Recently, while in the redesign process for lovely junkie I ran into consistent issues with Internet Explorer rendering things properly, whereas everything looked just fine in Safari, Firefox, Chrome, and Opera, it certainly wasn’t the case with IE 7 or earlier. I spent a considerable amount of time trying to resolve these issues while still having the site look OK in the other browsers, but I was unsuccessful. Frustrated, I took a step back and came to the conclusion that with less than 6% of our visitors using IE, it was simply a waste of time to continue to struggle with it any longer. I made the decision to no longer support older versions of Internet Explorer. Lovely junkie looks fine in IE 8, aside from some minor padding issues, so there is absolutely no need for me to support anything older given the small amount of traffic coming here from IE browsers in general.

Do a search on the web for whether or not to support older versions of IE when designing websites and you will find some heated debates, but what it ultimately comes down to is this: how will it impact your visitors? In our case it will have almost no measurable impact whatsoever. Most, if not all, of our traffic comes from well-educated, tech-saavy, and creative types who either use Macs, or are running Safari or Firefox on Windows. Simply acknowledging these facts has allowed me to finally put Internet Explorer out of its misery…and mine.

Do we realize how lucky we are to have lived through the last decade? Think about what we take for granted. We shoot 24p, DoF HD video that truly looks like film, and we edit on multiple huge LCD’s at our leisure in our homes.

Remember having to go to mapquest.com to print out driving directions? I can’t even imagine going back to that. I’ve got a GPS in my pocket at all times, why would I ever want to go to a computer to print up directions?

Could you survive in a world that didn’t have wireless/cellular internet? Imagine not being able to browse the web with a laptop,… a laptop without the internet, what’s the point? How about mobile data in general. Imagine not being able to communicate using twitter and facebook on your blackberry or iPhone. Imagine not being able to text message, email, browse the web, or take photo’s or video on your mobile phone. Ughh, no thanks.

So as this decade come to an end, let us feel empowered by all of the technology that the last decade has given us. Let’s feel blessed every time we pick up our 21 megapixel camera’s, every time we watch a Blu-ray film on our big screen plasmas, every time we take our smart phone out of our pockets. Because a decade ago, none of this stuff existed. 2010, here we come.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and yes Happy Festivus! As a guilt ridden Catholic, I felt inspired to make a Christmas style background for my iPhone. I hope that you all have a happy holiday!

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Instead of starting this article off with words like astounding, unbelievable, revolutionary, I’m just gonna dive right into what I think AVATAR really is. I can’t believe I’m gonna say this,… AVATAR is game changer. Whatever the game is, consider it officially changed.

Okay so before the film starts I’m sitting there watching the previews and they’re all in this new 3D technology called REAL-D. I actually found the previews a little hard to watch, and I think it’s because I never go to see 3D movies, so I had a little trouble getting used to what the glasses were doing to my eyes. Aside from getting used to the visuals I kinda had to pee, and I knew that I had better go because I was going to be sitting there for like three hours. But I was so drawn into these cool looking REAL-D previews, that I didn’t get up and go before AVATAR started, so I was like, what do I do now, I can’t leave???!! Well to give you an idea of how engaging AVATAR was; I actually sat there for almost three hours throughout the entire film and I totally forgot about the fact that for the entire movie, I had to take a wicked pee.

For the first half hour of the film, part of me was concentrating on the story and the other part analyzing the REAL-D. I thought that the REAL-D was apparent, but at the same time it had a unique and brilliant subtlety. It blended foreground elements that were out of focus, with wide-open spaces and layers of perfectly focused elements. Some of my favorite shots were ones that showed rows and rows of soldiers all sitting next to one another. You could literally focus your eyes on one soldier, or the entire shot, which made you feel like these people were actually sitting there right in front of you. That said, my eyes never fully adjusted to the REAL-D. But I think that’s because I’m not used to watching 3D films critically.

To tell you the truth I’m actually kinda shocked at how floored I was by this film, given all the hype and how much of the plot I had already known. That being, there’s an indigenous tribe of people called the Na’vi that are being harassed by an unstoppable military force, and the story is kind of an allegory for what the US is doing in the middle east. What I really loved was how James Cameron presented the story. It managed to impart a powerful message about understanding the world we live in, while not being preachy and self-righteous. The film had a head on it’s shoulders, which I kind of expected because Terminator and Aliens weren’t just fluff, they had an actually story, and I knew that if Cameron had put years and years into AVATAR, the story was going to be pretty damn tight, and it was.

On top of REAL-D being extremely bad ass the CG was gorgeous. I had feared that I’d be sitting there the whole time thinking, ugh, this looks like a video game. But I can assure you that’s not the case. There were many times throughout the film that I found myself staring and analyzing the detail of the Na’vi’s faces, they were gorgeous. The female lead in the film was a Na’vi named Neytiri, and I was totally taken by how believable she was. The close ups of Neytiri really showcased the depth and complexity of the CG, and it gave me great insight into who the Na’vi people were.

At the end of the film the military forces attack a gigantic tree that the Na’vi’s people live in. This scene was amazing! James Cameron is a master of large-scale action sequences. He doesn’t cut away or confuse the audience with close ups, he details all of the elements of an action scene in very real way. That said, I’m gonna sound like a real women here but I can’t believe this film was only rated PG-13. I understand that they don’t want to make it R, because it will broaden their audience and hold the film back from making tons of money. But the dramatacism of the violence in this film is substantial. There’s fire and explosions and very realistic death, and the way that Cameron uses the REAL-D technology only adds to the feeling of chaos. At the end of the film the Na’vi people are reluctantly fleeing as this absolutely massive tree is falling towards them. There are many wide shots where you can see the death and devastation happening in the background with perfect detail. Large groups of Na’vi people get crushed and killed in an instant, as the lead actors run towards the foreground. I found myself thinking, this should definitely be rated R.

But that’s just a personal opinion, the fact is James Cameron has created an entire world that we have never seen before, in a way that we have never been able to see anything. He uses REAL-D to add dramatacism and realism to a complex and profound tale. This is escapism, imagination and creativity done in a unique and masterful way. James Cameron, AVATAR, game officially changed.

I’ve decided to pull a majority of this months frames from AVATAR, in honor of this being AVATAR weekend. There are a bunch of great trailers out right now, make sure to check them all out by clicking on the images.