The Log

In my various interviews over the past year, a common theme of mine has been the relationship between design and development on the web. I am curious to hear your thoughts on this as well.

As someone who dabbles in the creation of web sites as a hobby and follows the true professionals online, it appears that there are not a lot of people who are highly skilled on both sides of this fence. It seems like most folks tend to spend more time on one side over the other and their career sticks on that path.

That seems to be changing somewhat in recent times, but overall I think the sentiment still holds true. As someone who has worked in the industry for more than nine years, do you agree with this? Is it hard for a person to be highly competent at design and development when it comes to the web?

Garrett: For the most part, I agree. I know a few people here and there who are truly fantastic at both designing and developing for the web, but most people tend to be in at least a 60/40 situation. I think this probably comes from the amount of time it takes to master each skill-set and that they’re sort of different parts of the brain. Someone who is a very talented designer, regardless of the medium, might be very good at writing, say, JavaScript, but might not find it interesting enough to become an expert. The reverse is also true. There are definitely exceptions to the rule, but for the most part people tend to focus on their speciality.

From a quick reading of garrettmurray.net and looking at your portfolio, it might be easy to assume that you are a more of a developer yourself. What would you call yourself? Where are your strengths?

Oh, I’m definitely a developer, yes. I have been saying for years that I’m not a designer, but it gets harder and harder to say that with a straight face when you look at how many times I’ve redesigned my personal weblog (maniacalrage.net) or the various other sites and projects I’ve done recently. That being said, I still don’t consider myself a designer in professional terms, because I never design for clients.

All my design work is for my own projects—things like Ego, my sites, other web applications—I’m the client and I’m not forced to work on a deadline. I could never be a designer by trade because I’m not particularly good at it in regular intervals. I get inspiration, I sit down, I knock out a design. But then I might not design again for two months. If I had to do it every day, I would be a horrible failure.

When it comes to development, however, I am able to focus and work harder on a regular basis. It’s interesting that of all my interests and hobbies (design, filmmaking, comedy, writing), development is the least creative in a general sense. There are times when I will go several weeks only writing code and not doing anything creative and I start to feel it. I’ll suddenly have the urge to redesign my site or write something. And it works the other way too—after a while without developing applications and purely being creative I will have a very strong urge to sit down and write code. They actually compliment each other very well.

It’s interesting to see how you break down the different types of work you do. I think it’s safe to say that the burn out some people feel in more traditional roles could be attributed to the lack of opportunity to flex their creative muscles. Your situation seems ideal as you get a good mix of both.

But back to the subject of designers and developers. As a platform, It looks like designing and developing iPhone apps is a popular move for many who worked primarily with the web.

How about you — what made you want to create Ego?

Like most of the other applications I’ve written, Ego was written first and foremost because I needed it. I was sick of checking Mint, FeedBurner and Twitter with several accounts from my phone. It required too many logins, too many tabs, too much time. So I just needed a simple place to look at all my stats in one glance. From that, Ego was born.

In addition, I enjoy learning new technologies and designing for new platforms or constraints. I love the iPhone and the new life it gave to mobile design and development and I was excited to give it a shot. And, of course, it would be nice to make a little money here and there.

Hmm, there are two interesting items you mention there. First, How difficult was it to pick up Cocoa (or Cocoa touch) and develop this application? What kind of timeframe did it take for you to finish learning and start building the application?

I had learned Objective-C (or at least a working knowledge of it) years ago when I wrote xPad. Back then it took me many, many months to learn and develop the app. This time around, I decided to go the smart route and read/learn BEFORE jumping into code. I get so excited about making something that I often jump in too deep and end up struggling to solve problems because I’m not as knowledgeable about things as I should be. So when I decided to write Ego, I bought Learn Objective-C on the Mac (Dalrymple & Knaster) and Beginning iPhone Development (Mark & LaMarche) and read them cover-to-cover over the course of two weeks. During that time, I never touched my computer. I just read and digested. By the time I started working in Xcode, I was much more comfortable with the idea of writing an iPhone app.

Start to finish, I think I spent about a month and a half designing and developing Ego version 1.0. If I hadn’t refreshed my knowledge of ObjC and read the iPhone dev book, I think it would have been a lot longer.

Wow — very cool. It must have been hard, taking out two weeks and not earning any revenue during that time. Which brings me to the other point you mentioned above:

“And, of course, it would be nice to make a little money here and there.”

Sharing only what you’re comfortable with, how is that going? Do you feel that the iPhone is a viable way for developers to earn a living?

Luckily, those two weeks were during a vacation, so it didn’t impact me too much. Whether or not it’s normal for someone to read ObjC and iPhone dev books while on vacation is another issue, but we’ll ignore that one for now.

Ego hasn’t sold as many copies as I would like, but it was never meant to be a breadwinner. I’m happy that I’ve sold as many copies as I have to date, and while I would love to wake up one morning and see 1,000 sales from the last day, that’s not realistic given how niche the application is. That being said, there is clearly a viable way to make a living through the app store, but I think it is becoming saturated and over time it looks that games might be the only way to get rich doing it. That being said, if I had 5 applications all selling as much as Ego is, I would be pretty comfortable from it. So if you want to send over 4 great ideas, that’d be fine by me.

Ha — they’re on the way.

You mentioned XPad previously, a text editor for OS X that is now freeware. You also mentioned that it took months to make. How hard was it to make the decision to release your hard work for free?

Actually, xPad is freeware because it’s old. It wasn’t free when it first came out. It was $9.99, if I remember correctly. It didn’t sell too many copies, but people seemed to love it (I still hear from people all the time that they use it to this day). Then there was an incident when I sold the IP to someone who then backed out of the contract. It’s a long and pointless story. When I got it back after a few months, I decided to just make it freeware (I also gave refunds to people who had bought it within the few months before I made it free).

By the time it became freeware it had been out for a few years and wasn’t really selling anymore so it didn’t bother me (and, like I said, people still seemed to like it). When I first released it, I definitely wanted to try to make some money from it, since I had spent about 9 months learning ObjC/Cocoa and developing it.

That being said, since xPad I have released other free applications, such as SimpleLog, which was a Ruby on Rails content management system. I’ve since stopped working on it, but did spend about a year building/designing it which was a lot of fun.

Well, I’m glad you brought up SimpleLog as well. I’m curious to hear why, after taking the time to develop your own CMS, you would then switch to a tool like Tumblr?

There were several reasons. Initially, it was because the content I was writing for my site had slowed to a trickle. I didn’t have as much time to write so I wasn’t posting as much. But I would constantly find photos or videos or other things I enjoyed and wanted to post with little bits of thought. SimpleLog was designed for writers. When I created it, I specifically set out to make a CMS that was simple (oy) and efficient for someone to use when writing on their site. I used to write a lot more fiction and such and it worked really well for that. But it wasn’t designed for short posts, multimedia posts, or so-called micro-blogging.

When Tumblr first came out I started an account and posted little things on the side but didn’t link to it anywhere. After a month or two I realized I had posted loads of content there and nothing to my primary site. So it seemed logical to switch.

On top of all that, I love the like and reblog functionality Tumblr provides. It makes it easy to find great content and also to get your content circulated around. Plus, the Tumblr folks are nice (and pretty damn smart, too).

I hear you there — I’m loving the service and the community. And seeing the whole story, I can see why you moved on in regards to each of these projects.

Back to Tumblr. I’ve been following Prettify since you joined as a member on Fusion. One thing I’ve always wondered though: why do you write in plural form?

Example: “One of the more unique icon sets we’ve seen in a while. Includes two version of folders in white and red.”

Hah. It’s amazing how many times I’ve been asked that. Honestly, I don’t know why I did that. I just wrote the first few in plural and it stuck. I guess I imagined in the beginning I would eventually have other people adding content to the site as well, but after a short time I realized (after looking at submissions) that I don’t trust anyone else’s taste enough to give out control over posting. I thought about switching to singular, but it was already the style of the site.

I actually did the same thing in the first few posts of another side-project called That’s Not Art, but quickly corrected it.

Well, it just adds to the charm of the site.

All right, that’s enough of Garrett Murray the developer and web savant. Let’s talk about your cinematic side. “Forever’s Not So Long” was really good. Can you describe the overall experience making the movie was?

Filmmaking and acting are my primary passion. Web development is fun and it pays the bills but my real interests lie in film and television. I’ve been working with my long-time friend Shawn Morrison since we met in college on various comedy vehicles and short films, of which Forever’s Not So Long is the latest. When we started talking about making FNSL, we decided for the first time to make a film specifically to send to festivals. We had talked briefly about submitting past films but it was never one of the primary goals until this one.

Shawn had written the core of FNSL a few years back when we had talked about another idea that involved it and when we started talking about what to work on in late October, 2008 we both agreed this story was interesting and would make for a nice short. He finalized the script and we shot and edited it during the month of November.

Forever’s Not So Long was different for us in that it was the first time we shot a short in high definition, and on film lenses. That presented new challenges (very heavy camera that Shawn had to hold, sometimes for a very long time, very precise focusing, et cetera) but ultimately gave us the best visual work we’d done to date. Especially when you consider how wonderfully Shawn shot it. It was also the first film we’d made in which music played a large role. Our friend Robert Andersen wrote a fantastic song called Emperor Norton, which is played over the last few moments of the film and really adds such an amazing amount of weight to the final scene. When I first heard that song a few years back, I knew immediately I’d use it in a film at some point and was thrilled we could use it for this one.

FNSL was also an interesting experience for me because it was the first film or content we’d made that I didn’t co-direct or co-write. I gave Shawn feedback on the script while he was working on it and a few suggestions during shooting but my role in this project was focused purely on acting. It was, quite honestly, fantastic to have someone else managing those other aspects and to focus on the character and story. Granted, I produced the film so that involved a lot of work, but luckily that was mostly before and after we actually shot it.

Coming from someone who knows very little about cinema in general, I have to say that when watching the film, the filmwork and the music definitely added to the feel. And the focus on everyday things.

On a side note, I have to ask this: when your character is outside talking to the girl on the street, a guy runs by. You grab him and say, “You’re dead already!”

He’s not listed in the credits … was this planned or is he some random New Yorker?

Actually, he is in the credits—his name is Jeff Beebe. He’s listed along with other people who run by on the street, including Amanda Crater, Sara Zarbo and my kid sister, Ashley Murray (who also did the makeup for the film). You can also find a full list of credits on the IMDB page for the film.

Ah, I stand corrected. Thanks for clarifying. Great work by everyone involved.

We’ve touched on your many facets: developer, actor, filmmaker, blogger, podcaster … let’s talk about Garrett Murray the entrepreneur. There has been a move towards self employment on the internet the past 4-5 years in which people are actually selling themselves. It sounds somewhat funny to say that, but in essence it’s true.

Many people want to be the next John Gruber or Merlin Mann. As someone who works for himself, what do you think of this trend?

It seems perfectly logical to me. I don’t begrudge anyone who is good at self-marketing, especially when they’re talented at something (or multiple things). I do get frustrated when people become famous and/or successful when they have no inherent skills other than networking—what’s the point of being well known for being useless?

The internet has made it very easy to create and broadcast your own brand, but it’s still immensely difficult to be successful with it. If your goal is to want to be the next John Gruber, that seems like a waste of time. John’s goal when he started writing Daring Fireball was to be a great technology writer. There’s a big difference there.

I definitely fall into the category of selling myself. Between my primary income (web development) coming from referrals and leads based on past work I’ve done, to building an audience for the sketch show and short films, to the little things like Prettify and That’s Not Art, everything is branded with my style and persona.

When did you make the move to working for yourself? Have you ever had a more traditional job working for someone else?

Oh, I’ve worked for loads of companies. Just before I started pinch/zoom I worked for a small Seattle-based agency called Blue Flavor. That’s where I met Brian Fling, who I work with now. In the past 10 years I’ve worked for many companies, both large and small.

When I left Blue Flavor I decided to make a very serious go of working for myself. Frankly, working in an office, working 9 to 5 … it’s just not for me. I like working late at night, I like working in solitude quite a bit, and I enjoy the flexibility of working from my home office. My cats seem to enjoy it too, since they have someone to bother during the day.

Blue Flavor — I hadn’t realized that. All right then, since you’ve made the move to self-employment, do you have any “professional” tips for the gads of aspiring entrepreneurs that are looking to go on their own?

I could probably list hundreds of them, but I’ll stick to what I feel are the big ones I’ve learned the last few years:

1. Always set aside at least 30% of your income for taxes. If you don’t, you’re screwed come April 15. It’s also a good idea to pay the quarterly estimates, although I always forget to.
2. If you need to be around people for most of the day, you’re going to have a hard time working for yourself. Most days I don’t see people for the majority of the daylight hours. I talk to a lot of people through IM, email and Twitter, but face-to-face contact is rare. If you can’t handle it, things won’t go well for you.
3. Consider each project carefully before taking them on. What sounds worth the cash in April sometimes feels like a horrible mistake in August. Tons of money isn’t a good reason to take a project.
4. Exercise. Since you’re not going to be out and about, walking around, you’ll gain lots of weight. I gained about 20 pounds my first year. I felt terrible and had to work it all back off. Do yourself a favor and don’t let it become an issue by exercising regularly. After all, you set your own schedule so you can run in the middle of the day.
5. Keep every receipt for everything you spend that’s related to your business. Meals with clients, travel, everything. You can write it all off, and you’ll need to since you’re going to be paying self employment taxes.

Nice tips, especially regarding taxes. That’s something I’m learning here — glad to hear you back it up.

All right, I have a bit of a fetish for software and how experts use their tools, as well as personal productivity (I won’t use the GTD word). Can you share how you make sure you stay organized and productive? And tell us about some of your favourite software tools that you use?

I’m pretty simple about how I stay organized and productive. When it comes to email, I archive what I’m not going to reply to and try to keep my inboxes empty. I file important things into named folders.

For files and such, I use a simple system of an inbox for downloads, a pending folder for things that I’m working on temporarily and an archive folder (with many subfolders) for things I’m done with but want to keep around. I also use Dropbox for all my business-related files (sharing with colleagues has never been easier) and filmmaking-related non-video files. I use a Drobo to store all my permanent content (video, older photos, et cetera).

For task management, I use Things on the desktop and iPhone. I use Tweetie for managing the various Twitter accounts I run (@garrettmurray, @egoapp and a few others) on the desktop and Birdfeed on the iPhone. I use NetNewsWire for feeds in combination with Google Reader.

I do nearly all my work with TextMate, Photoshop CS4 and CSSEdit. MAMP Pro for all my test server configurations for things like PHP and MySQL. I write iPhone apps in Xcode, of course. And I keep all my code (personal and business-wise) in git repositories and host them on GitHub.

I try to keep my desktop, inbox and filesystem neat and tidy as frequently as possible, which is just the digital extension of how I keep my apartment. I’m a bit of a neat freak.

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Thanks to Garrett for sharing his thoughts on the subjects above over the past months. As always, it was a pleasure to get inside the mind of an expert and see things from a more intimate perspective.

A couple of months back, I was giving Dan Benjamin a hard time on Twitter, claiming that someone replaced his avatar with a caricature of Cabel Sasser (of Panic fame). Dan replied, with a link to the source his avatar, which was supplied by the gang responsible for Happy Webbies.

Although I was merely giving Dan a hard time — you have to admit that his happy webby looks a lot like Cabel’s Twitter avatar — this made me stop and think for a second. “Dan Benjamin has a happy webby!?” Seeing as I follow Dan on Twitter, I have obviously heard of him before. But I realized I did not hold him in the same regard as other notables in the web design world, such as Jason Santa Maria, Veerle Pieters or Jon Hicks. Why?

Here is a guy who built the content management systems for A List Apart and Cork’d. He’s the CTO of Rails Machine and respected enough in the Rails community that he’s speaking at RailsConf for the second year in a row.

After reviewing all I know of Dan, I realized this simple fact – Dan’s work is mostly unseen, living in the back-end of any website he works on. All those other folks are unbelievably good at making pretty things that the user can see. Dan’s work might also be pretty, but in a different way. This realization got me to wondering if there are others like me — casual web design fans for whom this is mostly a hobby — who unconsciously place more importance on the visual over the structure of this ‘web’ we love so much.

So I decided to rectify this unbalance by learning more about Dan Benjamin and his work. And where better to go than straight to the source? Here’s what I found.

The Interview

Let’s start with your own blog, Hivelogic. You have mentioned in your 2007 redesign that it runs on your own Rails app – impressive back-end work. How much of the front end work was completed by yourself?

Dan: Save for a few brief experiments, Hivelogic has always been published with software I’ve written. Writing your own software is a great way to learn new frameworks and languages. It also teaches you the importance of a good user interface and workflow, and it helps you predict what clients might want out of a system they’ll be using every single day.

As for the front-end design, traditionally, and at present, I’ve done the designs myself. There have been three exceptions to this, where designer friends of mine created a design for me. They were Jason Santa Maria, Dan Cederholm, and Meagan Fisher. And as much as I realize that these designers did amazing work for me, far superior to anything I can conjure up, the Hivelogic aesthetic just never feels “right” to me unless it’s running on a design I’ve done myself, despite my preference for simplicity, and content-focused starkness.

You can see a retrospective of past and present Hivelogic designs in a Flickr set dedicated to the subject.

Cool. I think that people who follow the world of web design, but are not necessarily employed in that field, are very familiar with designers who take the popular CMS’s available and create a beautiful design of their own making. That you’ve done the opposite and built your own CMS is pretty impressive.

And you list some pretty impressive names who’ve done a design for you. This is part of why I was interested in interviewing you. I wanted to hear your thoughts on this particular topic – designers vs. coders. It seems like the designers always get the majority of the attention. In a recent article titled “Findability, Orphan of the Web Design Industry” on A List Apart, Aarron Walter illustrated the differences between designers and coders(Development) in his analogy of the web design family:

Although Development was a little nerdy and shy, everyone admired his brilliance—from which he created an artificially intelligent search algorithm in just two lines of code. Super-hip Design was the cutest of them all. He seemed to win top accolades all by himself whether his siblings joined him on a project or not.

Is this illustration frustrating at all for someone like yourself? And would you agree with the underlying sentiment?

Dan: I think that accurately represents the general point of view, even if it’s false. And it’s one of the things I’ll be addressing in some upcoming posts, as well as my talk at Railsconf - how can Developers stand out, even if it’s among their own kind in their own world.

So much of what developers do is behind the scenes and invisible. And worse, it’s expected that what they do will “just work.” Good design is held in high regard by users, and great design is usually rewarded. But good code, efficient, thoughtful, effective code just flies under the radar. Things like github can help bring attention to developers and their work, which is just one small part part of the site’s usefulness, but it’s harder for great developers to reach beyond their own community.

Good usability, though, that’s something else entirely, and that’s why I love thinking about and working on usability. Usability is the crossroads where design and development meet, and even today, with people preaching about usability everywhere you go, it’s too often overlooked and undervalued. Believe me, people notice when the usability is wrong. Sites can totally fail because of bad usability.

Good point. And I definitely agree. Usability should be the main, underlying goal of any website. And even further, developers of applications of any type, web or desktop, or even operating systems, need to keep that goal always in focus.

But when it comes to the web, most people seem to choose one side or the other, development or design. I’ve seen several people state that there are very few in the industry who would be considered great at both. Shaun Inman is a name that seems to get that label. Where would you consider yourself in that scale?

Dan: I’m one of the people who have said that there are few if any people who are great at both design and code. I think it comes down not to skill or ability, but rather to expertise. It’s possible to deeply understand code, databases, Photoshop, CSS, and even be able to write very well, but it’s the skill you practice on a daily basis, what you spend the bulk of your time doing, that you build up expertise in.

So while there might be people who have the potential to be good (or even great) at both design and development, it’s rare that you find somebody who has enough time to be simultaneously great at both in parallel. I’ve seen people shift specialities, getting great at something additional as they focus on it more, building or refreshing their expertise in the area, but generally, my experience has taught me that the people who are greatest at something tend to specialize in it. Again, that doesn’t mean they might not also be great at something else, but people who specialize are often the ones at the top of their field.

I certainly wouldn’t mind if, say, the neurosurgeon operating on my brain also enjoyed practicing law, but I’d want him to have been focusing on the neurosurgery thing more recently, if you follow me there. Maybe that’s not a fair comparison, but you get my meaning.

So, where am I on that scale? I think I have a good eye for design, and good design sensibilities. But I don’t live in the world of design. I know what I like, and what works, and I can implement some of that, but I’m not on the same level of people like Jeffrey Zeldman, Dan Cederholm, Shaun Inman, or the less famous but highly talented designers out there, doing design work every single day.

You tend to be the best at what you do every day.

Fair enough, and a humble response. And I think most people would say that you are probably one of the best at what you do. This makes a good segue to the next question.

With the increased popularity of the internet over the last 10–15 years, as it has become another facet of mainstream media, there is now a new channel for people to achieve fame (intentionally or unintentionally). Let’s call them ‘Web Superstars’ just for fun. Looking at the web design industry, you can see this playing out — there are those who are at the top — some of the names you’ve listed above. And there are others who look up to those people and who essentially look at them as role models.

Dan: Without a doubt, especially in the design community. I’ve worked with many incredibly talented yet relatively unknown designers who are quite literally star-struck by the more famous designers, and I can understand that. Those “famous” designers have put in a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to get where there are, and I think hard work like that deserves respect. Putting the time in and persevering.

Have you ever thought of yourself in this light? Are you a Web Superstar?

Dan: Am I a Web Superstar? I’ve been blogging since late 1999 and I’ve worked with some incredibly talented people on some great projects, so I can understand how people might confuse me with a superstar, but I would only call myself very lucky.

Going back to your work now. Your About page on Hivelogic lists some of the work you’ve done - publishing tools for Cork’d, A List Apart and others. And, as mentioned at the beginning, you’ve built your own CMS for Hivelogic itself.

For people looking in from the outside, the work involved might seem to be very similar. How much difference is there between the work you do for different clients? Do you basically have a foundational framework that simply gets tweaked for each one or do you start from the ground up each time?

Dan: Most publishing systems tend to have a lot of things in common, such as the management of date-based content like articles and posts vs. assets, static pages, images, and the like. You’ll usually want user accounts, role-based permissions, WYSIWYG editors, archive pages, comment systems with anti-spam features, etc. So in that way — basic feature sets a user would just expect to find in a system worth its salt — there are many things in common.

The difference is in the way that those things come together regarding how people visiting the site will interact with it, as well as the workflow and administrative dashboard that staff members will use to manage content. The way a university staff or engineering firm manages content and how their site actually works for visitors is significantly different than the way a site like Hivelogic works, and that’s different still from something like A List Apart. Sure, each one needs to manage and display some content, but how people want to use those systems is incredibly different. I tend to spend a lot of time focusing on usability, and while there might be shared components in the systems I’ve built, everything is being geared toward specific audience or client needs, so in that sense, it’s not uncommon to build a big piece from the ground-up.

I think good developers are always challenging themselves to find better ways to do things. I feel like I’d be missing a chance to engage more fully in that exercise if I wasn’t always trying to think of new or better ways of building software. And at the same time, Ruby on Rails, my development platform of choice, is evolving as well. New plugins come out every day. So it’s always interesting to see how you can see what’s new and leverage that to make products that are even more direct, more simple, and more elegant.

Interesting. It seem obvious that you play much more than just the developer role in your work. I would assume that a lot of what you do for a client would involve ‘information architect’ duties, as well as a few others.

Speaking of Ruby on Rails, I’m interested to hear your thoughts on some of the criticism that the framework has received. For people not involved in this aspect of web development, it seems like RoR has a lot of detractors, especially with issues like what Twitter has seen recently. Not that they have had serious reliability issues, but I think your average Twitter user would describe the application as flaky at times.

Let’s say you were sitting on the bus and overheard two young computer science students debating the merits of RoR vs some other framework - how would you respond?

Dan: I probably wouldn’t get involved. These days, I don’t believe there’s a right or wrong answer when it comes to selecting the framework to use to build an application. No one framework is better than another across the board, and I don’t think an application is destined to succeed or fail based the framework you’re using. They all have advantages and disadvantages. My preference is Rails because I like the elegant simplicity of Ruby and the way that David and the Core Team have leveraged it for the Rails framework. But I know people who prefer PHP, and others who like Python, and they like the frameworks based on that language.

It’s more a matter of personal preference. Find something you like and run with it.

Let’s move on to a really important topic now - beverages. I’ve got a few questions about Cork’d.

The ‘About Cork’d’ page lists you and Dan Cederholm listed as the founders. How involved are you both still involved with the day to day operations of this site?

Dan: Neither of us are involved with Cork’d anymore. We helped transition the site when it was acquired, and Dan C. did some initial design work, but that was it. We’re as hopeful and exited as everybody else to see what Gary has up his sleeve for the website.

I read this following quote from Dan C. in an interview on ThinkVitamin in August of 2006:

Because it’s so targeted I think that’s why it’s attractive to all these wine people, so there’s that, we could create a ‘Cork’d Deluxe’, where signing up, having a fee that offers extra features beyond what the free Cork’d does, that’s a possibility. Secretly, or not so secretly I guess, we’ve been thinking about other sites, I won’t go into detail right now, but there are other beverages beside wine, so we’ll see what happens.

Perhaps I’ve missed some news since then, but I think there are similar markets that could use this type of community. I’m sure ale/mead/beer fans would flock to a service like this. And I would think the entire nerd/geek community would do the same with a site centring around coffee.

Are there any plans for something new in this regard?

Dan: Building Cork’d with Dan C. was a great experience, and I’m looking forward to working on something else with him one day, but right now, both of us are too busy to take on anything new right now. But the space is wide open, for sure.

That reminds me of something I noticed on the Cork’d About page. In the section where you both are mentioned, there is this reference to Tundro:

Cork’d is a product of Tundro, a development agency building web applications for people like you.

But the link to Tundro.com does not work. Is this simply a project that never came to fruition? Or is there more to the story?

Dan: Tundro was the company we formed to build Cork’d. At the time we imagined we might one day create more applications. This is what the site used to look like:

The Tundro company, name, logo, and website weren’t part of the Cork’d deal, and I’ve retained ownership of them for possible use down the road.

Dan Cederholm used the awesome beer icon he’d developed for a potential new site for one of his projects, Foamee.

Thanks for clearing that up. As for foamee.com, that sort of what I was hinting at a couple of questions back. I would love to see Dan’s ioubeer and ioucoffee idea turn into something like Cork’d. He’s already got a great start with Twitter. And the logo’s are sweet. Seems like his always are – I loved his hivelogic icon.

Dan: He’s got a crazy talent for coming up with amazing logos and icons. It’s kind of wild to watch him work.

Now we can’t have a geek interview without asking this – do you drink coffee? If yes, how do you take it?

Dan: I do enjoy a cup of coffee from time to time, but I’m not a habitual coffee drinker. Caffeine tends to make me more jumpy than alert, so I watch the intake. I drink far more green tea (loose leaf, water at 180°, etc.) than coffee. My favorite cup of coffee comes from Stumptown in Portland, Oregon.

Let’s talk about another big project of yours - The Talk Show. So you get to work with John Gruber. You’ve made a few comments on the show about his ‘quirks’. And some tweets as well. If you had to sum it up, how would you describe working with John?

Dan: John is a great writer, and has a great eye for detail. He’s also very devoted to his work and his family. And he is very, very smart. And as is often the case with bright people, he’s somewhat eccentric. These eccentricities often come out in the form idiosyncrasies, like his obsessive attention to detail, his fixation on fonts and anti-aliasing, the hostility and rage against humanity, that kind of thing. It’s impossible to schedule anything, such as the recording of a Talk Show episode with him, while he’s focusing on writing, which is pretty much all of the time. Personally, I think the coffee just makes it worse.

So what ever prompted you both to work together and come up with the Talk Show?

Dan: We had so much fun when John was a guest on the Hivelogic podcast, and the response was so overwhelming, that we decided to make a regular thing out of it.

You definitely seem knowledgeable about podcasting. Your post on podcasting equipment was especially helpful for people starting out in this arena.

Do you think that this is an area that can now be considered an essential part of a business, especially people involved in web-centric fields? Or is it more of a fad that will never be looked at seriously, by media or big businesses?

Dan: I think that just as blogs are now a requirement for most businesses with a public face, podcasts and video blogs will one day be just as important. It might take a few years, but it’ll get there.

Well just take a look at What Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV has done with his family business using his video blog and social networking.

We’re also starting to see more and more companies becoming aware of the importance of social networking. Southwest Airlines, for example, is on Twitter. So are a handful of other companies. And they respond to you!

All those mediums appear to be initiating change in the way people think and interact with those offering more traditional services. It will be interesting to see how corporate America continues to react to these changes.

One last question about the Talk Show. Dan Benjamin and John Gruber. Which one of you is the sidekick?

Dan: John Gruber is my nemesis, so I’ve never really thought of us in terms of sidekick and superhero.

Nice. Maybe superhero and villain. We can call you Profanity-Filter Man, saving young Talk Show listeners from the fiery f-bombs of Gruber. Well … never mind.

I’ve got to give you both some thanks here though. On behalf of myself, and others like me, fans of Lost who would rather wait to watch each season in it’s entirety on DVD – thank you for the great job you guys did with giving away zero spoilers. I really enjoyed your discussion about the show in episode 16. But I was cringing through all 68 minutes thinking I was going to hear something about season 4 that would give a really important plot line away. Nice work keeping us in the dark while still have an engaging conversation.

Now that we’ve covered a lot of your professional doings, I’d like to ask you about your spirituality. You mention on the Hivelogic About page that you are a practicing buddhist. How did you come to embrace this particular religion?

Dan: I’ve been practicing a style of Buddhist meditation, called Vipassana or Mindfulness meditation, for a number of years. This style is practiced by Theravada Buddhists as well as many non-Buddhists, and is often used outside of Buddhist circles for things like stress reduction, relaxation, and even in hospitals and therapy centres to help people with chronic pain.

I had studied Buddhism before, and it seemed like a cool philosophy, but before the integration of a regular meditation practice, I hadn’t really delved too deeply into it. But after several years of daily meditation practice, I learned more and more about Buddhism, and it really made sense to me. The philosophies that it’s based on, the idea that we’re responsible for our own actions, that there’s an opportunity for a deep peace in daily life, that one’s life and activities can be understood when looked at with a very scientific eye, and that these things are all part of a bigger path was very intriguing to me.

I eventually reached a point where I was living my life as a Buddhist — not as a monastic, obviously — but it had become something that had become deeply integrated into my life, and that I found brought me, and subsequently people around me, a lot of joy. I was a much happier, much more calm, much more centered person.

Here are a few links:

• Mindfulness in Plain English
• Guided
• bfaq

Does this aspect of your life ever cause you to reflect negatively on your profession? What I mean is, does the part of Dan Benjamin that seeks spiritual nourishment conflict with what you do or the amount of time you may spend in front of a computer?

Dan: I think it’s my practice that allows me to spend the bulk of the day in front of a computer.

Ha. Fair enough.

Dan: I’m being serious - the practice of mindfulness and concentration is tremendously valuable in dealing with stress, and very helpful in establishing focus. I work faster and more effectively now than I ever have.

Wouldn’t that allow you to spend less time on the computer?

This is more what I’m getting at — as a Christian, I feel that relationships should be the primary focus in my life. My relationship with God, with my wife, my children and lastly neighbours, friends and family. Sometimes I feel that the time I spend on the computer distracts me from more important things.

The question — although poorly articulated — was intended to reflect that sort of idea and inquire if you ever have the same struggle.

Dan: Vipassana meditation is a kind of training for the mind. The same way athletes train and practice so they will excel on the field of play, meditation is practice for the real world, for real life. On the meditation cushion, we practice mindfulness of the present moment. I try and take that concept with me into my work day as well, trying to keep an awareness of the present moment. So in that way, although it isn’t easy, it’s possible to bring a clarity and focus into your workday.

In one of my favorite books on Meditation, Mindfulness in Plain English, the author (Bhante G) explains how you can take even the regular aspects of work and daily life and integrate your practice into them. It’s a challenge, but engaging this way can really change how you feel about your work and how you connect with it.

As far as how I feel about spending a big chunk of my day in front of a computer screen, I am OK with it. I work from home where it’s easier to get into the Creativity Zone. I get to see my wife and baby boy throughout the day, and although I do work a lot and have a number of projects ongoing, I get to structure my day in a relatively flexible way.

Thinking back, I’ve spent quite a bit of time in pretty difficult jobs, behind the stinking broiler at Burger King, pushing carts in the heat of the Florida summer and stocking shelves in a grocery store, working in a tiny, frenzied kitchen in an Italian restaurant, cleaning bathrooms in movie theaters, and working in plenty of mundane, unrewarding, punishing and abusive corporate jobs. By comparison, I’m pretty lucky.

So you appear to have a lot going on in your life. Listener’s of the Talk Show know that you have a very young son. You have your own business and site to maintain with Hivelogic and you are the CTO of Rails Machine. Throw in some podcasting and a healthy dose of Twitter and it would seem you are a very busy guy.

Dan: Well I have a clear separation of work and non-work. Keeping those two things separate are key. And I value my family above all else. This value makes really helps me decide what to do and when.

One last question. What does an average day in the life of Dan Benjamin look like?

Dan: It’s a bit different these days now that we have a baby, and as his schedule changes, so does mine. But generally speaking, it looks something like this:

Time	Activity
6:15-6:30am	Wake up (no alarm is used, I just wake up naturally at this time)
6:45 - 7:30	Meditation
7:30 - 8:30	Time with baby
8:30 - 9:00	Breakfast with family
9:00 - 1/1:30	Work*
1/1:30 - 2:00	Lunch
2:00 - 6-ish	Work*
6-ish	Pre-dinner family time until baby goes to bed
6?	Jog
7?	Dinner
8 - 11?	Family time, reading, television (if a show we follow is on), etc.

I should note that I find most days incredibly rewarding.

* Work includes checking email, responding to work issues, readers, initial catchup with news in the morning, etc. I don’t allot specific time for those things, they just happen naturally as part of the schedule. I also take some breaks throughout the day, and because I work from home, I get to see my wife and the baby.

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During the course of two months, Dan graciously answered all my questions in an articulate, professional fashion. I’m grateful for his time in providing this insight into his work and life, and I have a better appreciation for those who work in the web industry more behind the scenes.

As a user, it’s important to remember that there is a lot that goes on with an application that you never see. The web is no different. People like Dan are focused on making the web a great experience. We should all appreciate that.

Here’s to a happy webby that’s well deserved!