I have some cool conferences lined up this year that I thought I’d mention:

• Front-End Design Conference: July 23, 2010 in St. Petersburg, Florida, USA
• Frontend 2010: September 1 & 2, 2010 in Oslo, Norway, Skandinavia
• Fronteers 2010: October 7 & 8, 2010 in Amsterdam, Holland, Netherlands

Needless to say, I’m stoked about the events. Also, I’m really late on posting my new featured artist, but look for that soon!

Upcoming Speaking Engagements is a post from: Sushi & Robots
Related projects: • Art in My Coffee • Crush + Lovely • I Want Robots
Recommended: • Find or post a job at Authentic Jobs • Enter jinabolton.com as a referral domain at (mt) MediaTemple • Buy type by Adobe and 7 other foundries at Veer • Web Design & Development Books at SitePoint

• CSS3 Transforms, Transitions and Animations
  Learn how to translate, scale and rotate DOM elements, transition smoothly between CSS properties and animate elements utilising key frames.
• Typography in CSS3: @font-face, font embedding, licensing fonts and columns
  Utilising the @font-face construct for font embedding along with practical solutions where licensed fonts are concerned. Also covering the splitting of a single element’s content into multiple columns.
• CSS3 Best Practice & Graceful Degradation
  How best to implement CSS3 right now, the considerations relating to browser support and the use of vendor-specific properties.
• Visual effects with CSS3: RGBa, box-shadow, box-sizing, border-radius, border-image and multiple background images
  Understand how to effectively use CSS3 properties to create compelling site designs faster and more efficiently than before.

Please register today to attend this exciting event!

Think Vitamin CSS3 Online Conference is a post from: Sushi & Robots
Related projects: • Art in My Coffee • Crush + Lovely • I Want Robots
Recommended: • Find or post a job at Authentic Jobs • Enter jinabolton.com as a referral domain at (mt) MediaTemple • Buy type by Adobe and 7 other foundries at Veer • Web Design & Development Books at SitePoint

I’m going to set the publish date for this post to be set for yesterday. Muhahaha. But I know you guys will all know the truth. I’m late.

Late is a post from: Sushi & Robots
Related projects: • Art in My Coffee • Crush + Lovely • I Want Robots
Recommended: • Find or post a job at Authentic Jobs • Enter jinabolton.com as a referral domain at (mt) MediaTemple • Buy type by Adobe and 7 other foundries at Veer • Web Design & Development Books at SitePoint

I’ve been reading Dwell, Apartment Therapy, Remodelista, Real Simple, and Design Sponge. I’m constantly amazed at the beautiful spaces they feature, and something I find common in almost every one (at least the ones that particularly catch my eye) is that the space is clean, clutter-free, and minimal.

I want that.

So going forward, I’m going to keep trying my best to get rid of stuff. I figured I could start out slow and gradually, by making myself get rid of 10 things (whatever they may be) every week. There is a lot of stuff I have that just aren’t needed.

I am also going to have a friend (who has a good eye for clean, minimal design) to come over and just point out all the stuff they think “has to go”. I’m sure that will be hard, and I will try to resist on some things. But it’s all just stuff, and it may be the kick start I need to get the minimal, clean space I want in my home.

I’ll end this post by linking to some spaces that I find very beautiful and inspiring. One day I will get there!

• Opdahl Remastered Kitchen on Dwell
• Slim Fit Living room on Dwell
• Split Level House by Qb on Apartment Therapy
• Lawrence’s South Boston Light Box
• Löyly Spa in Portland on Remodelista
• Found Associates in London on Remodelista

Moving toward Minimalism is a post from: Sushi & Robots
Related projects: • Art in My Coffee • Crush + Lovely • I Want Robots
Recommended: • Find or post a job at Authentic Jobs • Enter jinabolton.com as a referral domain at (mt) MediaTemple • Buy type by Adobe and 7 other foundries at Veer • Web Design & Development Books at SitePoint

Earlier this year, I began putting together a collection of photographs I had taken of coffee art. I noticed that my collection was growing pretty quickly, so I created a photo blog on Tumblr called Art in My Coffee. Shortly after I launched the blog, Tumblr released their Submissions feature, which made it really easy to accept photos from other people. Through this small project, I have found that it’s pretty fun having a blog where I get to curate some great photos that other people contribute.

As Art in my Coffee slowly grew in popularity among my friends and colleagues, I invited Meagan Fisher to join me as a curator. This was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. She has been keeping the site updated and fresh, which is fantastic since I can get pretty busy sometimes. She has also been finding some really great, high-quality coffee art.

Yesterday, I received a very pleasant surprise: Tumblr featured Art in My Coffee in their Tumblr Tuesday post. I am very excited to have the project featured, and I am amazed at how quickly the blog is growing. I guess it’s pretty clear that people love coffee art.

I invite you to submit your own coffee art, and you can follow us on both Tumblr and Twitter. Finally, there is an exciting update for the blog coming soon, but I’ll post on that when it happens.

Art in My Coffee is a post from: Sushi & Robots
Related projects: • Art in My Coffee • Crush + Lovely • I Want Robots
Recommended: • Find or post a job at Authentic Jobs • Enter jinabolton.com as a referral domain at (mt) MediaTemple • Buy type by Adobe and 7 other foundries at Veer • Web Design & Development Books at SitePoint

Job change

For those who don’t follow me on Twitter or talk to me regularly, I no longer work at Apple. I am now working at Crush + Lovely, a creative studio located in both New York City and San Francisco. I do interaction design primarily, but I also have my hands in visual design, front end web development, information architecture, etc. So far, I’ve worked on fun projects like Fifty People One Question, By/Association, Crush + Lovely’s own website, among other exciting projects.

Not available for projects

I am no longer taking on any freelance work. Between going to grad school half time and working full time, I just don’t have time to take on side projects. However, I am still accepting speaking engagements and occasional small writing projects.

Book coming soon

I just finished coauthoring a book for SitePoint. That should be released fairly soon.

New Tumblrs

I just really got into Tumblr. I started a couple fun ones:

• Art in My Coffee, a blog that showcases coffee art, which I curate alongside Meagan Fisher
• OMG True Blood, a chaotic True Blood-related Tumblr, which I post to, along with several friends. (Sometimes it’s not safe for work, but that’s to be expected with an HBO show about vampires, right?)

New apartment

I just moved to a sweet apartment in SoMa! I’m stoked. Photos and more information later!

New diet

I gradually moved toward becoming somewhat pescetarian, which means I do not eat meat unless it’s seafood. However, I do eat dairy and eggs. I’m not doing this for any particular ethical reason. It’s an experiment to see if this new chosen diet feels better. I’ve already noticed that I have fewer stomach problems.

New site design

Okay, so as you can see, I have a new site design. I’ve been working on this design for a very long time, and at late hours after long days of work or school or both. It’s still not 100% complete, but I’m happy with where it is at the moment and decided to go ahead and make it live. I hope you guys like it.

You may have noticed that my home page has the same artwork by Jim Mahfood as I had on the previous design for Sushi & Robots. They now rotate randomly (refresh the page to see). I plan to feature more artists in the coming months, and I already have some amazing artwork by some amazing artists queued up. If you’re interested in Jim Mahfood’s work, look for my next post which will showcase his work and include a small interview with Jim.

I’ve temporarily moved my site back over to WordPress, but this isn’t a permanent change. I’ve also disabled comments on my blog as an experiment. I don’t know yet how long this will last, but I want to see if I like it this way.

Since comments are disabled, if you want to share your thoughts on my design, you can either send me an email, write up your own blog post and ping back here, or post your feedback on Twitter (@jina). I look forward to receiving feedback because I’ve been staring at this design for far too long.

Revamp is a post from: Sushi & Robots
Related projects: • Art in My Coffee • Crush + Lovely • I Want Robots
Recommended: • Find or post a job at Authentic Jobs • Enter jinabolton.com as a referral domain at (mt) MediaTemple • Buy type by Adobe and 7 other foundries at Veer • Web Design & Development Books at SitePoint

There are a lot of people that have your name, it seems. But no one I found is you… at least I don’t think. I have no idea where to even begin. Then the question comes… do I really want to begin?

It’s been a really long time. What, 22 years? 23? Not exactly sure. That’s long enough that I can say I honestly don’t know you. If I found you, what would you think? Would you even care? See, here’s the thing. I want to think that you’d care. But then again, if 23 years have gone by, and you’ve never reached out to me, maybe you don’t. Or do you care, and you just are afraid to reach out? It’s all so confusing.

If I reach out, would you reject me? Or would you be angry? Will it have been best if I had never searched for you at all? Sometimes I think that’s the better solution — not invite bad into this by looking for you.

But… the idea of you or me possibly dying before we reach out to each other worries me. What if I miss out on what might be the best thing I’ve ever done?

I have no idea what to do. But the thing is — even now that I am questioning it, I don’t even know how to even go about this.

I’m very, very easy to find. My name is pretty unique. A google search on my name brings up a ton of information. But you… you are not. So I guess I wait then. Maybe you will reach out to me. Maybe you’ll actually get to be at my wedding, should that day ever come. Maybe we’ll start over, and be mother and daughter again. I could even try to learn sign language so I can communicate with you. Or maybe you won’t reach out. Ever.

So I wait.

Waiting is a post from: Sushi & Robots
Related projects: • Art in My Coffee • Crush + Lovely • I Want Robots
Recommended: • Find or post a job at Authentic Jobs • Enter jinabolton.com as a referral domain at (mt) MediaTemple • Buy type by Adobe and 7 other foundries at Veer • Web Design & Development Books at SitePoint

As I was embracing the porcelain throne in the bar’s restroom, I knew that I was really needing to just go home and go to bed. But someone who worked at the bar called an ambulance, in what, I believe, was a cover-their-butts move. I don’t blame them for that.

I get to the hospital, and the nurse had me lay down on a hospital bed. Then she left me there to stare at the ceiling and sober up. I really didn’t want to be there. I didn’t even need to be there. But I was there. And they wouldn’t let me leave. I never did see a doctor come in. I pretty much just laid there for an hour before the nurse finally came back in and asked how I was doing.

“Ugh, get me out of here already. I don’t even need to be here,” I groaned. This didn’t make the nurse happy.

“Excuse me?”

“I’m sorry. I’m just really tired. It’s late. I want to go home,” I pleaded.

She let me go.

A month later, I received two bills. One bill was because I rode in an ambulance (not by choice or necessity) to the hospital. The other was for my one-hour stay in the hospital, and the itemization even included “doctor’s care” and “medication”. I had never seen a doctor that night, and I never received medication of any sort. But I was not really in the mood to try to fight it, so I paid the very steep, expensive bills (or so I had thought).

About 6 months later, I received a reminder in the form of a delinquency notice from the San Francisco Tax Collection Office for the ambulance bill. It seemed that check got lost or perhaps I never sent it and only thought I did. Either way, after verifying that the money was never deducted from my account, I scolded myself for letting the due date slip, then went on my bank’s online bill pay system, and sent off a payment.

Months later, I received yet another delinquency notice, along with a threat to report me to the credit bureau. The notice had a name and number to call to dispute the matter. So I called the number and got the voicemail of the woman whose name and contact information was on the letter. I explained in my message I left that I had already made the payment, and had records to show I sent it, and then left my name and number.

The next day I called back, and got the voicemail again. I looked online for a main line to the San Francisco Tax Collection Office. After being on hold for about an hour, the person that answered couldn’t help me but could direct my call. He directed me to the woman’s supervisor, since I couldn’t seem to reach her.

That landed me in the voicemail of that supervisor. I left a message for her with an explanation and that my calls hadn’t yet been returned. The letter left me only 2 weeks to dispute this issue, so every day counted. And only getting voicemails was not at all comforting.

The next day I called again. I was on hold for about 2 hours. When someone finally answered, I told the guy that I really needed to speak with someone. He offered to take a message. I told him that I had already left 3 messages, and that it didn’t make sense for me to be on hold for 2 hours only to leave a message. Surely someone had to be there for me to talk to. He maintained his offer. So I left a message again.

The next morning, I got a call back from a guy with a difficult to understand accent. After apologetically getting him to repeat his question 5 times until I finally figured out what he was asking me, I explained my issue to him. He told me they had absolutely no record of my payment, and that it was possible that it was lost in the mail. He then asked me for the date that I sent the payment. I told him that I was in transit, going into work, and that I didn’t have the date in front of me.

He then said in a very disbelieving tone, “Jina, I need the date of that payment.”

I told him once again that he had caught me at a time that I simply couldn’t answer that question. He offered to call me back in a couple hours. I gratefully told him, “yes, please! Thank you so much!”

He never called back.

The next day, I went to City Hall to make my dispute in person. I should have done this to begin with, but I really didn’t think it could be this difficult to handle my situation over the phone.

I waited in line for what felt like ages, and then finally my number was called. I explained to the woman my issue, and before I had even had the chance to finish, she got on the phone to talk to someone. She hung up and then said, “Next!”

“Oh… but… wait, what?” I stammered.

“Please be seated. Someone is coming to help you,” she said in a very annoyed tone.

“Oh. You didn’t say that before, so I got confused. Sorry.”

I sat and waited for what felt like more ages, and then finally a man called me to come speak to him. I explained my issue, and was almost at the verge of tears. And then I said, “Look, if my payment was lost in the mail, I’ll pay it again. I just don’t want you guys reporting me when I did try to pay you.”

He then had me show him my records, got my check number and date of payment. He looked at me with a look of concern, and then said, “Well, when I spoke to you yesterday, I asked you to tell me this information, but you didn’t give it to me.”

“Wait… that was you? You were supposed to call me back! You never called me back!” I exclaimed. I was so completely and totally frustrated at this point.

He looked at me with wide eyes and then said, “Oh… I’m so sorry. Here.” He then took the information down that I had shown him, and went to go check with the payment staff to see if they had my check and it had somehow just been sitting there or something.

30 minutes later, he returned and told me they did not have my check anywhere. I told him, “look, like I said, I’ll make the payment again if I need to. Just don’t report me to the credit bureau!”

“Oh, we won’t. You came here to state your case. But we do need your payment.”

I sighed in relief, but was still very frustrated. “Okay, fine. So I’ll make the payment.”

“Oh, you can do that over there,” he said, and pointed to a room to my right.

“Thank you,” I said and then made my payment. The whole “lost in the mail” thing really baffles me. I sometimes wonder if things really are lost in the mail, or if they are lost in the office, and the poor mail gets blamed. But then again, it’s possible mail gets put in the wrong place.

Like today, for example. I came home and saw a letter addressed to me sitting below my mailbox — where anyone could have taken it or thrown it away. Usually letters to me aren’t outside my locked mailbox unless they were accidentally put in someone else’s mailbox. Somebody was nice enough to leave it there for me. It was addressed from the San Francisco Tax Collection Office. What?

I tore the envelope open. A month (maybe two?) had passed since my visit to City Hall, and I was seriously ready to throw a fit, as I was pretty sure it was a major FAIL on their part, once again.

It was my first check I had sent the first time around, with the following note:

Dear Mrs. Bolton:

I return your Check #XXXX, for the amount of $XXX.XX, because you already paid in full your balance over phone with credit card.

Please, see enclosed your original mentioned check.

Should you have any further questions, blah blah blah…

SERIOUSLY? You returned the check that was “lost in the mail” months and months after I sent it, because I already made a payment — a payment I only made because you supposedly didn’t receive my first payment — yeah, this payment you have just returned to me? REALLY?

Oh, and I paid in person, not by phone, and I’m not a Mrs. But thanks, anyway!

Ridiculousness! is a post from: Sushi & Robots
Related projects: • Art in My Coffee • Crush + Lovely • I Want Robots
Recommended: • Find or post a job at Authentic Jobs • Enter jinabolton.com as a referral domain at (mt) MediaTemple • Buy type by Adobe and 7 other foundries at Veer • Web Design & Development Books at SitePoint

Clack, clack, clack. Click. Click. Clack. Clack. I stopped. That’s not a frog. Or a train. Or a car. What is that? To my left was the Caltrain tunnel heading towards the South Bay. To my right was the tunnel heading toward San Francisco’s last stop at 4th and King. Ahead of me was the San Francisco Food Bank, which was clearly closed for the night. And behind me was the 3rd Street Muni stop from which I came. There’s nothing around me that I can see that would make such a noise. What on earth was that?

As I continued to cross the bridge, Clack, clack, clack. Click. Clack. That sounds like a can of spray paint being shaken. Oh. Duh.

Under the bridge that I was walking on were the train tracks, and on each side of those tracks were graffiti-covered concrete walls. I’ve never actually seen anyone put those colorful paintings up. I stopped again, and walked toward the side edge of the bridge. It took my eyes a moment to adjust, peering into the darkness below. When things got clearer, I noticed a shape — and then realized there were two eyes looking up at me. There was a man standing there, peering up at me. We were making eye contact.

I suddenly felt very uncomfortable. It was only a graffiti artist… But I slowly backed away from the edge and then ran home.

An odd and slightly creepy moment. is a post from: Sushi & Robots
Related projects: • Art in My Coffee • Crush + Lovely • I Want Robots
Recommended: • Find or post a job at Authentic Jobs • Enter jinabolton.com as a referral domain at (mt) MediaTemple • Buy type by Adobe and 7 other foundries at Veer • Web Design & Development Books at SitePoint