Nawlins, the forum bomb, and Design Eye

~ 19 May 2004 ~

Just got back last night from business in New Orleans. Or “Nawlins” as the locals say with their southern drawl.

What a ride. Quite the city, but Holy Hanna it ain’t no place for a married man.

I had no access to email for three days, so I woke up this morning to 2,801 new messages. No joke.

My vote for most funkified city characteristic? Easy: The above-ground cemeteries (shown above). Apparently the water table is so saturated that buried caskets have been known to rise to the surface and float away in times of heavy rains. Hence, most of the graves are above ground. Creepy.

The Forum Bomb

Given the “superb” feedback to my latest Forum Topic of the Week (no offense to those who commented), I’m laying the feature to rest. And yes, above ground. Although I’ve run the feature for only a couple of months, I’ve contemplated killing it for some time now, as it never garnered the loyal audience I hoped it would. And no, no amount of bribery will bring it back from the dead.

Design Eye for the Usability Guy

What a great piece, no? (For those that missed it: Design Eye for the Usability Guy.) Props go to Andrei for organizing it all. And for picking up my slack during final editing while in Nawlins.

I think Andrei’s hit the nail on the head with a stellar idea: Assist the design-challenged experts that surround us with sound advice but nawful (Nawlins awful?) design. Who knows, maybe it’ll be recurring thing. One site’s homepage immediately comes to mind that could use a Design Fab Five makeover: Monster.com. Lousy design, horrible content structure… just a mess all over.

Cue the theme music, ’cause I’m ready for the next episode.

11 Comments

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1 Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain ~ 19 May 2004 at 10:51 AM

2801 Messages?!? My goodness. What was the ratio of spam to legitimate emails?

2 Cameron Moll ~ 19 May 2004 at 11:17 AM

…still figuring that out as I wade through my inbox. Initial report says most are spam.

3 swimp ~ 19 May 2004 at 03:04 PM

I had 1047 spam mails in my mailbox today so I can somewhat understand the frustration ;)

4 Alex Giron ~ 19 May 2004 at 10:52 PM

wow… the most spam I get is around 3 or 4 messages a day…. I could not imagine having that many….

ps: Great website you have here. Very nice design.

5 Todd ~ 20 May 2004 at 07:27 AM

Wow!

I returned from Mexico to 75 spam messages and I thought that was bad.

Welcome back!

6 Ryan Brill ~ 21 May 2004 at 07:10 PM

Excellent job with your part of the Alertbox redesign. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole post over at DxF and thought everyone did an excellent job. Guess that’s what happens when the “Design Fab Five” team up. ;)

7 bicyclemark ~ 23 May 2004 at 10:26 AM

Isn’t the reason behind having the graves above ground rather to do with Portuguese and Spanish sailors who landed and settled there, being that they have the same style of burial - meaning mostly above ground or at least.. highly decorative.
I know of an interesting Portuguese cemetery in N.O.
Anybody got more input on this?

8 Cameron Moll ~ 24 May 2004 at 05:18 AM

The information about the graves was extracted from a tour guide book I read while at the hotel. You’ll have to consult with them on that…

Thank you all for the kind comments. Much appreciated.

9 liz ~ 24 May 2004 at 03:06 PM

You simply have to try knowspam.net to kill your spam.

I use it on one of my emails that gets tons of junk and it does a fine job of filtering out the bad stuff. People who haven’t mailed you before have to visit a site and input the text they see in a graphic before their mail goes through. Granted, its sort of a pain for people who want to mail you, but they all get spam too, I’m sure, and will appreciate that you’re just trying to stop it.

10 Cameron Moll ~ 24 May 2004 at 05:10 PM

I’ll tell ya — I gotta do something. Between last Saturday night 10pm and this Monday morning 6am, I got 1,083 emails. Unbelievable.

11 James Z ~ 07 June 2004 at 09:20 AM

Having grown up in New Orleans I have to concur, it is no place for a married man. There must be something in the water there.

As far as the above-ground graves go, I actually find it kind of creepy to bury people in the ground. Kind of a different paradigm.