Are Recessions Always This Busy?
Piggybacking on the “Busy is Good” post, I have continued to remain incredibly busy since the beginning of the year. I would have to say that I am not personally experiencing the downside of this recession yet and I hope that continues to hold true. I’m not one to “knock on wood” but I am also keenly aware that everything could melt-down tomorrow. But I have to say that I almost feel guilty when people ask “how’s business?” with a trepidatious tone and a hanky ready to wipe up the puddle of tears that is surely ready to pour forth as I confess all the horrors of dried-up business and clients gone belly-up and all I can say is, “I’ve never been busier.”
Busy Is Good
I’ve found myself caught in the enviable quandary of not being able to update my blog due to an increase in business. I’ve had three unpublished posts sitting unfinished since the middle of January and haven’t had the time to really develop the thoughts out the way I would like. For me, posts do not usually fall into place (with the exception of this one) because I am forcing myself to post something–even if it is “thrown-up” so to speak.
It also seems ironic that the busier I am and not able to finish blog posts, I seem to get more ideas of potential good ones. For example, I’m just itching to write another post about AppleTV with all the news out the last week and a half about it. The only problem is that if you don’t sit down and start writing right away, specially if it involves breaking news regarding technology or politics, your final post–when you get around to finishing it–won’t be as fresh and relevant, not to mention, other news can break that might render your unfinished ideas and points moot anyways. So, the pressure is on to strike while the iron is hot and get that post finished.
In the meantime, back to werk!
Snopocalypse in Coeur d’Alene
Well, we’ve had a doozy. Just got done digging out of over 30″ of white stuff here in Coeur d’Alene. While most people aren’t surprised that it snows here in North Idaho, the fact is, it doesn’t usually snow this much. In fact, it never has snowed this much. At least as far back as they have been keeping weather records for the area, which is 1881. The old record of 15″ set in 1955 was trounced by almost double that amount (official Cd’A depth was pegged at 25″ but most places even within city limits got more than that).
I do have to say that the saving grace in this storm is that it was cold and the snow was light and fluffy. So, while shoveling light, fluffy snow can be a challenge in itself (think eating peas with a butter knife), it is not as hard as shoveling wet snow. And I have to give a big shout out to my neighbors who pitched in shovels, backs, snow-blowers and plow-equipped ATV’s to help everyone shovel out each other’s driveways. Even with all the help, I pretty much missed a whole day of work shoveling. And I work from home!
So, I’m enjoying the effects of Advil now and resting up for another storm supposed to hit on Sunday that they say will bring possibly another 4-6″ of snow. Bring it on. What’s 6″? Heck, I’ll take 12″! I just hope I don’t have to shovel 30″ of snow in my lifetime again!
MyFonts Beta is Looking Good
I got a pleasant surprise when I went to MyFonts.com a couple of days ago and saw the new sneak peak at the beta version redesign. What I once thought was my little secret will now be completely out of the bag. No longer will other designers be put off by the almost amateurish appearance of the old site this is replacing. MyFonts was one of those sites whose functionality more than made up for its lack of design sophistication. But I always felt if there was any site that deserved a better site design, MyFonts was it. And now it has one. And it is several orders of magnitude in both the design as well as the functionality.
Temporary Blog Design Changes
I’m having to temporarily change the theme of my blog because my last theme was doing some funky wrapping in Firefox and IE when you have custom Widgets applied. Even with the latest fix, I was still having the wrapping issues. So, for now, I’m using Brian Gardner’s very practical Revolution Code Blue 3.0 theme while I work on a new customized theme. I love what Brian and Jason Schuller are doing with Revolution2 and will give them some free press for little while. I’m also working on a new blog for Whitestone Design Werks that I hope to have up before the year is out as well. So, needless to say, I will be immersed.
Virtual Water Cooler Talk
Last Friday morning I was at the Coeur d’Alene Online Marketer’s Group monthly meetup at Calypso’s Coffee in downtown Cd’A enjoying a remote presentation by Matthew Ray Scott on “Virtual Business” (did I get everything?), and during the presentation Matthew mentioned that while there are many benefits to being able to work from home, that he still needed a virtual water cooler environment (yes, I know that I am violating one of Matthew’s recommendations to get rid of the word “virtual”, but for this story it applies). I had just been thinking about that very thing yesterday and realized that my combination of IM (iChat) and Twitter (Twitterific) sort of filled that need but I was trying to put my finger on what was missing that you receive from a real water cooler environment (besides cooler water).
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WDWerks.com Redesign Is Live
The new design for WDWerks.com is now live. It actually went live on Tuesday (as I posted last week, I was aiming for Monday), but I was still working on the portfolio pages and getting the slider jquery code to all work properly and just had a scrollable list as an effective placeholder. I was waiting to make any type of formal announcement until that part was ready.
I still have several things to finish on it. In addition to rewriting a lot of the copy (I’m always on the look out for good copywriters!), I will be implementing more jquery effects on the frontpage main image area. I am also working on new CSS for the form on the Contact Us page and will be applying the design to a WordPress theme and launching a dedicated blog for WDWerks. Currently, the blog link directs to this site but that will change soon.
Would enjoy getting anybody’s thoughts or feedback on it. And definitely let me know if you see any problems with it.
Channeling Cesar Millan
Cesar Millan has transformed our household into a bunch of Dog Whisperer wannabes. Being as that we’re in Idaho (and not just Idaho, but NORTH Idaho!), we’re not expecting Cesar to come toolin’ down our cul-de-sac in his Jeep and camera crew in tow anytime soon, so we’ve had to resort to the next best thing: throw all of his episodes into our Netflix queue and start “shushing” our dog ourselves. And our next-door neighbor’s dog. And our next-door neighbor on the other side. And our neighbors down the street and basically any dog that comes around our neighborhood.
Sneak Peak of WDWerks Redesign
My design business website, Whitestone Design Werks, has been suffering from a painfully outdated design and what is even more inexcusable, an embarrassingly outdated portfolio. My cliché excuse is the classic “cobbler’s kids have no shoes” and the fact that I have had plenty of business coming in to keep me more than sufficiently busy–even website design! I haven’t been totally slack. I actually began work on the redesign last December and have sporadically kept plugging away at it and have really been in earnest the past month to finish it up. It is the classic 80% of the time is spent on the last 10% of the work.
Well, I wanted to whet the appetites of anybody who may have visited the site recently and been disappointed with the lacking portfolio that there are better things to come. So, I thought I would throw a little bone and post a screen shot of the new site as it currently stands. Now I know that someone might think that its easy to post a Photoshop comp of a non-functional site, but you’ll just have to trust me that this is the real deal. My target goal is to get this finished by this weekend and have it up and running by Monday, 11/17. It will also involve moving the site from its current hosting service to Media Temple as well as all the email server configuration, and WordPress setup, etc., so that’s a tall order, but doable.
So, without further ado…
Pixar and the Reshaping of Disney Animation
This is all old news, but thought I would still go ahead and post this as we’re anxiously awaiting the release of WALL-E on DVD on November 18. Came across an inspiring article on the Hollywood Reporter’s website chronicling John Lasseter’s career that began at Disney after attending Cal Arts with peers Brad Bird, Tim Burton and John Musker, but came to a disappointing end after he was fired for going around a manager to pitch a project. The original 1977 release of Star Wars was an inspiration to John and so it seemed a natural for him to land at George Lucas’ nascent computer animation lab, hooking up with pal Ed Catmull that he eventually sold to Steve Jobs and which most know became Pixar Studios and as we all know, was bought by Disney just last year, bringing John Lasseter back around, full circle to not only return to the fold, but to become the shepherd of the whole flock that had been wandering in the wilderness of straight-to-DVD-sequel hell.
