I’ve been working for one of the big home builders in Alberta, updating their website. It’s an interesting challenge because they have three different sites for each of the cities they build in—Letbridge, Grande Prairie, and Medicine Hat each with different needs. At the same time, they want to maintain a similar branding throughout—but with individualized branding within each community they build.

I’ve been working closely with their talented in-house graphic designer who already had a beautiful site designed. We’re working together keeping the site updated and it’s developed into something that I really like.

If you’re looking for a master quality home builder in Grande Prairie, Lethbridge, or Medicine Hat check out their website and give them a call. And as a bonus to me, if you are interested in getting them to build for you, let them know you saw their site.

About a week ago when I was in Medicine Hat visiting my family I went over to an old Pronghorn teammate’s place to see how he is settling into teaching at my old high school.

He mentioned that the principal couldn’t find anyone qualified to teach the drafting/design class that they used to offer when I went there. It got me (once again) pondering the idea that perhaps I would enjoy teaching New Media at the high school level. I really enjoyed teaching the New Media Movie Making Camps a couple of years ago. I would be a very good teacher and I’d really enjoy it. I figured that since I already have B.F.A. getting the B.ED wouldn’t take THAT much more time. So, I looked into it.

What I learned irks me, but it does explain why there are so few qualified New Media people going into education. The Faculty of Education at the U of L only gives it’s B.F.A. students three choices for a combined degree:

• B.F.A. (Art)/B.Ed.
• B.F.A. (Dramatic Arts)/B.Ed.
• B.Mus./B.Ed.

Notice the conspicuous absence of B.F.A. (New Media). The U of C and U of A seem to have similar options. Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t think it’s entirely absurd that they don’t offer it, after all New Media is still pretty new—however, I hope that the principals of schools within the region make it known to the ATA and local universities about the need for such a program. It would be nice to know they are at least thinking about it.

As for me, without drastically changing the world first, in order to be able to teach New Media I’ve got to go back and take at least two more semesters of “Art” before I could even start on the year and a half of classes and practicums that I would need for the B.Ed. It seems like a long haul with a giant debt attached to it.

I haven’t yet decided if it’s completely out of the question.

I just finished putting together a site for a small construction company in Drayton Valley, Alberta, Karleb Homes Ltd.

Using cascading style sheets (CSS) I was able to keep the “content” of the site separate from the design. I also used Douglas Bowman’s sliding door technique for the navigation tabs which allows greater accessibility for larger fonts and screen readers than say just using regular, old-fashioned rollover images.

The footer is actually a repeat of the top menu, placed at the bottom of the screen because that’s really where the user needs it most—ie. at the end of the page ready for when he or she is done reading. For the spacing of the fonts, I relied on Richard Rutter and Mark Boulton’s SxSW talk, Typography for the Web.

I took the photos inside Karleb Homes’ newest project. I used my sister’s brand new Canon 5D as well as two of her Alien Bees lighting kits. The yard in the photo used for the header hasn’t been landscaped yet, but will be replaced when the landscaping matches the quality of the house.

I’m very pleased with the outcome of the site and I look forward to the making the next one—I love creating nice, friendly, and accessible websites and I’m currently looking for more opportunities, so if you are in need, let me know.

There was an accident at work last week. No one was hurt, but I was almost seriously injured.

Here’s the situation, some walls were taken out of the change rooms because they are rebuilding everything. At least one wall had heating vents going through it and when they moved the wall out, they left the bricks on top of the vent.

There was a guy grinding some metal bits out of the ground right were I wanted to pile some blocks. If he hadn’t been there, I would have just been piling away happily. Instead I asked him if I could start my pile beside him—if I would be out of his way or if I should just wait until he was done. He said yes so I just walked a few steps away to grab some blocks from the pallet and a couple of guys—I’m not sure who they are, (they call them the tin-bangers), started hammering on the vents, presumably to bring them down. Even though this particular job was supposed to have been done long before the bricklayers got there and certainly it shouldn’t have been done while there were four of us working beneath the vents, I guess they thought it was a good idea to be working on it right then.

All of a sudden about six bricks came falling out of the sky and landed beside the grinding guy on the ground and right where I was about to pile my blocks. It was so close to hitting him, and me, it was just CRAZY. Some of the bricks hit the new wall that had just been built and knocked one of its blocks right out of the fresh cement onto the ground.

One of the guys stopped pounding when he saw the accident but the other idiot—probably the one that actually caused the bricks to fall, didn’t even stop for a good 30 seconds. Somebody yelled at the grinding guy to get out of the way because there were still more bricks up there and the guy just kept pounding. Did I mention he’s an idiot!?

Anyway, needless to say, I was pretty shocked that I was almost struck down by six bricks that fell from about four meters. That would have left a pretty deep mark.

Some might call it a near miss, but I think a near hit is a more accurate description. I also don’t think anyone reported the incident. “No blood; no foul” I guess. I can’t wait to finish this job.

A few weeks ago, when I visited my sister and her family in Drayton Valley, she was so kind as to send me home with a few odds and ends of food from her storage room. One of the items was a can of beef broth with an expiration date of October 2006.

The other day I made Chicken Stir Fry with my friend Heather and she suggested that I use chicken broth instead of water to cook the vegetables. It was a great idea.

So the next time I cooked Stir Fry, this time just for myself, since I didn’t have any more chicken broth, I decided to use the can of beef broth that Jackie gave to me—even though it said October 2006 on the top of the can, I thought, well, technically it’s only the beginning of October, so it’s probably still good.1

BIG MISTAKE.2

The first time I ate it, it was not bad. I had a bit of an upset stomach but I thought it must just be heart burn. As I packed up the leftovers into plastic containers, I poured the broth from the bottom of the pan right over the rice. MMMM, extra flavour I thought to myself—extra food poisoning is what I SHOULD have been thinking.

The next night as I regurgitated the leftovers, I thought to myself—even though I know I’m not going to die, food poisoning does feel mighty close. Since I had thrown up about as much as I could and still felt sick, I decided that it might be a good idea to eat a heaping bowl or two of Raisin Brain, you know to “push the poison through”.

Moments later I was revisiting the entire contents of my two bowls of cereal in several terrific “oooaghhhs”. I quickly came to realize that I should take deep breaths between bouts of vomiting because you can’t breath while your digestive track switches direction.

The next few hours were long and painful. I decided that unless I felt totally better, I would not be going into work this morning. This was not a bad prospect considering how much work “work” actually is and it would be a good chance to let the 7 blisters on my feet heal. However, number one, I didn’t want to call in sick on only my third day of work and on the Friday leading up to a long weekend (how suspicious) and besides, at 6:00am I was miraculously and disappointingly healed (disappointingly because hey, four day weekend) so it was off to work I went; other than another slightly upset stomach at lunch it now appears as though the food poisoning has completely cleared up.

The story of my blisters is another matter. Suffice it to say that the first three days of work have been an adventure. I need to get some new work boots ASAP and hopefully I’ll beef up in the muscles department so that lugging those heavy blocks around won’t be so hard. Here’s to the working life.

And for supper tonight, I went back to my trusty staple… frozen pizza cooked in the oven.

1. This is where one comes to realize how important it is to have a girlfriend/boyfriend to bounce ideas off each other, like hey do you think this mould can just be cut off or is this dark grey block of cheese a write off?

2. For those of you that skipped over this post because it seemed too long, the moral of the story is don’t play Russian Roulette with expiration dates, it will catch up with you.

I started my first day of work as a mud mixer today. (That’s the common term for brick layer’s assistant). I am now fully aware of why I went to university.

The guys I work with are nice enough though and the money’s good, so until I build up a little nest egg that I can use to move on to bigger and better things, for the next little while it’ll be hard labour.

I’ve been thinking strongly about starting an online store part of my website. The hardest part is trying to come up with a product that I can sell enough of to make it worthwhile ordering them in bulk.

I think I’ve narrowed down my choices and now, other than a couple of loose ends that need to be wrapped up, I’m not working for anyone so I think it’s time to get down to business.

I don’t want to say too much, but I’ll keep you updated.

The Outfit game for Xbox 360 is now in stores.

Last year I had the opportunity to be a small part of the creation process, helping with the motion capture setup and then again later as a production assistant. I saw a copy of the game on Friday and sure enough, my name is in the credits.

About a month ago the developers started posting a blog about the conception and realization of the game; it’s interesting to read the posts from some of the great people that I met in Vancouver.

Of course, I still haven’t actually played the game yet, but the reviews I’ve read so far have been positive.

Update: Here are The Outfit credits. Surf down to Production Assistant to see my name.

I’ve been working on a hockey fan site for the Halifax Mooseheads—http://halifaxherd.ca. When I started, I was a little worried that I might be overdoing it with the amount of red and black that I was putting in the design, but I think it actually turned out quite nicely.

Not only did I come up with a standards compliant design that fit with the motif he was looking for, but I also set him up with a copy Word Press so that he is now completely in control of his content. Word Press is great because of the amount of customization available through plugins (and brute coding—if you’re into that sort of thing). Word Press also makes it extremely easy for updating and modifying your site. It’s hard to believe something so valuable is available as a free download. Sometimes the free choice, is the best choice.

The site owner still has a couple of things he’d like me to help him with, but Moose Crossing is up and running and (in my opinion) it looks pretty sweet. Feel free to check it out and let me know what you think.

If you’re wondering about how the announcing went… it started out a little rough and got better as the afternoon progressed. I was kind of nervous at first, just speaking into the mic and hearing my voice echo across the pool. The stands were pretty full and there were swimmers and officials all over the deck. I was sitting at a desk up in the stands. I welcomed everyone out and then I said, please stand for the playing of our national anthem.

And then it happened. Probably the most embarrassing thing possible. In my nervousness I didn’t even realize anything was wrong. I could hear my friend Vicki laughing from the pool deck and I had the sinking feeling she was laughing at me. The song played on. Then about 30 to 45 seconds into the song, Vicki walks out where I can see her and yells up to me, “Jeff that’s the American National anthem”. Could my face be any more red?

Apparently when queueing the music I rewound the tape on the wrong side. Now the decision had to be made, do I just play the rest of the song out and have the Canadian National Anthem play after, or do I stop it now and fast forward to the next song? I elected to stop the tape and just announce my mistake, “Oops, that was the American Anthem”. The people of laughed politely at my blunder but I was more worried that the meet would get started late because of my fumbling around with the tape player.

There I was trying to find the Canadian National Anthem on the tape meanwhile everyone else was just standing there, waiting for the music to play. Finally I realized I needed to flip the tape over and rewind it, and once that was on its way I used the moment to announce some of the money winners from the races yesterday.

I have to say, it was really embarrassing but things did pick up after that. I slaughtered quite a few names but by the end of the meet while I was still butchering their names, however, I just did it confidently and quickly so that most people probably didn’t notice hopefully didn’t care.

I’m glad I went; I had a good time. I’ll be doing the announcing for the finals again today.

This photo of me was taken at a swim meet here at the U of L a couple years ago, but this weekend the Pronghorns are once again hosting their annual swim meet at the Max Bell Pool. I’ve been asked to do the announcing for the finals on Saturday and Sunday. Go Horns!

I think some people fail to understand that if you’re having a meeting in a room where someone else is working and you think it’s too hot then setting the thermostat down to 15° will make the air conditioning kick in right about the time you head for lunch and consequently freeze the room.

It’s SO cold in here.

I uploaded the new International Centre for Student website earlier today. You can see the old version and the current version.

I had an interesting night out last Wednesday evening. I met a potential client to discuss a potential web page project. It started off a little rough with me heading to the wrong Boston Pizza (there are two on the South side but it wasn’t specified which one) anyway when I figured out where I was supposed to be I had an interesting time chatting with a couple of guys from the prospective client company.

I don’t want to get into too many of the details of the conversation but there were a couple of things that hit me the wrong way. They asked me what if I was LDS to which I responded in the affirmative. Technically this is true. They laughed and said something along the lines of, “Good, you’ll fit in perfectly at work—we’re all LDS. We even start each work day with a prayer”.

Fit in perfectly? Somehow I doubted that but I nevertheless nodded and smiled. I thought he was joking about the prayer but as the conversation continued I realized he was completely serious.

The product they are pushing is some kind of natural health supplement. They raved about its amazing ability to cure various mental illnesses including bi-polar and ADD/ADHD. My main contact explained that he believed the primary cause of mental illness was purely not getting the right natural nutrients into the body. He mentioned his strong belief in following the Word of Wisdom (the Mormon doctrine of healthy eating and living) and how their supplement was designed in the spirit of that doctrine. Even as he was extolling the virtues of healthy eating a giant platter of chicken wings materialized on our table. Then another one; then a third one. For someone like me—I don’t eat a lot of meat—it seemed like a rather unhealthy choice for dinner. I suppose ignoring the rule “eat meat sparingly” might not seem at the surface to be extremely unhealthy but it certainly is hypocritical.

I had lots of questions for them about their product and what they wanted me to do as far as their webpage was concerned. I got a fairly bad taste in my mouth when I heard that they had about 50 different sites all designed to help increase the search results of their main page. The image went from bad to worse when they started discussing how there were people out there whom they believed to be connected with the pharmaceutical industry that were trying to give them a bad name. This in itself wasn’t so bad because it made sense that when a company selling a natural supplement encourages someone to go off their prescription medication and take their “natural” product instead, you’re going to upset the pharmaceutical fruit-basket. Not to mention potentially putting someone in serious risk—a thought that caused me to raise an eye-brow.

But what really bothered me was how they reacted to the supposed slander—they fought back with a fax and internet smear campaign painting their accusers as child molesters!

Woah! Hold the phone just a minute guys. Maybe you guys need those morning prayers after all. I honestly don’t know the truth behind any of the libel directed against you, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. However I can’t see how you can feel justified in accusing someone of abusing children when you don’t know straight up about where those stories started. Frankly the whole story sickens me.

I’ve now found myself in somewhat of a moral dilemma. I could really use the money right now, what with being short on roommates and having student loans to pay back but I certainly don’t want to be associated with this hypocritically religious company. The question in my mind now is do I stand up for my integrity or do I help promote a company which operates in such a sleazy manner just for the cold hard cash?

Ironically it’s the Mormon in me that says stick to your virtues and gratefully decline their offer. It’s the greedy bastard in me that says, well just charge a little bit more and if they take the offer then it will be worth it, but if they don’t then I can tell myself that I didn’t really want the job anyway.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Will I be joining them in the hand-basket? I think not.

I’ve been working at the university for a little under three weeks now. I like the work, I really like the fact that I’ve learned a lot about CSS programming and sometimes I find myself just cruising away at the code and then notice it’s lunch time or the end of the day. I hate pulling myself away when I’m in the middle of some great break-through.

Today for example I learned how to implement random image headers on the top of some of the pages I’ve been fixing up. The About Lethbridge page, for example, has both the new random image code and it also integrates an embedded google map that has the University marked in relation to the world. It’s pretty cool stuff - at least it gives me a feeling of accomplishment anyway.

I usually try to post links that I think the majority of my audience will appreciate and somehow I don’t think I have a lot of web programmers visiting my site but I guess you never know. Anyway I’ve found the following tips for webmasters from the W3C very interesting and helpful in my attempt to make better webpages.