Smiles

Sometimes I get jealous of people with really great smiles.

This is probably why I dislike sharks so much.

How do they do it?

Halloween in New York City

This weekend we went to New York City for Halloween. Perhaps one of the most enjoyable things about the city is the sense of community and pride that fills people at these events. It's very easy to pick up a conversation with people very different from yourself, and I caught myself on more than one occasion sharing someone's excitement over some of the costumes. Conversations ensue and it is very easy to feel connected with others in that environment.

The parade still managed to impress with a 35% reduction in their funding and a shorter route. There were tons of people in costume - myself as Cosmo, one of the fairly odd parents.

 

Even without our bright green and pink wigs, children would scream (in a good way) at the very sight of us and exclaim, "It's the fairly odd parents!" At some point, an assumably drunk youth walked up to me with a scowl on his face and said,  "What are you supposed to be with that crown and those wings and the wand...some sort of...fairy?"

His girlfriend then exclaimed, "Oh my god, they're not just any fairies, it's Cosmo and Wanda!" After which he apologized emphatically.

So all in all it was a very enjoyable experience. We'll probably go into the city again next year.

And make Bean dress up as a lame vampire yet again.

Must Meme This

It's Not a Diet, It's a "Lifestyle Change"

The sedentary lifestyle that comes with working in an office setting is not at all conducive to staying physically fit. I have to admit that eating healthy and getting a daily amount of exercise (however minimal) was a bit easier with part time + freelance work. But I've been working my way up to running a 5K thanks to support from Suzi along with doing my old lifting regiment.

For cardio I'm working on the Couch to 5K program which is actually pretty good - it's a nice easy buildup to an otherwise arduous and intimidating 3 miles (the most I've ever done in my life is 2 in one run). I'm on week six, so this is how my schedule looks.

Day 1: 5 Minute Run/3 Minute Walk - 8 Minute Run/3 Minute Walk - 5 Minute Run
Day 2: 10 Minute Run/3 Minute Walk/ 10 Minute Run
Day 3:  25 Minute Run

Day 3 makes me

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Ender's Falls

Man - that new dedication to doing fairly regular blog posts died faster than a new years resolution. But I'm definitely overdue for an update.

In an effort to make Connecticut seem less mundane, it seemed like a good idea to go waterfall hunting in tandem with getting a good amount of exercise in by hiking to said waterfalls. The website New England Waterfalls has a fairly convenient guide with ratings, so we're using that as a basis for our travels.

This weekend Suzi and I headed out to Enders Falls in Granby. After getting lost repeatedly due to bad advice from Google Maps, we managed to get there in about 45 minutes. Below are some photos capturing a fraction of the six large waterfalls we came across. There were swimming holes, plenty of wildlife, and amazing streams through out the trail - definitely unexpected finds.

The photos don't really do Ender's Falls justice, but I really can't recommend this area enough for a non-strenuous walk through some of the best waterfalls in Connecticut.

This weekend coming up I'll be in Vermont...so more photos then!

Pesto Perogies

Pesto Perogies. I eat them because of the alliteration.

So today went fairly well food-wise, but I'm still lacking in the healthy diversity department.

Breakfast
Carnation Breakfast w/ Coffee - 250 calories

Lunch
Stacey's Pita Chips - 300 calories (perhaps the shittiest lunch ever)

Snack
Cheese and Crackers - 200 calories

Dinner
7 Pesto Perogies - 700 calories

Total: 1450 calories.

This is about reasonable... I don't think I can get away with eating much more than 1500 calories considering how sedentary office work is (unless there's a fire in the office or something). Tomorrow's goal is to fit some Cardio in somewhere.

The Competitor in Me

This year I ended up going to the Penny Arcade Expo in Boston. I didn't just go actually, I enforced which meant that I got to meet a lot of people responsible for organizing and running the event. It was a lot of fun meeting a variety of nerds with interests different from my own. We stay in touch with each other via a forum available to past and present enforcers.

Yesterday I came across a thread that announced a challenge: who could lose the largest % body fat by PaX Prime (September 3rd)? To say that I've let myself go this last year is a bit of an understatement. I've gained about 15 pounds and my goal is to lose all of it by PaX Prime.

Just to give you a little bit of a background, I used to look like this:

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How Gaming Will Combat Ad Immunity

 About two weeks ago I was exposed to an interesting presentation at the Design - Innovate - Communicate - Entertain conference that discussed how gaming has integrated with reality. "Design Outside the Box" is a lecture by Carnegie Mellon University Professor, Jesse Schell that explores how gaming, in the broadest sense of the word, has become an essential part to influencing behavior in the real world.

While I believe that the last few minutes of his lecture describe a future that I will not live to see, I think that the general theme of his argument, that games are going from influencing and evaluating in-game behaviors to real-world behaviors, is something that is on the cusp of going mainstream. He describes a car company that put what essentially amounted to a gigapet in your dashboard. When you drove appropriately, consequently saving gas, it would grow and provide immediate positive reinforcement for the sake of a desired behavior: consuming less gas.

The most relevant point to this post was Schell's reference to online advertisements and how gaming has a positive impact on their efficacy. "That's how it works," he said, "the games trick you into paying more attention to the ads."

As someone who grew up with the internet, I kind of wrote this off initially. While I had heard of the 40+ crowd doing their shopping through Google Adsense or banner advertisements, I sincerely doubted anyone around my age clicking on an advertisement for a Playstation 3 and purchasing it right there and then. A recent case study funded by Yahoo seems to back this claim, suggesting that younger people have a well developed immunity to online advertisements.

The research, conducted in partnership with an undisclosed national retailer, sought to accurately measure the impact of Internet display advertising across online and offline sales, by tracking people who had registered with both Yahoo and the store. The research found an approximately 5 percent increase in spending among those who had seen the ads–with 93 percent of those sales occurring in stores.

The potentially worrisome thing, however, was that among those under 40, the percentage was nearly zero. That could reflect the unpopularity of the particular retailer among that demographic. Or it could underscore a growing immunity to display advertising among the Web-savvy younger generation.

While there are certainly some confounding variables at work here, I seem to recall more and more articles cropping up about advertisement immunity, and the question any online media manager should be asking themselves is this: how do we combat advertisement immunity in a non-intrusive way?

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Good News and Promises of More Posting

After a year of searching for a company that matches my career aspirations and ideal work environment, I can stop the search and get ready to settle down with Cronin & Co. I will be working as an online media assistant full-time which requires working with multiple departments and projects simultaneously. I'm excited to be starting with a company I targeted back in October 2009.

This blog has been inactive for the last two months, but I hope to change that from here on out. You can expect a well articulated update every Monday and Thursday evening. I will probably post intermittently between these scheduled postings with things that I find amusing or have been thinking about but am making an effort to post something with a little more thought on those days.

Aside from that great news, I thought I'd share with you a new soundtrack I was exposed to from Professor Layton and The Diabolical Box, a Nintendo DS puzzle game that I hear is quite good. I haven't played it myself, but the music sounds pretty great.

This is an Exciting Week

That's really ambiguous, but more details to come.

Presentation on Social Media: Facebook!

The Windsor Chamber of Commerce has invited me to run a panel on social media with two other web developers. I'm going to be presenting information on Facebook and how businesses can use it to effectively reach target audiences. I am really excited about sharing my knowledge and current research on the subject. As always, meeting new people and helping them build a company presence through social media will be a blast.

You can find more information on the seminar here.

Pepsi Forgoes Super Bowl Ad for Philanthropic Marketing

It looks like Pepsi Co. is making waves on the internet with its decision to skip the Super Bowl for an entirely different marketing strategy that is a huge step up from the direction their competitors are going in. Pepsi is looking to make an impact not through a funny commercial, but by genuinely affecting change in the daily lives of a community.

I think marketing has always been about developing a presence and more importantly, an emotional bond between the consumer and the brand. Sophie Ann Terrisse, founder and CEO of STC Associates, a brand consulting firm, stated that "these days, brands need to become a movement, instead of just relying on good reviews for their Super Bowl commercials," and I believe she's an associate that gets it. A Super Bowl advertisement is an excellent way of communicating to a huge audience all at once, but is an extremely poor way of instilling brand loyalty and cultivating a lifetime consumer, especially when the cost is 2.5 million dollars.

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How I Conduct my Job Search

We live in a web 2.0 world, which is why it concerns me when a business or organization doesn’t have a website. The internet and technology make basic tasks, such as gathering information or in my case, recent job postings, a lot easier.

Rather than log into Monster.com and sift through the countless marketing jobs requesting me to be their “lady liberty” mascot, I use an RSS feeder to grab jobs from a wide variety of websites, including Craigslist, Career Builder, the Public Relations Society of America, and any other place I can get leads from.

Click to Enlarge

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Rhetoric & Cognitive Dissonance: Alive and Well

Language is a fascinating tool used to shape perception. Two sentences may initially seem to have the same meaning, but upon further inspection one can understand how, on a subconscious level, one sentence has influenced the audience in a completely different way than the other sentence.

After the Iran-Contra scandal had been formally exposed, Ronald Reagan famously said the following;

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Engaging Viral Marketing Builds Awareness: Ray-Ban's "Never Hide Films"

One of the small businesses I worked with has a tight budget and wanted to find a way to increase their search engine rank and build awareness about the services they offer. In my opinion, one of the most fun and creative ways to develop a presence on the internet is through viral marketing. One of the more memorable campaigns was Rayban's "Never Hide Films" video series.

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First Thursday Poster Designs for February

This week I had to finish up a poster design for First Thursday in Windsor, Connecticut. My client is the Windsor Chamber of Commerce and the goal was to showcase the stores while informing viewers of the great prizes the businesses were offering.

I decided to go with a fun and playful design - I used a cartoon boy preparing valentines for one, and then showcased the chocolate pearls being raffled off in the other. The chamber ultimately went with the chocolate pearl poster and I understand why; it adds a bit of context and visual appeal to the prizes.

The stereotypical pinks and purples are reminiscent of Valentines day. Light and colorful was the goal.

Chamberland Painting

I will be working with a locally based painting company called Chamberland Painting to revamp their website, and expand their internet marketing through social media such as Facebook and Twitter. I'm excited to help strategically position them in the market and help them inform others of the great work they do.

I'll be keeping this blog updated with my work.

Goals:
Redesign website
Develop content for main page
Provide a way for customers to request estimates
Create Facebook/Twitter pages to facilitate marketing

Contact Information

You know how to reach me.

Online Writing & Page Design Samples

World of Pwnage

Scaling Your Crosshair
Purchasing Equipment Quickly and Efficiently
Bomb Placement Strategy: De_Dust2
Tweaker's Guide to Your Rates in Counter-Strike Source

Invisible Gold

Creating Links on Your Page
Don't Get Tricked by the Domain Registry of America
Meta-Tags vs. Keywords: Your Site's Visibility

HostingCT.com

Created a Before & After Page for a Web Design Company

The Camper Bike: Fastest Way of Shedding Weight for Spring Break

 While this appears to be more of an artistic endeavor rather than the actual schematics to a soon-to-be product, the Camper Bike looks like a neat and heart attack inducing possibility.

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Playstation 3 Slimmer in More Ways than One

It appears that Sony’s new Playstation 3 Slim comes in threes. The new console, set to hit store shelves on September 1st, takes up 33 percent less space, is 36 percent lighter, and uses 33 percent less energy. While there are some aesthetic differences between the older and newer models such as the lack of a heat sensitive power button, the larger concern for some consumers might be if anything was drastically changed for this new model.

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Humorous Writing Sample

The Panda Problem

For those of you who want to believe in a God, I’ve got great news, he most likely has a sense of humor. The only piece of evidence you need in support of this claim is the Panda. Because of the panda’s cute and cuddly nature we have this great desire to preserve it. Yes, that appears to be the trend - if something is utterly useless but cute, let’s pour thousands into preserving it. Heck, I’m not saying it’s a pointless endeavor, only that the panda as a species does not have the will to live nor is it biologically made to survive.

First, let’s take a look at the panda’s colors. We’ve got a black and white bear that was once thought to be an exceptionally large raccoon living in south western China. When you take a look at its habitat, everything is brown and green. At this point one can conclude that the panda is one of three things: exceptionally lucky, has no predators, or is some sort of attention whore that relies on its cuddly nature to thwart the efforts of its predators. Indeed, the panda works some sort of magic in this regard, because as one may or may not know, cute and cuddly doesn’t always cut it – just look at the harbor seals in Canada.

You might be saying to yourself, “oh come on, if that’s all you got on the panda, then you can just quit cause you haven’t convinced me.” Well, I bring you perhaps the strongest piece of evidence: the panda’s reproductive process. The female panda is only fertile three days out of the year. As the female panda approaches her partner in the heat of the moment, the male panda will often look at her wearily as he eats his bamboo and swat away any attempts on her part to get the party started. Instead, the male is content with sitting on his butt muffin and getting fat instead of making his woman feel sexy. The panda clearly has lost the will to live and has no interest in preserving its genetics without the aid of panda porn.

And so we are left with one very important life lesson: be cute or die. I’m just thankful I’ve managed to hit the cute quota when it comes to other people. The true test will come after the Martian invasion. I, for one, will welcome our new alien overlords, their 12’x9’ cell, and three square meals a day.

Poster Designs

Menu Designs

Mailing Menus

Vector Drawing Practice

A vector drawing consists of points, lines, polygons, and curves to create a computer image. One of the leading vector drawing programs is Adobe Illustrator, but for my first vector drawing attempt, I decided to use a program that I am more familiar with: Photoshop.

Suzi provided me a drawing she had sketched and I used the under drawing as a guide for the Photoshop pen tool. The pen tool in Photoshop is horrifically unintuitive, but very powerful under the right hands. However, no guide on this planet will help you master it; the only way of getting the hang of using the pen tool is by creating drawings and shapes using it yourself. It's a little helpful to memorize the shortcuts pertaining to anchor points.

I followed a useful tutorial provided by Beavotron from the Penny-Arcade forums. I recommend watching that once or twice to get the feel for this vector drawing process. She uses the pen tool in Photoshop, however I recommend eventually getting used to using Illustrator, since it seems to be built for the sole purpose of doing vector drawings.

Anyway, here is the original drawing and the final product. Took me about 6-8 hours to complete.

Slowly Updating

Slowly updating this website with my portfolio using lightbox. I'll be writing about whatever interests me once I have the bones of this website finished.

Tomorrow to do list:

1. Add Menu Redesigns
2. Add Poster Designs
3. Add Writing Samples

Web Designs