Dan Merfeld
608/575-1066
dan@theorythree.com
www.theorythree.com
v0.3.4
Dan Merfeld
608/575-1066
dan@theorythree.com
www.theorythree.com
v0.3.4
Once, when I was in high school, I found myself atop the Mt. Everest of bunny hills waiting to push off. I'd never been skiing before, a fact that I alone knew, but was sure to become public knowledge in the merest of moments. Delaying the obvious pain and humiliation that awaited me, I fidgeted while the onlookers...
BY: DAN MERFELD | Mar 7th, 2008 | (9) COMMENTS
In a recent conversation, a friend described me as someone who is bored by the mere observation of a car wreck, and instead prefers to entertain himself by occupying one of the crashing cars. I guess I cannot deny the accusation, since over the last few months I've become pretty good friends with drama.
Drama seems...
BY: DAN MERFELD | Feb 6th, 2008 | (6) COMMENTS
Many years ago, I found myself working for a small print shop in Iowa as their in-house Desktop Publisher. I spent the majority of my day designing business cards, letterhead and envelopes. The occasional wedding invitation or logo design might find its way to my desk, but most of the time, it was more of the same....
BY: DAN MERFELD | Jan 6th, 2008 | (16) COMMENTS
I was pleasantly surprised this afternoon when a friend of mine emailed to congratulate me on the newly published article in In-Businesss Magazine which featured a write up on TheoryThree Interactive.
It has been over a month since I had the interview, and I had all but forgotten about it until today. I admit, I...
BY: DAN MERFELD | Dec 7th, 2007 | (6) COMMENTS
If you live in Madison, and you're looking for something to do tonight, consider checking out the Design Madison event.
We're hosting Vault49. The details can be found on designmadison.com.
We just picked them up from the airport, and I'm really looking forward to their presentation.
We're kicking things off...
BY: DAN MERFELD | Nov 15th, 2007 | (0) COMMENTS
A few weeks ago I received a delivery from FedEX. While signing for the package, the delivery girl pointed up to the hallway ceiling in my apartment building and asked... "What does 'area of rescue' mean?"
A valid question, I thought.
As she remained in a pointed stance, I noticed the sign to which she referred...
BY: DAN MERFELD | Nov 9th, 2007 | (6) COMMENTS
Several years ago, I was looking for a places to live in Madison. I was in no hurry to move because I was living with some friends at the time. I must have looked at a hundred places throughout the greater Madison area. All the usual considerations played their parts; price, location amenities, to name a few.
At one...
BY: DAN MERFELD | Oct 29th, 2007 | (6) COMMENTS
I was feeling particularly glum one morning. It was one of those days where you wake up in a bad mood. I didn't sleep well the night before and I knew that, although it was Friday, my work week would likely extend into the weekend.
Work has been great, and certainly not a reason for me to complain, still sometimes...
BY: DAN MERFELD | Oct 9th, 2007 | (10) COMMENTS
I am a confident person. I wasn't always, but I can honestly say that I can commit to my current level of confidence today.
When I think about how such confidence was achieved in my life, I often arrive to a memory of a conversation I had with my older brother.
Growing up, my older brother had always been the...
BY: DAN MERFELD | Oct 5th, 2007 | (7) COMMENTS
For a few years now, I have frequently found myself in a productively repetitive conversation with a good friend of mine. He is a bit younger than I am, and often seeks my advice about his eventual career choice. I enjoy the conversations and in exchange, I have benefited from his advice to me regarding my personal...
BY: DAN MERFELD | Sep 26th, 2007 | (10) COMMENTS
Before I begin, let me just preface what I am about to say by disclaiming the notion that I am trying to lay claim to an idea as my own, this topic is talked about heavily amongst business professionals and I'm simply offering my point of view on the matter.
Now that you've been properly disclaimed, let's...
BY: DAN MERFELD | Sep 15th, 2007 | (2) COMMENTS
Over the past few weeks, I've been going through some of my old emails, deleting and archiving. I do this about once a year, and always seem to end up spending more time reading the old emails then deleting. As anyone who knows me will tell you, I find myself funny. Yup, I'm that guy, the guy who sits in his cubical...
BY: DAN MERFELD | Sep 12th, 2007 | (3) COMMENTS
As an adult, I often look back on my childhood, in remembrance of the pivotal moments in my life. I find myself entertained by the very situations that, at the time, I occupied all of my focus and attention towards. As it is often said, things seemed bigger when you were younger. I find it important to remember such...
BY: DAN MERFELD | Aug 13th, 2007 | (2) COMMENTS
For the better part of this year I have been spending time fulfilling a dream of mine, to start my own company. So it seems logical that I also took on a few other unfulfilled dreams with my new found motivation.
My most recent accomplishment has been to buy my first motorcycle. I had heard from a few friends that...
BY: DAN MERFELD | Jun 11th, 2007 | (0) COMMENTS
Today I (along with about 12 thousand other people) attended a lecture by his holiness, the Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso. The Buddhist leader is - to put it simply - an inspiration to hear speak. This lecture marks his sixth visit to the UW campus, and I was fortunate enough to get a ticket (thanks Tim!).
He spoke for...
BY: DAN MERFELD | May 4th, 2007 | (1) COMMENTS
Tonight, Design Madison is hosting Chuck Anderson of NoPattern. Chuck is an exceptionally talented individual. If you're interested in great design, or just want an opportunity to meet a prodigy of the design world, check out the event details located in the link below.
If you can make it, stop by and say hello.
BY: UNKNOWN | Apr 19th, 2007 | (0) COMMENTS
This is a great article I found (through digg) on Digital Web Magazine, written by David Andersson which summarizes some of the web technologies used in web development, particularly HTML5.
BY: DAN MERFELD | Apr 10th, 2007 | (0) COMMENTS
Tomorrow (3/8/2007), I will be participating as one of the reviewers in the annual Design Madison Student Workshop & Portfolio Review.
If you're a student and interested in a fair assessment of your portfolio, no matter what state it happens to be in, you should come check it out.
Here's a blurb from the...
BY: DAN MERFELD | Mar 7th, 2007 | (0) COMMENTS
Well, after much contemplation, I've decided to purchase a Media Temple account to handle my email and web needs. For $200 a year it's worth having everything in one location for me. I will now begin the long and arduous process of migrating my email from .Mac to my new theorythree email account.
I tolerated the...
BY: UNKNOWN | Mar 1st, 2007 | (0) COMMENTS
I have become increasingly disappointed in my .Mac membership over the last few months. I'm having problems getting emails delivered to me on time, and also experiencing several issues with my iCal synchronization.
Because of this, I have been looking around at several ways to consolidate my emails, and perhaps...
BY: DAN MERFELD | Feb 19th, 2007 | (0) COMMENTS
Today Steve Jobs released a letter discussing his assessment on the current standing of selling music online and Apple's DRM (Digital Rights Managed).
This marks the first response from Apple regarding why they've chosen not to open their DRM - FairPlay - to other companies for use with their respective software and...
BY: DAN MERFELD | Feb 6th, 2007 | (0) COMMENTS
As posted on Official Google Webmaster Central Blog yesterday, Google will finally be supplying more link data.
Prior to this release, Google only provided one method for evaluating link traffic to any given site. The link operator (link:mysite.com).
I found this to be somewhat useful, but I rarely used it to...
BY: DAN MERFELD | Feb 6th, 2007 | (0) COMMENTS
Design Madison Interactive will be hosting Dan LaCivita of Firstborn on Thursday, February 8, 2007.
The event marks the second time we've invited someone from Firstborn to come out to Madison (last season, Michael Ferdman visited). Typically we try not to bring two people from the same organization, however, they're...
BY: DAN MERFELD | Feb 5th, 2007 | (0) COMMENTS
If you're like me, you've got a couple of browsers open all day. You're constantly bouncing from one to the other - testing pages, etc.
My browser of choice is Safari, but I can't ignore the plugins that FireFox has. Especially the web development tools which are quite handy for validating page code.
Recently I...
BY: DAN MERFELD | Feb 2nd, 2007 | (0) COMMENTS
Simplicity seems simple, but as I began to plan for the third major release of this site, I found the need to simplify, well, complicated.
There was the matter of managing the code, but first came the design revamp. I had a simple idea, columns. Several iterations later I wasn't happy how the columns turned out, so I...
BY: DAN MERFELD | Feb 1st, 2007 | (0) COMMENTS