Fran's Restaurant at Power and Light District

April and I went to the Fran's Restaurant, a 24 Hour Diner on the corner of 14th and Main.  I really wish this was open, when living down at 9th and Walnut.  It would have been nice to go somewhere to eat at any time of the day downtown.

We had a great dinner, at the mod decorated diner.  The inside of the restaurant is very modern in style, with a touch of 60's mod or what I would call International Modern.  The booth seats were big, and comfy and the sitting area was comfortable for April and I to enjoy our dinner.  

I had a traditional breakfast of Sunny side up eggs, Bacon, Potatoes, and a Bagel with cream cheese. April had Biscuits and Gravy, and Scrambled Eggs.  All great, and reasonably prices, compared to the fair I might find at say IHOP.  Great food, excellent service, and nice atmosphere for all about the same I would pay at say IHOP or Denny's.  I recommend Fran's to anyone looking for good comfort food, or a great place to grab some food after a concert while downtown. Will defiantly visit again, to try more of the menu, I'm intrigued by the Egg portion of the menu, that I need to look into closer on my next visit.

New Nick - Brand New

Apparently Nickelodeon decided to change their logo, and overall visual branding. The original iconic design had been in use since 1984, having a slight splat change in 2002 time frame. Watching my share of Nickelodeon programming when I was younger, this comes as a sad departure, as the splat always reminds me of those great shows, like Salute Your Shorts, The Adventures of Pete and Pete, and Hey Dude.

The new logo, has nothing in relation to the old logo, than the orange color, as now used in the typeface alone doesn't carry the same fun, appearance it once had.  Not a fan, especially of a sudden change in a logo, for what appears no apparent reason, than hey we wanted a boring bad typeface logo, to look more grown up.

Nickelodeon please bring back the old logo.

MTV's Buzz: fantastically forward-thinking TV from 1990 - Boing Boing

Wow, I don't remember this program, maybe bits and pieces I may have caught, but never remember seeeing this. An interesting look at what we thought the future would be, and ideas that we have started questioning and thinking of how media and ideas are shared, and who owns these ideas and created materials.

Facebook Footer, What is the info displayed near the copyright notice?

What is the different bits of info that are displayed if you hover your mouse over Facebook Copyright statement in the Footer of the page?

It seems, that the values keep changing.

How-To: Web server on a business card (Part 1) - Hack a Day

How-To: Web server on a business card (Part 1) - Hack a Day

for years, microchip pic microcontrollers dominated; pic16f84 hacks and projects are everywhere. the 8-bit 16f and 18f lines are supported by several coding environments and easy-to-build serial port programmers. microchip?s 16-bit pic24f is cheaper, faster, and easier to work with, but largely absent from hacks and projects.

we recently used a microchip pic24f microcontroller in a mini web server project, but didn?t find many introductory references to link to. in this article we?ll cover some pic 24f basics: support circuitry and programming options. we?ll also talk about our favorite features, and how we figured them out. our next article will outline a web server on a business card based on the pic 24f.


the basic circuit

This is pretty cool, I would like to do something of this sort if I new how to sodder and such. Anyone want to get me a soldering gun, and some chips?

Paper Foldables: The Blog:

These are pretty cool, digging the Krang one from the TMNT! A possible use for making some cool business cards.

branding firefox / journal / hicksdesign

Shortly before Christmas, I had an email from a chap called Steven Garrity, who works for Silverorange, and runs a blog called ?Acts of Volition?, in which he publishes a radio show on regular basis. (really worth a listen BTW). He asked if I would like to join a recently created Mozilla branding team, with the immediate aim of producing a new logo identity for the Firebird browser, soon to be renamed firefox (Ben Goodger has written up the reasons and process for the name change). The branding team came into being after Steven wrote an article recommending changes to Mozilla?s existing branding. I jumped at the chance, and today Firefox 0.8 is finally released, and the work is no longer confidential.

Explanation of the origins of the Firefox logo.  I remember seeing other versions, when the browser was in early beta when they were still figuring out the name and all of the browser.

Operating System Interface Design Between 1981-2009 | Webdesigner Depot

A Graphical User Interface (GUI for short) allows users to interact with the computer hardware in a user friendly way.

Over the years a range of GUI?s have been developed for different operating systems such as OS/2, Macintosh, Windowsamiga, Linux, Symbian OS, and more.

A good overview of how GUI have progressed. Nothing like some old school Mac OS screenshots. I wish I could get OS X too look a little more old school. You can see how everyone was stealing everyone's ideas as the progression and representations of graphical elements evolved.

GUI, Design

Welcome to Ars Technica v5.0! - Ars Technica

Damn you Conde Neste !

Screwed up the Ars Technica website!

Too Wired-ish looking for me and to glossy.

Oh well I will have to spend some time getting use to the new navigation and funky drop  down menus.

Why can't you guys update the OpenForums at least?

JOHN DVORAK'S SECOND OPINION How Adobe can stop Microsoft Commentary: Attack with a Linux initiative

Adobe could port its Creative Suite, which includes Photoshop, Illustrator, In-Design and other subsystems, to Linux as a shot across Redmond's bow. Then the company should embrace Linux in-house and develop a complete, optimized Linux OS designed to run a high-performance version of its Creative Suite on Linux optimized for Adobe products, to be sold as a bootable bundle for multicore-workstation hardware.

Are you joking? Adobe port their prized jumbled mess of a suite to Linux? Adobe products have been optimized to run on Windows for years now.(source needed, but it really seems that away) They can't even get it right in OS X, why in the hell would they port to Linux, an open source dominated platform? Everyone that runs a Linux box either writes their own programs or runs programs written by a community and contribute by either adding to that code, or providing feedback. Why would a group of people that like to tinker with their OS and programs would want to invite a closed source based program to their arena? Yes it would make productivity as a business standpoint that much more lucrative, but Linux doesn't have any other such app, that I'm aware of that is closed source and widely accepted and distributed with Linux. I understand that the article claims that Adobe should write and package their own Linux distro, but doesn't this go against what Adobe believes about software, and what the Linux crowd believes about software?
If Adobe wanted to take on Microsoft, and why it is even a battle? They should focus their efforts on Apple. Get Adobe running in OS X well, and with all the hype of Apple and their products, it seems as it would be a win win situation. I've noticed that Adobe has dumped on the Apple camp as of lately, and not sure why, since Apple based system is what got Adobe to where they are now.