A few more feature graphics for Spike. I might have said before that these are good little graphics for warming up the design muscles in the morning.


Still working through the plans for world domination updating my portfolio site. I've started sketching layouts on paper first to figure out some of the functionality - it's basically going to be an image gallery with slightly different organization.

Well this is post basically text but let's not get silly.

Currently in Seattle to watch a baseball game but here's what's been up with TrueNuff in the last little while:

• New Shirts For Sale!
  Four different shirts and stickers for sale at the new shop!
• New Subscription Options
  The mailing list sucks bingo - so we're moving to RSS & Email sign up at our site!
• J.Rai is Leaving
  Jeff is heading east-ward to Toronto - wish him luck!
• Greenling Custom Videos
  We did these custom video for a company in Texas that deals with organic produce.

Stay tuned for a video update and the exciting conclusion of the blender series next week!

That's all fer now!

I loves me some poker - Holdem' specifically. I ain't any good but I have fun playing (that's all that matters - right?). I've lost money here and there but I usually chalk it up to "education costs" as long as I learn from my mistakes.

Jess asks me if I can play "for fun" - kinda... but no. If you play "for fun" you have people going all in with a pair of two's with ten thousand fun dollars. Basically people play like morons when nothing is on the line so you can't really learn/practice strategies or get a feeling for the actual dynamics of the game so I insist on playing with some money. It doesn't have to be for much. If you put any amount of money into a poker game, be it a $5 buy in on a tournament among friends or playing online for pennies - people seem to smarten up because real money is on the line.

I usually put about $15 into PokerStars and play on the micro $0.02/$0.04 tables. Even with pennies people don't play like idiots and take it somewhat seriously and dollar lasts me a good 30-60 minutes. Some days I lose a dollar, some days I win a dollar. It's good bang for the buck for entertainment considering I could drink $15 quite quick.

Like everything Poker will only become a monster if you let it - know your limit and play within it.

It's true!

It's been two years since we released our "Mac Spoof" videos over at TrueNuff TV! and I marked the occasion with a blog post at TrueNuff with a bit of behind the scenes knowledge on how we did the background effect.

We've got a video update, the conclusion of the Blender series and some t-shirts for sale in the coming weeks.

Keep on keepin' on.

I sold my Pemberton Festival ticket. I can't spend $300 for the three day rapefest and then spend a few hundred bucks per day on booze to get so drunk I probably won't remember any of the bands.

I'm going to Seattle next weekend to watch a Mariners game instead. It's cheaper and if I get drunk and don't remember the game it won't matter because baseball sucks.

Just kidding, baseball sucks.

The HipHopSodaShop project is done. We did a "half launch" in mid December which contained many of the core features and then the project hit a couple snags. Many months and many consultants later the project is finally completed. The music player (powered by JW FLV Media Player), media gallery, and other features that didn't make it in for the original launch are finally in place. The media gallery and RSS based subscription mechanisms are things that I will be implementing into the TrueNuff projects in the near future.

For those who don't know the HipHopSodaShop is a chain of restaurants that is similar to the Hard Rock Cafe & Planet Hollywood franchises but with a Hip Hop theme.


I collaborated with The Rob for this project - he did the backend, php coding & databasing while I designed the project and handled the graphics and HTML/CSS stuff. The site is automated in key areas empowering the client to make direct changes to the site's content without the need for re-hiring us for future content updates. With peoples familiarity with Blogs, Photo and Social Networking sites these days I'm sure features like this will become standard in many of our future client projects.


Despite the scheduling setbacks and the interfering company growing pains the project was still lots of fun to work on and boy howdy The Rob & I learned a thing or two about projects in general.

My next bread and butter project is a re-branding of Tong Moo Do Martial Arts - more on that as it happens!

Re-brand THIS.

Whenever people throw around the term "Household Name" or "Brand Power" I think of my mom. She doesn't know about Flickr, Twitter, Digg or any other trendy/esoteric web sites (Not to take anything away from those sites, *I* like 'em plenty). She does however know about Facebook & YouTube. That's impressive brand recognition considering she doesn't use the internet, doesn't have a computer and barely uses her cell phone.

Oprah has a YouTube channel. Friggin' Oprah. Nobody one messes with Oprah. Nobody.

I was in Alberta in a town called Ponoka last week visting my dad & fams and hitting up the Ponoka Stampede (it's like a smaller/cheaper version of the famous Calgary Stampede).


I documented most of the trip through Twitter/Facebook status updates and took a few photos. That photo was from a trip a few years back... I'll get some new ones up soons. I know I should have posted about the trip before I left rather than returning but oh well - next time

Now that I'm back I can focus 100% on not updating this website.

Yeehaw!

Like I said earlier I've been doing feature graphics here and there for Spike. Given the fast turn around and 'disposable' nature of these graphics (they only last on the site about a week or so) I've had to pull out some quick & dirty gnarly photoshop tricks. Here's a rundown with some before & after shots.

In this this Laura Vandervoort (Canada represent!) feature graphic the photos provided by the client had her in blue bikini's - but not according to Photoshop



In this Manswers feature graphic we were going for the 'step' ladder effect. Where the breasts would get progressively bigger from left to right. However in the photos that were provided the girl with the biggest breasts was uh, kinda big in other areas too.



So I ended up using some very evil Photoshop trickery to slim her down a tad. I used the clone brush to remove some of the shadows from her midriff and did an overall horizontal squeeze. Nothing too blatant, but enough to slim her up a bit.

Don't believe everything that you see, especially in the Media.

In Hollywood anything goes.

I've finally "got into" Twitter after signing up sometime last month. I've even set up a feed up in this blog to replace the "forum threads" feed that was stagnant due to no activity.


Jess asked me "what's twitter?" and I told her it's a website dedicated to status messages. Facebook has status messages but Twitter's focus is just status messages.

These status message styled updates are called "tweets" - 140 character messages where you describe what you're doing, or what you're up too - and that's it. It's a growing community of people broadcasting their general day to day. It kind of reminds me of the IRC days when people would broadcast their currently played song - but not as annoying.

Twitter does differ from Facebook by adding the ability to reply to other peoples updates so conversations can arise - and I think that's where it's magic happens.

It's interesting that services like Facebook & Twitter (social networking / microblogging) have destroyed the traditional "internet homepage" of the past. That's not necessarily a bad thing though, remember when Geocities/Tripod/etc made up a big pie slice of the internet?

Yeah, I remember - the internet sucked then.