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.

I had fun doing this one and I'm really pleased with the results. Seems a bit blog styled but then again the entire internet has gone bloggy so I'm not too worried.

The media player on the site is powered by JW Media Player which is simply awesome and well worth the price of admission. I also managed to sneak the Lightbox2 effect into the image gallery.


I even gave my portfolio a really quick clean-up & tweak to ready it up for the big overhaul I have planned.

They're not the only ones who are "Broke and Out of Money"...

Did a few feature graphics for Spike - you may see new ones I do in rotation at the site from time to time.


More at my portfolio site that is sorely overdue for a makeover. I've been rocking that site since '99 or something it's time for an upgrade.

Soon Soon Soon.

Are there any Puzzle League fans out there?

For those who don't know what Puzzle League is its' a puzzle game (duh!) similar to Tetris but more simlar to Kirby's Avalanche/Puyo Puyo. It's concept is simple, match up three pieces, they disappear and blocks drop to fill the gaps created which may match up three peices, etc. This allows you to set up elaborate multi-part chain combinations and combos with enough thinking & planning.

If you like puzzle games but are sick of Tetris, go out and get this one.

If you play the game add my DS Friend Code: 403-829-977-226 and let me know yours and join this Facebook Group if you want to find more peeps to play.

Man Wikipedia, what did we ever do without you?

We just released a new video over at TrueNuff that's a spoof of the popular Will it Blend? videos. We've got five of them planned, and a new one will be released every two weeks.

Don't snort this...