No, I didn’t forget about SSL, I’ve just been super busy. If you’re reading this, you’re a more faithful visitor to my site than I am, or you’ve subscribed to the feed and upon seeing a new post here you came out of sheer morbid curiosity. I’ve got a couple quick things to go over concerning the direction of this site,  because it’s expanding.

Well, first off: I killed the forums (GASP!)... I know, crazy move right? Well no, not really. The forum was turning into a breeding ground for spammers, and truth be told, given the fact that it was hardly used, I decided to just can it. For those of you who posted there, don’t worry - all of you content is safe. If you have things that you’d like to get a copy of, shoot me an email and I’ll get those right to you. You can now add comments to each post instead. Spammers will target that area too, but not only will it be more difficult for them to junk up the site, but I’ll be there with my spam hammer waiting to crush them. There will certainly be more of a *ahem* traditional blog feel around here as a result.

This site will soon have a store where I’ll be offering educational screencasts. I’ve already started recording them, so be expecting to see some of the free (but invaluable) series popping up in their own section of the blog soon. I’ll be focusing primarily on traditional design principals, web design and development,  and really digging into tips and tools of the trade from now on. It should be really fun.

There is another project that I have been working on lately that links into this website. I’m very excited about it, but I’ll be keeping mum about that for now…

Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo.

This is a video from the Rocky Mountain News website - a sure sign that times are changing. Two things struck me while I watched this featurette. The first thing is of course, the negative impact that the closing of this newspaper will have not only on the employees and their families, but on the community as a whole. They covered in this video that two competing papers will always make for solid journalism and better coverage for the whole area, simply because competing journalists work harder to get that same story and with that you get two different perspectives on the same issue. While I could concentrate on this angle, I won’t. This, I’m sure, will be an area that is covered by voices more capable across the internet.

More after the jump.

Hello! Have you ever seen the highlighting effect of darkened corners applied to an image? Have you ever wondered how it’s done? Well, I have and did. One day I tried and sorta achieved the look, but it wasn’t quite right. Then I had a completely unrelated conversation with another photographer that planted an idea in my head. The next morning when I woke up, ding! I knew I knew. So I fired up the computer and loaded ‘shop and sure enough – I figured it out.

Because this website celebrates creativity in it’s various forms, I think it’s important to understand why some of us end up inherently more able to create than others. I think that it’s natural for those of us who are creative to be called “gifted” by those who aren’t as creative as we are - or more appropriately - those who don’t have the skill sets that we have developed. I’ve always abhorred the “gifted” label that some apply to creativity and those of us who practice it, because I genuinely feel that everyone possess the ability to learn skills that allow them to be creative.

Read on to explore this topic further as well as watch an interesting video on Synesthesia.

Not quite sure what to make of all of those little orange RSS icons out there that ask you to subscribe to them? That’s alright, you’re not alone. Seriously. I’d say that the majority of the web’s community see RSS and Atom feed icons and shrug them off not knowing how useful they are. But if your curious, I’ll explain to you what they are, how they work, and why they’re used. Are you ready to get your learn on? Then continue reading.