Journal

Working With Kids and Animals

August 1, 2008

Hollywood has a saying: Never work with animals or children. The reason is simple, it is damn near impossible to avoid being upstaged by an adorable puppy, precocious 5 year-old or even an ill-tempered llama.

But while she doesn't have to worry about being upstaged per se my brave, beautiful wife has taken it upon herself to work with not only our temperamental cat and offbeat dog but with our twin children as well.

Things have been hard, but wonderful since the twins have come home. In and effort to keep some level of order in our home my wonderful, wonderful wife has managed to do the following:

Really puts the challenges of freelancing in perspective.

Thanks Sarah.

Hello World

July 22, 2008

So much for keeping up to date on the blog. Yikes.

I do have a good excuse, of course. Adopting twins will eat away at your time, both before and after getting them home. Between the paperwork, scrounging up every last penny and childproofing the condo the wife and I had very little free time before heading off to Ethiopia to pick up our kids.

Afterwards? Well, try running around in a circle bent at the waist while repeating "get that out of your mouth" over and over again for six hours and see how much work you get done.

As for Todd Silver Design, we (by which I mean the cat and I) have continued to grow as a company. Our client base continues to increase, I've finally been able to upgrade to a G5 as my main machine and I've been able to continue to learn new techniques and technologies despite the kids and professional workload.

I do need to find a better office solution, however. Right now, we've converted our dining room into my office. This has lead to several problems:

Sarah and I are looking to move in a little over a year, allowing us to upgrade in terms of space to the point where I'll be able to have my own office. Still, if anyone has any other solutions they could suggest, I would love to hear them. A year can be a long time, and there is now guarantee we'll be able to afford something with enough space.

I've also begun to tire of my branding. "Todd Silver Design" is a little to small for what I want to create, so a name change may be in order. I'm going to be swamped in the upcoming weeks with a large project, so a full switch-over won't be possible until the fall, but I'll be tossing around a few ideas anyway.

I've also considered a little tidy-up of my website. Nothing drastic, just a few tweaks here and there.

Stay tuned.

How To Kill Time

March 15th, 2007

The very best, and most efficient, means by which you can waste valuable time:

1-Visit Wikipedia: While vandalism is a problem, and you can't always trust the information on the more contentious issues—those with nerd-ish interests can waste vast amounts of time surfing the online encyclopedia. Want to check out a few of the better photos of the moon Titan? Have you wondered about the lasting effects Dark-Beast has had in the Marvel universe or wondered about the finer points of the pre-Revolutionary Romanov dynasty? Wikipedia is the place to be. Cryptozoology? Hey, if you wanted to know the all the beasts that walk the Earth in Mongolian folklore Wikipedia is a great place to start.

2-Sports: I'm a huge Edmonton Oilers fan. And, for better or worse, the Oilers have one of the best groups of blogs you'll find anywhere. Covered In Oil is both playful and heartfelt, while mc79hockey knows his stuff and has the numbers to back them up. Hot Oil rates players by more than their on-ice performance in a non-threatening groupie sort of way while Black Dog Hates Skunks has a little bit of everything. My favorite by far is lowtide. He balances a deep love for his team which is tempered by his encyclapedic knowledge of the game of hockey, the Oilers, their prospects and sports in general. Given the chance to choose between lowtide and anyone in the traditional media I'm picking lowtide every day of the week and twice on Sunday. He doesn't have to self-edit to maintain access as the "pros" have to and doesn't dumb down his stuff. Good work lowtide.

3-Penguin Game: If you value your afternoons, just stay away. I just scored 311.6. Beat that.

4-Puppies: The non-virtual variety. You have to take them out every 20 minutes to ensure your carpets last longer than a month, they want constant attention and enjoy chewing on anything, the more expensive the better. Computer cables are a favorite.

Re-design

March 13, 2007

No. I didn't like the brown either.

In an attempt to both stick with the latest in colour trends as well as set myself apart from the typical portfolio site, the previous design used a palette consisting of a subtle blue gradient (which was really quite nice actually) and brown. Lots and lots of brown.

Brown? Yes brown. Why not brown? Walk down a street and you'll see blue and brown hiding around every street corner, on mannequins wearing the latest fashions, on billboards extolling the virtues of the next great condo complex, on the Vancouver Police Department's newest uniforms...Okay, not the uniforms, but you get the idea.

Only, once the dust settled on the old design, and I was accustomed to my wondrous-amazing banner that stretched with the browser window (thank you Cameron Moll) and the glory that is a variable-width design (thanks to Dan Cederholm et al.)I saw brown. Lots of it. Everywhere. Brown and grey text. What started off as a daring colour choice became, well, drab.

And once the colour began to fade (in my mind if not the screen) everything else began to fall apart. Typography went from clear and legible to pedestrian, images which once were clear became undefined and fuzzy, bad news all around.

Thus began the long, frustrating road of re-designing toddsilverdesign.net.

I kept the tag-line "Great Design Grows Business" and started building from there.

New Logo: I've had the same logo since I started Todd Silver Design in 2004, and it's simple but serviceable. (While a logo which includes an eye-catching icon (hicksdesign, simplebits) is in my future I'm unsure if I will continue to simply use Todd Silver Design in the future as this business continues to grow. If I begin to bring in partners or start hiring employees I'll probably re-name the company to something that doesn't include my name.) But, despite the lack of capitalization throughout the web, the lowercase logo was underwhelming. While capitalizing the logo was a simple solution, it does capture the eye to a greater degree—especially when placed on a website banner.

The Banner: Great design grows business. Well, using vegetation in the banner seemed the most efficient manner in which to incorporate "grow" into the design and the stunning Photoshop brushes created by Jason Gaylor guaranteed a great result, so the decision to keep the floral look was an easy one.

Colour: No more brown. for extended reading, text looks better set dark against a light background so the dark brown was ditched and a lighter, more subtle colour was chosen.

Under the Hood: Every page is validates as XHTML strict with valid CSS used to create the presentation. It's a fluid site, with margins set with ems and relative sizing used for the text (save for the logo in the header). I've dipped my toes in the PHP pool if only slightly allowing me to make updates by only updating a few text files as opposed to going in an editing the html files.

What's Next: Well, cleaning things up behind the scenes mostly. Designing a website is always a dynamic situation, meaning I've written CSS, changed it, dropped something, then changed it again, meaning there is quite a bit in the CSS file that doesn't need to be there. I'll be cleaning that up over the next few weeks. My writing isn't as strong as it once was, which is a major reason I've included a journal, so I'll be going through each page and editing my content as well. What's not in store is another major overhaul over in the foreseeable future. Updates, of course, will be a constant. I hope.

Pippin: Thain of The Shire, Squire to Lord Denethor

January 12th, 2007

Todd Silver Design has a new employee. He's short, furry and really doesn't get all that much done in a work day. My beautiful wife gave me a puppy for Christmas (he was born a week before Christmas Day) who has just recently joined our home. House-training is nothing if not an exercise in patience, and there isn't much low to the ground that hasn't been chewed on, but I couldn't be happier.

I've grown up with dogs, and couldn't imagine living without one. Which, while renting in Vancouver I was forced to do. But now, I have a furry little buddy following me around wherever I go... But the chewing... God the chewing...