In the past I’ve always designed my own business cards, printed them on expensive card stock, and hand-cut them with an X-Acto knife. My cards were way nicer than those my clients had gotten professionally printed with bubbly ink, no-bleed designs, and cheap paper. Though I put tremendous care into my cards, I never was happy with the design.

Why Have Business Cards?

I’m rarely asked for my business card except when I attend conferences, of which I attend one or two each year. As a freelance contractor, I leave work by walking twenty-five feet from my office to the couch. Many of the people I work for I’ve never met in-person.

When someone gives me their business card, I read it, pocket it, and eventually throw it out — sometimes before I remember to copy the information to my address book (sorry, just being honest). The reality is, with the ubiquity of the internet and with frictionless social networks like Twitter, I can connect with people immediately. So why have business cards?

Continue reading »

This is a test!

Octopress is a blogging framework designed for hackers, based on Jekyll the blog aware static site generator powering Github pages. If you don’t know what Jekyll is, Jack Moffitt wrote a good summary:

Jekyll is a static blog generator; it transforms a directory of input files into another directory of files suitable for a blog. The management of the blog is handled by standard, familiar tools like creating and renaming files, the text editor of your choice, and version control.

Jack Moffitt Blogging with Git Emacs and Jekyll

There’s no database to set up, and you get to use tools like Emacs, Vim, or TextMate to write your posts, not some lame in-browser text editor. Just write, generate, deploy, using the same tools and patterns you already use for your daily work.

Read the wiki to learn more