In repentance for my recent lack of blog entries, or for that matter, my lack of free time, I’ve compiled a small photo documentary on todays encounter with some Italian, Disney version of a Kinder Surprise. Levin was recently in Italy and was nice enough to bring me back one of these delightful treats. Little did he know how I used to love those Nestle Wonder Balls until some stupid kid choked on the toy inside (duh!). Apparently they still exist, except now they have candy inside which is infinitely less cool. Take a look at the opening ceremonies and then gawk at the hand painted glory of my tiny toy Pumba. (Those little pills really are difficult to open.)
It’s candy… and a toy!
June 15th, 2007Tick to the Rescue
May 9th, 2007
(Continued from “Basecampers, Beware“)
I’ve been doing freelance work for a little over a year now and I think one of the most important practices is carefully tracking your time. I went through a few different solutions before finally hearing Cameron Moll reference Tick at a speaking engagement at Valencia. I went home, signed up and have been using it ever since.
Now for the selling point. You’ve heard me make mention of my affinity for widgets before, so again, it has a widget. Sold.
It also has Basecamp integration! Something, I would no longer recommend! Read the rest of this entry »
Basecampers, Beware!
May 9th, 2007
If you use Basecamp to track your project hours, you may want to read this article. I’ve discovered a fairly serious problem with the time tracking feature in Basecamp. I’ve also got just the program to make sure it never happens again.
I’ve been using Basecamp, a very useful project management tool, for a while, on various different projects at different jobs and with different freelance clients. The longest running project, being Key Ingredient. Read the rest of this entry »
Rails Envy Logo & Cards
May 7th, 2007
I recently created a logo and business cards for some friends of mine over at Rails Envy. If you’re at all into Ruby on Rails, it’s a very useful blog. It’s run by Gregg Pollack and Jason Seifer, both of which are great programmers that I work with on a regular basis. The logo is kind of a nerdy one. I was trying to convey a “rails is greater than all” type of message so, obviously we can represent that very minimally with code. I went with a green colour scheme to go along with “envy”, as you may have guessed. I think the mint green shade and avoidance of black gives the cards (and logo) a clean, retro-esque feel.
Vimeo Addendum
April 30th, 2007I just wanted to add a little something to my last post.
Not even an hour after posting my article about Vimeo, I received the following email from Jakob Lodwick, one of the founders of Vimeo.
“Thanks for the nice Vimeo writeup on your blog.”
I’m assuming he was able to find out I wrote the article so quickly, thanks to Technorati. I thought this was just another way Vimeo separates itself from the “competition”. It’s a one sentence email. It probably took but a moment to write, but the fact that he chose to take that moment, where others couldn’t care less, and write an email shows that they still understand the lost art of customer appreciation. Bravo.
Why I love Vimeo. (Sorry YouTube)
April 25th, 2007
I signed up for Vimeo after I had my first and final frustrated moment as a YouTube user. Vimeo is truly a site driven by user created content. You won’t find any episodes of South Park, you won’t find and poor movie rips, or porn, or music videos that someone simply filmed off their tv screen. You will, however, find original videos like this one below. RG linked this in a comment on my last post, but I thought it deserved more shine than that.
Lip Dub – Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger on Vimeo
If you’d like to know a little more about why I prefer Vimeo over YouTube, continue reading. RANT WARNING
Read the rest of this entry »
The Yeah, Yeah, Yeah Post
April 13th, 2007
Last night a group of friends and I went to see the Flaming Lips at the House of Blues, Orlando. I think I can say without question that it was the best show I have ever been to. It was as if they read my mind and then concocted the most tactile, sensory overloaded concert experience imaginable.
I don’t know about you, but when I go to a concert and spot those giant confetti cannons, the first thought in my mind is, “I hope they shoot confetti like, the whole show.” Everyone knows that there’s no such thing as “too much confetti”. Although, I’m sure some of the guys on clean up crew at HoB would beg to differ (but nobody cares what they think).
Yellow and orange confetti was fired off during nearly every song, creating a blizzard-like state of the entire establishment. What’s more, Flaming Lips cohorts tossed out laser pointers by the hundreds before the show began, resulting in an audience-created laser light show… but that’s not all! Read the rest of this entry »