The Redhead Said

Peter Aguero Venn Diagram

Charlene Jaszewski — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 06:02:36 +0000

I felt like making a Venn diagram tonite and here’s what came out.

Moodle.net is dead, the end of an era

Charlene Jaszewski — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 19:43:26 +0000

Way back when the internet was just text pages and marketing had not yet taken over everything, I bought moodle.net and put up my very first website. It had an animated GIF for the front page and everyTHANG.

“moodle” was a handle I had chosen back in 1996 when I joined one of the first Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) on the young web, Bitstream Underground (BSU), where I had made lovely friends that I still have today. Moodle.net became a place where I tested out my web design skills, and put up stuff that amused me.

I did hard coding for moodle.net, but I eventually discovered blogging platforms and I moved on to blogger and livejournal. I kept moodle as my email all the way up until 2008 until I sold moodle.net domain to the gentleman who authored the moodle programming language. I kept charlene@moodle.net and he provided a forward to my new domains. But nowadays I have become theredheadsaid as my online identity, and sadly the moodle.net email has become a spam magnet, having been on the intertubez for 13 years. So i made the decision today to pull the plug on my moodle.net identity.

Goodbye moodle.net, I have loved ye.

Make something 365 Blog

Charlene Jaszewski — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 06:59:02 +0000

If you’re a creative person you know that sometimes you need a box to design your way out of. Many people find the “make X once a day” idea very fruitful. And there’s a lovely blog that chronicles just that!

http://makesomething365.blogspot.com/

One woman makes an owl a day…

This gentleman makes one imaginary creature a day

Oddments & Curiosities: odd creatures on odd days …

One guy just decided to Make Something Cool Every Day like this awesome “emoticikhans”

Society6.com: Another rabbit hole of illustration to fall into

Charlene Jaszewski — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 22:56:09 +0000

If you are a fan of threadless, or drawn.ca, or other illustration sites, you’ll love society6.com. It’s works of art from illustrators available in multiple formats: art prints, t-shirts, even computer and iPhone skins.

It has the Tumblr functionality that I love: you can follow people and their updates appears in an easy-to-read stream.

As a (closeted) illustrator, I like the idea of just coming up with the art and someone else producing its vehicle!

PictoPlasma, the Good Shorts

Charlene Jaszewski — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 18:22:12 +0000

Pictoplasma is an illustration/animation festival I first discovered when I was in Berlin in 2006. It just came through NYC today and I got to see it!
I couldn’t find all my favorite shorts from the show, but here are the ones I could.

THIS ONE TIME – by Nelson Boles

CASIOTONE FOR THE PAINFULLY ALONE – WHITE COROLLA

Good music can make a good animation even better, as shown in this little quirky gem. This just makes me happy. Animation by Julia Pot.

PLEASE SAY SOMETHING – by David O’Reilly

David O’Reilly is officially my new favorite animator. I dont’ have a copy of his NEW animation, called The External World. but if you see if playing anywhere in a gettable area, SEE IT!! It’s like South Park but with animation. Well, you know what I mean.

Here’s another one of his animations though, called PLEASE SAY SOMETHING, the tale of a dysfunctional relationship in a slightly future time between what I think is a cat and a mouse.

Le Silence Sous L’Ecorce (The Silence Under The Bark)

The loveliest short at Pictoplasma. A wordless fantasy about two subterranean creatures in the snow (this is just a teaser trailer).

SHINY SUDS COMMERCIAL

this is just funny

If Robert Moses Were on Facebook

Charlene Jaszewski — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 18:16:39 +0000

Whole Foods Punishes Itself For Screwing Up Prices (take advantage of it!)

Charlene Jaszewski — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 04:02:34 +0000

If you go to buy an item at a retail store and the register price is different than the shelf price, most stores will honor the shelf price. However, if this happens at Whole Foods, it goes a step further. Here’s how it happened to me:

Price Mismatch

I saw a sale price on the shelf. I took item to get rung up. It’s different than shelf. I paid for the item, but they sent me to customer service (I thought to get the difference back, which was $1). But the customer service person gave me the FULL PRICE of the item back! I guess they do this to, I dunno, make an example of themselves so they keep up on the prices?

Sadly, I went back the next day to get more of the tomato sauce (Frank’s – it’s AMAZING!), and the lower (wrong) price was still showing. I could have really taken advantage of this but some misdirected sense of ethics prevented me.

Item Doesn’t Scan

A few days later, I found they had my favorite Dulce De Leche in stock, so I grabbed three jars and scrambled to the register. The item didn’t scan. So guess what happens when the item doesn’t scan? FREE! And they made it free right at the register! Again this could be exploited, but I really didn’t need more than three jars of milk caramel.

Accidental Book Acknowledgment, how about that?

Charlene Jaszewski — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 07:00:58 +0000

So I was bored tonight and decided, like most bored people, to google myself. After the usual spate of linked in, facebook, and twitter links, I started seeing more obscure stuff. Sites I did one-off posts on, sites that were blog post aggregators.

Then suddenly a book acknowledgment for the book “Tarot for Writers” by Corrine Kenner. What? I have been acknowledged in a book, but the authors told me it was happening. But here I was, acknowledge for something I did long ago. Way back when I lived in Minneapolis (second time), I took a “Tarot For Writers” course from Corrine Kenner. I was in a phase where I was flexing my fiction muscles (that’s still a tough thing to do for a business head like me) and this intersected my love of the intuitive with my love of writing. Well Corrine made a book out of the course and thanked her class (including me!) How lovely! I hope her book does well!

How domain names are born

Charlene Jaszewski — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 02:39:41 +0000

If any of you know me you know that I do a plethora of different things, and I have a hell of a time describing it to well-meaning conversationers at parties, so much so that when the inevitable eye-glazing starts when I rattle on too long, I throw in, “AND I make homeade marshmallows dipped in chocolate.” This is true, and something I’m proud of, but not what I’m trying to get across. So I’ve done some brainstorming and figured out the core commonality in everything I do. I make things better.

I edit marketing copy.

I review websites according to usability and suggest ways to make them not suck.

I have ever so slightly changed lines or expressions in comics people have drawn to make them funnier.

I have tweaked jokes for people.

But the core of everything I do is OPTIMIZATION.

So I want to be called *drum roll*

LORETTA.

Ok for the 2 Monty Python people who laughed, thank you. Ok what I really want to be called is

THE OPTIMIZER.

Which i think could be really fun and I might have my little brother who is a killer copywriter help me with a campaign for that sort of thing. I can foresee carrying a mini-cape and fan and when I tell people my title putting them on and doing the superhero affectation. All in good time. But first, a domain name.

Sadly, theoptimizer.com is in use by GE, (who is using it on redirect the bastards!).

So I start brainstorming, here’s my train of thought.

communicationoptimizer.com (too long)

iamtheoptimizer.com (too Ozzy)

youneedtheoptimizer.com (too forceful)

getoptimized.com (taken)

youwillbeoptimized.com (too Borg)

optimizeforpeace.com

surprisebyoptimize.com

bewiseoptimize.com

icanoptimize.com (not strong enough)

iwilloptimizeyou.com (whether you like it or not mister)

dontmakemecomebackthereandoptimizeyou.com (too dad)

I haven’t come up with a perfect name yet. But I did buy www.theoptimizerNYC.com just in case I don’t think of anything better.

The Kindle Will Fail Because It's Butt Ugly

Charlene Jaszewski — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 01:28:17 +0000

After reading Why The Kindle Will Fail over at the Neiman Journalism Lab (yay new find) I came up with my own conclusion: it’s butt ugly!
I admit I got excited when the Kindle (version 1) first came out. Yay! I can have hundreds of books with me all the time! But then I took a look at it, and, being a lifelong Apple form factor girl, I couldn’t pull the trigger. The screen was smallish. The body was clunky. The interface was non-intuitive for pete’s sake. It’s like an engineer designed it. OoopS!! (from working in software for umpteen million years you learn a lot of engineer-designed software and products slip out because management doesn’t want to invest in usability testing- big mistake!). I thought, I can be patient, we’re still in early adopter mode. I could wait for the sleek, sexxy, intuitive Kindle version 2 i KNEW they were secretly working on. I had hoped Kindle would take a page from the Apple iPhone design book and make it touch-screen sensitive, and gestural to turn pages. But, my hopes were dashed when the Kindle 2 came out.

Kindle 2