I needed different parts of a single dynamic text field to have separate formatting. After some digging, I found that you can pass 2 additional parameters to the setTextFormat() method, the first is a starting index, and the second is an ending index. That will then only apply the formatting to that specific range of text in the TextField.

Example:

textField1.text = "Hello, my color is RED";
var format:TextFormat = new TextFormat();
format.color = 0xFF0000;

// setting up the range 19 and 21 will make the "RED" part of the string red
textField1.setTextFormat(format, 19, 21);

In order to duplicate, some extra code is required. You need to create a new bitmap object, and pass it the bitmapData of the original image, and then display them. Like so:

import flash.display.Bitmap;

//create however many instances you want
var duplicatedBitmap1:Bitmap = new Bitmap(Bitmap(loader.content).bitmapData);
var duplicatedBitmap2:Bitmap = new Bitmap(Bitmap(loader.content).bitmapData);

//add each instance
addChild(duplicatedBitmap1);
addChild(duplicatedBitmap2);

1. Add this somewhere in your shell profile.  For me, this is at ~/.profile.  Garrett supplied this tip to us.

alias server='open http://localhost:8000 && python -m SimpleHTTPServer'

2. Open up a new terminal window and change directory to the folder containing the work you want to stage.  Run the following to create a simple web server.

server

3. Now, you can go to http://localhost:8000 in a web browser to view the directory you launched the server from.

4. Install the localtunnel gem following the instructions on their site.  It’s pretty simple.

5. Stage your build using localtunnel by running (assuming you have a public key generated in the standard location) the following.

localtunnel -k ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub 8000

6. Now you’ll be able to view your work at http://****.localtunnel.com.  Badical.

nginx

Apache

As you most likely know, all the top shops in the industry are taking part in a voyeuristic web cam concept put together by the beloved FWA. It’s safe to say everyone in the industry has the luxury of working in inspiring spaces, so we’re gonna hold off on sharing that for upcoming shows.

Our initial FWA TV introduction revolves around the idea of what’s missing in digital relationships and taking advantage of the very personal nature of a web cam.

Here at BKWLD, we understand and take pride in meeting our clients and peers “face to face.” That being said, in our creative process we acknowledge that a project’s success starts with an in-person/real relationship. Everyone who uses the web, of course, has plenty of digital relationships (hundreds, at the least) where the odds are you’ll never meet that person in reality, nor even know what they even look like.

Our idea is to try to make that first step of introducing ourselves in a more human light to the industry. We all have our personas on the web, so here’s our chance to put our faces out there in a real, awkward, humble, yet confident, and approachable manner.

For the first week’s show, we’ll introduce to you our Sacramento team. We figure’d viewers have been checking other cam feeds here and there, so we broke down our Sacramento team into the following time slots below.

Get ready to watch us squirm…

Tune in Here @ 3:00pm: http://thefwa.com/fwawebtv

Team web cam time slots:

Veronica : 3:00
@VSkarshaug

Chad: 3:07
(too cool for school)

Jeff: 3:14
@jeffdoe

Matt: 3:21
@mattcarvalho

Ethan: 3:28
@iamethanmartin

Garrett: 3:35
@garrettb

Donald: 3:42
@buk_d

George: 3:49
@GeorgeToGo

Joe: 3:56
@bkwld_joe

Josh: (out of the office)
@joshreddin

Ryan: (out of the office)
@ryanvanni

Ok, not to be too big of a tease, here’s a recent photo of our Sacramento office (box checked). Next week our Seattle office will take part. I know they are chomping at the bit to show off their people and brand spanking new office.

Some fun times right there.

Over the last couple years we have had the opportunity to speak to various classes and programs full of folks enamored with the sort of work we get to do, and clients we get to do it for.  What’s funny is that we are always beside ourselves and left slightly confused with how enamored they are.

Just about this time every year, I get several emails from local, national, and some international folks looking for a summer internship.  And for the last nine we did not offer anything.  The truth is we never saw the value, for them at least, in having a handful of young people running errands, and handling miscellaneous to-do’s.  Nor did we believe we had the time to really offer the hopeful lot what they might be looking for.  But that was then, and this is now…

This is now our 2nd year providing an alternative kind of program.  One not for the faint of heart, lazy, or half-assed.  If you are looking for an internship that sends you on coffee runs, or where most of your time is spent on your own Facebook page, this isn’t for you.  If you are looking to get a first-hand, and hands-on perspective into what and how it all really goes down, this is for you.  It will be fast-paced, stressful, fun, exhilarating, you will want to pull your hair out, you will want to dance in circles.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
Over the course of six weeks, a select group of six interns will be fully immersed in one fast (normal in the real world) paced project. You will be a part of client management, pitching ideas, and complete digital strategy including web, mobile, social and experiential…as well as all of the production headaches and home runs that we get to experience in a full day here at the Buk.  All of this will be done for of a real BKWLD client and if your work makes the cut, the client loves it, your work may even be used in the real world.

WHO WE ARE LOOKING FOR
We are looking for a small group of dedicated and hard-working people.  We have no age limits, experience requirements, or education minimums.  However, we are looking for people with an inherent interest in marketing, design, and digital (duh). The right candidates will be interested in careers as producers, creative directors, technical directors, art directors, developers and storytellers. We expect this group to take it serious.  100% attendance, attention, and effort is required.

THE CALENDAR
In a nutshell, the weeks will look a little like this:

Week 1 – Immersion

• Introduction
• What is the process
• Client introduction
• Product discovery

Week 2 – Conception & Planning

• Story boards
• IA / Wireframes
• Revisions & Approvals

Week 3 – 5 – Production!

Week 6 – Case Study

• Document strategic analytics
• Write & submit case study

INTERESTED?
Sound good, want to see if you make the cut? Head over to bkwld.com/u to take the next step.

Although we didn’t snag a pencil, it was a huge honor to be nominated among the best in the ad world for our work. Making it through rounds of judging, and arriving at the final round of interactive projects made it all worth it. Being able to go to the awards ceremony has definitely energized myself and the rest of our team here at BKWLD. So stay tuned for some more amazing work in the future, and hopefully I’ll be able to report news this good or even better next year.

Event Photos

The first answer seemed like the wrong approach, having to add -webkit-transform-style: preserve-3d to every element and having the browser transform all the elements to a 3D state which would seemingly add more work for the browser. Not good, next answer.

The next answer was thought out more and seemed a bit more logical. Although for my build, both the header and footer have a fixed position. Header to the top, footer to the bottom, both of them pinned to the full width of the browser, no wider so it didn’t make sense as to why it was still flickering when the answer said it will happen if the elements are wider than the window itself.

The first approach I took was just to take out the header and footer CSS to see if it’d still flicker. It stopped! So something within the CSS must be causing this. I added the styles back in and only kept the styles for the actual wrapper for both the header and footer, still no flickering, so I was on the right path. After adding all the CSS back in and digging some more, I noticed the navigation, logo and some footer links had text-indent: -999em;. Taking this out preserved the header and footer completely during the animation and had no flickering. So I found the problem, the text itself was adding onto the headers width in the browsers eyes.

In the end, the simple fix was to add span tags around the text that I was negative indenting and hide that specifically rather than using text-indent all together. You probably wonder why I go into great depth on such a simple problem, but this has happened to be quite a few times before, and it is great relief that I know now what was causing it and how to fix it. I hope anyone who has had this problem before or are currently dealing with it find this article so you can move forward in your development and keep on making awesome things.

I’ve created a simple example for you to check out and see what happens. Simply roll over the rounded square in the middle of the page and let the flickering begin. Remember, only for Safari does this happen.

Another thing to keep in mind, is it also only happens if you have z-index on the parent element where the text is overflowing. I created another example to demonstrate this, the only difference between the 2 examples is this one doesn’t set a z-index on the header, which prevents it from flickering. Although for this build, heavy z-indexing is required.

Just copy the settings.yml file to config/settings.yml, then copy the settings.rb file to config/initializers/settings.rb. Once you’ve done that, restart your server and you’ll have access to all your settings.

You have your default configuration that you setup, then all your environments listed below that override any settings set in defaults. You’ll also need to create additional environment keys for any for other environments you may have.

I’ve found an elegant solution to this (in my opinion) by creating an object for each image, and to store information about the image in that object, including an instance of the loader. Let me show you.

Example

//counter to keep track of unique items in the array
var counter:Number = 0;

//base array with paths to the images
var images:Array = ["img1.jpg", "img2.jpg", "img3.jpg", "img4.jpg"];

//blank array which will be filled with objects that contain image data
var imageObjectArray = [];

for(var i:uint = 0; i < images.length; i++) {

	//create blank object with appropriate properties
	var imgMeta:Object = {imgPath: null, holder:null, loaderInst: null};

	//push the object into imageObjectArray so we can access it later
	imgObjectArray.push(imgMeta);

	//set the properties we know
	imgMeta.imgPath = images[i];
	var imgHolder:Sprite = new Sprite();
	imgMeta.holder = imgHolder;	

	//load the image here
	var l:loader = new Loader();
	l.contentLoaderInfo.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, onDoneLoading);
	l.load(new URLRequest(imgMeta.imgPath));
}

//function called when each image is done loading
function onLoadComplete(e:Event) {

	//use counter here to make sure we're getting the correct imageObject
	//we need to call each unique loaderInst here, so each image is unique
	addChild(imgObjectArray[counter].loaderInst);
	counter++;
}

This of course can be classed out and abstracted, but the basic principal here is being able to reuse the loader code each time through the for loop, and displaying each unique image when it’s done being loaded.

An additional benefit to this is being able to use the object again anywhere in your code, since all the information for all of the images is stored in imgObjectArray.

Here’s an update on our BKWLD goes to conferences initiative, where I attempt to suss out the merits and value of conferences.  We went to FITC SF the other month and I realized I never posted about An Event Apart Seattle back when we went to it (in April), so I’ll cover both in this post.

An Event Apart was great.  At the time I didn’t fully realize it’s value.  I felt like for every hour plus session there were only a couple nuggets I took away.  For the two days spent, a handful of moments didn’t seem worth it.  But I’ve really gotten my mileage out of examples of CSS2 techniques that were still relevant, CSS3 properties I didn’t realize had reached wide adoption, and ammo to argue the importance of planning for mobile.  I hadn’t made time to dig my hands into HTML5 canvas at that point and I can attribute the conference with spurning the ideas that went into an article in the latest issue of .Net magazine.  The speakers were also as entertaining as they were informative.  So I’ll recommend we go to An Event Apart again.  Oh, the food was really good also.  And the seats were super comfortable (with desk surfaces and power for laptops), although it was a tad oversold.

FITC had it’s ups and downs.  There were a number of engaging presentations that weren’t very educational.  These were things like speakers showing off portfolio work and experiments.  It was fun (even inspiring) eye candy, but with little discussion of how the work was done.  There were also some presentations we walked out on because the concepts being addressed were too novice-y.  On the other hand, there were some great panels concerning technical explanations of tools I’d heard about but hadn’t tried out yet.  Joa Ebert showed off his Apparat tool for optimizing and compressing swfs.  Colin Moock explained Union, a platform for creating multiuser web apps in Flash and JS (I’m very excited to use it on a project).  I also saw an interesting presentation on doing voice recognition in Flash, an overview of Unity 3D, and tracking colored dots with a webcam for augmented reality style stuff.  The location wasn’t great, it was really off the beaten path in the Mission Bay area of San Francisco.  So getting back into town was a cab ride.  And cabs were slow to show up.

So on the whole, I think we’ll do a careful reading of what the panels are before we decide whether to attend FITC next year.  If it was located closer, that would sway things as well.  Perhaps part of the reason An Event Apart struck a cord with me was because it was also more convenient.

Through some not very scientific testing, I found that 100-300 DOM elements is my sweet spot (though IE really needs it towards the low end of that range). Any higher and the browser noticeably chugs during rendering. I was surprised that once rendered, the browser didn’t seem to perform any worse during scrolling or resizing. Another thing I noticed was that Firefox visually added each element to the page iteratively (taking much more time), whereas all other browsers immediately showed all of them after the initial CPU churn.

Images

using images for custom typography doesn’t necessarily have a negative impact on a site’s performance and search engine optimization. If file size is carefully considered, and the proper alt text is used, typographic images can be a good solution. Of course, this technique should only be used for short bits of text, like page headings, pull quotes, and drop caps. I will argue that there are better options available today, but at the end of the day, images are a perfectly valid option.

Flash

The value of embedding fonts in your SWF files cannot be overlooked. Although it would be considered bad practice to utilize flash for only this purpose, if Flash is going to be used anyways, one of it’s major benefits is the cross-browser pixel perfection and ability to embed dynamic type.

Web Safe Fonts & the Font Matrix

The list of “web-safe” fonts is very limited. Normally, most web designers don’t stray too far away from Helvetica, Verdana, and Georgia. This list from 24 Ways helps expand that list to fonts that are common across many computers, operating systems, and installed software. Used correctly in font stacks, developers can target most computers that have software like Office and Creative Suite. Check out the list, you might be surprised by how many fonts are available.

sIFR

It’s worth mentioning sIFR here, although many developers have abandoned this technology in favor of Cufon, which I will talk about later. sIFR (which stands for Scalable Inman Flash Replacement) is a flash replacement technology. The philosophy here is creating the ability to bring rich typography to web pages without compromising accessibility or semantics. Additionally, one of the great advantages of sIFR was it’s fallback to plain text if Flash is not supported. Although it’s been criticized as hard to implement and somewhat buggy, this was the first real jump forward for web typography, and is still very popular to this day. sIFR laid the foundation for many great resources for custom web typography.

Cufon

The best way to describe Cufon is a next generation sIFR which is built with Javascript rather than Flash. This method has it’s benefits like not requiring the Flash plugin – good news for Apple devices. It’s also extremely easy to implement, and has very good performance, even for large amounts of text. You upload font files (with the proper licensing) through the Cufon site, and convert’s the file to SVG format. Then, the SVG file is converted to JSON which can be added to your site through simple Javascript. One downside to using Cufon is that many custom font licenses do not permit usage on web pages, so check the license or use a great free or open source typeface. There are many good ones out there.

If you’re looking for some high quality free fonts, Smashing Magazine is a great place to start your search.

Font-Face

This is by far the easiest method to integrate custom typography on the web. Using the @font-face property allows you to access fonts via CSS, and host the files on your web server. Of course, the same licensing issues remain, so make sure to chose a good typeface with no constraints. From there, you can use @font-face to access that font file for use with any CSS property. Add the font name on the top of your font stacks, and that’s it. There are a few hoops to jump through, mainly to accommodate Internet Explorer. IE requires a .eot file (Embed-able Open Type) to render custom fonts. Luckily, there are a few good online converters that will take common font files (.ttf and .oft) and convert the fonts to .eot. On a side note, I wrote a recent blog post about getting @font-face to work correctly in all major browsers.

TypeKit

TypeKit aims to take all of the hassle out of setting up @font-face, and they do a killer job at it. For as little as $25 per year, you can use fully-licensed fonts which are hosted on TypeKit. All of the licensing issues as well as the compatability woes are taken care of, and in turn you get an incredibly easy-to-use and extremely large font library at your fingertips. It’s definitely work a second look.

Google Font API & Font Directory (beta)

In the same veins as TypeKit, Google recently introduced their font API and font directory. Google hosts fonts that are licensed and ready to go, you just have to target these fonts on your site, and Google will do the rest. Their library is currently very conservative, but hopefully this will grow in the near future.

Google Calendar for scheduling projects:

At the heart of our scheduling setup is Google Calendar. Each employee at BKWLD has a calendar, and this is where we assign people to a project for each day of the week. The point here is to provide a broad overview of every employee’s week, not to provide granular details of specific milestones or todos. Each Friday Dan and I cover who is working on what for the following week and input it in GC on that employees calendar. We keep it high level, listing only the project name, and one or two words of what employee is working on, such as  ”Project name, flash dev.” If someone is out for vacation, it goes here too. In order to have access to coworker’s calendar’s just add them on your GC homepage under “add a coworker’s calendar” by entering their email address. Here is a screenshot of GC settings tab. You can sell the coworker’s calendars that I have access to edit, and other that I can only view. :

Google Calendar for day-to-day tasks

As producer, I’ll also use Google calendar to schedule internal meetings, client calls, or events outside of work for all us Buk folk, such as Ignite Seattle, the NW Pinball Show, or our upcoming Paintball outing. I know some producers prefer to use iCal for scheduling meetings, but I like Google Calendar because everyone invited can see the relevant info directly on the invitation, instead of having to open the invite in iCal to view the time, location, call-in number, ect. I’ve found that many clients don’t use iCal so it’s nice to have a tool that’s browser based.

Managing project milestones in Basecamp

At BWKLD we use Basecamp for most of our projects. At kickoff a producer will add the milestones from a project schedule to BC. From there, everyone assigned to the project can view the milestones and have visibility to both their portion of the project, and the overall scope. We also assign milestones directly to employees in bc. This is important because both Google calendar and basecamp milestones, as well as Unfuddled milestones, sync to iCal. To subscribe to a milestone calendar in basecamp, just go to the milestones tab, and click on the “subscribe to iCalendar” in red. You can subscribe to a global iCalendar where you’ll see all the milestones for each project, but I prefer to subscribe to each project individually. The advantage to subscribing to individual iCalendars is that iCal allows you to color code each project’s iCalendar different. This is really helpful if you are working on multiple projects concurrently. Check out this link for more info:

Using calDav within iCal to sync it all together

Now you can sync google calendars and basecamp to iCal. Consequently, by looking at iCal you will have ONE place to look to see the following:

a) events from your own google cal (meeting invites and your schedule on a daily level)

b) calendar of other people you have access to on google calendar (helpful if you are ever making a schedule or want to see who is working on what)

c) all milestones from any basecamp projects you’ve subscribe to. If the dates are ever changed in basecamp, just refresh iCal and you’ll see new dates updated.

It’s great to have one place to look to see how the project milestones from basecamp are lining up with individual employees schedule. To set this up, follow the steps here for syncing using calDAV on iCal Desktop by following this link and clicking on “Enable Google Calendar in Apple’s iCal”:

Recap:

Below is a screenshot of how your iCal will look after you’ve done all the setup:

On the top you’ll see Dave.Brown@bkwld.com – this is my BKWLD google calendar only. This is where I’ll see my meeting invites, and receive pop-up reminders throughout the day for upcoming meetings.

Next down is Gmail – this is a personal calendar, so by checking this box I’ll see anything personal. Helpful when I’m checking to see how a travel schedule lines up with  my personal life. I also add my wife’s calendar so we’re all synced up too.

Next down is Delegates. This is the list of all the people you’ve added on Google calendar under “add coworker’s calendars.” If you want to add/modify these settings directly in iCal, go to preferences>Accounts>Delegation.

Finally is Subscriptions – this is the list of projects subscribed to on basecamp. We’ve also be using Unfuddled at BKWLD recently and you can also subscribe to individual calendars through Unfuddled.

Now you’ll have complete access to all the info you’ll need for any project, easily accessible for a project. If someone asks you “who is assigned to x project and can I move them help on project y” you can easily see who is working on each project, look at when the next milestone is due, and see who else may be available to help based off of current workload.

Syncing with iPhone

You can also setup calDAV on your iphone so you will be able to keep your iCal and iphone calendars kept in sync wirelessly. You’ll be able to add/modify event made in Google Calendar on either you iCal desktop or iCal on iPhone without having to do a physical sync. Here’s how to setup CalDav on your iPhone:

Regarding seeing your Basecamp milestones on your iPhone the best option is simply periodically doing a physical sync between iTunes and your iPhone. Within iTunes you can choose which calendars you want to sync by going to the info tab> Sync iCal Calendars and selecting them there. This works for me because I often do a physical sync daily to update my podcasts and other content. Frankly we don’t move milestone dates around that often, so doing a physical sync every few days works out fine.

My favorite thing about this setup is that everyone involved in a project has the info they need. All devs and designers know when the next milestone is due for each of their projects. As Mr. Dan Fields would say, “Project Managed.”

Some of the apps listed are pretty standard and some not so much. We are always interested in exploring new apps so, please recommend away!

Jeff Toll – Creative Director

Photoshop - “Open and running every day, all day.”
TextEdit – “I get grief for using this but it’s lightweight and simple, simple, simple. I’ll start using a more robust text editor sometime soon. I use it for writing quick storyboards and concept explanation etc. ʻPagesʼ is upon the horizon…”
xScope- “Covers my ass for screen resolution guides at the very least.”
iChat- “Communicating with our Seattle office and random jackasses.”
iCal -“I’ve been getting better and better with my organization.

Robert Reinhard- CTO & Partner

Pages - “I haven’t touched MS Word in over 2 years and haven’t looked back. I love how it handles styles, it’s like easy CSS in a word processor.”
OmniOutliner - “For taking notes on conference calls.”
MAMP Pro - “Powers My LAMP dev environment. Makes it easy to setup additional testing vhosts (test dev rather than local host).”
TextMate – “When is 2.0 gonna come out?! I’ve been flirting with switching to Coda, but I miss some of the hotkeys.”
Socialite -“Aggregates feeds from Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, and Digg all in one place, plus allows me to post comments/tweets.”

Scott Thiessen – Flash Developer

Safari -“The Activity Window and Web Inspector alone are enough to make me feel like the king of the Internet.”
TextMate - “Lots of power for so little toolbar.”
Sequel Pro – “This is phpMyAdmin’s gorgeous, sophisticated sister. Unbelievable that this app is free!”
Spot Color + Developer Color Picker - “Slick way to grab colors from the screen, tweak them in your favorite gamut, and spit out hexadecimals.”
Quick Look - “Not really a stand-alone app, but I’ve definitely forgotten what it’s like to use a computer without it.”

Matt Aebersold – Flash Developer

Flash + AS3 - “Although thereʼs a steep learning curve, learning object-oriented AS3 has opened up so many doors, and is such an intricate and expansive programming language. Itʼs allowed me to create some kick-ass web designs.”
Coda – “Once a site project is completely set up, the complete integration is incredible, and so intuitive. Once I made the switch I’ve never looked back.”
MAMP - “Helped me do PHP dev on my local machine. Extremely helpful in every way.”
Things - “Awesome to-do app. Easy to set up and manage. So simple, and It’s what’s not included that makes it great. plus syncing over dropbox has make this invaluable. That said…”
DropBox – “Awesome cloud storage. If I point my apps there, than they sync on all my computers (iTunes, Things, etc…). Plus online file recovery is very easy.”

Sean Monahan – Flex Developer

Eclipse w/Flash Builder 4 Plugin - “Paraphrasing a Josh Reddin-ism, ʻItʼs a text editor for fully grown men.ʼ Upgraded from Flex Builder 3 stand alone and my opinion of Eclipse has greatly increased. Eclipse also has plugins for PHP dev, Unfuddle (our ticket tracking software) and Ant (for oneclick builds)- all this allows for a one-step development environment for Elastic.
Calculator -  “Boring, I know, but good for doing quick math. I use this a lot when programming Uls. Bonus: it has a “programmer” view for doing fancy binary math.”
Last.fm – “I like its music picks better than Pandora and the artist bios and photo streams are freaking sweet.”
Photoshop – “What doesnʼt it do?”
Adium - “A slick IM client that supports just about every IM service in existence.”

Aaron Egaas – Web Applications Lead

Chromium - “Browser of choice, nightly version of web inspector is as good as firebug without the performance hit.”
TextMate - “Code keeps me paid, and TextMate keeps me sane.”
iChat - “Remote communication, PM requests.”
MailPlane - “Multiple Gmail accounts? Like to keep ‘em separate? Notifications? Native web app feel with label and everything? Gets me into GCal, too.”
Terminal - “I gotta ssh into servers to push code, so I use some sweet aliases to keep it all organized.”

Dave Brown – Senior Interactive Producer

Adium
OmniOutliner - “Great for taking notes.”
FontLab Studio - “Converting fonts.”
Justinmind Prototyper - “Havenʼt really used this yet, but Iʼve heard great things.”
Adobe Media Player - “Checking/watching native flv.”

George Plendl – Front End Developer

Linkinus - “Best IRC client for a mac. irc.freenode.net, #jquery is a great place to learn and ask questions.”
Alfred - “Quicklaunch application for which aims to save you time in searching your local computer and the web. Replaced ancient Quicksilver app!”
Snippley - “Basic text and organization app.”
Beyond Compare - “Easily compare files, folders, images, anything. Itʼs great!”
TextMate - “The best text editor for Mac and a powerful abbreviation engine for HTML and CSS. Saves hours!”

Shelby White – Design Intern

DropBox - “Best app for managing projects between projects. I also use it for freelance in getting assets.”
Adium/iChat - “Adium manages contacts better but iChat actually sends files.”
Coda - “My favorite app with FTP for html/css.”
Wordpress - “ Where I’ve spent most of my last year and a half.”
TweetDeck - “Nice for managing my tweets…”

Joe Leoni – Producer

TweetDeck - “Best way to stay informed of Chad Ochocincoʼs daily workouts or Snoop Doggʼs ʻbreakfast activitiesʼ.”
iChat - “Instant messaging: extreme convenience and extreme inconvenience all wrapped up into one.”
Garageband - “Now anyone can be a MC, and youʼll probably be better than 99% of radio hip-hop.”
Pages - “Iʼd rather be using Word, but close enough.”
Solitaire - “The best way to play with yourself.”

Veronica Skarshaug – Administrative Assistant

Stickies - “Nice way to save on physical sticky pads, and info that I need on a daily basis is easily accessible.”
TaskMate - “Great for keeping my to-do’s in order.”
Numbers - “I like to make spreadsheets, I’m a total nerd.”
Preview - “Makes things easy, easy, lemon squeezy.”
iChat - “Because, duh.”

The Hit List – “Awesome and free GTD app to keep my days/life organized.”
Transmit – “Gorgeous UI and experience to easily upload my files.”
Adium – “My favorite chat client especially when used with the iPhone message style.”
Cicero – “Dashboard widget that fulfills my Lorem Ipsum needs. Used and abused daily.”
Photoshop – “There is a light on under this icon all day. Content aware fill has come in handy on more than 1 occasion.”

1) Follow these instructions from Rocket Theme to the letter.  I didn’t need to deal with any of the “Possible Issues” section.
2) Go into “/Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/ssl.conf” and add a new vhost within the <IfDefine> blocks at the end of the page.  This vhost will mirror the settings of the vhost you would have already setup in MAMP:

<VirtualHost test.dev:443>
DocumentRoot "/Path/to/document/root"
ServerName test.dev
SSLEngine on
SSLCertificateFile /Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/ssl_crt/server.crt
SSLCertificateKeyFile /Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/ssl_key/server.key
<Directory "/Path/to/document/root">
Options All
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>

3) That’s really it.  Restart MAMP and you’re good to go.

Thanks Greg Patterson of ground(ctrl) for putting this together.  Game time in a couple hours!

Update:

BKWLD Wins!  It was a great day and a close game.  Ground(ctrl) led with an early lead that they kept through most of the innings but BKWLD gradually wore away at it, eking out a victory in the last inning thanks to Shelby.

Central Park

Yummy Dinners

Racking up loads of frequent flyer miles for personal use…..

All sweet  perks of tireless travel, however the insights gained and personal bonds created with my clients far out way the value of my deep and diverse Gowalla passport!

Over the past three years BKWLD has cultivated a fairly rich stable of retail clients; challenger brands that need to create a one on one relationship with consumers through a truly “branded” web experience in order to grow market share and earn relevance in saturated vertical categories.  A brand website, not to be confused with a B2C e-store (even though they can work in cohesion) in the one chance brands have to, truly tell a story especially when we are dealing with minimal media dollars  limited to aspirational life-style shots and cheesy headlines for half page ad in the typical industry pubs. To truly look  and the DNA of the brand, the common thread of products sold and the motivation of the consumers purchase decision is a healthy and sometimes eye-opening exercise I enjoy conducting at our now custom and mandatory brand discovery kick-off meetings.

So now myself, the assigned CD, PM and often times CEO Ryan Vanni (he picks great restaurants) all shlep out to: Boulder or Carlsbad or MorrisTown New Jersey to meet with our new clients and learn everything there is now know about these brands and why people actually pay full retail for the stuff they sell.  We start out asking what we think are pretty simple questions: Who is your target,what does your brand stand for, what other brands do they wish to emulate etc. Often to blank stares and confused looks around the table!  Not only is this shocking but exciting as we begin to peel back the layers of what really makes these brands special.  This exercise had lead to some of our best work and would have never happened had we not got off our ass, and pushed these brands to think a little.

Currently we are “getting personal”  with Gregory packs on some product launch strategies, Smartwool on a new brand site, and Chobani Greek yogurt on a new social media platform, that being said my next three weeks are booked with face to face meetings that will lead to  some new Discovery Gold!

My Two Favs:

Gravis http://www.gravisfootwear.com/
Status Quo: T&A, Tats and killer tubs.
Discovery:  Gravis is smart, stylish and interesting to people who just like to be rad.
Results: an award winning brand site that makes the killer product the star, not the killer backside 720 the sponsored athlete can boost.

Red Ledge: http://www.redledge.com/
Outdoor Industry: Beards, Fleece, and snoot bubbles as we climb K2
Discovery: Red Ledge is real, honest, functional and funny as hell!
Results: a site the pokes fun of the industry and speaks to the real consumer, and a tagline that says it all: “Functional, Affordable Clothing – For Those Who Exist in Reality.”