Daily Brad, the blog

Repeating backgrounds for HTML have been around as nearly as long as I can remember. I first fell in love with the concept years ago while creating some for my desktop. (I had just discovered the wrap-around functionality in Photoshop and thought I was a genius). Most recently - if you call 2006 recent - I blogged about pixel patterns being used as wallpapers, as I played around with them for a couple of my site’s holding pages. (Like Tweet Sweet!)

Today I discovered a great link with a lot more resources than I had mentioned, and wanted to send you there to check it out: 27 Best WebSites to Download Free Seamless Patterns Some are graphic, a few are pixel, but all seem to be pretty high quality. Enjoy!

I recently noticed that traffic to my blog article entitled IKEA is Coming to Utah and My Logo’s On It! increased, so I investigated why. I found it was because there was raised interest in IKEA based on this Time article The Font War: Ikea Fans Fume over Verdana published last Friday.

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For those of you who don’t know what Bloglines is, you might as well go and check out the link. But in short, it allows you a one stop place to monitor all your RSS feeds. There are a quite a few tools that do this (even your portals like Yahoo and Google), but this one was the first one I was introduced to, and you know how that goes. (They won me!) Which one do you use?

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The Omniture UI team is growing continually, and we’re always looking to get some talented people on-board. It seems the UI designer is one of the most difficult to find. Someone who is not only talented in the aesthetic realm (our highly graphic applications depends on creativity and innovation), but who is also adept at creating easy-to-use interfaces for a highly technical and complex web-based software. And someone who’s willing to work in Orem, Utah. (Utah rocks!)

Here’s the latest job description we’re getting out there for a new hire. If you’ve got questions about the position or what it’s like to work at Omniture, drop me a line.

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2008 is one of the first years in a long time that I’m not taking a trip to celebrate my arrival to this world on January 31st. For those of you who know me well, you’ve already been asking, “where are you going for your birthday?” This year I decided to stick around town and enjoy this snow we’ve been having instead of lying on a sandy beach somewhere. Years past have been gloomy, gray and cold and it has been nice to escape to Florida, Cancun, Acapulco, Hawaii (all trips in years past). But while this year we’ve had plenty of the cold, in contrast to years past, we’ve also received plenty of the white stuff. I mean lots! It’s a nice change - I love the snow!

So to take advantage of the white stuff, I’m going snowboarding. Yup, hitting the slopes this weekend. I typically head to Brighton with my friend Jonathan, but we’ve also talked about trying somewhere new this time. In pulling up to check the weather for my birthday and the day after on KSL.com, I was surprised to find it was going to be a toasty day (and for the low none-the-less!):

So other than the oceans boiling and every living thing cooking in their skin, I think it just might be a good day to hit the slopes. I’ll be sure to grab my SPF 10,000 - wish me luck!

I check my lists of Utah Graphic Designers, Utah Graphic Design Firms, etc. on a regular basis to make sure that all the folks listed there are active links and still doing great design, and tonight I ran across something cool.

Though I don’t remember what EyeFX had on their page previously, what they have now is a lot of fun on a boring afternoon. The page loads up grey, and your mouse curser becomes a pen tool that allows you to create webs of designs that looks somewhat like a Jackson Pollock painting. Hovering the pen longer makes a thicker stroke, and moving quick keeps it light and thin. You’ll notice that the canvas area fits any size browser whether full screen, half screen or made tiney.

Give it a try at http://www.eyefx.com

I’ve never been much of a gadget person, nor have I been one who likes to chat, but for goodness sakes it’s nice to hear that I’m not alone. In a recent survey of 1,013 adults and 500 teens conducted online by Knowledge Networks from Nov. 30-Dec. 4., it was discovered that teens use Instant Message or “IM” twice as much as adults.

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It’s funny, I remember that Janet Meiners (the blogger who got me started doing this blog) said that one of the reasons she started blogging, is that she didn’t have that great of a memory. She said that she blogs to remember ideas she’s come across or had herself to save for reference later.

So I thought I’d blog about a recent discovery that prompted a few ideas in my brain that I thought I might forget. (That’s the funny part… at least to me anyhow.)

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I’ve been adding a few links every week to my lists of Utah talent (have you checked lately?), so keep checking back. I’m always doing Google searches trying to find more to add that I’ve missed. Tonight I ran across a directory called Salt Lake Sites at http://slsites.com where I was able to find a few more design firms, a photographer, and an illustrator I was missing.

Salt Lake Sites
Salt Lake Sites claims to be the largest open directory for Salt Lake City, Utah and surrounding communities. While it may not be the prettiest directory I’ve seen, with over five thousand listings in 280 categories, it well could be as it claims. The site was created by Kevin Delaney as a non-commercial hobby site. All he asks for being listed is a shout-out on your blog or website, or a small listing fee in return. There was a couple ill-fated links in the design section that I reported to Kevin - I’m sure he has plenty on his hands to do just approving new links.

So in an effort to get more people to find my site, I’m listing it there tonight. I’ll let you know how it goes (I use Google Analytics to track it).

Utah Designers, Illustrators, Design Firms and More
And keep checking back for my continued lists of Utah Talent! (I add a few new ones every-so-often, and verify their existence at least every week.)

And please let me know if you have any suggested links of other Utah talent!

100% Cotton

Originally uploaded by chezrump.

Did you ever play with Adobe Photoshop to create a third eye in the middle of someone’s head? Yup, that clone tool can be a lot of fun to the first-time user.

But it’s amazing to see the handiwork of someone who has really harnessed the photo-editing power of Photoshop like this image entitled “100% Cotton”. Check out some more of Paul Hollingworth’s photos on flickr and see other samples of his amazing work.

Kind of surreal, don’t you think?