Archive for May, 2009

I love the way iTunes handles podcasts. My church offers the ability to listen to sermons online (http://royaloakvineyard.com/sermons/), but they don’t offer an RSS feed I can submit to iTunes.

So, I wrote my first RSS feed*. It’s a testament to how well I like iTunes that I’m willing to manually update the RSS feed weekly in order to listen to the sermons in my favorite format. Of course, I love a project that requires research and problem solving — that played more than a small part.

I found a great guide on how to create your own rss feed, and I wrote and uploaded my own feed:

http://www.sethkimball.com/ROVCpodcast/feed.xml

It basically tells iTunes where to find the mp3 file of each sermon. Updating the feed manually is a little labor intensive, but it was a fun project.

Now don’t anyone go submitting this to the iTunes store. I don’t know if I’ll keep updating it. But if you want to podcast the Royal Oak Vineyard Sermons, open itunes and choose Advanced >> Subscribe to Podcast. Copy the above url (..feed.xml) and paste it into the box that pops up. I’ll try to keep it up to date!

*Check out this video if you’re thinking “What’s an RSS feed?”

I’ve been participating in Moustache May again this year. For the uninitiated it may be hard to understand why such a number of men would want to sport moustaches for a month, post photos of themselves online, and obsessively check and comment on each others photos. All I can say is don’t knock it ’till you’ve tried it.

I see Moustache May and (from the same creators/organizers) Whiskerino as a space for daily creative outlet, and this year I started making merit badges to go with my photos, as if MM were some kind of scout troop. You can see some of my favorites at left and my full MM profile with pics here.

I didn’t keep it up the whole month – just not enough time in the day. But it was a great exercise to be drawing daily. I wish Sketchcrawl weren’t 45 days away – I’d love to dive in already warmed up.

My friend Josh introduced me to Field Notes when I needed a replacement for my Franklin-Covey planner. Almost all my scheduling and task management are on my laptop or online now, so I just needed a nice, pocket-sized notebook for taking notes and jotting down tasks or sketches.

Enter Field Notes. They’re the perfect size, and the interior is graph paper (which I love). The key to their success, however, is being tailor made for the consumate design geek. The back inside cover gives detailed production specs in witty, feel-good one liners. The cover is described like this:

Cover: French Dur-O-Tone 80#C “Packing Brown Wrap,” with a thick, brute force, 1-Color application of “Dachshund Nose” black ink.

and the binding like this:

Binding by a Mueller saddle stitcher, with quiet appreciation to Samuel Slocum, George W. McGill and William J. Brown – the “Founding Fathers of the Staple.”

If that doesn’t give you a warm feeling inside, you’re not a design geek. If it does, I’ll bet you’re two seconds away from Googling “Field Notes” and buying a set. I’ll save you the trouble:

http://fieldnotesbrand.com

Molly ran across this ad while looking through, of all things, her latest Martha Stewart magazine. We both erroneously associated it with the series of beef ads featuring meat landscapes.

Molly: Ugh, meat is not appetizing Don’t make it bigger! Put a little piece on a plate and surround it by leaves or something.
Seth: You’re just not the target market, honey.
Molly: I can’t imagine Martha Stewart readers are the target. And I even like meat!

I had to admit she had a point. Who exactly is this ad targeting? I love meat, and I find this at best unattractive. Yet when I went searching for the aforementioned beef ads, I also found some even more disgusting raw meat landscapes from Negroni. Stop the madness, people.

I launched the latest version of sethkimball.com about a half hour ago. I converted the site to Wordpress, which is the system I use for my $500 website package. It’s a basic wordpress installation with plugins to help handle images, SEO, and a sitemap.

Notable additions are a blog (which you’re looking at) and detailed descriptions of the design services I provide (click “Home” to check it out). Some of the links may have gotten wonky in the redesign process, so if you find anything strange happening with the site, please let me know