Just a seasonal reminder that today marks day one of Taco Johnukkah! In case you forgot, the season of tacos is the eight business days before Christmas. Stop by your local Taco Johns and see if they give you a funny look when you ask for the Johnukkah special.

(If you are scratching your head in confusion right now it’s because this is a very inside joke. Somehow we started this tradition at our office a couple years ago and for some reason it has stuck. Seriously though if you haven’t had the cini-sopapilla bites you should give yourself a little treat. Yummy.)

Few people know that ping pong was an important part of Bruce Lees training routine. Bruce had the opinion that traditional martial arts techniques were too rigid and formalistic to be practical in scenarios of chaotic street fighting. That’s why the paddle speed, improvisation and timing involved in ping pong appealed to him so much. Lee would eventually formalize his ideas of “Practicality, flexibility, speed, and efficiency” into the martial arts system known as Foo Led Yu. Here is some recently uncovered footage of Bruce playing ping pong with nunchucks:

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Ok, so this is really just an advertisement for a Nokia phone, but isn’t it fun? What a great viral video! By the way, the Foo Led Yu thing, I came up with that myself. TM.

I try to keep track of when inspiration hits me. If I am exercising or driving or reading or running when the idea comes, I make a note of it. If I could find a pattern to when I have my best ideas then maybe I could hot wire the system when I need it. Wouldn’t it be great if you had this kind of control over your mind? Knowing that you had to come up with a solution to a tough problem, you could just follow 5 easy steps.

Step 1: Skip breakfast.

Step 2: Take a 15 minute nap immediately after eating a chicken nugget value meal from McDonalds.

Step 3: When you wake up, surf the internet for rare b-sides from your favorite musician. Burn a cd of your new music and play it in your car while you drive.

Step 4: Stay up an hour later than you normally do and set your alarm for an hour earlier than you normally wake up.

Step 5: Wake up as normal, hitting the snooze twice, then take your daily shower. As you are washing your hair the solution will come to you. Guaranteed or your money back. Lather, rinse and repeat.

Do you have any routines or tricks that help you find inspiration? In reality we have very little control of when inspiration will hit us. After building Font Burner last year I went through several months of waiting for my next idea. All I could do was wait. I couldn’t force myself to think of something. My sketchbook, where I document my ideas went practically unused for most of the summer.

The idea for Phone Feedr came to me as I lay in bed around midnight. It kept me up for hours and I had the whole site completed in my mind by morning. All that was left was the execution. Since then I have felt like I am in a zone. One idea connects to another. Ideas that have been dormant for literally years have resurfaced thanks to a new insights. My sketchbook is active again and I feel like I have to write things down for fear of forgetting them. No joke, I had a dream that I was working on a website for work. In my dream I had added a feature that hadn’t even crossed my mind while I was awake. The next day I remembered the dream, and thought, “Wow, that is actually a pretty good idea.

I don’t want to sound like I some kind of a genius or anything. Most of my ideas are crap and I won’t know it until some time in the future when I can look back at them with objectivity. But that doesn’t matter. The thrill of creating something is my drug. There isn’t a better feeling than being in the zone, having ideas that build off each other.

So as I sort through my ideas and try to carve out time to pursue my projects I find myself sleeping less and working longer. This is another chance to try to find a pattern to my productivity. How does sleep affect the equation? Too much sleep and I am lazy and unambitious. Too little sleep and I am impatient and easily distracted. But at about six and a half hours of sleep I am on fire. My brain is dulled just enough to make connections that a fully alert and rational mind would skim over. It lingers on the thoughts a little longer, in slow motion, spinning them around and remixing them. For the visual graph-lovers out there, it looks something like the graph on the right. There is a sweet spot of sleep where creativity peaks. I have a feeling that this is the same reason why some people use drugs.

So I am looking forward to finishing some of these ideas up and sharing them here soon. I have a couple WordPress plugins in the works. I also plan on releasing some WordPress themes. I have a significant improvement to Font Burner on the way. Some iPhone related things, and some refinements for Phone Feedr. I am really excited about it all. Better get back to work.

Today marked my five year anniversary at work. I work with some really nice people and they put balloons and streamers on my desk and there were snacks and kind words. While I dread being the center of attention, I have to say that I was touched by the gesture of my co-workers.

A little over five years ago I was working as an in-house designer at Nelnet. It was my first “real” job as a designer and I was ambitious and excited to finally be doing full-time what I went to school to become. The projects were entry-level, but I tackled them with enthusiasm and passion, hoping to use the experience as a stepping stone to the next level of my career. The next level came when I was hired by HuebnerPetersen. I was thrilled. Finally, this was a place where I could grow and learn and gain experience. And I have. It has been, and continues to be a great job.

Recently, I have been watching the instructional videos created by Apple for developers that want to learn how to build iPhone applications. Each video is narrated by a different Apple employee. I was surprised that each one introduces themselves as an evangelist. Technology Evangelist. Software Evangelist. Application Framework Evangelist. One after another each video was introduced not by a specialist. Not by Senior Vice President of blah, blah, blah. These people were evangelists. People so passionate about what they do that it is closer to a religion than a profession. And it showed in their presentations. I don’t know if I have ever seen a tutorial that bordered on being inspirational, but Apple was able to do it.

Perhaps my infatuation with the word “evangelist” has something to do with my Christian upbringing. My dad is a pastor, and I have been raised to consider church work as a “higher calling.” While there isn’t anything inherently sacred or spiritual about design, I bring a strong set of convictions and beliefs to my job. It is why I chose the name “Cath3dral” for my future web design “studio,” with an irony that may or may not be apparent to the average person.

As I reflect on the last five years I have to wonder what lies ahead for me. How do I get to a point where I am a design evangelist? In some ways that kind of devotion is not a welcome trait in a designer. An evangelist wouldn’t stand for design being used to promote a product that doesn’t live up to the headline. An evangelist wouldn’t stand for the erosion that happens as an idea gets watered-down from concept to completion. An evangelist has no patience for corporate jargon that gets passed off as customer service. An evangelist doesn’t strong-arm their ideas onto others and call it collaboration. And yet those very challenges, the pitfalls that we all struggle against, those are what makes being an evangelist for design all the more necessary. A voice of conviction may not always be welcome, but it will surely be heard.

So as I look ahead I can’t see what is next for me. All I know is that I want to continue to do it with the enthusiasm of a missionary. I want to create work that inspires people like the words of a preacher. I want to lead people out of the darkness like a prophet. And most of all I want to serve God by using my skills to do his will. Luckly, that leaves me with a huge challenge and an enormous room for growth in the next five to fifty years. Here’s to the future.

Growing up in the Midwest, Showbiz pizza was the best place in the world to go for a birthday party. Games, pizza, tokens, tickets, crappy prizes, and that creepy animal band that performed every half hour. Someone got hold of the robotic Muppets (the band’s name is The Rock-fire Explosion) and has been programming them to sing modern songs. They record the “performance” and post the video on YouTube. Here is one where they “cover” a song from one of my current favorite bands, MGMT. Enjoy!

via the yellow stereo

I probably talk myself out of writing at least one post a day. I guess I don’t think it is worth expanding on an idea that I could sum up in one sentence. So rather than discard those ideas I decided I will just save them and post a handful at a time. Here is the first batch…

I hate bad sportsmanship. Especially when college basketball players have NBA attitudes.

After 4 days of strep throat, it feels really great to be alive again.

Good work always impresses me, but I am never impressed by a degree, title, or the school that someone attended.

The best movies I have seen recently are: No Country For Old Men, The King of Kong, The Assassination of Jesse James, and Rocket Science.

In all the times I have flown on a plane I have never had a conversation with the person sitting next to me.

After losing 15 pounds in two months I have come to the conclusion that losing weight is easy, it’s the willpower that is the hard part.

The longer I am a dad, the fewer risks I take and the more careful I am with my life.

Friends at work and I kind of started a Christmas tradition where we celebrate Taco Johnukkah. For the last 8 business days before Christmas we eat lunch at Taco Johns. The holiday starts tomorrow (wednesday), so feel free to join in the festivities at your place of employment.

Be sure to check out www.tacojohnukkah.com for more details and menu recommendations!

At church this morning a woman stood up and cried as she asked us to write letters to the members of our church in the military. It was a touching plea and if you have the opportunity I encourage you to do the same. It is a little hard to know what to say to someone you don’t know, but the support is surely appreciated. I am reminded of a letter I received as I was starting college. It was from a man I have never met. I dug it up and thought I would share it with you as we remember Veteran’s Day.

Dear Adrian,

The purpose of this letter is to express my appreciation for your friendship and for the efforts you are making in this new phase of your life. (The Air Force taught me to always start letters with “the purpose.”)

You face many choices during the next few years. Along with your parents and a host of other “old folks,” I offer my best wishes, my prayers and some “free advise” for the future.

First, you already know or you will soon learn how little effort it takes to stand-out in performance above most peers. Don’t let this lull you into mediocre efforts in job performance, human relations or your work for Christ. My fear is that we, as a society are promoting average accomplishments instead of proclaiming the virtue of excellence in everyday activities. So much for philosophy. On this work ethic let me share an incident which has helped me make some better decisions for the last 27 years.

In 1969, I was a young pilot sitting in a bar in Saigon with several awful tasting Vietnamese beers running through my bloodstream. Right out of the movies, this girl sits down, asks for a light and proceeds to smoke. Not tobacco, but it was marijuana. I had never had the opportunity to try marijuana, and after a bad day at the office getting shot at, it seemed like the right time to try it. I was within inches and seconds of lighting up when an overpowering thought invaded my alcohol dulled brain. “Would you want to read about this in the morning paper?” Following thoughts included: Would I want my family to know? How about my fellow officers who depend on me while flying wing? How about God? He already knew.

I’ve always been rather proud of that particular decision that night because I knew that I did not want to read about the incident. Now, I have made some bad decisions in the last 27 years, but I’ve had to twist or rationalize to get past that same question that haunts me when confronted with a “right/wrong” decision. In retrospect, I wonder if presidents Nixon and Clinton would have decided differently in the Watergate or Jennifer Flowers cases if they had known what would be spattered on the front pages. Of course the newspaper is just a symbol that caused me to stop and think. God was the author of that bit of insight, and I’m ashamed that I have not always made the right decisions since that night.

With the promise of Christ’s forgiveness, I can now go forward with the tools for making some better judgement calls (decisions in the future). I ask athat you pray for my son, Alan and me; pray that God may give me wisdom and that he may grant Alan maturity and some insight on good decision making.

I’m looking forward to your visit “home” sometime in the future. In the meantime I hope to enjoy my new-found friendship with your dad and family. I always talk to much, but I am a trained listener if you ever need one. Your friend and brother in Christ.

Several things have crossed my path this week that have to do with the power of exponential numbers. The first was a great movie called Soylent Green which takes place in a future on an over-populated Earth. Here is a video clip of the opening credits:

The second exponential example comes from the Colbert Report where Steven Colbert interviews Chris Jordan. Chris is a photographer whose work tries to show the amount of waste that everyone in America discards every day. Very interesting interview and artist. You can watch the interview here.

The final exponential observation has to do with an addicting little online game called Vector TD. Beating a level involves destroying vectoids that get a harder with each level. Don’t start playing unless you can afford the exponential time sucking side effects!

Do you ever ask yourself this simple question: Am I happy? I guess it isn’t that simple of a question becuase I sometimes struggle to answer it. For many people happiness is most directly tied to there jobs. When they struggle with happiness they might ask question like:

“Do I like the people I work for?”

“Could I be making more money?”

“Is the work I am doing rewarding/meaningful/fun/important?”

This can’t be an original idea, but it struck me that if a person could be satisfied in all three of those areas (people, money, projects) then they would have reached complete career happiness. I sketched the following diagram to illustrate the Complete Career Happiness Continuum™.

As you can see there are three factors that contribute to career happiness: good co-workers, good projects and good money. If you are short in one area then you fall into one of the three gray areas of misery:

1. You like the people you work with and you enjoy your work, but the pay stinks.
2. You make good money and like the people you work for but the work is terrible.
3. You love your work and the pay is good but your co-workers are losers.

For me I have a hard time complaining about any one of those factors. I like the people I work with. I am getting paid to do something I love. I am making decent money. So why can’t I just say, “Yes, I am happy!?” I think this is where my diagram falls apart. It doesn’t take into account the “grass is greener” part of human nature. You are always going to want to make more money. You are never going to get along with everyone you work with. No matter how great your projects are, there will always be times when it is just work. I guess the challenge of being happy is learning to be content with what you have. Unfortunately, that sounds more like a fortune cookie than words to live by. I wonder if I could be happy writing fortunes for a living. Hmmm.