Who is Kim Siever?

I am working on a project where I have to add several new job postings each day into a data base through a simple web form. Often, the job duration, application due date, city, or company are the same as previous ones. As a shortcut, I simply type in the first two or three characters and scroll through the auto complete list in Firefox.

Occasionally, I press tab too soon to get to the next field and end up submitting a partial value (like ’4 ‘ instead of ’4 months’).

Well, I just realised how to delete unwanted items from the auto complete list in Firefox. Just scroll through the list with the down arrow key on your keyboard until the the unwanted one is highlighted. then press Shift+Delete. Voilá! (is that better Cedric)

For IE users, I believe the key combo is simply the Delete key.

I received my first Veer catalogue today. I hadn’t realised I even ordered it.

Not that I mind of course. There is some nice stuff in there. Sharp photos, beautiful fonts, cool merch. I just wish I had the money to buy some of it.

At least I have something cool to look at it on my dinner break.

ZDNet has an article that states Google now pre-loads websites for the top results of searches made using Mozilla browsers.

Reza Behforooz, a software engineer at Google, announced on Wednesday that the search engine now pre-loads the top search result into the cache of Mozilla browsers.

“Now Google’s faster than ever on Firefox and Mozilla browsers,” said Behforooz in a posting on the company’s blog. “When you do a search on these browsers, we instruct them to download your top search result in advance, so if you click on it, you’ll get to that page even more quickly.”

Here’s an experiment that uses only CSS and XHTML to create a functional maze. No scripting at all was used. It even comes with secret passageways.

I have a bunch of GMail invites and everyone I know has a GMail account already. If you want one, just comment on this post.

I also have nearly 700 chips on BlogShares. I’ll give 50 to anyone who writes a post on his/her blog about HotPepper.ca and 100 to anyone who adds a link on his/her blog’s sidebar to the HotPepper.ca Blog. While supplies last. Just post a comment to let me know.

In addition I also have 100 invites for 360°, the new blogging service by Yahoo! Let me know if you’d like one.

Mary dropped off my dry cleaning today.

They charge 4.50$ for each tie and six-something for suit coats. I’m having two ties and a coat cleaned and it cost more to clean two ties than it did to clean an entire suit coat.

Seems a bit backwards to me.

I’ve been published on ALA!

A very exciting time. I should point out that the article was originally written last summer, and I have learned a few things since then. Nevertheless, here is Spruced-Up Site Maps (or “Spruce Maps” as ALA cleverly named the URL) in all its glory.

Looks like I got in in the nick of time as well.

ALA is not accepting new articles at this time.

Last spring, there was some discussion over at DxF regarding personal dingbats. I found the discussion enlightening and inspiring. As a result, it made me realize that I wanted to establish some sort of strong identity for myself on the Internet.

The first step I wanted to take was to develop a personal dingbat. I wanted something that represented me, that was widely recognizable, and that would work well at various sizes. I ended up deciding on using a hot pepper as the basis for this. Hot peppers are found in numerous cultures throughout the world and are instantly familiar to those who see them. I won a jalapeno eating contest about 11 years ago and love spicy foods. These were all indicators that a hot pepper was a good choice for a personal dingbat. Besides, I am hot stuff and a hot pepper represented that well.

After the dingbat was designed, I added it to the footer on all my web projects. This allowed me to set up a preliminary branding solution that was subtle and would set things up for a future stage.

The second step was to buy a domain name. Naturally I wanted something related to a hot pepper. Unsurprisingly, hotpepper.com was already taken. I was somewhat disappointed in this because I knew people would automatically try that URL to find me in the future. However, as I started contemplating it more, I realized a hotpepper.ca domain would work well for me. It was just as simple as hotpepper.com, but it also defined me as a Canadian.

The beginning of this month marked six months since I purchased the domain. I felt it was time to move the branding to a new stage. I wanted this stage to be focused more on promoting the website. To accomplish this, I moved all of my various web projects over to the hotpepper.ca domain and used .htaccess files to automatically forward visitors over.

Once this was accomplished, I knew I wanted to create a design that could be standardized across all of my projects. I did not want it to be too elaborate for the first time. I wanted it to be a minimalist approach that would focus more on branding. I also wanted something that could indicate the different projects I had.

One thing I liked was the way that FedEx, Google, Yahoo and others maintained a consistent global brand while still providing a pseudo identity for different products/services. I wanted to incorporate something like that. As a result, I created a branding solution that included the dingbat, a stylized URL, and a project label.

As well, I incorporated the colours of the logo into the headings of the pages, and used the pepper itself in various page elements (menu headers, list bullets, etc).

I think the design I have chosen works well for the goals I had, and will be effective at strengthening my identity as I prepare the final stage for the future.