Colophon

I'm most interested in what it's worth vs the latest fad. Pragmatic Idealist. I vote for function over form, comfort over fashion every time all the time. I clamp down on pretentious vibes and aim to influence myself and others with and for good.

Tools

Downloadables

Reference

Dogma

Theory

No. 1: UX Design Needs Protection

Without air-tight barriers to ego-bloat, collaborative interactive design becomes Bureaucracy 2.0. I propose honest communication at all costs as a solution.

No. 2: Obey Grid

Passive-aggressive affiliation with The Grid serves to slow project production, maintenance and scalability. If you Grid, then obey it. If not, then say so and plan on how to handle your shtuff without it.

No. 3: Art & Code Hold Hands

Starting a project, application or page with thorough understanding of how art and code hold hands on the target platform is crucial to getting good results without losses on either side.

No. 4: Content vs. Fashionable Containers

Just as showing is better than telling, giving is better than showing. The UI should contain the gift not be the extent of it.

Luxurious Type

07-20-2010

What was, for over a decade, an issue of intense frustration for web designers and developers alike, is now a non-issue. Typography.

Typekit is, indeed, a lovely thing.

Enjoy fresh fonts @typekit.

 

Weekly Interests: July 5 - 9

07-09-2010

Something new: sharing what I read and encounter online, weekly. Hope you find it worthwhile.

UXDev

Business

People

Technology

Projects

Blogs

 

Phone Home

07-08-2010 iPhone route from China to Austin, TX
 

For the Birds

06-25-2010

I'm officially back on Twitter, folks. I know you've all been waiting, breathlessly anticipating the Second Coming of Danny Hotea to Twitville. Well, here I am!

You, go make me a sandwich!

Hopefully it'll prove worthwhile for the el profesionalismo in me and not give too much occasion to the ADHD-o in me.

 

For the Love of All Things Organized and Useful

06-17-2010

Just found this. I know, I know. I'm late to the game. But not too late to fall in love. That's what matters.

After all, it's all we need.

 

Hybrid

06-14-2010
Because I somehow love both Country music and New Wave... that should qualify me for a handicapped parking permit."
~ Chuck Palahniuk
 

Insight

06-11-2010
 

Noble Goals

06-09-2010

The meaning of life is...um...er... Well, let's just say that a dream without a deadline is a dream. And one (dream) with one (deadline) is a goal.

  1. Read through all Dooce archives.
  2. Get (any) one of these.
  3. Make a gas-engine powered scooter with My Hero, this summer.
  4. Grow bald with dignity.
  5. Get leaner and less meaner with age and hair loss.
 

Truuust

06-03-2010

I have a relative, we were close growing up, who uses the title of this post as his email. A drawn-out statement, very relaxing to pronounce, as his cyberspace nomenclature of choice.

I'm reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell and coming unglued inside. Then, this morning, my RSS feeds me this tidbit from Bobulate: On Trust.

God wishes to move the will rather than the mind.  Perfect clarity would help the mind and hurt the will."
~ Blaise Pascal

I'm thinking about this. How I relate to it. How I've been "affected" throughout life in regards to trust. What it means and how it matters. For me, this is, very personally huge. And I didn't know it until the drive to work this morning.

Trust.

 

My Hero

06-02-2010
 

MODx and Google Fonts

05-26-2010

Most of the world doesn't know about my life-changing, mind-altering blogging skills on display at flatgut.com.

I pardon you.

Using Google's shmancy fontagraphy inclusions, I beautified my blog in a matter of minutes. A call to the right font stack. A few margin and line-height tweaks. And voila! My font is served.

What's so cool about the life of Web developing right now is that we've been granted better web typography at the hands of Google. The nerds have finally figured out that functional aesthetics are good and have made a way for the poor and lowly to impress with luxurious typography. Albeit limited, the Google Font Directory is great.

Here's what I'm using on my blogimus-maximus:

Lobster is for H1's

Droid Sans does H2's right

Vollkorn makes P text flow refreshingly

Google fonts and MODx make for super-quick type resetting. I fully endorse this method of development. Give it a whirl (pronounce the "h" like your grandpa does)!

 

Web Stack - A Definition of Terms

05-20-2010

I fully endorse Mr. Meyer's proposal for the universal adoption of the term "web stack" when addressing what was heretofore referred to as "front-end web-standards technologies—(X)HTML (of any flavor), CSS, and JavaScript". Henceforth, I, dannyhotea.com, shall progressively promote the newly proposed and fully endorsable nomenclature of "Web Stack" (proper noun) in the context of UX Development and Web-centric technology discourse(s) and social gatherings.

I advise you do the same.

 

Font You And Your Family!

05-19-2010

I was just about to pull the trigger. I wavered. Checked back repeatedly and then didn't.

And now I'm glad I didn't. For the most part, anyway.

I'm talkin' about upgrading my Typekit account to the $50-version. Google's on the job and now my web fonts are free.

Woohooo! Look at me! I've got free @font-face.

 

UX Tools

05-14-2010

I've been (slowly) reading Seth Godin's latest, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? In it he talks about artists and art, money-based economy, platforms (from which to promote your art) and other such things. Good stuff. This morning, my blessed RSS reader gave me a link to something wonderful: Web Design Sketchbook, a site giving away free, printable UI grids.

UX is starting to be fun. Mostly because of good folks doin' good things like providing tools and guidance.

I'm a bit happier now.

 

Bye Bye Lala

04-30-2010

It's been a while since I've been actually happy because of something on the web.

The more I learn about it. The more I code and design. The less it matters to me. The thing itself. It's meaningless and mostly serves as a void of memorable stimulation in my life.

It's work.

My son asked me, after spending half the day with me in my cubicle at Dell, "Dad...(always a 20 second pause for pre-launch calibration), why did you decide to do that for a job?"

Silence.

Left turn signal tick.

"Uhm...."

I think I gave a short lecture on the importance of weighing options before making a commitment. Alluded to college. Mostly said that I kinda fell into it over the years.

This may sound silly, but I remember when I fell head over heals for the web. It was the world I had been sheltered from and it was now (then) mine. All I had to do to be part of it, really part of it, was learn HTML. Then Flash. Then Javscript and PHP and mySQL and everything else.

Enter the learning grind.

I love learning. But, learning for its own sake is a hell I prefer to avoid. I need, I must apply something I've learned. I must DO something with it. It must bring something back for me. It must return something to me from all the effort I give. I want reciprocation from my learning and efforts to apply it.

Enter Lala. The giver. The generously smart thing on the web.

I was actually happy when I found lala in late 2009. Happy.

I'm sad to see it go. Sad that Apple, a company who's business and design decisions usually make sense to me, usually make me happier than not, is the company that's responsible for this goodbye.

I can't imagine being as happy about online music technology as I was with lala.com, again. But then, I'm not really imagining, yet.

We'll see. Hear, rather.

 

.delay() Gratification

04-28-2010

The small things in life truly do make a huge difference.

I rejoice with all my fellow code nerds for jQuery's addition of the .delay() method. In times past, I've had to carve my own from scratch in cold-weather, uphill and barefoot after eating sawdust-flour bread loaf and boiled shoe leather.

Life is much better now thanks to the jQuery team.

Yay.

 

Lone(ly) Ranger

04-15-2010

I'm in between bites of lean chicken doused in organic ketchup accompanied by kosher pickles. It's lunch time at the desk (again). I've been tasked with opening up the throttle on the current project in order to make good time. That translates into (far) more time at the desk. Both at home and in the cubicle.

I am a lonely design code zombie.

I'm not sure how you react to overwork. But what I feel the most is loneliness. Constant. Like a block of cement on my chest. It's very difficult to remove.

I know I'm lonely because music isn't working. I even tried listening to The Beastie Boys' Intergalactic Planet Gathering, just to mix things up a bit.

Nothing.

I got nothing past the last second of beats and sound.

Normally, I'm an avowed, professing, non-workaholic who heavily denies being preoccupied with work of all kinds for the sake of being around loved ones and living a full life full of purposeful activity. Today, my avowements feel like paper airplanes crashing into the river of denial, getting soggy and sinking. No sign of'em. Just gone. All my self-sayings of not being a workaholic are, in fact, just sayings.

Now, to clarify, I do believe that there's a time for building something. A time for exertion beyond the norm. Yes, I'm all for that. But, what I've experienced is the constancy of such exertion over the past five-to-six years and it's times like these that I feel the let-down. The temporality of it. The flimsiness of it.

Maybe, I'm just tired.

I'll finish the chicken, pickles and ketchup. The Diet Coke. And get back to it. The sooner the better to finish up.

"Done is beautiful." ~ Frank Chimero

 

The Benefits of Lunacy

03-31-2010

Have you ever laughed so hard you feared (amidst the roaring joy of the moment) you'd cross over, permanently, into the 51%?

I just did. I think it bruised my sternum.

Maybe it was an image I saw for the first time. Or maybe my blood sugar is excessively low. I'm not sure. But the feeling, the feeling was cathartic, if only for a brief moment. I felt something like when you imagine driving your car off a cliff or getting held under by massive surf at Huntington Beach.

The thrilling fear of death pulsed through me for two, full heart-pumps.

Sure beats all this hand-coding nonsense, I say.

Enjoy!

 

I Blame Tina Fey

03-04-2010

I do. She's responsible. Directly. For my lack of sleep.

If she hadn't done produced such wonderment in me with 30 Rock, I could sleep. As it stands, I'm neither able or interested. I'm compelled, rather, to watch every single episode of the show on Netflix.

That's me on the couch with the Macbook Pro glowing, earbuds in and cackling late into the night.

 

N.E.A.M. and EnHANTs

02-25-2010

Have you ever had a crazy idea only to see something very similar actually happen? If you have the crazy-idea-become-partial-reality was most-likely followed by an internal dialog about hidden genius.

I know I have.

This morning, I came accross a post from one of my favorite online contributors, Johanna Beyenbach of Tokyohanna that triggered this post within minutes of reading it.

N.E.A.M.

About a decade ago, during a haircut, I unveiled my crazy idea to my friend, Andrew. The letters stand for: Night-time Energy Accumilation Module. The idea, laughable at the time, was that I would invent a ski mask for night-time use. The mask would somehow harvest the micro-energy generated by my facial hair growth and wirelessly transmit it to an energy repository in my house for later use.

EnHANTs

Energy-Harvesting Active Networked Tags sounds like a very cool project, indeed. I feel like what I imagine kids in the 50's felt like when they thought about 1984. "I'm getting a jet pack when I'm 50!"

What was once laughter filled with jubilation in reaction to sheer absurdity is now the laughter of excitement, and in the better sense of the word, lunacy.

As in mad scientist laughter.

Tell me these ideas aren't similar at all. Not even close. And I (might) stop laughing like I've lost my marbles. At least on the outside. But, for now, seeing the vastness of what I could only imagine being spanned by real technology gets me giddy.

As in Giddy-Up!

 

I Just Got Taller

02-18-2010

Believe what you will, but I'm growing. This site is proof-positive of that.

Along the lines of work in the Internets trenches, I'm planning and scheming how I might package and transmit acquired UX and UI knowledge. I'm feelin' good about my career direction and momentum. Reminds me of learning how to surf at Huntington. The mastery of it, in my opinion, is positioning, timing, momentum and balance.

There's nothing like it in the world.

But, I digress. Surfing helps me look at what I do in life, and subsequently at UX Dev / Design, from those four vantage points. Here's how I see things:

Positioning

The question of "where?" is crucially relevant to my profession.

Where was I?

Started out as a desktop publisher for an Internet Training company. Read the manuals to learn about network computing and the Web and started hammering away at design and code.

Where am I now?

UI Engineer and intermediate PHP coder with over a decade of experience designing and integrating page-code for clients ranging from companies that occupy their own zip-code to little-ol-me and my own personal one-offs and scripts.

Where am I Going?

Shooting for independence under the moniker consultic.us. Products and services are in definintion and refinement mode, right now.

Where do I want to avoid?

After a 20-month stint of unemployment after the bust of 2000, I'm not eager to go back to the bread line. That's a given. More specifically, though, I'm avoiding work and activity that costs too much. Thinking of life as a one-shot investment chance sobers my appreciation of each moment's value. There's plenty of opportunity to do good in the world. I want to be part of the good and avoid the not-as-good or worse.

Timing

The popularized Greek aphorism, "Know Thyself" comes to mind here. (No, I don't use the word "aphorism" on most days. I'm running on borrowed sophistocation via Wikipedia.) Asking for too much, too soon, as in trying to land a highly technical role in a small agency or taking on menial and less challenging work at a corporate behmoth has much the same outcome. With every new gig, I try to take on just a bit more than I have in the past but not so much that I drown immediately. It makes for a good growth plan and keeps me learning, engaged and live.

Momentum

I'm blocking out an 80's song, right now. I'll spare you the title or any lyric. I'm just that nice.

Anyone who's coded or designed knows this is big. Stop-and-go workflow makes for good cubicle-monkey behavior but can't account for success in gaining solid competency in the industry. Strike while the iron's hot.

Balance

Although self-explanatory at times, balance is ellusive most of the time. I would say that's true for most people and moreso for industry-folk. This last point, flies in the face of previous ones. If this four-point post were a car, the last point would be the brakes.

Essential, wouldn't you agree?

I'm gaining bits and pieces of balance. All of it expensive in terms of life-experience; mostly learned the hard way. The rewards, though, are so sweet. For me, it's spending time at home or outdoors without the cloud of possible technology solutions hovering over me. I'm human again. I'm a dad. My kids love me. I'm a hubby. My wife loves me. It's great. Life is good. Even without technology, the web and all the other stuff mentioned, life is good. And balance is, for me, the practice of disciplined remembering.

I don't just look and feel taller.

I am.

 

Take it Easy

01-18-2010

I nearly pushed the red button, this morning.

Yah. It was that bad. My reaction to some poor shmuck's opinion nearly sent me off the edge. I wrote a lengthy rant about it complete with expert use of profanity. As I edited and re-edited the rant, like sharpening a blade on a fine stone, I began to realize that I am insane.

Or, at least I was for a few minutes.

Now that I'm back, I just wanted to remind myself, in front of the class, to obey the 10-second rule. Which on the web should be converted to say 1-hour rule.

Wait an hour after sharpening the blade, aiming the missiles or whatever, before unleashing hell. I think it will help us all.

 

Sniff Sniff: Musings, Mucus and Meaningful Influence

01-15-2010

Weather or not you're prone to influence from weather, I'd bet a ripe tomato you're no match for a bucket of snot.

My sinuses are packed like a Polish sausage. Coffee the only medicine available. I'm on a 10-minute hiatus from UX Dev, in a thankful and thoughtful mood and wanted to share.

In late 2009, Phil Coffman posted a link to a site who quickly became one of my favorite writers and online people. His name is Joshua Longbrake. I first landed on his December 15th post where he describes the contrast between cheese-eating liberties in different contexts. I laughed like a horse!

'Nother influencial happening is a new book I'm reading by Phil Vischer, creator of VeggieTales titled, "Me, Myself, & Bob". I've devoured half of it already. Can't get enough. I'll have more to say on it in the coming weeks.

 

Keep a Clean Nose in Content-Creation

01-11-2010

This is a very negative post. If you feel happy, you may not be inclined to read on. I prefer that you don't actually. I wouldn't want to be held responsible for spoiling a contented person's day. Being that, at the moment, I am not a contented person, I will continue.

Having spent more than a decade clicking through the veritable sludge produced by adrevenue vampires and masterminds of mediocrity for over a decade, I consider myself credentialed enough to publish my own authoritative opinion on the matter of blogging. I'm a big fan of getting to the point. So, here goes.

How Not To Blog

The way it's done by most folks out there is the way not to blog. Symptoms of stupidity in practice include, but are not limitted to:

  • Putting the reader second to anything at all. SEO, Traffic, Buzz, whatever. If your content isn't edifying someone, it's cluttering the world for the sake of funding your idiot behavior which in turn feeds on itself. I vote against you.
  • Vapid rants inspiring your buddies, cronnies or clan to echo your own, one-point sermon of woe
  • Cut-and-paste from other sites for the sake of feigning content creation on your own site. Think of the endless crap-stack of Web design galleries and you've picked up the right scent trail.
  • Agressive display of anti-whatever-it-is-ness (again) for the sake of traffic

How To Blog

These fellas are to be commended in that they actually provide intelligent content with appealing presentation. It's as though they believe that packaging their message is a way to build credibility on top of creating great, original, thought-provoking content ala subversive magazine articles.

How To Deal

So, what am I doing besides stinking up the room with my own vapid rant or attempting to perfume my pig pen? To be clear, I am recommending a boycott of worthless content.

In short, I say in your own life's endeavors, keep a clean nose in content-creation. If you need to earn cash, do it with integrity. Build something, teach someone, help in one way or another. You will inevitably be credited for the good you do in the world. Whether or not that meets your finanicial needs entirely is another issue. Which, while we're at it, begs the question of greed. Check yourself before you wreck yourself.

 

Twenty-10 Change in the Wind

01-07-2010

For me, Twenty-Ten is all new, complete with a new workplace and career path. I've dropped 2009 and subsequently the full-time employment I had with a small Austin company like a torn sock and moved into a new direction as a UX Dev consultant with the goal of working independently under the moniker of consultic.us.

As part of my newly productive and fun(er) life, I've migrated dannyhotea.com to the MODx platform. I've been infatuated with it since my work for Dell.com's Global Site Design Design Library site. Did I stutter?

Projects on Radar

Writing out a publicly viewable list of my ideas is a first for me. In that regard, you might say I've been unsociable up until now.

Pee Shoe

This will be a series of short, autobiographical essays starting with my earliest memories and working through mid-adolescence. My son, Ethan, inspired this one. When he was younger, I would tell him improvisational stories, series of stories, every night. One was about a rabbit named Zoozoo. Another was about a lizard named Lenny the Lump. I even made up a one-off prose-poem called The Grubby Little Boy once to motivate him to take a bath. Not sure if that helped his bathing moralle, but what the stories did do was prove his love for narrative and my love for writing and creating stories.

consultic.us

This will be my new consulting business. Phase one is to operate independently from other agencies or businesses, doing Web UX Dev & Design work nationwide. Phase two is under wraps until further notice.

Flatgut.com

This is where I journal my learnings and earnings in effort to become and remain healthier and more attractive. Men, in general, are hideous and repulsive at face value. The hairy bodies, the love handles, the gut. My ambition is to become as much of a glistening diety by age 35 as I possibly can.

Short Do-List

  • More fun!
  • Writing
  • Photography for fun and personal journalism
  • Get back on the skateboard
  • More outdoors & less chair-and-screen-time
  • Nurture friendships deliberately and regularly

Stop-Doing List

  • Twitter is at the top of the list for 2010. No more Twits for me, friends. Facebook may be next. I'm not sure. I just removed it from my iPhone, so it's getting close to the chopping block.
  • Sensless TV-watching
  • Unplanned learning or information collection en-masse
  • Unscheduled to-do's of any sort

Money is Not Enough

Besides work, I've determined to live for something. My kids are my life. Time with them, teaching and learning from them, is on the radar. Time to nurture my marriage of (nearly) thirteen years to the ever lovely Kristen (Kauffman) Hotea is high on the priority list, as well. Then there's organizing the garage and spending more time outdoors. Forget jogging for cardio, skateboarding is where it's at!

God bless and keep you, this year. I wish you the best life possible. That's what I'm going for.