smackfoo.com | I find your lack of faith disturbing.

Seth Godin is, as usual, right on the mark — no user servicable parts inside:

That’s what it says on countless electronic and mechanical devices. “Don’t touch this,” it says, “you’re way too dumb to open it… you’ll get hurt”

The problem, of course, is that pretty soon you start looking at the entire world that way. Whether it’s web design or Google analytics or backing up your hard drive or just talking to the guys in the plant about your new ideas, it’s really easy to see the world as a black box.

Here’s a simple secret of success: ignore the sticker.

I’m a geek. I work with servers, infrastructure and network hardware. I know how a good deal of my industry’s stuff works because I was never afraid to rip the cover off and get my hands dirty — a parentally challenging (and initially somewhat destructive) habit as a child has lead to a busy and often productive work ethic as a result.

When I tackle something new, be it technology or software, I still whip the cover off for at least a brief look at the clockwork action below.

Speaking of busy people, Michael Heilemann has been sneakily building what looks to be a fantastic user interface for Habari.

… a few weeks back, I went AWOL and started crunching away on a complete design for the administration interface for Habari, in an effort to create a set of blueprints, from which this thing can be built in proper.

He provides a good run-down of the where and whys via a screen-cast showcase of the design and there is also a snazzy flickr set — which is in stark contrast to the totally abortive drive-by-design wordpress 2.5 is still currently sporting.

Lovely work by a sharp-as-tacks pixel pusher — and it’s great to see community involvement habari being taken in the spirit it is given.

Bill Israel has been busy of late (and now I know why) whom announces:

In an effort to bring good music to the tumbling masses, Richard and I have started a music tumblelog called Tuneage.

Richard and Bill both have a great sense of what makes music worth getting out of (or rather, into) bed for. Tunage sports a snazzy yet simple design, great tunes and fantastic visuals — well done lads.

Perhaps proving that yet again, tumblr can be more than just a re-blogged nirvana — in this case a music-lover’s co-production.

Being a New Zealand National, I forfeited the right to vote in the recent Australian Federal Elections — in losing that right as a free citizen I can only echo Cameron’s call to vote.

“Vote with whatever criteria you deem important, but please, vote.”

Never take the right to instigate change for granted, it’s a rare chance to shape the future and all it takes is stepping out the front door and pressing pen to ballot paper.

Mr Hunt has re-launched cameron i/o.

“I’ve run this website on Tumblr since May 2007. But starting today I’m switching to Chyrp, a new lightweight blogging engine. If you don’t follow me on Twitter, or browse my photos on Flickr, you probably have no idea I’ve been planning this.”

Grey hues never looked so good — the refresh brings subtle improvements to imagery and typography alike — resulting in a more polished presentation.

It’s also great to see that chyrp is still quietly achieving very cool things in the self-hosted tumble log space, boasting features and functionality similar to that of tumblr and like services.

Looks great Cameron - props on the change and design!

Richard has updated his typographic tumblr theme to version 2.

“I’ve made all the changes outlined in the previous post now. I’ve also moved a few things around — I’ve applied the theme here, if you want to see the changes.”

A typographically focused tumblr theme, made finer still, with exceptional font choices — it’s great seeing bold use of larger font sizes.