Russ Hall

I found this cool site called LogoYes where you can use flash to create a sweet logo. When I was playing around with it, I decided to sort of invent a company that I have been toying around with called Fox Interactive Development. I don’t know if it would actually work because it might be associated with the television studio of a same/similar name, but a slight adaptation would be all right. It’s pretty awesome, and although I have absolutely no design skills, it was terribly easy to whip it together. It starts with the option of choosing an image for your company: Hi-Tech, Bold, or Flair. They have a pretty expansive selection of artwork to use in your logo and a nice selection of fonts to fit whatever feeling you’re trying to convey in your image. After you finish your logo, you have the option of seeing it on business cards, which might be one of the most useful features of the site.
The entire process only took a few minutes, but the results look like something that I’ve seen designers spend a lot of time working on. With a little time to ponder and maybe some sketching, this is probably the most effective way for non-designers to put together branding for a new business or a revamping of an established business. And, with 100 free business cards, this is a pretty good investment. So, if you’re looking for logo design, check out LogoYes. The above thumbnail is a screenshot of the development area near the end of the project.

When I was looking for TVs on Newegg, it reminded me how much I like browsing the site and piecing together the various parts that would become my little box of productivity. I get so much delight from building it and getting it all working that I don’t know if I could ever buy a computer. If I were to buy a pre-built computer, I’m not sure what I would get. It’s a really fine line between cost and performance that needs to be taken into account. If I were just looking for something cheapish that can handle most normal tasks, there are lots of choices out there. For example, click here. There are plenty of choices, but that seems like a fairly decent cheap deal. And, I don’t really have qualms with recertified/refurb/off-lease stuff at all.

click here

January is shaping up to be a pretty slow month, as far as I can tell. Finances should be in order, current projects will be done, football will be ending/over, the weather will be miserable, and the holidays will be gone so I’ll be looking to spend more free time around the house gaming, reading, and webworking. To combine two of those, I think I’m going to see if I can finish my ColdFusion Certification Study Guide by the end of January and take the exam sometime in February or March. I get a bonus at work, which would be cool, but it would be pretty nice to have that on my resume. So, bust out the pens, pencils, paper, monitors and such. Hopefully the gaming doesn’t distract me too much.

The mane was getting unruly, so I had to trim it back. It was awfully bushy and pretty gross, but it continued because I was mostly afraid of cutting it too much and having to go back to where it was. I’m trying to grow it out a bit, hopefully nearish the length of Milo Ventimiglia’s hair in season 1 of Heroes as Peter Petrelli. I think I’m still about an inch away, and I do need to figure out how this matte of thick hair is going to handle any sort of styling. This is quasi-gay, yes, I understand, but it’s kinda schweet to change one’s image and see how people view you differently based on your haircut. Anyhow, I think by Christmas it will be the length I want. Maybe for New Year’s I’ll cut it all off… Or I’ll just enjoy my flowing locks.

life insurance quote

The last week was wonderful to relax from some stressful weeks of work. But, I’ve finished up a few projects and I think the paychecks should, hopefully, be coming in within the next couple weeks. Just in time for Christmas shopping. “Hooray!” says the family. I think in the next week, I’ll probably get back on the horse and get some additional stuff done and maybe work on some personal projects. I really need to start planning and building the rebuild of this site and the new meetrusshall.com site for my portfolio and such.

drug rehab

Last month, Benny and I were working on Hoggy’s website and I got to do the ColdFusion coding to handle the menu, graphics, and some other stuff. One of the coolest things I got to play around with, though, was Google Maps integration. You can do some pretty cool stuff with them. For this project, we just did a mashup to show the location of each restaurant on a map, and delivery areas for the locations that delivered. I think they turned out pretty well. Originally, I wanted to include it in a lightbox (check out the menu food pictures) which basically makes it pop up in the same window while the background fades to a translucent black. But, it wouldn’t display the custom icon and I didn’t have the time to sort through the code to try to fix it. But, yeah, if you’ve got time and want to play around with a pretty cool technology, do a search for Google Mashups or make your own Google Map. Also, I want to try playing around with Yahoo!’s maps because I hear they might be easier and are friendlier to ColdFusion. We’ll see.

term insurance

Randy asked me if I was going to do anything with the Jetta and if I had looked at body kits or anything. Of course, I have browsed around a little bit, but I think I like the way it looks now. If anything, I thought about getting some window tint throughout the car, but I’d also like to find a classy car spoiler that looks good.

After going in early today–I arrived around 8:15–I wasn’t sure how late I’d have to stay. I ended up being there until about 8:15 tonight. The weird thing is, it’s not that bad, and I could have stayed even longer if I needed to. I got one project finished and made some progress on another. I probably could have worked on the second project for another couple hours, at least. I started to notice a little bit of a drag at the end, but it wasn’t too bad and I probably would have caught a second wind at some point. I guess this isn’t so bad, but it is kind of strange to think that after working 12 hours, I would have continued to work (and am now doing some personal web stuff) until who knows when. If it wasn’t for the structure of set work hours, I would easily put in over 40 hours each week. I think the fact that I start at 9 and am done at 6 each day keeps me on track and keeps me from overdoing it.

This post sponsored by: drug rehabs.