tyHATCH / Notebook

After nearly 4 years with a small hosting company and another, newer account with Media Temple, I finally decided that it was time to pull the trigger and go with MT and stop paying for two hosting accounts, it just wasn’t worth it to me.

Right now, everything’s going through a bit of a transition, hopefully the dust will settle down over the weekend. If you need to reach me, you can try my gmail account (tyhatch at gmail).

Update 2: With the lovely economy, this house really is a bargain at $149,900. Makes me sad, but you get a great house.

Update 1: There will be an open house on Saturday, April 26 from 2pm-3pm. Stop by and see the house!

With my new job, comes another cross country move to a new location. Which means, sadly, we need to sell our very cool, big house. When we first purchased it in 2006, we planned on staying put for several years. There were no plans to move anytime soon, so we embarked on cleaning up and fixing the house how we wanted it. In the process we’ve improved several aspects of the house, including rewiring the living room (and pulling enough wire to complete rewiring the upstairs) updating the phone wiring for better high speed internet connections and installed a climbing wall in a bedroom for the kids. Now it’s finally how we imagined it to be, and we’re leaving.

The house is located in the original plot of the town of Stewartville, Minnesota, a small town 10 minutes south of Rochester, MN. It’s the birthplace of Richard Sears, (we can see the house he grew up in from ours.) The neighbors are wonderful, the neighborhood is quiet, and there’s a city park just around the corner with trails and picnic tables and a great play area for kids.

If you work in Rochester (possibly at Mayo Clinic or IBM–the area’s two largest employers), there’s a commuter bus stop a mere 2 minute walk from the house! That’s how I’ve gone to work the past 18 months. It’s great. Had I not accepted my new position, we’d be happily living in this wonderful house for a long time.

So if you are looking to buy in the area, or know someone who is, let them know about this great house.

Thanks.

I noticed a slight bump in traffic this morning, looking at my Mint stats it appears that the cat is now out of the bag officially about my joining the NorthTemple crew. It’s an understatement to say I’m very excited to be joining such a great team of designers working on something I deeply believe in. I’ll be there in mid-May.

I’m also leaving behind another talented and fun group of designers at Mayo Clinic who I will miss. It’s been great working with the creative team lead by Dan Brevick. He’s been one of the best Creative Directors I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. He’s looking for my replacement right now. It’s a great place to work and has some incredible benefits that are hard to find in today’s job market and you’d join a stellar team that is a lot of fun to be a part of. Not only that, you get to work on a wide range of projects that help people live better, healthier lives.

Sometimes life throws you really nasty curve-balls. Best you can do is keep going. Then there’s those who soldier on and create good from the tragedies they experience. Such is the story of Viola Vaughn. I just read her story over on CNN. Truly an inspiring story. And a true hero to those she’s helped.

Very cool online tool for creating your own fonts from FontShop. (Via Hicks.)

Adam Darowski looks at how using your URL as part of your UI can be helpful for power users. I’ve long used this as a best practice personally. It may take some additional effort to set it up on a larger service, but the long-term benefits of human-readable URLs are definitely are worth the effort.

Congrats to the WebKit team.

Dave Shea asks a great question and gets some great answers. Personally, I have way too many things going on outside of work right now to even think about this, but Dave raised a great question that is nearly always in the back of my mind. I’d possibly rephrase it to say: “Is there something I can create that has me as the client and still have an income?”

The answer is as variable as the number of designers out there. I think the folks over at Coudal have tapped a magical vein for themselves. Carlos Segura of t-26 and 5-inch and the gang at 37signals have also figured out what works for them. (Wait a minute, they’re all in Chicago… What’s in the water there?)

What works for me will be different that what works for the next person, but we all see the wild success of others and long to quit doing client work at some point. In the end, I believe it’s all about having the courage to follow one’s passion to see where it leads.

I missed going to SXSW this year. I would have hit the interactive conference had I gone, but the music’s great too. Fortunately, NPR’s got me covered with music with their All Songs Considered. Yesterday’s listen was R.E.M., today’s it’s Vampire Weekend. And don’t miss the concert podcast either.