Broom's Blogs

Designing your Portfolio

2009-07-14T17:54:00.002-06:00

testing my trackbacks ;)

Designing your Portfolio

New Blog and Portfolio Site

2009-07-14T00:30:00.002-06:00

After about 3 weeks of work, i've finished my new blog. I designed, and built the wordpress theme from scratch (which is kind of impressive for me!). its not perfect, but its done enough to show.

enjoy!

jonbroom.com

Fixed!

2009-06-28T18:43:00.003-06:00

fixed my image problem and my theme looks like it should again....

at some point within the next month or so i hope to have a new blog site designed and built on my own url jonbroom.com. if you would like to temporarily subscribe to this blog i'll post up when the new one is ready.

thanks!

Racing

2009-02-25T16:32:00.003-06:00

I started a new blog for our 2009 racing effort, so if you're interested it that stuff then be sure to check it out.
Las Escobas

our new bike is hot

Coffee

2009-02-19T15:39:00.002-06:00

I dedicate this post to Anthony

Things I'm Grateful For

2009-01-20T16:55:00.010-06:00

in no particular order:

Family
my family is great, and the time we spend together is something i look forward to. We have a bond and common interests that most families don't have.

Career
I have a pretty good job. I enjoy what i do, and who i do it with. I think i have a bright future to look forward to and a little more job security than a lot of other american's have at the moment.

Ayden
He's a kick ass little dude and i look forward to us growing up together. I hope that i can provide him with everything he needs to become a successful young man.

Friends
I have some great friends that i know i can count on. sometimes I forget that some people don't have the support system and bond that i have with the people close to my life.

Racing
its a great outlet and an amazing way for me to spend time with my family, be active, meet new friends and have something to strive for and look forward to.

USofA
Its obvious that we all take what we have for granted in the US. just a look through some of the photo sets on the big picture make it quite obvious that we're very lucky to have what we have and live where we live. check out these pictures from the gaza strip, the Congo or Mumbai to see what i mean. I'm also amazed and greatful that someone like Obama has come around and brought new life and a sense of unity to the US and the world as a whole. His face is probably on every newspaper in the world today. that doesn't happen often.

Health
I'm very thankful that as of now, I have my health and so do most of the people closest to me. I know how easy it is to fall ill or have something tragic happen to you or someone you're close to. I can only hope this continues to be the case and that my own body holds up to the abuse i put it through. For my friends that haven't been so lucky, stay tough and let me know how i can help.

theres plenty more to be thankful for in my life, but these are the things that have been sticking out in my mind over the past couple of weeks. my family and i had a pretty good 2008 (especialy compared to the average), and we're looking forward to 2009.

Peru

2008-12-12T11:41:00.008-06:00

I've been back from peru for a good month now, and i finally got through the 1,800 pictures that i took and finished uploading them all to flickr. The trip was amazing. We saw lots of beautiful country, met some amazing people and got to push ourselves mentally and physically.

we began our trip in Arequipa. This is a beautiful city situated at the base of several snow capped volcanoes in a high altitude desert type of climate. We really enjoyed our time here. We took a two day trip into the Colca Canyon region as well. i wasn't real impressed with this trip, but it was still nice. we did a bus tour. i think i might have enjoyed it more if we had hiked it, but thats ok.

we then took an overnight bus to Cusco and quickly fell in love with this city. you get harrassed a lot more in the streets to buy and eat stuff due to its higher level of tourism, but if you get away from the plaza de armes then its not so bad. while in cusco we went horseback riding, and generally explored the city. this is where we started our real adventure: the Inca Jungle Trek.

The Inca Jungle Trek was amazing. it was much harder than i expected it to be, but thats partially due to me getting a stomach bug the morning the trek began. hiking through the rainforest with low energy levels due to not eating and worrying about crapping your pants will definety put a damper on your good time, but i still loved it. i can't wait to do more trekking and backpacking in the near future. we rode mountain bikes for one day, hiked the 2nd, then took a train to aguas calientes before making our way up to Machu Picchu to explore.

one of the highlights of the trip for me was climbing Wayna Picchu. i'm not sure what it was about it that i enjoyed so much, but i really felt a sense of adventure and accomplishment. it wasn't particularly hard, but the view was amazing.

Overall it was a great trip and penny and i had a good time. I'm really looking forward to more adventures to other countries. I've got my eye on china, and anywhere south of there, as well as alaska, canada, mexico, and other more local adventures.

Personal vs. Professional Personas

2008-10-13T11:51:00.007-06:00

Should our online personal and professional personas be separated?

Online Social Media and Networking isn't really all that new anymore, but it's relationship to your professional life is. If you're like me, you've got accounts on sites like myspace, facebook, flickr, delicious, twitter, brightkite, a personal blog and professional blog that are all recording and broadcasting your life to your friends, family and co-workers. I share lots of personal experiences on these sites, as do a lot of other people, that may or may not represent myself as a reliable and professional person. There wouldn't be much of a problem with this except that my professional life has taken over just as much a share in my online identity as my personal life has. The fact that I'm an interactive art director specializing in social media applications plays a big role in my professional identity growing, but i think this is a phenomenon that is spreading to other fields as well.

So, how do you manage this? I don't want my employer, future employer or client to find those drunken picts from last new years, or discovering my odd collection of "dickbirds", but i do enjoy sharing these things with my friends. On the other hand, I think its valuable to show that you have a strong online presence as well as an active and creative lifestyle. These are all important to keeping a creative mind healthy, and the fact that you have a life, online or off, is a very positive attribute. Showing that you have a sense of humor, that you're sincere about who and what you are, and not afraid to express yourself can do wonders for how you're perceived in the workplace. No one likes a fake, and its almost always obvious when you're persona totally changes at work (especially if your facebook page shows otherwise), but where and how do you draw the line?

The only answer is restraint. I know, its not fun. Its muffling the real you, its censorship, its whatever.... but face it, thats the way life is. you can't show every part of yourself to everyone in the world and not expect to be judged by it. A few years ago you could post up anything you wanted to your social applications and only expect your "friends" to see it, but now most of my online buddies are professional contacts. The good thing about my industry is that most of them are in the same boat as I am. We're all trying to figure out the balance while combining their personal and professional online presence into one. Everyone has to evaluate their own career path and their lifestyle and decide how much they can be publicly intertwine in a productive fashion.

Times are changing and i can't wait to see how this evolves social media and the workplace.

Peru

2008-10-13T11:21:00.004-06:00

In two weeks i will be exploring and aclimating myself to the 7,000-12,000 feet elevation of Peru. to be exact, i'll be in Arequipa (pictured). I can't wait. I was totally expecting this month to drag by at an unbelievably slow pace, but so far its been going by pretty quickly. I've been really busy at work and preparing for the trip. being busy helps.

we've got our hiking shoes, packs, travel alarm clock, typhoid and hepatitis A shots, spanish dictionary, and a rough itinerary that involves at least two flights within peru and 4 cities including Lima, Arequipa, Puno and Cusco and the surrounding areas. Recent talks have thrown in the idea of a quick trip over to Bolivia for a stay at La Paz.

Some of the key sights and activities on the list include:

watching the sun rise over machu picchu and hiking to the top of the accompanying mountain to enjoy the view.

visiting Colca Canyon which is more than twice as deep as the grand canyon

a boat ride on lake titicaca (heh heh)

rafting

horse back riding

parasailing

train rides through the andes

whatever we feel like

Update

2008-08-15T12:10:00.005-06:00

A lot has happened in the past few months, and i haven't been blogging at all, so i'll try to give a little recap:

I started dating a girl that i use to work with, Penny. It's only been about 6 or 7 weeks i guess, but it feels like its been much longer... in a good way. All i can say is that she's amazing. Usually there are reservations, or things that make you nervous when you first start dating someone, but I don't have any of that with penny. I think we're both excited to be where we're at, and I look forward to things to come.

I have a new roommate. well, i guess technically i have 2 new roomates. Nadine (my baby's mamma) was having a hard time with roomates and all, which can make things difficult when it comes to paying the rent. So, we talked about it and decided that we'd give it a shot. She moved in 2 weeks ago along with our son, ayden. So far so good. We're more like brother and sister than anything, so that aspect of things isn't a problem. I think the biggest thing we have to worry about is being good roomates and working out the typical issues of parenting. this also opens up the possibility of getting a dog. i love dogs but am at the track too often to have one on my own, so we'll see what happens with that. at the moment american bulldogs are the topic of conversation.

Work is still going great. I just had site launch - Crysis Warhead - and I really feel like i'm gaining great experience for my career. Lots of big things are happening around here, and its pretty exciting. Not to mention the fun and games like bowling, cotton candy machines, pool tournaments, rock band rock offs and general goofing off.

Things I want to do on a Motorcycle

2008-06-11T10:25:00.002-06:00

Sorry i haven't been blogging. i hope no one had any nervous breakdowns due to my sudden disinterest in blogging here... heh... I got a random idea last night though. a new blog should be in the works soon, and that always spawns new inspiration to write.

for now, i'll leave you with a list of adventures that i hope to complete on a motorcycle. this is something i've been thinking about a lot latley since picking up an old DR350 and making it street legal. as of now i have no official plans to make these things happen other than doing smaller weekend trips and getting more experience on the bike, but if you're interested let me know and we can actually make plans.

1. Ride Yellowstone National Park
2. Ride from the east coast to the west coast on nothing but dirt roads on the Trans-America Trail (or at least a decent section of it)
3. Ride from California or the Pacific North West to Alaska and back with my dad and brother.

thats it for now.

Valentines Day

2008-02-14T13:15:00.008-06:00

Seriously... what has this holiday come to? before you even have a chance to send flowers to your valentine, you're getting not so subtle hints about it. what makes people think that being told/required to be romantic on a certain day makes it romantic? It's really hard to show you care when you don't get the chance to make it your idea. if someone asks you about sending them something for valentines day before you get a chance to even carry out plans you already made to do so, then that at least partially discounts the whole "this was my own initiative and i love you" idea. it turns into "I know you want and expect this on this day so i guess i'll buy these flowers, and this pre-printed card". It kills the idea that you did it all on your own... or at least shots it in the foot.

There is nothing romantic about this "holiday" to me. Its very hard to make something genuine and special when 1. Its required of you, 2. its expected (as in not a surprise), and 3. everybody else is doing the exact same thing at the exact same time. On top of that, if you want to go out to dinner you have to deal with the mass of people that are all trying to get a nice dinner at the same time.

On a much more lighter note: a buddy i know from riding motorcycles got fantastic news this week about his battle with cancer. quote: "there are undetectable levels of the cancer byproducts/components appearing in my blood. It means we can assume there is very little cancer in my body."

I've been following the whole process over the past 9 months or so through his blog. I've learned a lot about what it takes to get through something like this. I can only hope that if I find myself in the same situation i can hold it together as well as he seems to be. Congrats Andre. well done.

Site Launch

2008-02-06T09:33:00.000-06:00

We've really been working hard on the development of this site over the past month. Its very complex with lots of AJAX and some tricky CSS performed by my awesome co-workers. Its still got a couple small bugs to work out, but it was a really great effort with a short dev timeline. I actually created this design at about 11 at night while i was in austin doing the Phizzpop challenge, and Ken did all of the mark-up in the middle of doing the mark-up for the red site that i mentioned in a previous post.

The client said this upon delivery yesterday:

We just spent the morning going through the site & it looks great. In my experience, this is one of the best development efforts I’ve ever seen in translating the creative comps into reality – and you’ve done so in just one month. Thank you for going the extra mile & working extraordinarily hard at making Port 25 a great experience. I’m very much looking forward to pushing this out the door and seeing customer reaction to the upgrade. We have a vocal audience and I expect no shortage of reactions

MyBabyOurBaby.com

2008-01-25T11:05:00.000-06:00

A good friend of mine, Ray, launched a really cool community site that he's been building with a friend over the past 4 months or so called MyBabyOurBaby.com. Its a community site built around creating "books" about your kids. The cool part is that you don't just invite people to see or follow the book (although you can do that too). You actually invite your family and friends to build and contribute to the book right along with you as your child progresses. Its a great way to keep a good record of your child.

Once you get other friends and family members on the site, they can then create books for their kids (or you can start it for them if they're not very savvy internet users), and their books get added to your home page where you can keep track of activity on all your books, and make your own contributions.

Props to Ray and his buddy, Beau. Nice job guys.

oh... i almost forgot my favorite part. When you write a new entry, called "stories" on this site, it automatically gets the date and time from any picture that you upload and orders your book accordingly. when i first started my book i thought i would have to start from the begining (4 years ago) and work my way up if i wanted things in the right order (like a normal blog works). Thanks to this feature, i can start where ever i want as build it out as i go... new stuff, old stuff... it doesn't matter!

Site Launch

2008-01-24T17:06:00.000-06:00

A site that we did for the mothership (mic ro soft) (avoiding the search engines) launched today. it is for a charity headed up by Bono, and actually had to be personally approved by him.

We only had about a day and a half to design the site, and about a week and a half after that for approval, changes from the mic ro soft team, and from bono's team, and for mark-up and development. it was very rushed, pretty hectic and involved a lot of hours by a variety of people to get the job done. the site design that got pushed through is actually more of a collaboration between myself and my creative director, Sean. You can see one of my other comps that i was hoping would get picked here.

The final product looks pretty good, and we're proud to have been a part of it. its also kind of fun that the whole project is getting a lot of press by various sources including the new york times web site.

Les Savy Fav

2008-01-21T13:07:00.000-06:00

Steve and I went to see Les Savy Fav on friday night at the Palladium Ballroom in downtown dallas. I've seen them twice at Rubber Gloves in Denton. The first time was amazing, and the second time was pretty good too, but a bit of a let down in comparison. They more than made up for it with this show though. What a fun, rockin' show. The picts i managed to get with my cell phone above only represent maybe a 10th of the antics.

Other than coming pretty close to duking it out with some kids up in front of the stage, it was a great night. It was kinda wierd though, I've always been the kind of guy that avoided confrontation. Its not my thing, but that night I was ready to go. I wasn't starting trouble, or looking for trouble, but these kids were being dicks and i wasn't going to put up with it.

Two Point O'ed

2007-12-27T10:54:00.000-06:00

I'm sure most of you reading this blog (assuming anyone is reading this blog) know what the term "Web 2.0" refers to. Basically it just refers to a breed of social networking and user driven sites, but it's also been associated with a trend of web design that we've all been submerged in for the past 2 years. I like to refer to these shiny, wet, reflective, star burst sites as being "Two Point O'ed", but we really should come up with a more deserving and appropriate name. Pictured here you can see a fine example of what i'm talking about. It's got most, if not all, of the key elements: plenty of shine, reflections, cyan, magenta, star burst emblem, networking badges, gradients, etc. Please, help me classify this trend in design so that we can engrave it into a shiny headstone and put it to rest.

Steve and I were introduced to a term while at FOWD that I love and quickly adopted: Flashterbation. It refers to the gratuitous use of flash animation that happened a few years back. It's so perfect, and fun. This shiny trend needs something just as suiting. Maybe it's already out there and I don't know about it, or maybe it just wasn't good enough for me to remember it... i dunno....

450 Singles

2007-12-19T12:11:00.000-06:00

At this point I'm a little unsure what my immediate future in racing is. I feel a little bored of racing the smaller bikes I guess. Mainly due to trying to attend too many races this year. I feel like i've reached a point where i'm getting pretty decent at it, and really want to move up to some bigger bikes, even if they're still minis. the issue i have with that is: 1. i don't want to spend the money on a new bike right now, and 2. I feel like i've reached a level in my abilities that is allowing me to push myself and the bikes i've been racing closer to the edge which has resulted in some wicked crashes compared years past. I feel like i'm riding a thin line between getting faster and knocking the shit out of myself. Thats why i'm thinking i might take a year off and do some enduro racing on the dirtbike for a while. Start a new challenge.

Anyways, that wasn't really the point of this post. the point is that i really want one of these 450 single bikes! It looks like several organizations across the US are building a class for this new bike, and if they're not making a specific class for it, then they'll squeeze you in with another class where you'll be competitive.

So, I think that most of you know what a motard is by now. basically it's a dirtbike fitted with 17inch wheels, slicks and suspention adjustments for roadracing. Now there is a new breed of "motard" and they're callling it the 450 Single. Its a 450 four stroke dirtbike chassis and motor with upgraded suspension parts, 17inch wheels and slicks, some sport bike style clipons and rearsets, and its fitted with a road racing style fairing. I think this would be the perfect bike for me to race if i was to move up to the bigger bikes. Its not crazy fast, it looks fun as hell, and if they build restrictions into the classes so that you can't dump 10 grand into the motor to win all the races, it'll be very competitive and maybe not crazy expensive.

Graffiti

2007-12-18T17:04:00.000-06:00

I've been telling a lot of people about Telligent's new product, Graffiti for a while now. Well, its finally out. A lot of people have been loading it up and seeing what its all about and i've heard a lot of good things about it. as soon as i get some free time I'll be redoing this site and building it on the Graffiti platform.

For those that don't know, Graffiti CMS is meant to be a really simple content publishing platform for individuals and small businesses. It's designed first and foremost to be simple. If you still don't know what I'm talking about, it's along the same lines as wordpress, but much more powerful.

Gotta give big props to Steve Ray for the design. I'm jealous that his first site to go live here at telligent/sound creative is so kick ass.

Phizzpop Design Challenge

2007-12-18T11:27:00.000-06:00

Last week myself and two others from Telligent (Ken Hanson, markup master, and Kyle Beyer, backend genius and generally kick ass at attacking a challenging project with a good strategy) traveled to Austin to compete in Microsoft's Phizzpop Design Challenge.

The format of the competition makes for an interesting challenge. You get a day and a half of training on microsoft's new Expression Studio. at the end of the training on the second day (tuesday afternoon) they present the challenge that we have to design for and send you on your way for the next 2 and a half days to design and develop your solution and prepare a presentation to sell your idea to a panel of 3 judges. I think this format has potential, but there is one major flaw. The Expression Studio software is very new, and isn't even complete yet. I understand that this is a great way for microsoft to get some feedback and input on their new tools, but it makes for a very stressful, and sometimes disastrous 3 days of furiously paced work.

Microsoft had people on site to help us with the software through out the competition, but they could only help so much (big props go to Josh Holmes for his help and efforts). They were of great service to us and the other teams, but didn't seem to know much more than what we were able to figure out on our own. Adding to the software's downfalls were our own. We found out we were going to the competition about a week before hand, so we were looking at the expression studio software for the first time monday morning at the training. some of the teams obviously know quite a bit about the software already giving them a huge advantage, but obviously thats the nature of competition and its no ones fault but our own.

On the other hand, it has some really nice features as well. If Fireworks would adopt a few of the cool features and tools found in Blend i would be a happy man. They also have a very nice philosophy for work flow from designer to developer. I hope that this continues to evolve... adobe needs to take some notes.

Overall we had fun, created a really nice piece, and I got to work and get to know a couple of cool guys. We worked furiously with lots of heart and effort. Our 10am to 4am work days took a toll on us and by the time i got home on saturday i was basically sick from exhaustion. We didn't win (that honor went to thirteen23 and they deserved it), but I think we came up with a great, realistic solution. If we had been able to develop some more of our silverlight pieces and created a flashy presentation I think we would have had a real chance at winning. It was very dissapointing to not win, and i think it made it worse that they don't tell anyone what place you came in. There was no closure. No satisfaction. No tangible results to tell us how well we did.

I tried to keep a record of our design process, and you can see some of that in my flickr stream. The home page design is here and the interior pages along with some misc picts and things can be found here. If you have any feedback, positive or negative, feel free to post it up here or on my flickr account.

Oh, and did I mention that I had to present our project in front of a packed bar full of people? I haven't had to do anything like that in a loooong time. It went reasonably well though.

Things I want for Christmas

2007-11-27T13:33:00.000-06:00

Corporate Zombies

MyCuppa Tea Mug

some funky shoes. these are the Freddy Kreuger dunks. they'd be cooler without the blood. size 11

Works Connection Radiator Braces -- MSR Radiator Guards -- MSR Enduro Skid Plate
for 03' KDX220

Fly Folding Ramp

NetFlix

a rad plant that'll survive in my office (no real light). saw some plants growing in glass "pots" filled with gravel that were cool. its called "forcing" i think.

I'll add more as i think of it. dunno know why. no one ever buys anything off my yearly list anyways...

NYC part 2

2007-11-26T15:19:00.000-06:00

It's been 2 full weeks since i went to NYC, so, lucky for you, the details are getting a little fuzzy. Back to where i left off...

Friday morning steve and I hit the town on a mission to get all our tourist sight seeing and shopping out of the way so we could do other stuff with anthony and crew on saturday. We get a slow start by going the wrong way on the subway. We figured it out before we got too far and eventually made it to the tip of Manhattan to get a look at the statue of liberty. after that we walked north to see Ground Zero where the twin towers use to stand. I didn't see any memorial or anything, just a big NYC block with no huge building occupying it. its kind of a weird sight. I thought by now they would have already been well under way constructing a new building, but it looked like they were still taking out the remaining structure of the original buildings.

We took the subway towards SOHO, walked a little bit of China Town, visited a few stores that we wanted to check out and killed time until it was time to meet up with Anthony, his co-worker Nick, and Greg Battle and Bill Robertson from Global Grind for lunch. They were on the top floor of a 45 story building off 7th and 38th street were a lot of Russell Simmons' companies are located. We briefly met him before heading up to the roof where they take their smoke breaks. The view up there was amazing.

Afterwards, steve and i were on our own again. We headed back down to SOHO to finish our shopping agenda and tried to stay dry in the 40º rain. Later that afternoon was when i found out that Bank of America canceled my ATM card. The banks were closed already, and most places in NYC don't take credit cards. I only had so much cash on me so i was screwed until the morning. I guess you could say that it worked out to my advantage to some extent since i was able to drink till 4am without spending a dime. We all hit the town (i have no idea where we were) for some bar hopping fun. After some food at a diner that our new NYC friend Nater took us to we were done for the night. We found our way onto the subway and dozed off till we found ourselves back in brooklyn.

Saturday we did some more running around, shopping, etc. We visited Saint Patricks Cathedral, a huge 3 story H&M, kid robot and ate street vendor hot dogs before we decided that Manhattan was just too intense and crowded to hang out in on a saturday afternoon. We took the train back to Smith Street in Brooklyn and checked out the little boutique stores before getting our last dinner in NY. Once again my bank card issue got me out of paying for dinner, even though steve and I had fully intended on paying for dinner with our credit cards. they only took american express. We were worn out by now and decided to just get some wine and head back to Anthony's place for a night of hanging out and playing Wii Sports.

Early Sunday morning we took a car up to LaGuardia and headed back to dallas. I was ready to go home and get some rest, but sad to leave.

Thanks to Anthony, Matt, Natalie and Anna for putting us up for the week. It was great seeing you guys.

NYC part 1

2007-11-16T14:57:00.000-06:00

Ok, i gotta get all this stuff out before i forget the trip entirely. Its been crazy at work so its been really hard to find the time to blog about anything. Of course i keep getting all these ideas and things that i want to write about when i can't find the time to write. Anyways, i'll try to keep this NYC recap short and sweet.

Steve and i made it to NYC without issue. we had separate flights separated by an hour or so. Steve was already in Manhattan with Anthony eating dinner, so i was on my own. My first ever NYC experience is a car service guy trying to hustle me. I manage to get away from him, grab a taxi and head to the nearest train station so i can ride it in to the city to meet up with everybody. It was pretty exciting to be on my own trying to figure out what i needed to do in this new place. I like traveling on my own sometimes. I found them without any problems, we ate, and headed to anthony's place in brooklyn to drink beer, play wii, and get some sleep.

The next day, wednesday, we headed out at about 7am to go to the Future of Web Design (FOWD) Conference in the city, and I got to experience a bit of NYC rush hour (pictured here). I love all that energy. The conference was pretty cool. Joshua Davis was interesting, and very entertaining, but i enjoyed Ryan Singer the most. He is part of the 37 Signals Team (best known for their online app, basecamp), and in general just a very smart, cool dude.

After a full day of speakers it was time for the afterparty at a club called Rebel hosted by Media Temple. It started at 7:30 and was open bar all night, so i'm sure you can guess how that evening went.

The next day I slept in until about 10, and rode the train back into Manhattan with anthony to check out his work. after that i was off on my own again since steve was in workshops all day and everyone else was working. I started off by eating an authentic street vendor lunch and taking the train to Times Square. I walked from the times square/42nd st stop all the way to central park before taking the train back down south to SOHO. I can't tell you enough how much i enjoyed being on my own for a day to explore... it was great. eventually i was glad to meet up with steve and the gang and head out to a pub called McSorley's. Its the oldest bar in New York, has the best cheeseburgers in town, and an awesome old school new york atmosphere. they brew their own beer and thats all the carry. we all ordered a beer and the dude comes back with 16 beer filled mugs and plops them down, giving the seemingly 100 year old table a nice coating of beer... it was great.

to be continued....

A Big No No

2007-10-31T16:01:00.000-06:00

Do Not Resize My Browser Window When I Go To Your Site!

nothing pisses me off faster than my browser window suddenly jumping to full screen. not only is it rude to just go and change the way a user wants to browse your site, but its also very annoying trying to grab that little resize handle on the bottom right of the screen with the mac doc down there and all.

It might have been cool when everyone first figured out the little piece of java script to make that happen 5 or 6 years ago, but its NOT COOL ANYMORE! Knock it off!

Work Updates

2007-10-16T10:40:00.000-06:00

We've been keeping pretty busy here at work, even though it seems i haven't had many exciting sites launch lately, but Telligent, our parent company, has had a lot of exciting things going on. We've been growing like crazy and picking up some really exciting accounts utilizing Community Server and we have some really exciting new products in the works that we're looking forward to getting our hands on.

One really big project that we landed recently was Myspace.com. Their forums are now powered by community server. The user base for the forums is over 70 million users and since they launched the new forums they've had 300,000 new posts by 20,000 unique users, and 9,000 threads have been "favorited". I think that really says something about the scalability and power that these guys have built into community server.

Another project that has recently launched is Global Grind. I did a lot of the initial user interface design, as well as the logo design for the site and the guys here did the behind the scenes wizardry to make it all possible. there is a lot of unique functionality in that site that is not apparent at first glance. Its hard to explain or imagine the amount of work that went into it.

Gettin' Dirty

2007-10-15T09:40:00.000-06:00

I finally got a chance to take my KDX for a ride this weekend. I was able to get a hold of some of my old friends in the TSBA (texas sport bike association) and meet up with them for a day at the Red River Motorcycle Park near Muenster, Texas. Its a beautiful, huge chunk of land on the Texas side of the Red River with miles and miles of trails as well as large chunks of sandy beaches to play on. Its a lot of fun and host to the infamous RedBull Last Man Standing.

I was a little nervous at first because I have been out there once before on a friends DRZ400. Its a decent bike, but it was big, heavy and didnt' have great tires on it, so it beat me to death. i didn't walk right for a month after straining my back from picking it up so many times. This trip was much different. My new bike is light, easy to ride and was built for the kind of terrain we were on. It was great.

I had a few spills, but nothing too bad. At one point i found myself at the bottom of a hill trapped under my bike. I was trying to cross a 10 foot deep trench where you have to go down one side, ride across the bottom for about 10 feet then attack the other side and try to make it up. It wouldn't have been a big deal except that there was a 1 or 2 foot deep rut that i was trying to go through on the up side. I got stuck about half way up and was trying to back down the hill and have another go at it, but I used bad technique and ended up falling over backwards, hitting the back of my head on a tree, my tail bone on the hard pack dirt and found my self trapped under the bike while i waited for one of my buddies to come help me... good times.

The highlight of my day of riding was towards the end of the day. We came upon a challenging, sandy, rutted, seemingly never ending hill climb. The whole thing curves around to the left as you go up, so you can't see whats coming. I already had a fair amount of momentum going for me, so i decided i was just going to stand up on the pegs and pin it in second gear all the way up. I looked ahead, tried to keep a nice line through the ruts, and leaned forward to keep my front wheel down as i worked my way up. As i came around the last bend i see that there is a 1 or 2 foot vertical ledge at the top of this hill. This presents a mental challenge for several reasons: 1. i got stuck on a smaller ledge while hill climbing earlier in the day, 2. if you don't make it, or loop the bike there is a lot of hill to fall down behind you, and 3. you're suppose to wheelie up the ledge and let your momentum carry your rear wheel over which means you must stay on the gas. My split second decision was to keep up the fast pace i had so far, and just attack that ledge like it was nothing. I know i successfully unweighted the front wheel but i'm not sure if i managed to wheelie it up or not, either way, i hit it hard and fast. It practically launched me off the top of that hill onto the nice flat ground where the other riders where waiting to see if i was going to make it or not. Well, i did... with style. they were all impressed and my adrenaline was pumping. I had a hard time going to sleep last night as i replayed that hill in my head over and over. I can't wait to go back again.

Pastrana is Crazy

2007-10-10T14:41:00.000-06:00

Apparently jumping out of a plane with a parachute is just too easy these days, so Travis Pastrana decides to do without one.

Last Race of the Season

2007-10-09T12:16:00.000-06:00

This weekend was my last race of the year. We did a 4 hour endurance on Marc's DRZ110 and sprints on my yxr100. It was crazy humid causing major sweating even when you didnt' feel hot, but we had lots of fun. The endurance race started at 5pm and ended at 9, so half of it was at night under the lights. It was the first time i've raced at night, and i really liked it. It wasn't as different as i expected it to be thought. i'd forget that it was night time. We finished 4th in class a couple of laps behind 3rd.

The sprints on sunday went well, although i didn't bring home any trophies. I would have had at least one 3rd, but i crashed. Stuart was in 1st, Frank in 2nd and i was in 3rd with nice gap on 4th. we were wheel to wheel for several laps before i had a highside-lowside in the last corner causing a nice faceplant in my new helmet followed by 4 or 5 rolls. It dinged my head pretty good and my neck hurt for about an hour, but i was ok. needless to say, my new MX helmet is ruined. I'll have to wear it this weekend when i ride the dirtbike at muenster on sunday, but after that i'll pick up a new one before i ride again. Thanks to Dave from work for coming out to check out the races.

on a side note, if you're wondering what you might want to get ayden or myself for xmas, i'd recommend This.

Official Class Champions

2007-10-03T09:40:00.000-06:00

We just wrapped up the CMRA Mini Endurance season last weekend at Oak Hill Raceway in east Texas. This was my first year doing an entire cmra season, and it was a lot of fun. If i remember right we one every race except for 2 second places. That puts us way ahead of the field in points and we've earned ourselves the Class Championship. Not sure what we get for that yet, but it should be some form of trophy or plaque along with some contingency money from a few vendors that we use such as Komodo Leathers and Bridgestone Tires.

The race on Saturday went well. I really enjoy riding roger's xr100. its very well set up, predictable and all around a worry free bike. Roger owns his own shop called OnRoad OffRoad Cycles (254 853 4852) in Austin, TX. He does a lot of work on European bikes and specializes in suspension and electrical i believe. as far as i can tell, he's pretty damn good at what he does. i was doing very consistan 1:58s, and my fastest lap was a 1:57.9. one second slower than my best at that track. We finished 2 or 3 laps ahead of second. their fastest laps were around the 1:52 range. They've got a crazy fast little KLX110, but somehow we beat them.

This weekend is my last race with TMGP for the year (i'll be in NYC during the last round), so starting next weekend I'll finally get the chance to go play in the dirt with my new toy. It sounds like they're going to let us do a night race on saturday night under the lights. It'll be my first time. I hear its pretty fun. I'll let you know how it goes.

Fantastic

2007-09-20T08:44:00.000-06:00

2003 KDX220... I've been dreaming of a dirtbike for 20 years, and wanting a KDX for 2 or 3 years. Now i have one.

Racing and Soccer

2007-09-17T17:12:00.000-06:00

Last weekend was the first ever race on the newly expanded track in Katy, TX. It had some issues, but overall it was a lot of fun and a great weekend of racing. I raced with Marc and Jeff in the endurance on Marc's DRZ110. It's a well sorted out bike and a lot of fun. We ended up with 2nd place in the Lightweight expert class 1 lap behind first. Our fastest lap was around 55 seconds I think.

On Sunday i raced sprints on my yxr100 and did really well. I managed to get my 2nd ever 1st place in sprints. It was in the MiniGP Expert class, and a great, hard fought battle. I got lucky when Frank, 1st place, crashed and gave me first, but i still had a tough battle against Gilles. He passed me, i passed him back, he passed me back... we had a great battle until he tried to creep up on the inside of me in a left hander. I didnt' know he was down there and came down on him. we got together, leaving tire marks on my leathers, and he had to get on the brakes landing him in 3rd.

We were running 16:45 gearing i think. it felt pretty good except that i was topping out between the first new turn and the chicane. a 44 on the rear might be better. the sweet spot for the tire pressure seamed to be about 21 front 22 rear hot.

This weekend was Ayden's second soccer game. He did really well considering he wouldn't play at all his first game.

He went out 3 or 4 times durring the 30 minute game and took control of the ball several times. Only problem was that he never took it towards the goal. what ever direction he was headed when he found himself with the ball was the direction he went until he was out of bounce. He did a great job though and we both had fun.

This is what a Heart Attack Looks Like

2007-09-13T13:59:00.000-06:00

I try to spend my money in the right places, so I watch the mail for coupons that i can use for lunch during the week so that i dont' have to eat left overs or dollar menu all week long in order to afford other fun activities. Today i found a coupon for Jack in the Box for a free drink and curly fry if i buy their new sirloin burger... sounds like a deal to me!

To my surprise, the burger alone costs 5 bucks! Ok, fine. i'll pay 5 bucks for a decent burger now and then, but thats not what bothered me.... The burger is Huge! its rich, super cheesy, greasy and plain over the top big. I have to admit that it was pretty good, although it would have been a lot better with one less slice of cheese. I could only consume about 2/3rds of it, but i can just picture the average american eating this crazy mountain of calories along with their 44oz medium coke and 1/2 pound of curly fies without blinking an eye... ugh. we're disgusting.

Latest Project

2007-08-30T13:22:00.001-06:00

One of our projects here at Sound Creative released a sneak preview of their site that i've been working on for the past month or two. We're all very excited about this one, and i'm really looking forward to seeing it go live. It's easily the best work i've ever done in my opinion, especially when you see the rest of the site. Check it out, but keep in mind that this is still just a mock up. I made up everything on that page, and the logo is still a work in progress.

Motorsports Ranch

2007-08-27T16:44:00.000-06:00

This weekend was the 2 hour mini endurance at Motorsports Ranch in Cresson (just south of Fort Worth). I had mixed feelings about this race because: 1) it was only a 2 hour race, and it gets hard to justify the expense and effort that goes into a race weekend when you only get 1 hour of seat time, and 2) this track is bigger than we usually run on our bikes. you basically have the bike pinned for the entire 2 minute lap except for 2 turns. this means that most of your lap is spent buzzing down a long straight with the bike topped out at about 60-70mph... its not that exciting. On the up-side, i've never run this track, so i was looking forward to it, and Cara came with me. I don't think she's ever seen anything like this, so she was excited and seemed to enjoy the herself.

The weekend didn't get off to the best start. I set my alarm for 4:45am. everything was right: volume up, set to am, turned on, etc., but it remained silent all morning. When i finally woke, curse words began flowing from my mouth when i realized that it was almost 7. This means that i'm going to miss practice and will have to compete in a race on a track that i've never been on. its not the best strategy and it ended up costing us 1st place. We did manage to come home with 2nd with 1st only about half a lap ahead of us (pretty close after a 2 hour race). My best time was a 1:50 and i think roger was down in the 1:47s.

After the race cara and i cruised the paddock on the pit bike, watched the mayhem of the big bike endurance start (and restart, and restart again), and i taught her how to ride the pit bike. she did really well considering she's never done anything like that before. she was like a giddy little kid, "can we go ride the pit bike again?!?". She had one incident after a few beers on sat night that put her on the pavement, but she came away from it ok, unlike my brother.

Overall, we had a great weekend at the track.

hot, hot fun

2007-08-14T10:45:00.000-06:00

My Dad and I spent the weekend at the kart track just north of denton racing with the TMGP guys. Overall the weekend went really well, but saturday was downright brutal. I believe the news said the air temp was about 105 and the heat index well over 110. Someone at the track with a heat gun said that the track temp was 128, and the ambient air temp was 108. Those are some nasty numbers when you're attempting a 4 hour endurance race on a 2 man team. Originally i was suppose to be running on two different teams in one race, but lucky for me one of the bikes broke early in the race. Theres no way i could have done both and i was feeling bad that i had over committed.

I ran with Alan on Stuart's KX65 powered ysr (65cc water cooled 2stroke, pictured above). It was crazy fast and lots of fun. unfortunately it was just too hot out to enjoy it and start pulling good lap times. i was averaging 51-53 second lap times, and alan was doing around 47 seconds. the original plan was for alan to do 1 hour stints and for me to do 30 minute stints, but neither one of us could stay out for more than 25 minutes before we had to come in. Every time i got off the bike i thought i was either going to throw up, or pass out. It was one of those days where you wonder why you're even out there and just want to give up. In the end we wound up with a 3rd place, so we did alright.

Sunday was much better. The temps were probably about the same, or worse, but sunday is sprint day. That means you only go out on the track for one 8 lap race at a time, which works out to probably about 12 minutes per race. I had about 30-40 minutes between each race, so i had plenty of time to drink fluids and try to cool down. My bike was running great and i did fairly well. I finished 4th in a couple races and managed a 3rd in another, but the highlight of my day was passing and beating "Fast Frank" in the backwards race after he made a small mistake. I was running 15:44 gearing and it was perfect. no topping out between turns. Tires were at about 20 and 21 psi cold. My lap times got down to the 49 second range according to dad's stop watch, which is about 2 seconds faster than i've ever done before on that bike. actually, thats the best lap times i've done out of all the bikes i've run there, even the faster kx65 and 60! not bad.

I did have one good spill during one of the sunday races. I was going through turn 3 (tight right hander) and lost the rear on the exit. It came all the way around and i found myself spinning on my belly down the middle of the track. at one point i managed to look up and saw an XR100 coming straight for me. I knew he was going to run me over, and i felt him hit me, but i didn't know where. Its weird what you remember and don't remember from crashes. I had no idea where he had hit me. It must have looked pretty dramatic because everyone was a little worried that i was hurt, but i was fine. I got up, picked up the bike and continued racing. The guy on the XR came and found me later to see if i was alright and told me that he hit me right in the chest. he had to choose between that and my head.

I Heart NYC

2007-08-03T12:46:00.000-06:00

I just made an impulse buy (something i don't do often). Plane tickets to NYC to go to the Future of Web Design conference with Steve. I've been wanting to go to New York for 10 years, and i'm finally doing it. I'll get to visit my good friend anthony, and hopefully get a chance to hang out with some of my buddies at Global Grind. Its going to be fan-freakin'-tastic. i better start saving, cause i have a feeling we're going to be whippin' out fliff like a sultan.

On another note, the Wii is perfect for a night of pizza, beer and kicking your friend's ass.

Hallett 2 Hour

2007-08-01T12:53:00.000-06:00

This weekend was the 2 hour endurance race at Hallett, outside of Tulsa, OK. The race went very well for us. The bike was running well, Roger and I kept it upright and we won our class. Only bad thing about the race is the fact that we all traveled all the way out there for a little over 1 hour of seat time on the track. I dont' like 2 hour races, but we're in it for the points, so we race them all.

As for the picture, Careflight flew in during lunch on Saturday for demo. they just happened to pick a spot to land about 20 yards from where i had set up camp. I've never been that close to a landing helicopter. As you can see, i had to stuff my tent under my truck in hopes that it wouldn't blow away.

Roger rode the first hour and was doing consistent 1:54-1:56 lap times with a fastest lap of 1:54.681 right before he came in for a pit stop. I didn't have as much practice on that track so my lap times picked up throughout my stint. i started out running 1:56 for the first 10 laps, then started running 1:54-55 for the next 10. The rest of my stint i managed consistent 1:53-55 with a fastest lap on the last lap of the race at 1:52.386 and an average speed of 57.148mph.

the fold

2007-07-31T09:35:00.000-06:00

I think i probably have this argument/discussion with clients on almost every project i work on: the fold, and what should be above it. For you non-designers, the "fold" is simply the point where information is no longer visible from your initial interaction with the website, newspaper or anything else that requires user action to see the rest of whats going on. Historically in web design everything was designed to cram all your information above the fold so that the user could see everything you needed them to see without scrolling down. Well, users no longer mind scrolling. They expect it and its become second nature, but clients still want you to cram everything in.

This is a great blog by Milissa Tarquini laying out and destroying the myths of the modern day fold in webdesign.

I'm Mashable

2007-07-26T12:36:00.000-06:00

The site I've been working on for the past 10 months got a short review on Mashable today. kinda cool.

It hasn't been publicly launched yet, but they have set up a myspace page

Fear and Fate

2007-07-25T10:10:00.000-06:00

I've been reading a great book called Clear Waters Rising: A Mountain Walk Accross Europe. It's about a man traveling from the western coast of Spain, to the eastern boarder of Europe on foot. While passing through the mountains of northern Spain he travels through an area littered with coal mines. He's ventured into one of the abandoned mines and begins to imagine what the life of one of these miners must be like: blackness, rockfalls, gas, flooding, dynamite.

I was beginning to understand fear. Or rather, I was beginning to understand that there could be no fear. Constant danger concentrated the mind on the practicalities of staying alive, of not making a mistake. It was a mechanical, absorbing business which demanded a combination of set rules and intuition.

Real fear showed up when control was snatched by the claws of fate. Played the right way, fate stood little chance.

The reason this hit a cord with me is that it directly applies to motorcycle racing, among other things. Its really hard to explain to people what we do without them thinking we have a death wish. When i first decided i was going to start racing I had a new born baby. I could tell i was being judged. Some people were more vocal than others, but it was there. People thought i was being irresponsible. I knew that the only irresponsible thing i was doing was entering a hobby that would suck my bank account dry for years to come if i wasn't careful.

I guess this could also be applied to sky diving, which is something i've been presented with latley. I never thought of sky diving as something i'd do, but now that the opportunity sits in front of me, mine for the taking.... i don't know. The weird thing is, its not the falling, landing or any of those things that scare me. Its getting in that little plane, flying up to position and having the nerve to throw myself out of it when the time comes. I think its the anxiety that I'm afraid of more than anything.

Poker nights

2007-07-24T12:32:00.000-06:00

I've been playing Hold'em once or twice a week for the last year or so. I like it. its a good challenge, and a fun way to kill an evening that might otherwise be spent watching TV. I'm actually getting decent at it too. I make the final table out of the 4 to 6 that start almost everytime i play, and frequently make it into the top 3-5 out of the 40 or so people that started the tournament. I rarely actually win though. So far only once.

I'm torn on whether or not its worth checking out a cash game or taking the hour drive to the casino in Oklahoma. All the games i play are for fun and they're free. I don't have a problem with that, and i don't have a problem with gambling in general, but i feel weird about the thought of driving to Oklahoma in hopes to make some money at the poker table. maybe its a product of growing up too close to las vegas in the 80's.

Don't click it

2007-07-17T11:13:00.001-06:00

I like this idea. A lot.

you navigate the entire site without clicking. it was pretty natural for me not to click, but i can see it being a problem for others. either way, i think its an awesome idea and a fun experiment.

check it out: dontclick.it

OHR 6hour

2007-07-09T14:09:00.000-06:00

This weekend was the 6 hour mini endurance at historic Oak Hill Raceway in east texas. I love this track more and more each time i go. its always a great challenge and really takes some guts to pull some fast laps, but once you figure it out you can rail around that place.

I always seem to miss practice at the hill for some reason. This weekend was no different, but i wasn't too worried about it. it was a 6 hour race, so i had some time to get up to speed. it only takes a few laps anyways. my first stint was a little hairy due to a lot of chattering in the rear which would start chattering in the front as well. after i came in and talked to roger (bike owner) we decided to let a couple pounds of air pressure out of the rear. what a huge difference that made. almost no chatter at all. the slicks were sticky, the track was dry, the brakes were fantastic and i was really getting into a solid groove.

towards the end of my second 1 hour stint i got involved in a heated and long fought battle with an aprilia rs70 2 stroke. it had our xr107 4 stroke out powered, but i was able to keep up with him. I was even able to draft him down the long straight. i've never drafted anyone and noticed a difference before, but this time it worked beautifully. if i was drafting he'd walk away from me and gap me by a good 30 yards or so, but if i could stay on his rear tire the entire way he couldn't pull any gap. thats the fastest i've ever gone on one of these small bikes, and it felt a little sketchy. he eventually won the battle when we almost crashed into each other (he missed a shift and i was committed to the turn we were entering). i had been on the track for an hour and when you get an adrenaline rush like that it takes a lot out of you when you come back down, so i came in for a rider change and tried to cool down.

My lap times were really good. on my bike i've only been able to do a 2 minutes flat lap times, but on roger's bike i was doing consistent 1:58 and 1:57. I had the teams fastest lap with a 1:56.9 which frustrated roger a bit. from experience i know that its not the best feeling in the world to have another teammate beat your time on your own bike.

Kwik-E-Mart

2007-07-06T13:13:00.000-06:00

Tom and i went to the local Kwik-E-Mart today to check it out. it was Packed! People were taking pictures all over the place like it was disneyland. they had some of the simpsons products like buzz cola, donuts, squishees and krustyO's along with lots of characters, store decoration, signage and even kwik-e-mart uniforms for the cashiers.

The whole thing is a brilliant idea. the buzz and traffic created just for that one store will more than pay for all the decoration. people have been talking about it all week, and the store itself was a madhouse. i'm trying to think of anything else that could create that kind of attraction to a 7-eleven, or to any store, but i'm at a loss. The iPhone and wii release are the only things i can think of off the top of my head that even compare.

Pick-Up Truck!

2007-07-03T08:33:00.000-06:00

/hillbilly voice
Its been long, loooong overdue. After almost 5 summers of no AC and being at least a little embarrased by the couple of "Dave Ramsey Specials" i've been driving, i finally got a new truck. well... new to me. I just picked it up last night, and so far i freaking love it. with some new dark wheels (maybe something like this or this with no lift) wrapped with some BFGoodrich all terrain tires... mmm.... and maybe even blacked out emblems it'll look bad ass. for now its great as is. i can't wait to load up all my gear and head to the race track this weekend.

Tellitern Rock-Off

2007-07-02T09:53:00.000-06:00

We can't be the only office in town that has formal Guitar Hero Rock-Offs, can we?

The office is short on desks. We've hired new developers, and brought in a small army of interns (also known as telliterns) for the summer which has created a desk shortage. Basically, one of the interns is going to have to give up his proper desk for a rubbermaid fold out table. To decide who the unlucky intern was, they had to impress us with their showmanship in a Guitar Hero Rock-Off judged by our american idol impersonating panel of peers. Not a bad way to spend a friday afternoon at the office... too bad we were out of beer, and rotten fruit.

EDIT -- Ado just posted up the video on the telligent blog... Rock-Off

Oh, almost forgot, I found a fifty dollar bill in the parkinglot during! as soon as i got back to the office i heard that the Supersuckers were playing, so i decided to spend it on a concert ticket and booze. It was a great show. I was just telling someone the other day how i haven't seen a good show in a long time, so this was perfect. I've been wanting to see them for years, but always seem to miss their show (same goes for fumanchu). they didn't disappoint.

Paintball

2007-06-25T15:32:00.000-06:00

On friday we had a team building outing at DFW Adventure Park in Roanoke. We all showed up at 10am in our various states of ready-ness for the day. some in full army fatigues, some in their hunting gear, and many others, like me, in t-shirt and jeans. The mood is mellow, and the faces look sleepy.

Now its time to get our gear together for the battles to come. you can feel the energy levels rise a little. We split up the 30-40 telligenti into 2 teams: team 0 and team 1 (dev. geeks.. haha), and head out for our first game.

Finally we are ready. Team 0 and team 1 line up on opposite ends of a 100 yard field scattered with huge wooden spools and various barricades. The refs give the signal and we're off. Suddenly these mild mannered developers are running, jumping, diving, yelling out enemy positions and plotting their demise. Paint is flying everywhere and the place literally sounds like a battle field, sans large explosions and airplanes. People are screaming in pain, others are laughing and some are just trying to catch their breath under their masks.

When our little 10 minute battle was over there was nothing but smiles and war stories. A little blood hear, some torn clothing there and even a painfull looking shot to the neck. This went on until we had exhausted ourselves at about 3pm. Dirty, sweaty and sore we packed it up and went home to heal our wounds and treat our soon to be discovered chigger bites. My count is 9 or 10 paintball bruises, and about 20-25 chigger bites. Some were much higher than that!

Today was our first day back at work since our little adventure and I haven't heard a single complaint about the day. I think it was a great success. I feel like i know my fellow telligenti better, and i hope they feel the same about me.

Big thanks to JasonA and Rob Howard for a kick ass day.

Other Kids

2007-06-19T12:02:00.000-06:00

I stumbled upon this flickr stream today. There isn't anything special about it (except for the bondage), but i found it interesting that while looking at it i was thinking "these kids look alot like us". I'm not sure where they're from... Germany? Poland? Sweden? The point is that I / we forget that there are young people all over the world that probably look, act and experience all the same things as the young, naive, american public.

it just reminds me how much i missed out on when i didn't get my ass over to Europe for my backpacking trip. i can still do it, but i probably won't. there is just too many other things going on in life now... its sad, but these commitments and activities that have taken over my free time and money are positive things in my life, so i guess i can't complain. i bet my trip would be a lot different now than it would have been 6 years ago.... i bet i'd remember a lot more.

Apple.com

2007-06-14T15:05:00.000-06:00

mmm... the new Apple site is nice. as my friend Steve put it "they just seem to do shit right"

damn straight.

HOW

2007-06-14T12:32:00.000-06:00

The HOW Conference in Atlanta was amazing. I don't even know where to start. I met so many fun people, and learned so much in all my sessions... how do i even begin to write a blog about it without it becoming a 2000 word mess of stories and experiences?

The Conference

The speakers and conference as a whole were great. I got so many great ideas on how to keep the creativity going, tips on how to deal with clients, exercises to keep you fresh and much more. I took one session about drawing, and i decided to make it a habit to do at least one drawing a day. I might start a blog or flickr account to keep record of them (i am a nerd after all), but i haven't decided yet.

Congrats to the HOW staff for putting on a great conference. I've worked plenty of large events before, and i know what kind of work goes into a show like this.

The People

I've met so many kick ass people in the past few days. I can't think of a single person that i met that wasn't happy to stand around and shoot the shit. I think the experiences i had with the people i met were even better than the conference itself. off the top of my head i'd like to thank Sonya, John, Quyen and Trent from Southwest Airlines, Kelly from Richmond, Rebecca and Carmen from Ohio, Cassandra from Oregon, Luther and Hailey from Atlanta and the hundreds of other people that i met. I can only remember so many people from the blur of events this past week. Of course i gotta thank my co-workers Sean and Dana for making this a great trip.

Atlanta

I really wasn't expecting much from Atlanta, but it was really a cool place. It was a lot like Dallas, but seemed like it had more culture. Dallas has some culture, but its overrun with superficial crap. On tuesday we went to the Aquarium for the "Descenders Ball". it was a very nice aquarium equipped with the biggest sea life exhibit in the world. After they kicked us out of there we all took cabs over to the Star Bar in Little 5 Points for some fun. It was very interesting to see a club full of such a big mix of people. there was the bartender with tattoos and a foot long beard, there were black kids mingling and dancing, there were hipsters, rollers, movers and shakers. Dallas is much more segregated than that. everyone was very friendly, and one local girl grabbed me as i was walking by, wrapped her arms around me and started talking in my ear about how life is too short to drink cheap beer ($2 pabst baby!)... great night.

Before heading to the airport on wednesday we went to the Coca-Cola museum. we had planned to tour the CNN center, but i guess we changed our mind. It was a pretty neat place. I liked the art and architecture/design of the building more than most of the contents itself. oh! i almost forgot... the coke museum sends web pages to your phone. its kinda creepy. i was standing by the entrance of the Aquarium taking the picture you see here, and as soon as i took the pict i was sent info about the museum!

Get some Rock'n'Roll

2007-06-07T10:14:00.001-06:00

I started listening to the GaragePunk Podcast a few weeks ago after i heard about it from Farmer Tim. I thought it was alright at first, but now i love it. They put out an hour long show everyday packed full of great stuff that you've never heard of, but wish you were cool enough that you had.

The GaragePunk Podcast is a network of home-made, low-budget “radio show”-style programs that focus on wild and obscure garage rock, proto punk, surf, R&B, broken blues, powerpop, punk rock, new wave/no wave, noise, and trashy, primitive rock’n'roll from the past, present, and future. Our show hosts are ordinary people — music fans just like yourself. Not professional disc jockeys. We just have an interest in music and culture that is anything BUT ordinary.

The House

2007-06-06T18:01:00.000-06:00

I finally finished my house in the colony. Its listed and i'm just awaiting an offer. Only problem is that no one is looking at it. Its been listed for about a week and a half and, that i know of, has only had one showing. I'm getting the feeling that its priced too high. I'm not in a hurry though, so we'll see what my Realtors do. I think if people see how nice it is inside it will be worth what i'm asking.

Now i actually have to figure out where i'm going to move when it does sell. I haven't lived in an apartment in about 5 years, and the thought of going back makes my stomach turn a little. Especially now that i'm in my nice, finished home. It looks like that may be my only option though. My main goal was to get closer to ayden so that i could help out nadine (especially since john just got officially deployed and is on his way to Iraq), and to spend more time with ayden other than just my weekends. I want to be able to pick him up from school and take him to karate or whatever. The problem is that there are NO rent houses where they live. Theres a couple of crappy apartment complexes, and a couple of nice ones, but no rent houses. In fact, there isn't anything even close enough in near by cities to help with my situation either.... this whole thing is becoming very frustrating.

Another thing thats bothering me is that I was also hoping to save some money on rent, but all of the decent apartments cost just as much or more than what i'm paying for a 3 bedroom house! So i'm moving into a housing situation that i don't like, and i'm paying more. Kind of makes me go back to the debate on if its more beneficial to be close to ayden and commute to work, or to live closer to work and commute to ayden (which would give me way more housing options). It makes sense at first to commute to ayden since i'll be driving to work more than i'll be driving to him, but a lot of the times will be more spur of the moment things where nadine needs help or i could come by for dinner, etc., so it would be nice to be close. It's also a pain if i have to drive all the way to grapevine to pick him up, drive all the way home, then drive all the way back to grapevine in the morning to take him to school and back again to work.... ugh. i'm getting a headache, and right now addison is sounding pretty good. even though i'd much rather just be in east dallas. unfortunately that makes for a long drive to work and to ayden.

the future is coming

2007-05-31T14:51:00.000-06:00

Wow... how awesome is this? A coffee table to match your new iphone. I'm picturing these kinds of computers in use everywhere before we know it... especially in the class room. how much different do you think it would be learning physics or chemistry from a teacher lecturing while using this technology as his chalk board? I'm curious to hear where other people see this technology going? of course there's the obvious - porn.

New York City

2007-05-29T16:25:00.000-06:00

I've never wanted to move to New York more than i do right now after going through this photostream. Having a young community thats tight enough to have crazy organized mayhem is amazing. seems like we had it at one time here in dallas, and you find pockets of this in many cities (take the chair races that i've heard about in Tulsa for example), but i've never seen as much as i found in this one photostream out of Brooklyn.

Hallett

2007-05-23T13:24:00.000-06:00

This past weekend Dad and I took our first ever trip to Hallett Motor Racing Circuit west of Tulsa, OK. Overall the weekend went fairly well. the track is nice and fun. It looks like it would be a blast in a car. We got there at about 1:30am saturday morning after navigating the crazy unmarked backcountry of north east Oklahoma. What a mess. We stoped at one town not too far from the track to ask the gas station attendant if she knew if there was anything to eat at the highway intersection about 10 miles up the road. She said "I don't know. I've never been that far." Hahahahaaa... my dad and i just looked at each other in disbeilief. After getting about 3 hours of sleep we got started with our busy morning at about 5:30am. The day went alright considering we only rode 45 minutes of the 2 hour endurance race due to mechanical problems. Dad worked the track all day picking up 10 or 15 crashed bikes durring the big bike endurance in turn 8.

Saturday night dad and I kicked back and drank a bunch of beer out of the CMRA Keg. Funny part is that we were both using the pit bike as our transportation. picture me riding a kids dirtbike with my dad riding bitch behind me. After getting a little drunk, we rode the bike through the paddock back to the truck trying not to crash. we found out in the morning that those little tires didn't stand up to that kind of abuse well... the rear tire was shot.

I joined dad in the corner working duties on sunday in turn 4 to recoup some of the gas money spent to drive out there. $3.39 a gallon sucks. It was a beautiful day with some of the best racing i've ever seen. Combine that with hanging out with dad, and getting paid to do so, and you have a good day.

Edit: these picts were just posted on the CMRA boards. they're really good picts of the big bike races on Sunday... Hallett Picts

Now for the technical stuff:

ran the track clockwise. temps were cool... maybe around 60º. bike could have used some jetting adjustment. 17:41 gearing. could only pull 5th if i had a good run or if going down hill. i think 17:43 would have been better.

finished 4th in the F6 sprint. beating 5th by .07 of a second... good times.

finished 2nd in the F7 sprint with a fastest lap of 1:59.637 on the yxr100

finished 2nd in the endurance on Roger's XR. spent the first hour and 15 minutes trying to diagnose a sick bike. replaced all the electronics and rejetted the bike. finally noticed that the choke was broken. fixed it and Roger put me out on the track for the remaining 45 minutes. ran a fastest lap of 1:57.677

Quote

2007-05-22T13:00:00.000-06:00

I go around some street corners
and have an idea in my head as clear as a picture.

I like the cut-out
I'm moving around in,
slowly, toward change.

Some things just wait for me
to stop defending myself.

-- Kark Krolow

Stolen from teheredto. its an awesome flickr photo stream from a couple of girls in houston. For some reason, i really like this. i really like most of what they do. its all very creative and alive... almost intimidating. There is a picture that goes with the excerpt, but it won't let me post it. follow the link above to see it and the rest of their stuff.

CS Theme Contest

2007-05-15T13:32:00.000-06:00

Community Server has announced a theme design contest for the new Community Server 2007. you must design and implement your your new theme in order to enter it into the contest, and that can be done in two ways:

1. Best Theme Export – Use the new dynamic theming functionality in Community Server 2007 to build a new theme. Most important part of this track is that you must be able to import/export the theme using the control panel. All files, CSS, and changes much be embedded in the single xml file generated by Community Server. The second rule of this contest is the theme must be based on one of the two default site themes Community Server 2007 ships out of the box.

2. Best Damn Theme You Can Create – Track 2 removes all the rules from Track 1. This theme can be based on one of the two we ship, it can be a custom theme from the ground up and anything in between. You are free to add/edit any inline code as well as include any kind of custom code you like. The only restriction is you can NOT change any of the core Community Server code. These themes must work with the out of the box Community Server 2007 download. You do NOT have to theme the control panel.

Judging will be based on creativity, originality and ease of setup. In other words, it still has to be easy to implement. i'm guessing that a bunch of hacks and trash code like mine won't impress any judges here. 1st place wins a MacBook, second scores an XBox360, and 3rd gets an amazon.com gift card.

The official contest announcement and rules can be found here. If you have any questions about it let me know.

BTW: i'm going to mess around with the new CS2007 a bit, so i might have another blog move soon. hopefully that'd be the last one for a while. i dont' have to many readers as it is, i'd hate to loose you guys just because i keep changing my URL.

Crystal Beach

2007-05-15T11:14:00.000-06:00

Last night i got back from Crystal Beach with my old buddy April and her family. I love going down there. April and her family are awesome people, and its nothing but a good time. We drink, eat, drink, eat, party, drink and eat. everyone is happy.

we got there friday night, and of couse started drinking. we took a walk down to the beach and got attacked by hundreds of mosquitoes the second we hit the sand. thank god for topical Benadryl. i had my doubts about it, but it actually worked really well. took almost all the swelling and itching away in a matter of minutes.

Saturday we wait until about 11am before hitting the bottle. we swam, walked the beach, ate crawfish and eventually found our way to the Crab Festival that they put on every mothersday weekend. Basically you eat lots of food and drink lots of beer. combine that with some live music, dancing and good people watching and it makes for a fun night. I even got my friend Brian from houston to come down with his wife brandy and his little sister. they seemed to enjoy themselves, but the two of us were itching to leave because he had his 4-Wheeler out in the truck and we wanted to go roost some sand with it. we got that 700cc beast on the beach at about midnight and proceeded to scar that poor beach for a couple of hours. we decided to quit before we got too comfortable and killed our selves on that thing. April came back after her ride "I was going 60 mph down the beach!!"

Sunday consisted of more drinking and cruising the beach looking for firewood for that night. we dug a nice pit and waited for the sun to go down, but no matter how much off we poured on ourselves the mosquitoes were relentless, and eventually drove us indoors. it was really disapointed since we had been looking foward to building a nice big bonfire since we got there.

I can't thank april and her family enough for another kick ass weekend at the beach house. hope to see everyone again soon.

i done got fancy

2007-05-11T09:15:00.000-06:00

I decided that it was time for a new phone. I was afraid that my old phone was going to die any day, and i wanted something that i could sync up to iCal and maybe even check email with. since the 50 dollar camera i bought off craig's list kinda sucks and is as big as a brick, a decent camera phone was also on the list of features i wanted.

I did a fair amount of research, and after talking myself out of the Blackberry Pearl and the Blackjack, I decided on the Sony Ericsson W810i Walkman phone. I really wanted to get one of the smart phones, and probably could have got a free one with some digging, but they are more than i probably need. I've only had the W810i for a couple of days now, but i love it. it seems to have just the right amount of features for me. It syncs up wirelessly via bluetooth to my imac to mesh my calender and address book together which is awesome. I didn't even really have to set anything up. iSync just handles it all for me. It came with a USB data cable, so i can hook it up and transfer pictures, files and MP3's back and forth easily, or i can just insert the memory stick into a card reader and do it that way. The phone came with a nice set of head phones, and they are the exact style headphones that i like, and it can receive FM radio, so i can listen to the radio if i want as well (something that i miss on my ipod). I haven't been as impressed with the 2 mega pixel camera as i'd hoped. the pictures i've taken so far have come out pretty grainy, but i think it'll be fine in some better lighting situations. i didn't figure out how to use the "flash" until yesterday (after i took those pictures), so i think that would have helped. I say "flash" because its not actually a flash, its a light that stays on. kind of weird, but might be cool because you won't have as many unwanted affects that a flash can cause.

During my phone research i learned that you don't have to get your phone from your provider to get the "new contract" or "renewed contract" phone discount. you can get your phone from the manufacturer, or from another source like amazon.com (where i got mine). their deals are much better than cingular, and you still choose your plan and all the options right there on that site. pretty cool. if i had checked out the pearl or blackjack on amazon i bet i could have got one of those free too, so its a good thing i didnt' look, cuase i dont' need one of those phones and i probably would have got one.

I'm off to the beach for the weekend. see ya!

Paint and Chick Fights

2007-04-30T11:41:00.001-06:00

My parents came up this weekend to help me paint the house. i bought an airless paint gun and we painted the entire house. now i have to go through and paint all the trim and cabinets, then the bathrooms and most of the ceiling.... ugh, its never ending.

On saturday night i went to sunshine to see last of the interceptors play. It was john's last show before going to iraq, so there was a lot of people there and it was a good night. There was even a crazy chick fight with about 8 girls attacking each other in the middle of the bar... like icing on the cake... except that half the people i was with got kicked out.

Baby Cakes

2007-04-27T11:41:00.000-06:00

Baby Cakes is the best thing ever... well maybe Brad Neely is the best thing ever... genius.

Radio Free OKC

2007-04-26T14:21:00.000-06:00

I use to be pretty good friends with a guy named corey a few years back. He since moved away to santa fe, and then back to his home town of Oklahoma City. We talk hear and there, and he even came down to visit and to see a Ted Leo and the Pharmacists show once, but his girlfriends car got vandalized in deep ellum and i haven't really kept in touch with him since... deep ellum can do that i guess (bad ass show though).

He has since started making a bunch of noise about Radio Free OKC and i never looked into it to find out what it was. i think i was expecting some political talk show that he liked or something, but today i discovered that its actually a podcast that he has been doing. I've been listening to the last couple of installments today and its actually really good. Aparently its the most listened to podcast from oklahoma city.

Upon checking out the myspace page i realised that a couple more of my one time good friends are also a part of the project, jamie and geoff. i say one time becuase everyone has moved away from dallas... except for geoff. he just has a girlfriend.

remodeling

2007-04-23T12:21:00.000-06:00

I really began to dig into my remodeling projects this weekend. i bought almost $700 worth of paint, a new airless paint gun and tons of odds and ends to get my house in shape to put on the market next month. on thursday night I patched up various dings and holes in the walls among other small repairs. Saturday morning i was planing on mowing the yard then finishing the last of my grout work on my new tile in one of the bathrooms, but the yard work turned into an all weekend project.

I realised that since the grass was so long when i cut it last time that the ground was covered with grass cuttings and dead crab grass (or whatever that stuff is called). so after mowing i gave it all a good raking and ended up with about 8 huge trashbags of grass and weeds. Hopefully that will allow some nice new grass to grow. i also filled the back of my truck up with branches that i cut off one of the trees and tackled the insane rose bush that was begining to take over my house.

Now thats all taken care of, i can get back to finishing up the tile and get to painting. if all goes to plan i can get new carpet installed by the first and get it listed the first week of may.

Friday the 13th, april 2007

2007-04-14T10:55:00.000-06:00

Friday the 13th has come and gone again. This time with a little more drama due to the local tornadoes and crazy hail. I started off the night leaving from work to head down to Elm Street Tattoo to get on the list to get tattooed (normally its so packed that if you don't get your name in there by 7 or 8, you won't get tattooed by midnight when they shut down), but due to the crazy weather i stopped off at steve's house for some shelter from the approching hail and rain.

After that blew by we took off to deep ellum to get our 13's from Oliver. A lot of people dont' get the whole 13 thing. they see it as pointless and trendy, but there is more too it than that. a small part of why we get it is just becuause its pointless and trendy, but thats not it. you have to pick your tattoo from a big board filled with around 100 variations of 13's: a 13 on a skull, in hebrew, tons of type faces, a 13 made out of boobs and a pearl necklace... i'm drawing a blank on other examples, but there are tons of them. lots of them are silly, and thats part of the point. I think i explained the reason we get them best yesterday in a conversation i was having: "...its a reminder of this point in your life. what ever challenges, happiness and feelings you have... it'll be reflected in that tattoo forever along with your feelings for the dallas culture". i can say that my 13 tattoos are not my best tattoos, but they are my favorite. they have more meaning than any of others, but its hard to explain that meaning to some people.

So, we got our tattoos, steve and his wife went home and i went to Tom Cats to see nadine and john. John is ayden's step dad, and he is about to get shipped out to Afghanistan with the marines. He plays in lots of bands and they're pretty good, but i've never been able to make it to a show. luckly i made this one... his last one before leaving. it was a lot of fun and i'm glad i made it. after that i headed back to elm street to socialize and drink some more free beer before going up to lower greenville to hang out with garrett, scott and megan for a bit.

it was a good night, and i love my new flying eyeball 13 tattoo. now i'm off to college station to watch the CMRA races at Texas World Speedway, and enjoy the rest of my weekend.

Aqua Tenn Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters

2007-04-13T16:26:00.000-06:00

I'll admit that there is a pretty good chance that this movie might be a waste of 8 bucks, or whatever it costs to go to the movies these days, but i can't wait to waste those 8 bucks.

Happy Easter

2007-04-10T09:42:00.000-06:00

I've been away in Phoenix the past week. My younger brother graduated from MMI last week and my dad and I had to drive there and back from Dallas to bring him back to texas. The school was pretty cool. they have literally thousands of cool bikes at that place just for the students to take apart and put back together. they're all donated by the manufactures, so after they're done using them at the school they have to cut up all the bikes into unusable pieces and recycle the metal. I'm sure that honda wouldn't appreciate the school taking away their business by selling the bikes or parts that had been donated. makes sense, but its kinda sad to see all those perfectly good bikes and not one of them gets to be used as intended. puts a little tear in my eye.

Overall the trip went pretty well. I wasn't too impressed with Phoenix though. Crime, smog and traffic was all i could see. Playing "spot the hooker" on Indian School Road is always a fun game to play with the family, and watching people play bumper cars on the freeway is entertaining too (i watched two accidents happen in one day... one involving 5 or 6 cars), but overall I didn't think too much of that city. they do have Del Taco and In-N-Out though... two of my favorite places.

On-Board Camera

2007-03-30T13:37:00.000-06:00

I found this on-board video that one of my racing buddies has on his putfile. its a little long, and the quality isn't that great, but it'll give you a pretty good idea what its like racing these little bikes. you can't race this close, bumping, kicking and rubbing on big bikes.

the video is of the backwards race. it's an 8 lap sprint and you run the track backwards. its usually a crowded race and you get absolutley no practice time. no hot lap or anything. you just grid up and go. what makes it even more interesting is that you use slightly different parts of the track than you do normally, so its slick too. we also cut off a portion of the track due to saftey reasons.

in this race we did do one sighting lap going the correct way around becuase they had just cleaned up some oil on the track and they wanted us all to see where it was. the camera man actually follows me around the track on the sighting lap (black leathers with 2 white stripes down back), but after that you don't see me.

so... here it is. Enjoy.

Oh No!

2007-03-30T11:38:00.000-06:00

I just realised that my 10 year highschool renuion will be next year! i'm getting old! 30 scares me. i've still got way too many sports, activities and things i want to do that are hard to do as you get older. especially for me since i have a bunch of fused vertebre (11 i think). i feel like degenerative arthritis is going to start setting in any day, thus ending my rough activities that i love so much.

telligent.com launched

2007-03-29T09:23:00.000-06:00

We launched our new Telligent.com site last night. Telligent is the parent company of Sound Creative (which i work for), and everything else here including Six Fires, Community Server and Code Smith. The site came out really nice. I like it a lot. I didn't have any hand in its creation though.

Some of the highlights:

A weekly (or more) blog on Telligent activities, thoughts on technology, creative, etc by the Leadership Team

Some really great case studies (more coming soon!)

A much more agile, and up-to-date look and feel

A really cool image rotator on the home page to showcase some of our work

... and all built on Community Server of course!

Denton race results

2007-03-28T17:11:00.000-06:00

This past weekend was round one of the TMGP series in Denton, Tx. I made the mistake of taking a clariton D on saturday morning, so the first half of the day i wanted nothing more than to take a nap. this is not a good state to be in while racing. it takes way more concentration for long periods of time than you would think. After about 2pm, i started to feel normal again and got up to speed. I didn't finish too well in most of my races, but i did manage a 2nd in the 19-29 age group sprint. The bike ran great. better than it ever has before. i was worried because i changed the oil before loading it up and noticed that the bike had sucked up a lot of water during the last race of the season last year. you can tell becuase it turns the oil into a chocolate milk consistancy and color. i wasn't sure if the internals had rusted up from the water sitting on top of the oil all winter, but i guess all is good. we were running 14-45 gearing i think and it was popping up the front wheel a little when shifting into 4th. i wouldn't call it a wheelie, but it was coming up. we weren't quite toping out on the straights, and i was topping out between the hairpin and the back chicane.

Sunday was the 4 hour endurance and we were riding peter's kx60. I can't believe that a kids bike is that fast! it hauled ass! That thing was a lot of fun, and tried to loop over backwards everytime you shifted. it handled a lot better than i expected, but we had NO front brake. it was a little scary. I only use the front on my bike, so adjusting to only using the rear (which is probably about 25% as effective as the front) was a challenge. I ran off track a couple of times, and even had a small crash in the grass once while trying to get back to the track. Eventually i kind of got the hang of it and was able to continue braking with the rear while diving into the turns. My fastest lap of the weekend was a 50.890, and peter beat me out for fastest lap on the team with a 50.843. Eric was our third rider and it was his first time ever on the track. He had only been riding for about 6 months, but he did really well. It started raining durring his 3rd stint, and he went down once, but he did a really good job in the rain. i think he passed everyone in the field at least once while the track was wet! He was super hyped about the day and is hooked already. I'm just glad i wasnt' out there in the rain. thats how i end up in the hospital. the track was dry by the time my next stint came up.

We had a few mechanical issues: sparkplug change, sproket bolts backing out and the sparkplug actually popping out. apparently it didnt' get tightened enough. we finished 7th out of 10 teams in the superbike class.

oh, and we gave ayden a mohawk on saturday morning before heading to the track.

Guns and Cowboy Boots

2007-03-22T09:53:00.000-06:00

Its been a while since i blogged last. I've been really busy with a big project at work thats hit crunch time the past couple of weeks. I also just haven't had much to blog about. My parents, ayden and I are headed to the track in denton this weekend so i should have something to write about next week. I'll be riding a friends kx60 motard, so that'll be fun. I've been wanting to ride one of those for a long time. If i like it, i might upgrade to one in the next year or so.

Ayden and i had fun hangin' out around the house last weekend. he finally decided that he wanted to wear his cowboy boots. i'm sure it had a lot to do with that "cowboy gun" that he acquired. He wore them all weekend even though they're a little too big and he had a hard time walking in them. He asks about every 5 minutes if we can go to the race track, and he is finally going this weekend. he hasn't been since last season, so he's ansey. He even called me this morning at about 8am to say he didn't want to go to school. He just wanted to go to the race rack with dad.

Apple Stores dominate

2007-03-08T15:21:00.000-06:00

Signal vs. Noise pointed me in the direction of Fortune's report titled Apple: America's Best Retailer. It talks about how sucesful the Apple Stores have been despite what the critics said about the chain when they first hit the scene.

(Fortune Magazine) -- "Sorry Steve, Here's Why Apple Stores Won't Work," BusinessWeek wrote with great certainty in 2001. "It's desperation time in Cupertino, Calif.," opined TheStreet.com. "I give [Apple] two years before they're turning out the lights on a very painful and expensive mistake," predicted retail consultant David Goldstein.

The report goes on to say that Apple stores make more than 10 times per square foot than the flagship Saks store, and over 4 times what Best Buy makes. Pretty amazing. I think the part i found most interesting, and very smart, is that they actually built a store inside a wherehouse before actually putting them out for the public. this allowed them to see what kind of interaction they got from their designs and adjust it to fit the experience they wanted us, the consumer, to have.

Another neat little fact is that they ended up with a design that invited customers in to the store to play, talk or learn. You never feel like you have to buy something when you go to the Apple Store. They eventually cut out anything that wasn't necessary from their design (much like 37 Signals does) and made it as easy as possible for the consumer to come in and simply experience the key products in the store.

The minis fit nicely into a real estate strategy that Jobs calls "Ambush the customer." He says he wanted to show Windows users "how much better a Mac is. But Windows users weren't going to drive to a destination." That's why Johnson waited so long for the San Francisco location - a corner off Market Street where people live, work, shop, tour, and play, as he puts it.

"The real estate was a lot more expensive," says Jobs, but it was worth it because people "didn't have to gamble with 20 minutes of their time. They only had to gamble with 20 footsteps of their time."

genius.

Modern Marriage

2007-03-08T12:34:00.000-06:00

I ran accross this blog by girlyunderwear about modern relationships. I think it hits on something that we all think about, especially those of us who arn't married, but we never really figure out. Its about the dynamic between couples today, and theories about why things work or don't work. most of the blog revolves around passion, sex and eroticism, and I think maybe those 3 things are the most important in a relationship. Like a lot of people, i've never really thought it though enough to come up with a clue of what that might mean, but i do believe that most of the rest of the relationship falls into place if you can keep those 3 alive. then again, how would i know? The article explains how it all doesn't always revolve around sex. It can be alive in many different ways.

this blog lays it all out. Its pretty interesting stuff.

I'm gettin' that itch again

2007-03-07T16:29:00.000-06:00

Ever since i was a kid, i've always had a thing for the '62-67 Chevy II. I don't know what it is about that car. i think its the simplicity of it. its small, to the point and just flat out makes a mean, kick ass little muscle car.

I'll be in the market for a new used car (why used?) next year, and i need to get something dependable. I need a decent truck that will get me around for a few years and haul my bikes around texas. I just can't kick that urge to buy a project car for a couple grand and go to work on it for the next couple years until i achieve that bad ass little shoebox nova i've been dreaming about all my life. I'm not the kind of guy to keep it in the garage either. I would drive that thing everyday. I'd also want to drive it from the first day i bought it, which makes things tough. i'd have to make sure i still had another vehicle handy, cause more often than not, your saturday project runs into wednesday and you're stuck without a car. My point is that as much as i want to start the process now, i just can't. I also don't really have enough garage space... even though i have two garages... weird.

Typography

2007-03-02T13:48:00.000-06:00

This is some genius typography. Its an animation (most likely adobe after affects would be my guess) of a Pulp Fiction scene. As you might expect from a Pulp Fiction scene, its not clean. stolen from Signal vs. Noise

Change of Direction?

2007-02-26T14:55:00.000-06:00

I'm in a bit of a weird spot right now. recently single (well... a couple months single), a bit lonley, and trying to decide where i want to live. I moved out of Lakewood recently, and into a rent house that i own in The Colony. I was about to move out of the house in Lakewood, and get another place in that general area, but at the same time i also had renters breaking their lease in this house. Instead of risking the house being empty for a month or three and thus paying double rent, i moved into the house temporarily. I'm doing some updates and cleaning up the mess that those kind people left for me to clean up, and then I'm putting it back on the market, and moving when i get a contract signed.

The plan has always been to move back down into the Dallas area. Preferably east dallas. Thats where my friends are, my hangouts, my life, events and all the other things that come with being in an urban setting. I really love it down there and i feel like thats my home. The problem is that its about an hours drive away from Grapevine, which is where my son lives with his mom. this doesn't seem like a big deal until you think about the fact that if i pick him up from school and take him home, that comes out to over two hours durring rush hour. That means when i get home its bed time.... there goes any chance of hanging out with him after school unless i pick him up at school and do something locally with him for a few hours.

So this weekend i began to weigh the differences between moving back down to east dallas where i have a life, or moving to grapevine to be close to my son. he's getting older now, and much more aware, so i want to be there for him on a more regular basis than i am now. I'm just worried that I'll be bored and unsocial out there. its so far from everything i know. the good thing is that i like to mountain bike, and grapevine is home to 2 great trails. I also race motorcycles, so i would still be doing these social things, but i wouldn't have much of that random kind of social life that comes when you can just walk over to the bar to hang out with friends and meet new ones. i also wouldn't be as willing to do all that driving to go to social events like art shows, grand openings and other networking events.

anyways, the point of all this rambling is that i think i've decided to move to grapevine. i can't justify not going out there with the noted reasons. i have to think of him before myself (not that i don't already). So, with a tear in my eye, i say goodbye to lakewood and east dallas. my home for most of the past 10 years.

I'm rich, Biatch!

2007-02-23T13:40:00.000-06:00

I got my tax return today. its not huge, but its enough to give me a good start on knocking out 2 or 3 debts on my way through Dave Ramsey's baby steps. I can't recommend Dave Ramsey enough. He's one of those "Get rid of your Debt, and be Rich" speakers, but he's not like the other guys. There are no tricks. no gimmicks. Dave is just an honest, church going guy who wants to help as many people as he can. the power of what he teaches is amazing, and you can tell by listening to his radio show that he cares about people.

the thing is, this whole problem american's have with credit and spending is like an addiction. most people have to hit rock bottom before they realise that they have to change what they are doing. most people don't think that there's a problem. they're paying their bills, they have a nice new car and a house in the 'burbs, so whats the big deal? the big deal is that they are just spinning their wheels. they have all this stuff, but it just keeps cycling. they'll sell that car and get another loan for a new one. they'll refinance the house to pay off their credit cards.... it goes on and on. you dont plan on that happening, but it does if you don't change your ways.

I just read his book The Total Money Makeover in december and started the steps at the beginning of January. I can already see the difference its making in my life. I see clearly whats happening with my money, and how to make it work so that i can be successful. I use to be concerned because i knew i was smart enough to make a lot of money, but i thought that i needed to change occupations to make that happen. Now i know thats not true. all i need to do is sacrifice a little, have a little dedication and think ahead.

Anchor Screen Printing

2007-02-23T10:33:00.000-06:00

Steve and I designed and built a site for our good friends Slim and Oliver Peck at Anchor Screen Printing a year or two ago. It was a brutal amount of work getting all the images for the shirts together, but we got it done and its serving them well.

today steve pointed out that he saw it on the Daily Slurp.

Community Server Write up

2007-02-22T11:22:00.000-06:00

I've tried to explain what Community Server is to a lot of my friends and family, but i always feel like i fall short of really explaining it well enough for people to get an idea of how powerful it is.

Design Meltdown posted a blog about it today that explains it well. They also have a few projects that I've worked on in the "sample usage" section. Gotta give credit to the guys here at Telligent for putting together a great web application that just keeps getting better.

Race weekend results

2007-02-20T12:04:00.000-06:00

The weekend went pretty well! it was cold as hell at night, which made it hard to sleep in the tent, but the days were nice. we arrived at the track friday night at about 9:30. set up the tent, blew up our air mattresses and tried to get some sleep. it got down to around 30º. combine that with excitment for the race to come and i didnt' get much sleep.

we awake at about 5:30am. Mom and Dad head out to the corner workers meeting (they work the track while i race) and i start taking care of all the pre-race business while trying to stay warm.

Our team owner, Roger, recently broke his finger and had some pins sticking out of it, so we weren't as efficient as we could be. This was also the first time that the three of us had ever been on a team together. We didn't make practice, but i don't think that mattered much. We've all been on this track before, so we know it well. we'd just have to adjust quickly to a new bike.

we started the 4 hour race with me on the bike. I goofed the start and started from the back of the pack, but was quickly passing those bikes i could. the bike we run is an XR100 dirtbike that is converted for roadracing. it falls into the slowest (smallest displacement) class in the field, so theres only so many people we can pass. to put it another way, there was 38 bikes in the race, and only 3 of them in our class... yet we finished 19th overall. that tells you we were doing pretty well. We also got 1st in class with a lead of 17 laps over 2nd place.

I did take one good spill at the very end of my second hour long stint. i was in a back and forth battle with another rider for several laps. i got a good run on him through turn 5 (a fast right hand turn that you go through at top speed if you're good) and made it past him before turn 6. unfortunatley i went into the turn too hot and lost the front at turn in. my shoulder and head quickly smacked the pavement and i slid off the track about 25 feet in that position. once i hit the grass the tumbling started. after about 3 of those i stoped and sat up on my knees to take a mental inventory of injuries. I was ok, but i couldnt' really see straight. i pick up the bike and its got a bent handle bar and some earth stuck in it in various places, but it looks ok. i get it started and head to the pits to let Darrell take over for the rest of the race. i think we only lost one or two laps.

the crash gouged out a nice hole in the shoulder of my new leathers, but it sounds like the good guys at Komodo are going to fix that up for me when i take them in for some alterations this week. By the way, the new leathers are awesome. i love em. that was the roughest crash i've had, and it was at about 50mph which makes it the fastest too. the protected me very well. my Shoei helmet did a great job too. i was dazed but no concusion.

well... since helmets protect your head by self destructing on impact, i'm off to do some new helmet shopping. luckly we made enough money working the track over the weekend to pay for it.

More picts can be found on my flickr account

CMRA Season Opener

2007-02-16T14:35:00.000-06:00

The racing season is finally here! its been a long off season as always. I've got the truck all loaded up with gear and I'm leaving straight from work to Oak Hill Raceway for round 1 of the CMRA racing series.

I will only be doing the mini endurace race this season. its a 4 hour race on a 1.8 mile road course. Basically, you have one bike per race team, and anywhere from 2-4 racers. you ride for however long the team decided your stint will be, then you come in the pits to hand the bike off to a teamate. sounds simple enough, but can be painful. We'll be on Roger's XR100 motard (dirtbike converted for roadracing - pictured at the left), so its a little more comftorable. usually i'm on my yxr100. its a much shorter bike, but has the same motor. its killer on the knees and after doing a 30-45 minute stint on it you can barley walk.

the weather looks decent, but a little on the cold side. when we purchase our gear (helmet, leathers, gloves, underarmour etc) we are usually planning for hot weather since most of our racing is done durring the summer. This weekend has a low for about 30º and highs at about 60º. the 60 sounds good, but i'll be done racing by about 1pm on saturday... so i'll miss out on most of that. not to mention we'll be camping at the track and corner working when i'm not racing in order to help pay for the weekend.

I also finally got a real set of leathers. i've been using a somewhat cheap two piece set up where you have a jacket and pants that zip together. now i have a one piece that was custom made to my measurements. i picked it up yesterday and can't wait to break it in... hopefully not by sliding my ass across the track.

Site Destruction!

2007-02-12T16:48:00.000-06:00

I could spend all day on here!
-- NetDisaster.com --

Vanilla Ice's "Tax Rap"

2007-02-12T12:27:00.000-06:00

This is the best thing i've seen in weeks! Vanilla Ice is doing a promotion with Turbo Tax called The Tax Rap. It looks like Vanilla taped the promo spot in his garage... kinda weird, BUT the videos themselves and the thing as a whole is hilarious.

Guess sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. Gots ta pay dem bills, ya know!

Broom's Blogs on the Daily Slurp

2007-02-06T11:22:00.000-06:00

This blog made it on the Daily Slurp today. i expected it to be a little bit harder to get recognized on that site than this, but hey... I'll take it!

i just noticed that its also on Screenalicio.us. i've never heard of that one. seems there is a whole community of these sites that feed off each other. I've found this site "featured" on a lot of sites today. hmmm...

by the way, their screen shot of the site is all messed up. i know this site doesn't display right in explorer, but is fine in firefox and safari. i really don't want to spend my time trying to figure out whats wrong with it in explorer... if you know and want to tell me, i'll fix it. anyways, this is what its suppose to look like:

if it doesn't look like that for you... post up. i'm curious how many people are veiwing my site with it screwed up. if its a lot, then i guess i'll fix it.... gahh

Mac Chicks and Icons

2007-02-02T13:57:00.000-06:00

Ray turned my on (no pun intended) to this site that features the "mac chick of the month". I have to say that i do enjoy Macenstein's mac chick of the month. and along the same lines is this youtube vid.

If you're like me, you're always looking for some web icons to use in your comps. we found a huge collection of free icons to use (edit: note the different licensing). i havent' looked through them all yet, but they seem pretty good. ––Max Power–– empowered by monkeys.

JobBurner.com on the Daily Slurp

2007-02-02T10:17:00.000-06:00

JobBurner.com is in the first slot of the Daily Slurp today.

JobBurner.com is live

2007-01-29T15:54:00.000-06:00

JobBurner.com launched this morning. So far we've got a lot of positive feed back on the site, as well as a couple of bugs... which is to be expected. I designed the logo as well as all of the user interface, which translates into the entire site.

There are still a few updates to the site that we are making to certain sections, and we will be doing another launch soon with even more features. From what i know, we might make some waves in the job search world... we've got some fun tricks up our sleeve.

Big thanks to Shane Henderson, formally of Match.com, for coming up with the concept and spending hours on end on development. we put in a lot of work on this site.

If you have any feedback, good or bad, let me know!

Ayden's Mohawk

2007-01-26T16:46:00.000-06:00

Ayden got a mohawk this week. apparently he decided that he really wanted one, so Nadine and John gave him one. Cool with me!

Blogmailr on the Daily Slurp

2007-01-26T16:30:00.000-06:00

The site BlogMailr.com got on Design Melt Down's The Daily Slurp recognizing "beautiful design". kinda weird since the daily slurp site isn't much to look at, but i do like design melt down. theres lots of good info on that site as well.

kinda neat. i've never had anything recognized like that. its not a big deal really, but its still cool. I also got a promotion yesterday to Associate Art Director. Not a bad week.

blogmailr is the second from the right on the second to last row. its highlighted in yellow...

Exploding Dog

2007-01-19T15:07:00.000-06:00

I discovered an artist today on the 37signals blog named Sam Brown. I think his stuff is pretty cool... the more i look at it the more i like it. I can see it as some kind of new art form... I'm not sure how to explain it. Its obviously very simple and basically composed of stick figures that have been roughly drawn on the computer (most likely illustrator). At first glace it could be confused by the work of an eight year old, but if you look at it a little closer you can see that there is more thought and skill put into it than that. they convey ideas and emotions very well, and you can tell that thought was put into the simple things like expressions and use of space. the core skeletons and structures of the characters are done well too. if you've ever taken an animation or cartoon drawing class you know what i'm talking about.

The other interesting thing is that he bases his drawings off of random titles that people send to him. Its very interesting to think about how he got from the title listed to the drawing. some are amusing in this way, and some are kind of sad.

anyways, take a look and tell me what you think. Dewit! I know some of you are reading this crap, so humor me and participate for once!

Microsoft CES blog

2007-01-08T09:16:00.000-06:00

We launched another site this weekend. its just a simple blog and photo gallery site for microsoft's presence at CES. we were under the gun on this project due to the holidays. i only had a couple of days for design and approval, then we only had 3-4 days to slice, code and de-bug after that. Considering the circumstances, it came out fairly well. if we had more time, i would have liked to have made some more spacing adjustments. it got about 24,000 page views on its first day (thursday jan 4), and so far today (monday jan 8) we have about 1.3 million hits at about noon, so thats always cool.

the booth tour was done by Waggener Edstrom (they're in Portland or Seattle, i forget).

you can check it out here: http://microsoftatces.com

Open Kapow

2006-12-06T09:45:00.000-06:00

I had another site launch this week. Its called openkapow. Its an online community to support kapow technology's RoboSuite software. I'm not sure how the software works, but you can create bots and mash up web pages with it from existing information online.

This site and client was a challenge to design for, and we're not totally sold on the final product, but overall it came out ok. I put in a lot of hours and thought on this project and learned a lot, so it was all worth it.

Here is an article written on the the site and Kapow from Techcrunch.

Christmas Pictures

2006-12-04T10:54:00.000-06:00

Nadine and I got ayden's pictures taken for Christmas a couple of weeks ago. I finnaly got them back this weekend to send out in xmas cards. I've never sent christmas cards, it kinda wierd. i feel so grown up...

They came out really good. Maria from Squaresville Studios did a really good job. I was impressed.

Thanks Maria!

Surgery

2006-12-04T10:28:00.000-06:00

I finally had my surgery last friday to remove the metal "pin" from my shoulder. I had broken my collar bone into 5 pieces in september '04 "mountain biking" in houston. i had a pin put in to keep it together so that it would heal properly.

A lot of people ask why i didn't just leave the pin in there. people give me looks like i'm just getting it removed so that i can show off the pin, or get pain killers after surgery or have some kind of addiction to pain. The real reason i needed to get it removed is so that i could break it again. Since i mountain bike and race motorcycles on a regular basis, the chances of me breaking my collar bone a couple more times is pretty high. its just a given, if you do these activities on a regular basis, you're going to break your collar bone at some point. Look around the next time you go to an event like a motorcycle or mountain bike race, and i'll bet you see a lot of unsymetrical collar bones.

If i were to break it with the pin still in the bone, the bone would have no choice but to break on the ends, making things very messy. Now that the pin is removed, it can once again break in the middle and do less damage.

So, here it is. my trophy. a 4" long screw with a hex head and a tip made to dig into some flesh and bone. its been 3 days since i had it removed, and i'm already feeling pretty normal again. about 4 more weeks of healing and i can ride without the worry of tearing things up in the event of a crash!

The Party System

2006-11-16T21:27:00.000-06:00

As my close friends know, I hate talking about politics. For one, i don't know enough about it to participate in a good conversation, and people get emotional real fast which drives me nuts. This will be a rare moment that you'll hear me talk about it. Feel free to comment and point out my ignorance.

I was listening to Michael Savage today on my way home from work. If you don't know, Michael Savage is the host of a talk radio program called The Savage Nation. He's also an extreme conservative. He had a man call in and give him some grief over something he had said, so Savage asked him if he was a liberal. The man said yes, so Savage began asking him some questions. I thought that this conversation was going to quickly turn into an incoherent mess like most of these things do, but instead the man gave him honest answers, and they had a very friendly conversation. I can't remember the exact questions he asked, but they were by definition the difference between conservatives and liberals. The man agreed with Michael Savage on every question, which brought up a really good point that i've believed in for a long time.

Or 2 Party system does not represent the masses. I believe that most of america is probably somewhere in the middle. This man, for example, considered himself a liberal, but the views that he was expressing were all "conservative" views. Unfortunatley, we are not given many options when it comes to choosing the men and women to represent us. There is such a battle between the republicans and democrats that its become destructive. We can pick the anti republican liberal, or the complete opisite. Even if we don't like either one we either vote for one or the other because they are a little closer to our own beliefs, or even worse, we vote for them strictly because we consider our selves a "republican" or a "democrat".

Everything is so split in 2 and overwhelming that a 3rd party never gets a chance. All we're going to get is the same kind of people, persuaded to go to the left or the right and stand for certain veiws to make sure that they win over some certain state. It's sad. The only way i know how to help the situation is to vote for those independent people going for office. I know they won't win. I might not even think they'll be the best choice, but i hope that the more votes they get the more it will bring hope and confidence to the next guy. Maybe someday we'll get someone that thinks with their head instead of with their advisors.

BlogMailr on Wired

2006-11-16T15:16:00.000-06:00

The BlogMailr site and service that we created here at Telligent and Sound Creative (site coming soon) is getting a Ton of hits, sign ups and press. I've never had anything get this big. Its a good feeling and I'm glad its representing us well.

Our CEO, Rob Howard, wrote this blog earlier this week stating the we got a write up on wired's blogs, Monkey Bites. We're also getting tons of hits, a hefty number of signups and other articles written daily.

That combined with my newly aquired project involving one very cool and influential music industry badass, has me walking with a smile on my face.

Official new blog

2006-11-15T17:18:00.000-06:00

i have officially moved my "bloggings" to this blog. Its not totally complete yet, but most of the stuff i want to be here is here. i still have some goodies to add to the sidebar (flickr gallery, links, music picks... stuff), and not all my old posts have been transfered, but there is enough here to call it "ready".

Let me know what you think... good or bad!

Edit: of course my page is completly screwed up if you're on a PC. why wouldn't it be? i just got home after "launching" this today, and checked it on megan's (girlfriend) PC to find that its not even close. ugh... if you're on a PC please check back in a few days so that i can clear up these issues. It does work in firefox on a PC. explorer is a pain in the ass. If you don't have firefox, i'd recommend getting it and using it. i hear rumours about the new explorer being good or something, but nobody has it yet...

BlogMailr

2006-11-08T15:51:00.001-06:00

My first site since I've been working at telligent is live as of yesterday. Its kinda cool, especially for designing and developing the entire thing in one week.

Its a site that lets you post to your blog via email. So you can blog anywhere, anytime. I'm actually posting this from my email right now.

If you want to use it, its free!

Published with BlogMailr

Nicky brings home the championship

2006-11-03T15:50:00.000-06:00

Congrats to Nicky Hayden for winning the MotoGP World Championship! There was a lot of people that didn't think he was going to pull it off in the last round in Spain, but when Rossi went down it sealed the deal.

Next years is going to be a very interesting season with the new bike rules. Everyone will be on new machines and some new stars will shine. mainly nicky's teamate Dani Pedrosa.

One of the coolest parts of Nicky winning the world championship is that he grew up here. He's from Kentucky, but as a kid he raced the exact same little series that i race (TMGP) and on the exact same bike. From there he went on to race in the CMRA which is another texas based series that i have participated in, and i'm hoping to get a full season's worth of racing in their series next year.

New Developments

2006-10-31T15:48:00.000-06:00

I started a new project the end of last week. we basically designed it in a day and are in the middle of development as i type. i think it's going to be pretty cool. i would show you what the site will look like, but for now i'll tease you with this.

oh, and a site i worked on launched this week. its the official blog for microsoft vista (their new OS). it can be found at http://windowsvistablog.com/. an unaffiliated blog about the site can be found here. i should note that this wasn't really my design, but i was heavily involved in the project and elements from my designs went into this one.. so i can take some credit.