As you Americans know, the big presidential election is barely a week away and, though it's been talked to death, and though I know most of you have your choices set, I wanted to take some time and voice my opinion to the digital world.

With this seemingly endless war in Iraq, recent troubles with the economy, and the severely disappointing and selfish leadership we've experienced in the last 8 years, the potential impact of our choice in this election is gigantic! And I personally have had my decision set to Barack Obama for quite a while now. There are people who try to push off the anti-McCain "more of the same" phrase saying that McCain is not Bush, but there are enough similarities between the two and it is a close enough race to make me almost pee my pants and look into Canadian citizenship.

One of the characteristics McCain seems to share with Bush is this sort of "act now, ask questions later" approach. This became apparent to me when the two candidates were discussing the use of nuclear energy in the debates. McCain attacked Obama for claiming to want to "look into" using nuclear energy, where McCain seems to want to act now. Of course we would want to act cautiously before using one of the most dangerous materials in the world! I feel that McCain wants to solve problems, while Obama want to solve them without making new ones.

The other thing that bothers me about McCain is his choice in Sarah Palin as a running mate. We can all argue about Palin's experience and whatever, but I think just about everyone can agree that she is not the best choice for Vice President. The problem that I have is that I feel she was chosen mostly for the fact that she is a woman. I think there was so much hype around Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, that McCain had to do something to stir things up and draw some attention his way. While I can understand that a large part of campaigning is advertising and image, I find this insanely irresponsible! Forget if McCain dies, if elected, Palin will hold the second highest position in the entire country!

For me, Barack Obama has the vision, charisma, and the type of leadership we need to turn ourselves around from the last 8 years. It's certainly a wake up call when the simple fact that Obama can speak so eloquently is almost enough to win my vote! I feel I'm on the same page with a lot of his beliefs. I love that he wants to push for alternative energy research which will help save our planet, save money and create jobs. I love that he's not a former military officer and wants to use diplomacy to solve our issues. I love that he's open-minded to new solutions to old problems.

And I know that it's superficial, but I'm a designer at heart, and I have to be honest and say that one of the things that drew my attention to Obama early on is the beautiful design for Barack's campaign—not only internally but from designers from all over the world. As an adult, I can only remember 3 presidential elections, only 2 of which I could vote in, but I don't remember ever seeing such an immense creative reaction to a politician. It's truly inspiring!

I was basically a coin toss between Clinton and Obama at one point, and then I visited his website. The use of Gotham is phenomenal! And there are countless other examples of amazing artwork done in the name of Obama, 2 in particular come from a couple of artists that I've followed for a long time, and who do some awesome work. Here is San Francisco-based Scott Hansen's Progress poster:

And Shepard Fairey's' Hope poster (posted in the window of my home, thanks to Upper Playground):

No on Proposition 8!

Regardless of what your choice is for the presidential election, we Californians have a ridiculous proposition to vote on this upcoming election—Proposition 8. Proposition 8 seeks to deny homosexual couples the right to marry in California. I'm stunned that this is even being voted on. You would think that after the women's right struggle, and then the struggle for civil rights, that we would get it! Everyone is free in America! Right? No! We are voting on a basic right! Why? Some religions don't like it! But wait, there's separation of church and state, right? Yes. Let's vote!

Regardless of what anyone votes, this will be a right someday, this is just a matter of how much fight we are creating for everyone. But regardless, we have to vote! And I think one important thing that people forget is that when they vote, they are voting for everyone. People make their voting decisions based on their own opinions (of course), but we have to remember that they still affect other people's lives. In this case, if you don't agree with gay marriage, this does not affect you! Because you will never be involved in a same sex marriage! If you're worried about tradition being tarnished, don't even fret—Britney Spears herself took care of that years ago. So please, don't be selfish. If there's anything that should be encouraged in this world it's love, so do the right thing.

This ends my political rant. Feel free to send me your comments, try to argue with me, whatevs, but go forth and vote next Tuesday!

We've got an election right around the corner, and the Cubanos decided to launch a site called Aliens Vote. The site aims to (sort of) give a voice to the millions of resident aliens in the U.S. by asking who their choice would be for the upcoming election.

We're very excited to see the outcome of the whole thing, even more so because about half of the company is alien and we work with a network of freelancers from all over the world. So if you are an alien in the U.S. tell us what you've got to say, or have any friends who are, pass the word along.

This entry can't end without any nerd stuff, so here goes! This was my very first project in the Python web framework, Django that is in production. We are good pals with the folks over at Media Temple, who sponsored the project (and just underwent a pretty slick re-design by the way) and gave us use of one of their brand new Django Grid Containers and it was nice, easy, and fantastic to use.

The most exposure I've had to a web framework has been with CakePHP, and using Django has been a nice breath of fresh air. Though I've just skimmed the surface with Django (and Python), it seems to be organized in a much more intuitive way, extremely flexible and portable, the command line stuff is very helpful, it comes built-in with loads of support without seeming too bloated, and I'm a HUGE fan of the DRY principle (Don't Repeat Yourself) behind the whole thing. It was definitely challenge to jump into because Django has a lot of conventions that I'm unfamiliar with, and I also don't have the background in Python that I do with PHP, so I found myself flipping through a lot of reference for simple stuff like splitting strings, etc. I'm excited to jump into my next Django project and I'm sure I'll post more about it, but if you've been considering it, I definitely recommend it!