Thank you everyone for your thoughts, condolences, and prayers regarding the recent death of my father. Your words and kindness have truly given me comfort during this difficult time.

Posts will return this week. Thank you again for your understanding and patience.

Warmly, Chanpory

Last night, my father, Yath Rith, passed away. He was 78 years old and was sick for a long time. I was able to see him just a few minutes before he died.

My father was a Cambodian refugee of war, a man who liked his shoes polished, and a meticulous barber who preferred vintage hair clippers over electric ones. Until his steady hands failed him, he was the only one to cut my hair. Although cultural, language, and generational differences sometimes divided us, haircuts brought us together.

He did not know what design was, but it was from him that I gained a discerning eye. Thank you, Pa.

LifeClever will not be updated this week, while I spend time with my family. I expect posts to return next week. Thank you everyone for understanding.

Is Mint Ready for Your Money?
A great in-depth review of brand new money-management tool. Complete with extensive screenshots.

The Right Brain vs Left Brain test
“Do you see the dancer turning clockwise or anti-clockwise? If clockwise, then you use more of the right side of the brain and vice versa.” Stare at the shadow of the ballerina long enough, and you’ll see her spin the other way. Total mindfuck.

7 Little Known Ways To Drastically Improve Your Learning
“Most people have pretty ineffective strategies for learning. Here are a couple tips for how to maximize the amount you learn so you can use more of it later.”

Kyle Krichbaum, 12-year-old vacuum savant
This totally obsessed Michigan boy has a giant collection of vacuum cleaners and even wanted to be a Dirt Devil for Halloween. Thanks to Kyle for validating the geek in all of us.

Have a great weekend everyone.

If you’re in San Francisco on October 25th, you can’t miss Punchcut’s Typophile Film Fest 4. It’s the perfect time to mingle with connoisseurs and dabblers of typography.

Here’s the dealyo:

Punchcut’s screening of the Typophile Film Festival 4 is best described as a three-hour party centered around a rare and unequaled selection of short typographic films. Hailing from Portugal, The Netherlands, Austria, Canada and the US, the films create a visual mashup of motion design, typographic animation and short stories.

It includes broadcast motion design, documentaries and typographic eye candy from Trollbäck + Company, Strange Attractors, Heebok Lee, Nick Shinn, Juan Leguizamon as well as exclusive interviews and cuts from the acclaimed documentary film Helvetica. Thanks to FontShop for helping make this presentation possible.

Where, when, and how much

Venue:
Swedish American Hall
2170 Market Street
San Francisco, CA 94114

Date: Thursday, October 25

Doors: 8–11pm

Screening: 8:30–9:30pm

Tickets: $12

Posted in: Event, San-Francisco, Typography

I’ve recently had two posts published on Merlin Mann’s 43 Folders. The first is a confession and plea about my own laptop addiction. The second is a follow-up post and presents my five favorite tips for divorcing your laptop.

Check them out:

Laptops: A blessing or a curse?
“When I got my first laptop, I loved the exhilarating freedom of whipping it out anytime I –”needed– it. No matter where I am, I could work on a project, balance a budget, or play a video game. Years later, despite its –”convenience–, I’m dangerously married to my laptop.”

How to divorce your laptop
“If you’re in a soul-sucking marriage with your laptop, you’re not alone. Last week, I confessed the details of an embarrassingly codependent relationship with my laptop. In desperation, I begged you, fellow 43 Folders readers, to share your experiences and tips for breaking up with a laptop. Many of you empathized, offering very useful suggestions.”

Posted in: Lifehacks, Productivity

It’s Blog Action Day and today’s post is about the environment.

What’s a super-easy way to reduce energy consumption, lower your energy bill, and feel good all-over? Put your computer to sleep.

For some of you, its already second nature to tuck your computers in at night. The rest of us, however, are still seduced by screensavers like flying toasters, swimming fishes, and flurry lights. When we leave work, we turn off the lights and turn on the screensavers. It’s hard to resist, because they’re just so darn pretty. Also, screensavers do prevent “burn-in”, right?

Turns out, they don’t.

Click to continue

Posted in: Computers, Environment

Helvetica, the typeface everyone loves to hate—and hates to love—now has its very own coffee cup. Austere but oh so cute and clever.

You can get it for $18 bucks at Veer. Also, don’t forget to check out the Helvetica film.

Too bad, I don’t drink coffee. :-(

Posted in: Design, Typography

Giant megabookstores like Borders and Barnes & Nobles are great for getting coffee table design books that everyone and their momma has. But if you want to snag ultra-cool limited-edition books, you’ll have to look elsewhere.

Here’s my favorite places to discover new books before everyone else. Most are in Europe because that’s just where the better design books are published. This means If you live in the states, you’ll have to pay a bit extra for shipping. It’s a small price for the extra cool-factor:

Click to continue

Posted in: Books, Design

ShoutingMat.ch
“The ninja editors at shoutingmat.ch have compiled a definitive list of the blogs that everyone’s reading. A separate elite division of parsing ninjas scours these blogs regularly to find out what all the blogging heads are linking to. Using our top-secret army of (robot”and, again, ninja) monkeys, we then determine what links are hot and publish them for you.”

Menu Bar Show and Tell
Check out this gallery of what Mac users have done with their menubars: “The Mac Menu Bar”the small strip of applications on the top right of your Mac”houses some of the coolest apps you can run on your system. They’re small, they’re sleek, and sometimes they’re absolute must-haves for staying productive on your Mac.”

Blogging is Dumb, Stupid and Successful
“Most blogs are dumb, even the successful ones. The ones about blogging. This isn’t because the writers of those blogs are dumb, they are very intelligent. It’s the readers, the ones who want to scan not to read, not to study, not to ingest. The ones who want another quick fix trick, before they have a chance to implement even the quick fix trick they just learned.”

The Paradox of Choice—Why More is Less
A video of Barry Schwartz given at Google TechTalks. Video has subtitles, so no need for headphones.

I’m a very very bad person. Why? Because I procrastinate. I put things off, leave them to the last minute, or simply never finish them. To beat these lazy habits, I’m reluctantly reading Neil Fiore’s The Now Habit. I still haven’t finished it after three months, but I have hope. (I have 40 pages left.)

According to Neil Fiore and 30 years of research, procrastination isn’t the result of laziness. Rather, procrastination is a symptom, a way of coping with deep psychological self-criticism and fear. It’s because we’re taught to believe that working is good and playing is bad. To reverse this unhealthy model, Neil proposes a tool: the Unschedule.

The Unschedule looks like a normal schedule, but with a twist. Instead of scheduling work you have to do, you fill in everything you want to do.

Here’s what my Unschedule looks like next week:

After visualizing my day, I was amazed to see I don’t have time to work for more than two hours without a good break. Already, work doesn’t seem so bad.

Here’s a summary, based on Neil’s instructions, on how to make and use your own Unschedule:

Click to continue

Posted in: Lifehacks, Procrastination, Productivity

I have a confession. The reason why you’ve heard barely a peep from me isn’t because I’ve been Tasered by zealous cops or abducted by aliens. Truth is, I’ve been fiendishly playing Scrabble Scrabulous on Facebook. I swear, It’s like a Krispy Kreme donut with sprinkles of crack on top.

How did I become so addicted?

Click to continue

After seeing pics of Samsung’s new slim and sexy printers, I fell in love. Exclusively sold through Apple, the ML-1630 ($200) and multi-function SCX-4500 ($300) feature an unconventional design with a high-gloss black finish and slim form. After wiping off the drool off my face, I dashed to the Apple store in San Francisco and picked up the multi-function version.

Here are pics from the unboxing and my initial raves and rants:

Click to continue

Posted in: Apple, Design, Printers, Review

Hate spending time keeping track of where your money goes? Check out Mint, a new and free money management tool for people who hate managing money.

Mint allows you to view all of your banking and credit card transactions side-by-side, making identifying all of your transactions much easier and faster than ever before.

How does this help you? We make it easy for you to track down erroneous charges or bank fees, and keep a closer eye on your money.

Mint even lets you label your transactions so you know what bills you need to split with your friends or roommates, know which ones need to be reimbursed for your company, and more.

I’ve been in the private beta for two weeks (it’s now public), and it’s become my favorite financial tool.

Click to continue

Posted in: Finances, Tools

The continuing growth of Web 2.0 startups means designers can expect to be approached by a lot more clients with five-figure budgets who are virtual novices to the web design process. Without proper handling these clients can be extremely difficult to work with.

I know, because I was one of those clients.

I was recently put in charge of redesigning my startup’s website. The only thing I knew about design was that I had a vague distrust for the color orange. I was not a good client. I asked lots of dumb questions and made a lot of unreasonable demands.

If you are interested in working with design neophytes like me, here are some suggestions on how to attract and manage novice clients:

Click to continue

Posted in: clients, Design process

Everyone experiences the desire to procrastinate. For one reason or another, nothing is harder than doing the one task that needs to get done. People go to great lengths — create excuses, find other work, or even hide — to avoid a dreaded task. Usually time spent procrastinating is simply wasted, but it doesn’t have to be.

When managed effectively, the desire to avoid one job can be used to get other things done. This strategy is called structured procrastination. Rather than doing nothing at all, take care of business that normally gets forgotten. This is a great way to deal with mundane chores. Use your desire to avoid real work to force yourself to work harder at something else!

My favorite structured procrastination activities include:

• Organizing my work area
• Networking
• Scheduling
• Tying up loose ends
• Meetings
• Running errands
• Clearing out my inbox
• Helping others
• Getting up to date

Of course, structured procrastination doesn’t always work. There will be times when you can’t stand to do anything work related. Usually this is a sign that you need to take a break and recharge.

Rather than forcing yourself to work when you aren’t up for it, embrace procrastination completely. These activities cure procrastination by rejuvenating energy and creative mojo:

• Go to lunch
• Exercise
• Take a walk
• Cat nap
• Creative thinking
• Read a good book

Of course, there are many other excellent alternatives for both structured and unstructured procrastination. The key is experimenting until you find what works for you. Hopefully these suggestions will help you think of new ways to get things done even when you don’t feel like it.

Written for LifeClever by John Wesley, who writes at PickTheBrain.com about self improvement, motivation, and building self confidence.

Click below to get even more juicy tips & tricks via our RSS feeds:

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Designing navigation may be one of the most critical parts of a web layout. Yet it always surprises me how many websites seem to put little effort into their navigation. Even websites that put every element together just right except for the navigation will have a hard time creating a positive experience for the user.

Jakob Nielsen seems to have made an interesting discovery concerning web design and navigation. When designing a layout, it is critical to make sure the navigation doesn’t look like ads. While this may seem like a no-brainer to LifeClever readers, even Uncle Sam can get it wrong upon occasion.

Nielson found that the U.S. Census Bureau’s homepage had a dismal 14% success rate for it’s most important task. Why? Because the the key area looked like an ad. 86% of the users failed to find their country’s current population (even though it was the most prominent feature on the page) because it was bolder, different in text and ultimately resembled an ad.

Check out the screenshot below of the eyetracking studies done by Nielsen. You’ll notice that in the top-right corner of the layout, the user typically only read 1/3 of the population clock, which was meant to be the most prominent part of the page.

Could this be directly related to the fact that people are wising up to CPC ads like Google Adsense, which thrive on the fact that people mistake it for navigation? I’d have to think so. This is even true for a government website, which of all the sites on the internet is least likely to have ads.

Nielsen gives a quick tip for all you designers out there: Don’t get too fancy with different colors and text. By keeping the text and color schema fairly simple, users will scan the site more thoroughly. And a user that has a positive experience navigating a website is a happy user.

Writen by Glen Stansberry of LifeDev.

Posted in: eyetracking, layouts, Web Design