Visual Lizard
Julian Moffatt
Julian is one of the founders of Visual Lizard Inc and a web/tech-junkie if there ever was one. He has a small collection of iPods (3 and counting) and a Blackberry 7250 for those times he is actually away from his computer.
Having been first introduced to computers at the tender age of 6, Julian has had at one point or another: an IBM PC XT, an Apple 2e, a Fujikama 286 (with a 256 colour monitor!!) through to the first computer he personally purchased, a glorious 486 PC with 40MBs of hard drive space and a 16-bit graphics card for $4200 in 1990. Coincidentally, that was his first loan as well. However, it was the 486 that led to the discovery of newsgroups (remember alt.rocknroll before Usenet?) and Pine, the worlds worst application for email ever. In-fact, some would say that his addiction to X-com and Pine caused him to take a break from University to pursue "something to do with computers dad". The rest is history as they say.
He works with a MacBook Pro in the office and is equally at home in front of Linux, Windows or OS X operating systems. He is project manager, design shepherd (he speaks designer fluently and has been known to run in certain design circles under an alias) and CSS guru. He also brow beats the guys in the office about accessibility, Search Engine Optimization and the importance of music to the soul.
When Julian is not actually working, he can be found enjoying time at the hockey rink with the guys, beating small synthetic dimpled balls across acres of manicured land or just hanging out with family and friends at home or the cottage.
In spite of all of the above, Julian has an awesome wife, two crazy-cute daughters (3 and 1), 2 cats and a dog that has moved out citing breach of contract under the "no-child-and-dog-cohabiting" clause. She visits from time to time, but can be found relaxing on a pile of sheep-skins at the grandparents house most days.
-
For Julian’s contact information, please add my vCard to your address book.
Conserve? Why not.
In recent weeks I've seen some debates around the web on how effective hybrid cars are versus other forms of energy conservation. While this is all reasonable debate, what seems so obvious to me is that you should be doing ALL the methods you can to conserve energy. Not one or the other. It should never be a question of "Do I want to drive a hybrid car (insert other type of fuel efficient car here) or should I change my light-bulbs to low watt fluorescent ones?"
While I can see the debate over what form of conservation is actually conserving more energy, the fact that people are debating this is a good thing. The more awareness we bring to energy conservation the better off our natural environment will be for it. Frankly, it saves you money in the long run as well, so your wallet will be better for it too. Granted you can argue the initial switch costs money, but you need to think of it over time.
Look at it this way, if you drive a car that currently uses 1000 litres (10,000 kms of driving at 10 litres / 100 kms - I know, pretty low, but we will keep it this way for easy math) of a fuel in a year, your switch to a hybrid car could (should) cut that by 400 (40% - likely more) litres. So you only consume 600 litres of fuel in the following year. If gas costs $1.25 / litre, you have saved $500 in fuel costs. You have also prevented the expulsion of 2.36 kg of CO2 per litre of fuel burned, which totals a whopping 944 litres of CO2 that did not get released into the atmosphere. Even if a hybrid car costs on average $5K more than a regular car of the same make, if gas prices did not increase over the course of 10 years (which is not going to happen) you would realize the difference in purchase costs of the hybrid vehicle inside a decade of ownership. If you drive a car that uses 3000 litres a year, then you would realize the savings in 3.5 years!
Obviously not everyone can switch to a hybrid of some sort, but for those that can, you should be looking at hybrids first and then working downwards to a standard combustion engine. Anyhow, my math is rough, so you can do your own comparisons over at the hybridcenter.org (imperial units, but you get the point).
The bottom line is that energy conservation should be a tenant in your life style. It saves money. It saves emissions. It saves the planet. Call me a hippy or a neo-green or a sheep for falling in line, but if it means my kids get to enjoy the areas of the planet as we know them now, then I'm all for getting on this energy conservation / savings band-wagon. Hell, I'll even drive it for awhile if anyone wants me to!
Comments
From The Web
Dec 24, 2008
HTTP Client - Mac Developer Tool for HTTP Debugging
Very nice tool. Dwayne - make sure you download this one ASAP!
Linked by Julian
Dec 18, 2008
i Love Katamari
For the iPhone no less!
Linked by Julian
Dec 17, 2008
GitHub
Social code repository hosting. Pretty awesome idea and some wicked projects on the go in there. We are an SVN shop at present, but GIT does have us thinking about moving.
Linked by Julian
Dec 02, 2008
24 ways: Easing The Path from Design to Development
24 ways kicked off a few days ago. Here is a terrific article for our all our designer friends.
Linked by Julian
Dec 02, 2008
How to answer the phone
Quick note from Seth Godin on how to answer the phone. It is absolutely true.
Linked by Julian
Nov 28, 2008
99 Graphic Design Resources
A nice list of sites for reference. I.
Linked by Julian
Nov 28, 2008
This is How the Web Gets Regulated
Joe Clark makes some terrific points about the state of online video captioning. Read it and remember that accessibility online means for accessibility for everyone.
Linked by Julian
Nov 26, 2008
Get Satisfaction - People-Powered Customer Service
Interesting. Filed for later.
Linked by Julian