This little piece of awesomeness by Ramon Cortez has been shooting up the CSS charts since he published it earlier this week and it has inspired me to get my preech on.

Passion projects such as this (and the paper bird that proceeded it) is what drives front end designers and developers to invent new forms of web interaction. Many of us with day jobs and families don’t often find the time to experiment with CSS or other DOM scripting but I believe it’s uber important that we strive to make that time. Google’s “20-percent time” for their engineers has proven effective — leading the way for big ideas like Orkut and AdSense to come to life — but why are we so reliant on our companies to set up these types of policies? It’s easier, by far, to make this a lifestyle change on our end while at home.

So, I’ve officially committed my Saturday mornings to doing just that. 2 hours of uninterrupted time on whatever shiny new project UI/UX and design related ideas that come to mind. This Saturday: jQuery to make Ramon Cortez’s CSS Coke can 1) zoom into view,  2) auto-scroll and 3) consider similar applications. Next week: Cinema 4D text experiments. Proper.

Here’s another goodie from Ramon Cortez: Pac-Man CSS!. It’s not 100% in terms of the original game play, but it further illustrates the potential of tapping JS to turn CSS powered designs into engaging pieces of multimedia gold.