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Interesting tidbits from around the web (June 14th):

• How to create your own Twitter background using Photoshop | Community Guy – Ben shows how to set up a custom twitter background and shares out the template he uses to do it with.
• Distractions and Correcting Focus « MacLitigator – Some tips and tools for dealing with pomodoros from a Lawyer, but applicable to just about everyone.
• How to Design Your Business Card | Webdesigner Depot – Some really interesting designs and ideas here, though for scanners (people that process your business card to digital) crazy shapes, circular printing and non-standard materials make it a pain in the ass to get it through my ScanSnap and into my system.
• Pivotal Labs: Talks – Loads of talks buy the pivotal crew, only thing they need is an rss (or better miro) feed.
• Video: How To Get Thousands of Visitors From Google – Keyword tips for good google juice on a blog post
• The Road to Rails 3 – GIANT ROBOTS SMASHING INTO OTHER GIANT ROBOTS – Thoughtbot has a bunch of open source code, here's where they sit in relation to latest rails (2.3.x and 3)
• Rondam Ramblings: Top ten geek business myths – sobering dose of reality for would be geek entrepreneur
• Next Chapter in the Lego Robotics Saga: Amazing Bipedal Walking (video) | Singularity Hub – Pinocchio lego robots

Interesting tidbits from around the web (May 31st):

• Phusion Passenger 2.2.12 released –
• Customizing Rails Apps with Plugins – takes the blog in rails 3 examples and adds to it with a bunch of plataformatec plugins
• chneukirchen’s bacon at master – GitHub – a small RSpec clone

Browser wars are still alive and well on my desktop. I love chrom*’s speed and each tab as a force-killable thread if needed. Not a fan of 1password integration, no form filling atm. Firefox is a beast and Safari, well, meh. Chromium’s my new default, we’ll see how long this lasts.

Interesting tidbits from around the web

• Forrst – designer and developer inspiration sharing.
• Mint – on my Droid now.
• MacRuby: The Definitive Guide – Matt Aimonetti’s Open Feedback O’Reilly book.
• Interface – iPhone mockups and prototyping, on the iPhone.
• heroku-sql-console – sometimes you need to get your hands dirty with SQL.
• George Starcher’s YouTube Channel – he’s got some great videos on how to set up a Mac to do podcasting with a lot of attention on getting really good sound as a source. Applying this to the next round of BDDCasts we record.
• ice cube – more recurring events.
• iPad Cabinet – an interesting kitchen hack. Recipes are a nagging problem in my attempts to be paperless.
• How to Set Up Your Freelance Business for the Long Haul – lots of things to do when you start out freelancing, this is a pretty good list.
• Ultimate Collection of Google Related Mac Apps – I had no idea there were this many. Calendar, Mail and Contacts are my main ones. They get sync’d through at least 4 different CRM-ish systems.
• Pimp Your Tables with CSS3 – prettier tables.
• Linode Backup Service – announced.
• Get your garage ready for summer – I just spent part of this weekend doing that. I’d buy less tools if I did this more often. Because I could find the tools.

Got through the weekend of client work and Monday didn’t do too much damage. I’m still working on that whole work/life balance. I picked up a copy of Get More Done, Make More Money today, read it and submitted an RFP or two for some Virtual Assistance. Hopefully over the next week or two I can get to a short list of potential VA, or have found one. WWD had an interesting post on How to use a virtual assistant in your business.

Interesting tidbits from around the web

• Web Developers Can’t Sell. Sorry. – No reason to apologize, for the most part, we can’t. A good set of tips if you still want to try to do this on your own.
• Cleaning user’s input – This has been coming up a lot today, maybe it’s taking long enough for Rails 3 and this is such a no-brainer idea that people are looking for workarounds. Who knows?
• Beautiful-HTML – I half hoped, half thought this was going to be something with HAML.
• 7 Ways to Get More Out of LinkedIn – Alright list, I’m still trying to figure out how to use LinkedIn more. I have found more work through Twitter than LinkedIn. I’d update my status more if I didn’t have to go out to LinkedIn (can’t get ping.fm to work, and they’re support folks aren’t getting back to me).
• Meet jQuery – from PeepCode, bought and on my todo list for tomorrow.
• Python Language Moratorium – interesting.
• Smart Email Marketing – Some good tips. For the haters that think this is spammy, email marketing also gets people to attend conferences, usergroups, and a host of other things.
• Basic postgresql server setup – One day I’ll look at postgresql.
• A first look at the Droid – On my tobuy list.
• The difference between motion and action – or, as one of the comments note, “Never confuse motion with action” – Ben Franklin. Leo has a better post, IMO, The Little Rules of Action.
• Rails on Karmic Koala – For when I’m brave enough to take my production boxes from Hardy to something else.
• I’m an idiot for not using Heroku – maybe you are too. I’ve got a couple things in my idea pipeline that would be good candidates to test out Heroku.

Finished editing Episode 11 of BDDCasts today (but it won’t go out until Monday). It feels like the rendering time of ScreenFlow 2 has gotten worse than ScreenFlow 1.5.x. I haven’t done any times, but it feels several times slower.

Interesting tidbits from around the web

• Verizon FiOS Backup – Unlimited computers in your house, one subscription, 50G for $7/mo, I’m seriously thinking about dropping Carbonite and Mozy.
• Coda Stuff – I might be one of the few people on a Mac that is pretty meh on the whole Coda thing. I have TextMate, vim and the only other thing I want is SubEthaEdit type collaboration in TextMate. I know it’s fixed by TextMate 2. Anyhoo, this is a big list of Coda plugins and such.
• Google Closure – probably the good news out of the google camp today was the releasing of some tools for JavaScript.
• Dashboard – is the other bit of news from google, it’s pretty scary when you see it all in one place how much google owns of mine.
• A few UI best practices – 6, exactly. Easily identifiable links might be the only one that gets some friction. Blue and underlined?
• 13 Mac Apps – I’m a sucker for these, especially ones that could be really useful. Of the ones I don’t have but still look useful are SuperDocker and iStat pro which might be information overkill.
• Time Machine Editor – hack away at your Time Machine settings and scheduling.
• Video Monkey – The heir apparent to the insanely awesome and retired Visual Hub. I pulled down 0.5 and it’s not as easy as Visual Hub, I’ll keep my eye on it though.
• 50 Common Mac Problems Solved – I’m linking to the printer friendly version because the original was 5 clicks through. A pretty decent list, worth a bookmark and a read.
• 10 Free Server & Network Monitoring Tools that Kick Ass – ’nuff said.

Finally 24 hours with no fever and no fever reducing medications needed, my girl goes back to school tomorrow. And I go with her in the morning, I’m carving pumpkins for Kindergarten’s “Pumpkin Day”.

Interesting tidbits from around the web

• Derek Wyatt – has a bunch of videos about vim on vimeo. I’m sure he chose vimeo for obvious reasons. Short, entertaining and educational.
• eddorre – has another snow leopard rails setup. That’s on my list of things to do.