Author: Brian Dys

Step 1

Embrace this thing called “internet“. No more red tape, no more grouchy customer-fronting employees, no more 7 am long lines 12 pm you’re given the application form 5 pm you’re ordered to come back tomorrow. No more nothing government, no more.

Step 2

Speak in Filipino. Speak in local dialects. And be understandable in whatever tone you will be speaking in.

and Step 3

Entertain questions and answer questions.

Like this website.

The best place to find government services and information. Simpler, clearer, faster.

It’s true, I’ve tried and used its information.

Every heard of this ancient creature snail mail? I used to send one to my pen pal in Cebu and was exhilarated finding a reply waiting for me.

But that was ages ago.

Living in an apartment complex has got its quirk – receiving tons of mails for people who already moved out of the address. And this morning, I dedicated my time to return them (instead of simply putting them in the junk folder or trash bin).

Hello, mailbox, we meet again

Some of the mail with stamps, I was able to slide into the dropbox of a private mailing company. But for some of the letters, like the pictured “official mail” from a good senator, remained on my hands because the personnel said it won’t be sent without stamps. I tried to buy some to get rid of the irrelevant mails that very minute but they’re not available.

The thing called Philippine Postal Corporation

Searching for a location where I can buy stamps (to return the mails) in Metro Manila on PHLPost’s wesbsite didn’t help either. As far as this website is concerned, other provinces have their post office locations listed down but not for Metro Manila. Are they all gone?

It’s not really extinct yet. Snail mail is a dying breed. Bills are coming into email inboxes and other letters or packages can be delivered within the day by reliable couriers. The people who are mistaken in sending packages thru the Philippine Postal system either gets arbitrarily taxed or gets their goods lost (either by theft of mishandling).

I don’t know how PHLPost will transform its service into a sustainable and relevant one. Maybe its “Shop Online” section will save the day (currently a dead link). But what’s in store? Shop online for envelopes and stamps?

Today, I signed up to be a consultant to manage a government website for several months. At first, the plan was to redesign it piece by piece and integrate a CMS (like WordPress) but news recently came that soon, all government websites will follow a set of guidelines and will be built on Joomla!

Igor the web designer

Mixed feelings of doubt and curiosity immediately entered my mind. From being a webmaster to a webslave. A master might mean someone in control and a slave – someone being ordered around. In reality of this situation, only the level of control varies – being ordered around stays the same whether webmaster or webslave. Nevertheless, a wise designer gets around in packaging his solutions in a way his/her clients would understand and agree on.

The consultancy might not utilize most of my plans to power up the website in terms of better content structure and visual design. Well, as they say:

It sucks but it’s money.

This is the short-term, though. My toe is already in the door, so might as well shove the whole foot in. I am still hopeful that I would be a part of this effort to bring the government in a state-of-the-art information superhighway 21st century time being.

If you have a padded content, everything in it will be bound by the padding around it.

But how do we expand an element to the edges of the container, disobeying the padding – something like a full-width picture.

We use negative left and right margins to offset the spacing brought about by the padding.

Negativity only for margins

The tendency of the negative margin is to, instead of inserting the specified space, it allows the content to fill in a space to that direction. So, for margin-left: -1rem, it will allow the content 1rem at the left – couple that with a margin-right: -1rem, it will allow the content 1rem at the right. That will offset the 1rem padding around the container.

[codepen_embed height=”798″ theme_id=”1820″ slug_hash=”FybHu” default_tab=”result”]See the Pen A Dose of Negativity by Brian Dys Sahagun (@BrianSahagun) on CodePen.[/codepen_embed]

As tested on the img element, margin-right does not work – so we wrap the image in a div and apply the negative margins on that element.

You can use negative margins to offset/correct unwanted spacings around elements.

Update – 10/9/2014

This post has been moved to Design DriveThru.

It’s like trying to solve a puzzle – you try out different solutions until you either come to a dead end or to face more questions.

That’s how it is trying to establish a foundation, a system in simplifying the process of designing an internet product such as websites, apps, and nowadays, whatnot.

How can we simply turn the abstract ideas of clients into a bunch of playing cards we could easily identify and arrange and ultimately build into a house (not made of cards)? Also at the same time, with only a flick of a switch, upload themselves and make available for usage.

That’s what I’m trying to find out (at least the first part).

I’m lazy. But it’s the lazy people who invented the wheel and the bicycle because they didn’t like walking or carrying things.

~ Lech Walesa

I’m looking for a bubblegum patch for tables displayed in narrow viewports. So, I thought about display: block, max-width: 100%, and overflow-x: auto. Take a look at the examples: Example 1 shows the problem of the overflowing content of the table and Example 2 shows the quick solution.

[codepen_embed height=”621″ theme_id=”1820″ slug_hash=”Kobqa” default_tab=”result”]See the Pen Lay It on the Table by Brian Dys Sahagun (@BrianSahagun) on CodePen.[/codepen_embed]

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