Holy crap; I finally captured it on camera!

Keyhole Photo documents Mobile Mardi Gras with an awesome WordPress blog. I’ve always been very proud of our Mardi Gras — first in the nation, as we’re all required to mention — but never get to see much of it. (I’ve got to move closer to downtown!) My favorites are this portrait of Queen Ethel Vaisin from Sacred Heart and a candid shot of MAMGA King and Queen Lauren Levins and Jonathan Horner. Definitely will stay tuned so I can keep living vicariously through their lenses.

I’ve been on a cooking tear lately; I’m finding that it’s a great way to unwind after a long day at my desk. Right now I’m cooking my way through Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa: Back to Basics cookbook, and my taste buds have been happy with the results. Tonight for a late dinner I made myself some eggs with sausage and leftover roasted potatoes and red peppers. I baked up these cheddar buttermilk biscuits I found in the cookbook to go with. Big ups to these biscuits. Am I going to need to join the Barefoot Bloggers now?

Lack of Flash in the iPad (and before that, in the iPhone) is a win for accessible, standards-based design.

Zeldman

I haven’t written about my trip last week — despite having a million things to say, there’s just been no time. Coworking with Brian, Sheri, Jane, Mike and Matt was awesome — we always end up being a little sad we don’t work together in-person after we do these. We got to meet up with some local WordPress users from the Tybee Times (new WordPress-powered site coming soon!), SCAD Radio, and District.

Being back in a place that still feels like home, with the people I work with, was surreal at times but really fun for me. The menu still calls me back: “Come Home Matt.”

But these Tybee people. These people were my brothers and sisters for two years. Being away for so long almost let me forget how much I missed them, but one night back together has reminded me well. I’d prepared myself for the possibility that I might not see anyone I knew while I was in town. I forgot to prepare myself for the possibility that I’d get to see so many of you. Tybee was my home again for a week and I couldn’t have hoped for it to have been any better. It won’t be so long before I come back again.

The photo above is from Matt’s Tybee WordPress Meetup gallery. Sheri took some awesome pictures of our WordPress meetup at Huc-a-Poo’s.

Jane, over on the WordPress development blog:

Designers need a list to call their own, and now we have one. You can sign up for the wp-ui list to discuss ways to improve the interface or user experience of WordPress, and to discuss progress on design-related projects for the open source project, like the design challenges we’re going to have.

There’s lots of great design minds in the WordPress community, we just haven’t done a good enough job yet of tapping into that talent. It’ll be most excellent to see what we can all do as a team!

Took Brian and Sheri to Ex Libris and was proud to find a book on WordPress (right next to three pamphlets about Twitter, fittingly).

Nice to know that my design work is still floating around SCAD, albeit in the form of a screenshot in a book in the student bookstore. :)

I got a Williams-Sonoma gift certificate for Christmas, so I picked up something I’ve wanted for a while: a set of Bodum Canteen glasses. They’re made of borosilicate glass, like original Pyrex (or the Hurricane bong, if that’s more your passion), so they’re strong but crystal-clear and lightweight. They’re also double-walled, meaning there’s actually space and air between the layers of glass. This keeps beverages insulated — meaning hot drinks stay hot and you can enjoy them without a handle or a sleeve. It also means cold drinks stay cold, your ice melts slower, and water doesn’t condense on the outer glass, so no rings on your furniture.

Because it’s so versatile for both, I’ll just rinse out the same cup over and over all day, switching between water in the morning, to iced tea with lunch, to hot chocolate at night. It’s awesome. And unfortunately, I’m not getting paid to say so. I read a few reviews from people whose Bodum glasses had chipped or cracked from ice or a violent dishwasher, but so far it’s been smooth sailing (I’ll post a comment here later if that changes). If I get more, I’ll go through Amazon as they’re quite a bit cheaper.

Making potica for Christmas was my grandmother’s tradition, and when she couldn’t manage the work any longer, I decided to learn so the tradition wouldn’t be lost. My mom, my brother and I got together to make one a few days ago — it took three hours but was totally worth it. It’s also really boring to watch at normal speed, so here’s making potica in under a minute:

Music: Another Christmas Song by Stephen Colbert