hushMedia wanted to provide a more entertaining way to distribute promotional items for one of their clients so they hired my company to create a trade show kiosk game.

The backgrounds and prize revealing videos were created by 1UP Creations while I wrote the Flash ActionScript 3 code that powers the game and added special effects such as the elevator climbing animation, pulsing logo and red hover states for the buttons.

You can view an online demo of the game here: hushMedia elevator game

Note: as the game was designed to run directly from a computer’s desktop, depending on your internet connection speed there may be a delay while the game loads.

Today the PLANiT Measuring site that I redesigned for Modern Empire went live.

Due to a technical issue the News area which requires a working WordPress installation to function was DOA at press time. The company that hosts the site is currently addressing this issue and you should be able to read some PLANiT news by next week.

Update: Sat. Dec 5, 2009 – After some laborious effort the NEWS section is now functioning.

The details of the site were mentioned in my last blog post and the project proved to be a somewhat slippery animal. In the end the client decided to stick with their old client area so my password protected WordPress installation ended up on the trash heap.

Please check out the site if you like. It’s alway satisfying to see projects completed.

Modern Empire Inc. has hired me to work on a site for one of their clients, Planit Measuring.

As part of a marketing overhaul being overseen by Modern Empire we’re doing a redesign, adding some flash elements as well as incorporating an easily updatable News page and password protected Client Area.

Planit produces “real-time, digital floor plans for all property types across North America. Using our patent-pending MeasuringBoard® technology, we efficiently measure buildings and produce accurate CAD plans that are easier to read than architectural drawings and more cost-effective than traditionally measured floor plans.”

The goal of the new site is to better reflect what Planit does while providing an intriguing, modern experience for the user.

At this time, once you’ve entered the main area of the site, only three regions have a semblance of content, those are the News and Contact pages as well as the Client Area. All other pages load some standard and very bland filler content.

The News section of the site is built and awaiting the final items. It utilizes WordPress to load dynamic content that the client can update on their own. It also incorporates Shadowbox JS to load images from thumbnails. This is a great JavaScript plugin that loads content in a box surrounded by a dark translucent overlay. The content is scaled to fit inside the viewer’s bowser window regardless of what screen resolution they are using. Shadowbox will also be used in the other areas of the site to load images.

The client login has been created as another, separate WordPress site that utilizes the Members Only plugin along with some hacking of the login php file to create a personalized, protected area that the client can use to post specific content for their clients.

There’s still a lot to be done but I’m pleased to present a sneak peek at what will undoubtedly be an attractive and interesting website. Stay tuned for more information as work on the site continues.

It’s been a long time since I’ve updated the site. Work has been keeping me extremely busy. One of my most recent projects has been a flash website for Club Ash Bar & Lounge, a new club opening in Barrie, Ontario this fall. I’m pleased to announce that the site is now complete and online.

The site features, a music player, on-line VIP sign up, reservations and job applications as well as restaurant and bottle service menus updated from xml. The forms are sending information using PHP and the VIP form queries a MySQL database to provide applicants with unique confirmation numbers.

The management of Club Ash is also involved in publishing and web work and they’ve hired me for a few other projects that are still in development. I look forward to posting about these as they get completed in the coming months.

Someone on twitter posted a link to this satirical video about “The Vendor Client relationship – in real world situations” and I couldn’t believe how true it rang. So much so that I really didn’t laugh at it the first time, I just thought “Yes. Yes I know what that’s like.” Particularly the guy at the video store. I’ve had people say exactly the same thing to me while discussing a potential web design project.

Eventually I did laugh so I thought I’d share the laughter with you and if you don’t laugh at least you can get a glimpse into what it’s sometimes like to do my job. :-D

Enjoy!

One of the pitfalls of being a freelancer is that, on occasion, you run into situations where it’s necessary to do some work to get some work.

By that I mean, you have to attend meetings, prepare design sketches and present them to a client all before being paid a penny. Some times this pays off and some times it doesn’t. When it doesn’t, you find yourself in possession of “orphans”, designs that are doomed to walk the earth, never fully realized and unattached to a project.

This is the story of just such a scenario and the designs that resulted.

The Meeting

Nearly a year ago I was contacted by a fellow I went to high school with.  He had finished editing his first feature film and he claimed he wanted to update the film’s website to generate buzz about the movie’s imminent release.  We had coffee, threw some ideas around but mainly, we discussed my former film and television career (I used to work as an assistant director).

When the afternoon had come to a close he informed me that he was about to embark on a clandestine endeavor that would keep him unreachable for several weeks.  He would contact me afterwards.  He also revealed that he was severely in debt because of the film, a revelation that left me feeling skeptical.

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MIRROR CHECK

Day One:

• Nose hair under control!
• Eyebrows lookin’ good!
• Ears lookin’ good!

Day Two:

• Nose hair under control
• Eyebrows lookin’ good
• Ears lookin’ good
• A few more white hairs in beard than yesterday.  How?

Day Three:

• Long coarse hairs protruding from nose
• Eyebrows have joined in the middle
• Ear hair moves when head turns

Panicky search for scissors ensues.

Repeat

My sister had a baby last year and immediately caught the photography bug.  She’s taken some amazing photos with her digital SLR camera and has decided that she wants a serious venue to display her shots.

She’s found a number of photoblogs she admires and has ask me to design one for her.  The sites she likes are all wide, one column designs and she wants to have a nice animated flash box in the header.

The flash content should be fairly easy so the main challenge for me will be getting WordPress to bend to my will.   I’ve never done a one column blog before but WordPress is rather flexible so I think I should be able to accomplish my goal with a minimum of hair pulling.  My plan, at the moment, is to use CSS to place three sidebars in the “footer’ which will allow my sister some degree of customization using widgets.

I’ve come up with three designs for her to choose from. Each of these has variations using different colours or design elements. For brevity, I’ve chosen one example of each design to display here. The actual size of the content will be 990px across.

“Modern”

The main contenders for the final design appear to be this and the following one. I like this design as it’s clean and simple but still incorporates a few unusual elements to set it apart from an out-of-the-box blog theme. I’ll have to employ some flash text replacement for the entry headings as well as adding a gradient.

The look is attractive, uncluttered and classy.
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Anyone who uses Facebook has probably noticed and if you’re like me, been annoyed by the rash of lists that keep cropping up. They have titles like “20 random things about me” or “20 Albums”. To further irritate my inner curmudgeon the trend has recently been exacerbated by livingsocial’s “Pick Your 5″ which clogs the newsfeed with list after relentless list documenting every category imaginable from “My top five albums from my college days” to “Five worst movies ever”.

In fact, the number of “Pick Your 5″ entries, coupled with the overwhelming popularity of inane quizzes, that clutter the facebook newsfeed has me contemplating leaving facebook forever. But then I’d have to face the social isolation inherent in working from home and being the parent of a young child (but I suppose that’s content for an entirely different entry).

I avoided jumping onto the list bandwagon thinking that it was too self-promotional and oozed with, as my wife put it, “Oh, look at me! I have such interesting and eclectic tastes!” Until a friend from my OCA days tagged me on her 15 Albums list and I found I agreed with an astonishing number of her choices. Despite my misgivings, I started to ruminate on albums that somehow made a difference in my life. As luck would have it, this blog has been sitting here begging me for content for some time now so I’ve decided to just start writing about music in my life and see where it goes. I should be able to avoid appearing “interesting and eclectic” as there are some records that had profound effects on me but which I would hardly classify as artistic masterpieces or even listen to today. Having said that, these albums were once important to me and shaped my growth as a wannabe rock star.

One example of this is Supertramp’s 1979 album Breakfast In America

This is the first full length album that I remember buying with my own money. Up until this point I’d been a regular purchaser of 45’s and I already owned two singles from Breakfast in America: Goodbye Stranger and The Logical Song. By purchasing the album I was securing Take the Long Way Home the only single left on the album at that time (they would later release the song Breakfast in America as a single).

I was eleven years old and my family and I were in Bracebridge, Ontario visiting my brother’s godparents when I spotted the record in a store window. It was $5.99 and I decided then and there that I wanted more than just singles in my life! I wanted the whole kit and caboodle! I forked out the cash and hastily removed the shrink wrap. I was immediately fascinated by how the outer and inner sleeves were cleverly designed to look like a menu from a traditional 1950’s diner. I listened to the album often and having pulled it out recently I’d say it still sounds like well crafted pop, although to my modern ears, it edges a little too close to “easy listening”. It’s definitely the kind of music you might hear at the dentist’s office.

The Monkees Collection Incident

One particular album from my childhood was important to me but for reasons other than musical. The K-Tel double LP The Monkees Collection taught me a lesson about responsibility and was the beginning of my uncanny ability, perfected some years later, to hide unpleasant thoughts and feelings deep in the pit of my stomach.

When I was seven years old, for days I begged my parents to order The Monkees’ Collection. They were reluctant at first, citing the unreliability of the post office and the uncertain trustworthiness of K-Tel. But I would not be dissuaded. I explained that this was the ultimate Monkees collection! It contained two records! Two records! K-Tel was a major player! They could trust K-Tel!
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Just for fun I ran the Russian text of the spam in my last entry through Google Translate to see if I could get a better idea of what it read.  The result was much more natural in tone but I still don’t know what the spammer was trying to achieve.  The Google translation was as follows:

“Beware of moshennitsa!
It steals your money!
Pashkulskaya Elena
Date of Birth 12.11.1984
Place of Birth: City of Anthracite, Ukraine
Lives in St. Petersburg.
Under the guise of a customs broker engaged in financial fraud
intentionally delaying растаможку goods, bring your goods to forfeiture.
Be careful!”