The 42nd Annual Happy Magic Awards!

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December 30, 2009 at 1:15am

This post is so NSFW, it had its way with your mother.

Rejoice my friends, for the time is upon us to celebrate the mix of achievements and stupidity that we as a community embrace. The people you know, the things you see on the web, they are all celebrated in this very exclusive, elitist liberal award show. We’ve tallied all 3.7 million of your votes and are excited to share with you the results. This is in no way skewed by the events I remember over the past two months.

Best Site I Work For

Virb.com

Indeed, this is the greatest site I work for in the universe! Thanks, universe.

Runner-Up: Blue Flavor: the other place I worked this year.

Best Event To Mark The End Of Days

Airbag/Happy Cog Merger

“Trust me,” Greg said, “one day we’re all going to win the Happy Magic Awards and it’s going to be huge.”

Finally, as everyone was expecting, the rise of our dark lords to consume all development & design teams in the Northwest Hemisphere has come to plan. Next year look forward to Happy Cog Miami, Happy Cog Goes To Hawaii™, and finally: Cthulu Cog.

Excellent.

Runner-Up: Mark Bixby talking to you, New Moon

Best Fight Sequence

Jeff Croft & Patrick Haney

TWITTERFIGHT!

Finally, someone was man enough to call someone out on Twitter for using their Twitter account how they want to. Finally, someone was man enough to escalate it to the next level by talking about unfollowing if they don’t like it. Finally, as in all cases of the internet, there is no finality. To you, Mr. Haney & Mr. Croft, we give you the daytime television salute for filling our days with soap-opera glee in 140 characters or less. For once, TMZ.com, seemed unimportant. Hug it out?

Runner-Up: Zeldman vs. Favrd, Living vs. Time

Best Platitude

“Our Web Design Community Needs to Be More Serious, and Less Sensitive About $variable”

There were many, many blog posts on this topic. It’s important that our community needs to be more serious. About critiques, design, community and sharing etc. It’s important that we all take a look at what we’ve done and not respond harshly. It’s important that we mature to the level that all businesses do. It’s important that we’re as serious about serious stuff as all the serious businesses run by serious people. Never, in any other industry, have immaturity, non-seriousness and not taking criticism ever occured. We need to be more serious… like academia: where ego and politics never matter… or the finance industry: where ego and politics never matter… or the real estate industry: where ego and politics never matter… or the scientific community: where ego and politics never matter… or politics: where ego and politics don’t matter.

What’s important is not offering solutions, just stating opinion as fact.

Best Topic Which Bores the Shit Out Of Everyone But Web Designers

Typography

Typography is boring & uninteresting & we get you like @font-face & we know it’s not fully realized & yes, we know it looks good & it’s still boring & I do think it’s valuable & I don’t think it needed 40% of blog posts this year & why it needed 300 different T-shirts and posters is beyond me.

&&&

Best Topic Which Bores the Shit Out Of Everyone But Web Developers

TIE: Terminal, Github & SQL

Also, congratulations on the low number of SQL queries used to generate a page. You’re now 5 days late on your project completion date.

Your Github download has a crappy filename too.

Best Topic Which Bores The Shit Out Of Everyone But Information Architects

Information Architecture

Runner Up: Information Architecture

Best New Trend

Geo-location

This was a toss-up between your mom signing up for Facebook and geo-location, but geo-location wins. Why? Because I’m writing this from the computer… UPSTAIRS!!!!!

Worst Guy Ever

Ryan Irelan

Runner-Up: Hitler. Jason Fried as well.

Most Unfortunate Group of People

Standards Groups

Nice work, everyone.

Runner Up: Carnies, Australians

Best Canadian I Promised One Day I Would Make Fun Of On This Blog

Dave Shea

More like CSS Zen Jerkface!

Runner Up: Nickelback

Best Continuing Trend

Old Bloggers Who Blogged Prolifically 5 Years Ago Not Blogging

At this point, good riddance: out with the old, in with the new.

Best Blog Ever

Happy Magic Fun Time

I was shocked, no awed, with humility (of which I assure you, is the greatest humility in the world) when everyone voted this very blog the best blog on the internet. I know you have a lot of choices when it comes to the internet and reading, but we’re proud you chose us. Bite me Zeldman!

Technical Awards (handed out by lesser celebrities)

Best Empty Promise: The Second Coming: Every year. What a disappointment.
Runner-Up: XHTML2 (How we will miss ye)

Best reason to start a Tumblr: Book Deal. Just find WHACKY photos.

Best reason to start drinking: Beer.

Most common question asked to the owner of this blog: “What exactly do you do?”

Best answer to said question: “I’m a web developer, no longer front-end, but I can do that.”

Real answer to said question: Eat. Then I cry while holding myself listening to Smokey Robinson’s “Tears of a Clown”. It’s all very weird.

Best CMS (which is way better than your CMS because I’ve never used yours and I know this one well): ExpressionEngine.

Best Design Trends: Big hero images, big font, big primary nav. The internet gets super-sized. Just add carousel and you’ll have used your whole cookie-cutter!

Best post-colonic waste channel: Signal vs. Noise.

Nice Awards To Friends & Distant Lovers

Cool Little App: Querious

Most Awesomest Humourestest Trendest (Latin): “Poopin”

Cool Little Things: Prettify, Simple Desktops, Droplr.

Blog I’ve Enjoyed Most This Year: Matt Brown whenever he talks about his work.

Guy I Counterpointed With And Got a Lot of Hits From So Thanks And No I’m not Above Checking My Stats Because All I Want To be Is Truly Loved: Cameron Moll.

That’s all folks!