Going Green? Wasteful Packaging.

February 9, 2009 – 5:23 pm

Online retailers are quickly becoming notorious for the most wasteful practices when it comes to packaging. What is the reason for this? My guess is that retailers like Amazon.com, Dell, Staples, etc. have a standardized packaging system. I am assuming their system uses a very limited number of box sizes like a Small, Medium, Large, and Special-Large.

Small is like a catch all for a large percentage of the shipments from a thumbdrive to a hard drive, starting with something like a 14x12x6 box, and moving up from there.

Eraser from Staples

Eraser from Staples

This certainly may reduce costs and makes it much easier to automate, but when I receive an 1 1/2″ eraser in a cardboard box 1000 times it’s size, I feel sick to my stomach. I am not a “tree-hugger” but this has to bother anyone who cares about the environment even a little bit. There is no reason that they could not have shipped the eraser in a small envelope. There are many first-hand examples of this on the web, but nothing has changed and I don’t think these retailers have answered to this.

Makes me think about boycotting online retailers… but they are the lesser of two evils. Paying 20% more than online prices for a gadget while having a BestBuy rep try to convince me why I need $85 HDMI cables, is worse than this.

By Justin | Posted in Web | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (1)

What to blog about?

January 28, 2009 – 4:37 pm

I plan to blog primarily about web development techniques, tips and tricks. I will also write about my latest projects, mainly gadget related, and about news in the tech industry. There may also be some political or social commentary dropped in when I feel the need. I will not blog about my daily life,  although I may occasionally write about important life events.

This is all assuming I can keep up with this. Which is never a sure-thing.

By Justin | Posted in Blogging | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Website Redesign, Finally!

January 28, 2009 – 3:36 pm

I have reluctantly decided it is time for me to embrace the ‘new’ social web. When the term ‘blog’ was first coined, I never thought I would end up creating or writing my own blog. At the time, maybe around 2004, I thought it was a fad and it would never really hit mainstream. In fact, I was vocally opposed to it. It felt too ‘Venti triple non-fat espresso machiatto’ for me, if that makes sense to you. Obviously, I was very wrong.

glowview21

Glowview 2.0 (2003)

Since starting my career shortly after launching the previous design (Glowview 2.0) in 2003, I kept doing various side projects when they came to me.  However, my personal sites had fallen by the wayside and I stopped doing updates of any kind. For the past 5 years, glowview.com had been taking up rent space on the internet and taking a yearly domain renewal charge from my bank account.

A redesign, long overdue!

Like many people, I am a somewhat private person. The idea of having personal details of your life available to the world is a scary notion to me. But I’m not blind to the trends, I see where the web has headed. In this business you need to keep up with the technology and what’s happening, or you will be left behind. It isn’t enough to just be aware of Facebook or Twitter, it’s a web developer’s responsibility to know how they work and how to use them. In addition to the importance of having expertise in the technologies, they are also vital and undeniable networking tools and will undoubtedly create more work for me.

So I am now Twittering and blogging and it’s all available on Glowview 3.0. Glowview 2.0 did not even include my real name and was purposely worded to make it sound like Glowview could be a large shop with many employees. This type of thing was a popular trend in the business during the late 90’s and early 2000’s. I’m actually excited to see this die in favor of this open, honest, and ‘out-there’ approach.

This is a long-time web developer’s first blog post… quite a bit behind the curve. I hope you have enjoyed it.

By Justin | Posted in Blogging, Glowview | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (1)