I had a dog, his name was Marleau. He was a Boston Terrier, and he just wasn’t that smart. His nickname was “Derpity Doo” because he was was that derpy. We all loved him a lot. One day, we visited my parents, and we brought the Derp along. We got in the house, let him… more
The Rands “R” started many years ago as this: I’ve been toying with branding, design, color, and other marketing elements for the site for years. I remember spending a couple of weekends trying to get a good picture of the weave of my favorite beanie as background for the site. That’d didn’t go well. I… more
Frequently, I get a direct message from a community member on the Rands Leadership Slack pointing out a broken link on this weblog. I am happy to fix the link. I am not happy to reread what I wrote fourteen years ago because much of the early writing is… just awful. Unbearable, poorly punctuated, semi-coherent… more
Coming to the end of another complicated year. Each time I think we’re getting back to normal, something else horrible goes sideways. It’s wearing us all down. Over at the Rands Leadership Slack, we do an annual donation program where we ask those who are finding value in the community to make a donation to… more
Awhile ago. I picked a font for a reason I’ve since forgotten. The typeface, Cyan, is unremarkable. Not a great body font and not a great headline font. I probably used it in a presentation once or twice, found it to be poorly kerned, and then moved on. However, the R, the lowercase R, somehow… more
The world is full of bullshit right now. Perhaps it’s always been full of bullshit, but I’m sitting here right now, and I feel that we – as a species – have taken the bullshit to an entirely new level. Strongly held beliefs are based on the flimsy opinions delivered by totally unqualified sham journalists… more
After 200 issues of A List Apart, Kevin Cornell is retiring as staff illustrator. I find Cornell’s work to be gorgeous:
I was fortunate enough to have him illustrate the very first (out of print) Rands t-shirt. Can’t wait to see what he tackles next.
I’m at peak travel right now. I’ve been elsewhere for three of the past four weeks and that means I’m optimized for travel. I’ve already documented how I optimize moving my crap hither and fro in A Bag of Holding, but it’s during this peak travel that I’ve noticed a handful of helpful behaviors that… more
A long time ago, there was a big fight between Engineering and Marketing regarding the name of a new 1.0 product. I was not there, but the fight went something like this: Engineering: “So what are we going to call the product?” Marketing: “We’re not sure yet. The focus group data isn’t complete.” Engineering: “A… more
The world is full of bullshit right now. Perhaps it’s always been full of bullshit, but I’m sitting here right now and I feel that we – as a species – have taken the bullshit to an entirely new level. Strongly held beliefs are based on the flimsy opinions delivered by totally unqualified sham journalists… more
