Ipsum dummy text hipster style. “You probably haven’t heard of them…”

• Jonathan Fields implores us to make more bad stuff – it’s the best way to learn!

Well, that’s that for another week. See you next time!

I’m not cool enough to use the Hipstamatic app on my iPhone often, but I was inspired on my daily walk today. My apartment is in the street in the bottom left!

Wow, I can’t believe it’s Friday already! This week has been a blur, with lunch meetings, webinars and Mexican food. My favourite!

I have also been digging lots of stuff online this week. Here’s my curated collection…

• Of course, the big news this week were the riots in London, Birmingham and other cities in Britain. While there were many devastating stories and images, there were also uplifting ones. For example, I loved this impromptu bulletin board forming a “physical hashtag” in Peckham.

• The Dutch have come up with the most exciting thing in public transport since escalators – the “transfer accelerator” (read: “awesome slide”) in Utrecht brings the fun back to train travel. When you’re in a hurry to catch your train, why walk down the stairs when you can sliiiiiiiiiiide…?

• Some pop-up books even adults will love.

• Under The Site lets you see the technologies in place behind any site. This is a really handy tool for getting inspiration about whether a site is using WordPress, which plugins they’re using and more!

• For a more conceptual, artistic look at the “back” of websites, Back of a Webpage is a clever and humorous take on what websites would look like if we were looking at them from behind the screen.

• If you love infographics as much as I do, I can guarantee you’ll like Visual.ly – a whole database of them!

• The amazing Chris Guillebeau asked his readers how they would come up with an extra $300-500 in the next 30 days. Check out their answers for some smart inspiration for making a couple of extra bucks.

• Art of the Menu is a website dedicated to the sometimes great, sometimes mostly unreadable world of menu design. Fascinating!

What are you up to this weekend? I’m going to SF WordCamp, which is very exciting. I hope to have lots of amazing content from there to share with you over the coming weeks!