Well you may have read previously that one of my clients, The Rum House, on Magazine Street, is going to be featured on a Food Network TV show called “The Opener” with David Adjey (David was a contestant on Iron Chef America). The Opener will be debuting in March of 2010.

I’m really excited. I know I wouldn’t use  the word “excited” anymore, but this time, I really am excited. Not only for the Rum House, but I get to see my work featured on a national TV series. It’s pretty damn awesome, if I do say so myself.

Check out the promo trailer for “The Opener.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csNh_-khisA

Stay tuned!

I have two resolutions I will try my hardest to follow. I’m not going to use the word “excited” in a post ever again, and I’m going to post more often. We’ll see how long I can hold out.

Shultzilla launches in a week!  Aimee and I are so stoked to bring you guys some awesome shirts and bags and other generally awesome things.  We can’t wait for you guys to see the website. I think it’s going to be a killer design, and hopefully it’ll be something we continue to do for a long time. It’s another WordPress install, actually.  With a shopping cart plugin that is really sub par, but I’ve done waaaay too much work trying to fix the bugs. You do get what you pay for, and unfortunately this one is FREE.

When we start making millions, we’ll hire a PHP developer to custom build Shultzilla v2.0.

Fred LeBlanc’s site is finally up! I think it’s a killer site, and I’m very happy with how it’s turning out.  Thanks to Fred, I’ll be working on Cowboy Mouth’s website design.  I think this one will be a great opportunity for me to try some new stuff and build my WordPress repertoire.

Lots of cool things a brewin’.  Keep in touch, kids.

I’ve just updated the websites section with a couple of new items, Jonathan Pretus, The Rouge Muse, and Puglia’s Sporting Goods I did at work.

I did most of these a few months ago, but I’ve been so busy I haven’t even had a chance to update my own stuff.  I know, I know… pathetic, right?

I’ve got some exciting stuff I’m working on right now, as well.  I’ll be starting the build of Fred LeBlanc’s (of Cowboy Mouth) new Website this week.  It’s going to be another custom WordPress install.  I’m really enjoying doing these custom WordPress sites.  They’re super easy for the user to update, and best of all it’s a free CMS.  Nothing wrong with that.

I’ve also got a few projects I’m pretty excited about, but can’t really talk about now.  I’ll be collaborating with my buddy Geoff Gauchet on one of them, which I’m really excited about. You’ll hear about it soon.

I’ve started the build on The Rum House website this past week, and I’m really excited about this one.  If you haven’t been to The Rum House yet, you really need to get over there and get yourself some drinks and some food.  I don’t know which one they do better. Go decide for yourself. We’ll be rolling out some new Drink Menus in the next couple of weeks too, so keep your eyes open for that!

Aimee and I are working on some artsy side project stuff, and we’ll be rolling that out within the next couple of months.  I’m super excited about what we’re doing, and I hope you guys like it too.

Lots of exciting things going on, kids.  Stay tuned!

I just launched my good buddy Jonathan Pretus’ (guitar player for Cowboy Mouth) new website, built around the Word Press CMS engine.

Check it out, if you don’t mind!

http://www.jonathanpretus.com

So apprently, there’s a new way to write CSS.  I just got a newsletter from Sitepoint with a new css language plugin using Ruby. It allows you to add variables into CSS, which means instead of changing the same color on 20 lines of code, you use the “@” tag in your stylesheet, specify the variable name, and now, you change one line of code for the entire site.

http://lesscss.org/

There’s some other great stuff it’ll allow you to do, like operations and nested styles.

I’ll be doing some experimenting this week and I’ll post my findings on how easy this reallly will be.

It looks to be something fancy!

Maybe I’ll be able to talk about this at wordcamp NOLA 2010!

I wrote this article for the Design the Planet blog, but I thought it important enough to re post.

The web has come a long way in the past nine years.  Unfortunately, there are still a few people out there (17% of you) that seem to like the web how it was in 2001.

This is unfortunate, because that 17% is missing out on a whole new world of interactivity, design aesthetics, functionality, speed, security, and quite frankly, I can’t understand why.

Internet Explorer 6 has been criticized by web standards experts, internet security firms, and designers since it’s launch in 2001.

In June 2004, the U.S. Government’s Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) urged readers to use ANY browser other than IE6, because of security flaws. Read the article here.

As of 2009, the security firm, Secunia, counted 142 vulnerabilities, of which 22 remained unfixed.  Some of these 22 are classified as moderately critical in security. Read the article here.

In 2005, PC World magazine rated IE6 as one of the 25 worst tech products OF ALL TIME.  This list is going back 30 years.  The list included some older products, but also included AOL and Windows Me, which turned out to be a complete dud.

On top of all the security flaws prevalent in IE6, there is much criticism from web designers and web standards experts regarding the functionality of IE6.

The problem is that IE6 does not support CSS2, unlike most browsers.  This means that developers must write hacks and other coding workarounds to ensure proper display.  This means a longer turnaround time and extra costs that are then passed on to the client.

Jeff Zeldman, author and leading web standards guru says

“IE6 is the new Netscape 4. The hacks needed to support IE6 are increasingly viewed as excess freight. Like Netscape 4 in 2000, IE6 is perceived to be holding back the web.”

IE6 does not support transparent PNG files, which are smooth transparent images, that allow for shading and depth on a web page.  Designers must include hacks that display less attractive transparent GIF files that leave a choppy, hard edged outline.  This option certainly lends itself to a less  fulfilling web experience.

Even social networking leader, Facebook, has decided their users using IE6 will receive an inferior user experience, by not allowing many features when using IE6.  They bluntly explain why, and encourage the user to upgrade their browser.

The thing that escapes me the most is the reasons for not upgrading your browser.  Aside from some large institutions and government bureaucracies, that require certain software that will only run on IE6, there isn’t much reason for a normal user to stay with such an antiquated piece of software.

Imagine you got a car in 2001 (internet explorer 6).  This car was comparable to other cars at the time.  It wasn’t the fanciest, it wasn’t the most secure, but there weren’t many other options, and it got the job done.

Now, imagine five years later, you were offered a brand new car. This car was fancier, quicker, safer, and it was FREE (internet explorer 7). You decided to turn it down.

After nearly ten years, you were offered a newer, faster, even more secure car, with side impact air bags and anti-lock brakes, all wheel drive, and stability control (Mozilla Firefox 3)… Completely free. But still, you turned this car down for your ten year old jalopy that was falling apart, had proven safety issues, and frankly was ugly as sin.

The logic escapes me.

As an IE6 user, you may not even know what you’re missing out on.  But, do yourself a favor, download a newer browser.  One of my personal favorites is Mozilla Firefox, an open source browser with lots of add-ons and extras. Google Chrome is a new kid on the block.  If neither of those entice you, you may want to try Microsoft’s replacement for IE6, IE7 here.  However, you shouldn’t get attached to IE7 too long, because version 8 was just released.

Trust us folks, you’ll be happy you did.

Also, on the list of soon to come updates are the new website for Omega Hospital and a new logo for Second Line Paint, which I helped develop the concept for, and then our very talented illustrator dan at Design the Planet took it and ran with it.

I’m pretty excited about both.

Hey there people.  I’ve got a few new updates for you. I’m really excited about these two new updates, to tell the truth, and I’m going to be adding them to my portfolio as soon as I get some free time (which isn’t a whole lot these days, unfortunately).

So, the two newest updates are a couple of sites we just launched for Design the Planet.  Puglia’s Sporting Goods – www.puglias-sporting-goods.com and Wilson Marsh Equipment – www.wilsonmarshequipment.com.

Puglia’s has been around for a super long time, and it’s an honor to give them an online facelift.  They haven’t had a website before and I think we’ve given them something exceptional. I used a lot of textures and imagery of the great outdoors to really convey the Southern Louisiana Outdoors feel they were going for.

When I was a kid, my family used to tailgate in front of Puglia’s, and I always loved the giant shark they had out front.  I was totally stoked to do a website for them.

Wilson Marsh Equipment is an awesome company.  They build these huge cranes that go out in the marshes without sinking, and to tell you the truth, I think I want the cargo buggy for camping.

They’ve been around for a long time. They’re looking to get into selling their excavators in Europe, so they needed a new website to impress executives abroad.  I think we gave them something impressive.

I’ll be posting some screen shots soon.

Living in New Orleans, it can be easy to forget you’re not really in that big of a city after all.  There’s an entire world, just a few miles away, that most people in New Orleans would never dream of venturing .

Unfortunately, St. Bernard Parish gets a bad rap.Aimee is a Chalmette native, so I’m down there on a regular basis.  It isn’t necessarily St. Charles Ave, but there is a certain charm about Chalmette. There’s lots of open land, diverse wildlife, and the mighty Mississippi.  And, while the air may not be the freshest around, it does have one thing Magazine Street doesn’t have.  Fresh Alligator.

Read the rest of this entry »

So I have to be honest, I was convinced. Word Camp, you convinced me. Twitter seems to be a very powerful tool. I’ve already gotten a great number of hits to my website from this weekend’s Word Camp.

By the way, I’d like to make a shout out to all my new “tweeps” (for those of you not in the know, a tweep is a twitter peep… at least I guess that’s what it is – I’m not entirely sure).

Anyway, I did learn some great stuff, and I hope to attend next year. I’d also like to try and see if I can speak about something awesome next year (if anyone out there reading this, I’m like the best CSS coder in the world – for reals).

I’ve also realized there is a whole lot of stuff about Word Press that I didn’t even know was possible. I can’t wait to start playing around with all of these new tools that I learned. I’m like so totally excited! OMG!

Word to your collective mothers.