MB | BLAH BLah blah

3 Firefox Plugins I Can’t Live Without

June 13 10 | Comments (0)

Xmarks: save and synchronize bookmarks across machines. Bookmarks are precious…
MeasureIt: measure pixel distances in your browser.
ColorZilla: pick any color you see.

(+ Firebug, Web Developer, HTML Validator, Fireshot and TOR for stealth browsing…).

Nobody Does It Better

June 13 10 | Comments (0)

Carly Simon. I recently got caught into watching all the James Bond movies and discovered this sound. I love the song, love the light, love the fashion, love the atmosphere, love the energy of everyone on stage and love the artist. Filmed in 1987.

The Kills – Tape Song

May 16 10 | Comments (0)

Solar Powered Moon Watch

April 20 10 | Comments (0)

A prototype created by The Emotion Lab in the process of becoming a reality. Did I mention it will be solar powered? Simple and beautiful.

Moonwatch has been designed to establish a relationship between the moon cycle and a person’s emotional states. It’s a new concept of time based on nature which invites people to reflect upon and gain a closer understanding of their mood and daily life on earth.

Lady Gaga Was On My Plane

March 28 10 | Comments (0)

In a little screen in front of my seat. That’s how we met. Exclusive video from Taratata.

A Logo/Banner for Robocat Confectionary

March 27 10 | Comments (0)

Logo/banner I created for Robocat Confectionary: “musings on music, photography and vegan confections” by miss Joanna Rooney. The cat is pushing a vegan cupcake in his mouse.

And if you are wondering if I am a vegan, the answer is no. I am a beast. I eat everything and anything. I do work on eating responsibly though (if there is any “responsible meat eating”…). I wish there were more organic restaurants in Manhattan.

My Playground available in DVD

March 26 10 | Comments (0)

I wrote about this documentary back in November when I first got into Parkour. Now the DVD of My Playground By Kaspar Astrup Schröder is finally released. You can purchase it for $30 in the US. Also check out this interview of the director.

MY PLAYGROUND explores the way Parkour and Freerunning is changing the perception of urban space and how the spaces and buildings they are moving on are changing them.

Mainly set in Copenhagen the film follows Team JiYo as they explore the city and encounter the obstacles it presents.

Award winning architect Bjarke Ingels, founder of BIG Architects, is fascinated by the way Team JiYo convey architecture and takes the team to his buildings, to explore and unfold their skills, that may be just as groundbreaking as the architecture itself.

The film travels around the world from Denmark to Japan, United States, United Kingdom, and China to explore where the urban mobility is heading.

Team JiYo has a dream of making the biggest dedicated parkour park in the world, but isn’t parkour and freerunning supposed to be in the city and not in a fixed environment?

Kaspar Astrup Schröder set out to more closely examine the way that traceurs interact with architecture – honing in on parkour and urban mobilty in modern cities spaces via Team JiYo and the people that determine how the space is shaped within our cities.

SEO Friendly CSS Image Replacement Technique

March 12 10 | Comments (0)

The CSS Image Replacement technique I have been using needs to be promoted a bit.

Recently on Be Nice T-Shirts, I needed to do some image replacement for a header on the homepage. I knew about these three techniques:

display:none; hides the text from the CSS. Then what is the point?
left:-5000px; pushes the text to the extreme left, outside of the screen. While it is still on the page, it is not entirely sure that search engines won’t ignore it thinking you are hiding a bunch of text.
The “alt” tag within the image. Necessary but not a solution in itself.

I was curious to see how Google did it and this is where I found the perfect solution. Clean and SEO friendly. You will place your image after the text you are replacing and give the image an absolute position and a left:0;.

Here is the code that I applied to the h2 in the right rail of the ubenice.com homepage.

First the html:

<h2 class="hdr">Photos
<img alt="Send Us Your Photos" src="_images/h2-photos.gif">
</h2>

Then the CSS:

.hdr {
height:65px;
margin:0;
width:250px;
}
.hdr img{
left:0;
position:absolute;
}

Finally, if the image is not correctly positioned (or if you using a sprite), you can adjust it by playing with left:Xpx; and/or adding top:Xpx;.

Just Launched Geek Girl, Inc.’s New Website

March 6 10 | Comments (1)

Yesterday, I finished a project for Geek Girl, Inc. A simple website built on WordPress.org: mysweetgeek.com. I had no idea how much fun it was to play with WordPress. It is a great CMS, super easy to use for clients who want to be able to maintain their websites. I created her own WordPress private theme. I also created the illustration n the homepage but the entire idea came from Geek Girl, Inc’s head.

This made me want to start to offer web development services to others. This is it. We shall see where this takes me… You can find more information on my web development service page. My company is M.B. Works. Cara came up with the name without really thinking about it. I like it. It’s simple.

Organic Restaurants In NYC – The List

November 29 09 | Comments (2)

When I look for a place to eat, most of the time, I start by going through the organic places, see if there is anything close to where I will be. I have ran the search for organic restaurants a million times. I am creating this list mostly for my self-centered self. Great if you like it too.

I haven’t gone to all these places, so unless I add a note to it, I cannot speak for the quality of the cuisine. If you know a place that is not here, let me know. This is a raw draft, I will enhance this as time goes by.

Enjoy!

Places in Manhattan:

Angelica Kitchen‎ (angelicakitchen.com)
300 E 12th St

Blossom Vegan Restaurant & Cafe‎ (blossomnyc.com)
187 9th Ave

Candle 79‎ (candlecafe.com)
154 E 79th St # 3R
I love this place. The food is delicious. The service is great. I am now bored by this place a bit. Last time the food was really not exceptional and way over-priced. Added to this, we had a debutant server…

Candle Cafe‎ (candlecafe.com)
1307 3rd Ave

Not a fan…

Caravan of Dreams‎ (caravanofdreams.net)
405 E 6th St

Chennai Garden‎ (Chennai Garden‎ on nymag)
129 E 27th St

COUNTER Vegetable Bistro & Organic Bar‎ (counternyc.com)
105 First Avenue
I have been to this place a couple of times. For some reason, I never remember what I think of this place. Next time, I will write it down… We recently went with a few friends and now I remember: each time we go there, one of us feels sick right after. Oh. And this time I took Mushroom slider. I should have paid attention to the missing “s”! I was not happy when the plate was presented to me. Overall, weird atmosphere and bad karma. Their drinks have fun names.