For the last six to nine months I’ve been typing, building and creating, crafting and twisting my brain for any bit of creativity I may have left untapped. I found an entire wing of drafting tables and lounge couches with huge bay windows over-looking a massive cavern of caves and natural springs. I found this tinny little plant down there, and I want it to grow. Do you think you can help me…

is a project that Brody and I have been cultivating since we started working with MercyMe. It’s been quite an intense process meeting with management, musicians and marketing directors. It seems that each of them has their own view on what is going on in the industry right now and they never really seem to be on the same page. Which is why I think it works for them, everyone is able to focus on what they are supposed to be doing, and their able to do it well because of that focus. One of the Goals of SkorInc is to be able to work with-in that concept of Focus on an interactive level.

My personal Goal and Hope for SkorInc and myself is to be a part of the change that is taking place in the Christian Music Industry. By helping Artists Cultivate their Music and their Community through the Blogging Platform I think we can help this trend that is ultimately going to produce a new generation of Musicians. A Generation of Musicians that are in touch with their fans in a way we’ve never seen.

What can you do right now to help?

Go over to Brody’s place and see what he’s doing to shake things up in Nashville. Also be sure to head over to SkorInc and check it out.

At this point in time the Music Industry is starting to latch on to interactive media. Be a voice in defining what media they use, because the media can decide their level of involvement.

So here it is,,, this is where I’ve been for the last few days. Slaving away till all hours of the night, brain storming and typing like a Stenographer on crack…(you know you love it)

So this is VisualComa v3.1.0 and I like it… It’s not a huge diviation from the last design, but its a little more fresh and simple. I wanted the visual focus to be more directed to the posted content. I guess that mean I should put some real content in here then… Another point of interest was to freshen things up by using a relaxing font when possible. Apple Casual is a great font, one of my favorites.

Other News

As I mentioned the other day I actually bought my own Scooter. It’s a Honda Ruckus 50cc, yes that’s the weakest cc I could have gotten apart from getting a pocket bike. but seriously who would I be kidding if I were to get a real motor cycle… I’m pretty sure I would kill myself or lay it down on my foot right in the middle of town and have to be drug out from under it. Then some old lady with saggy nylon tights would come over to see if I was O.K. and I would accidentally look up her dress… So lets just forget about getting a motor cycle. I don’t like what I’m thinking about.

What else is new…

In relation to what else I’ve been doing, mostly typing but also listening to some sweet tunes. One in particular that I got was ‘Grace Kelly‘ from Mika… I freaking love this song, and for some reason they remind me of Queen. oh and don’t ask why, but I’ve really been into the Shiny Toy Guns, weird I know…

Nuff said for now,,, I promise I’ll get some good video of the Scooter in action (biscuet), maybe even a wheely. just for you Wine… I’m building a mount on the front for my camera, so, good time are coming…

Take it easy

I found another great bit of information today about combining CSS with PHP… Now the seriously time consuming work can begin….

For those of you that may not know, who ever you are… I have been grinding my fingertips to the keys over these last 6 to 8 months developing Themes for Blog and Myself, working toward the goal of being a serious competitor in the theme industry. I am still way behind…

None the less I hit another mile stone today with fully dynamic CSS that can be administered from the Design/Themes section in WordPress. As far as theme development goes, this is a fairly standard option. I’ve just never taken the time to get into it. So, now I can spend countless hours restructuring CSS,, oh the joys of the learning curve.

BTW, if you haven’t gone over to MeRandy, you should check it out. I also want to say for those of you that have, Don’t expect anything of real content to come from there. It’s a place for me to dump my drawings, pics, and random finds that I wouldn’t post here.

I’ve been working on a personal project these last two days. I kind of like it when I get in this mode of thinking where I can’t stop till my eyes are bleeding. I’ve got a new theme built, and it’s for me.

this is not a pun on my name, and I’m am not randy right now, just tired…

Basically I wanted a place to be able to post more pics and drawing with out feeling the need to be coherent. I’ve got millions of drawings and tons of lame pics that will never get posted here. All the same I really want to have a place for my weirdness. (its one of those blogs you can view and entire month in a mater of 5min) — (also one of those blogs that you find and think, “what the hell is this crap?” its going to be awesome.)

oh, and the name is merandy.com. It’s a horrible name, but it makes me laugh…

Here is my latest work… Connersvine…

The Connersvine theme is by far my favorite one, and for some reason I was able to wizz through it. I think design only took about a week and a half, and coding took about another week. I love it when this happens, work seems to be a breeze and it’s actually fun to work all hours of the day and night.

Here are a few things I like about the design…

• Real photos to work with… Cool background image.
• Fixed header Link section.
• Use of png’s with Opacity.
• Comments section. (nothing that special, just different than what I’ve done so far)
• Posting section has some new ideas I’ve been wanting to do.

All in all I’m really satisfied with their new design. Check it, click on stuff and let me know what you think. (yes, I know there is nothing in the news section)

Here is my latest work. I’m not going to toot my own horn… I do like it, although I have been starring at if for a few weeks now so I need a break.

Its all ready to go, my only real concern is IE, since I moved I don’t have access to Internet Exploder and that is really bad.

So if you’re using IE and you happen to swing by FEE and see some ridiculous mistakes feel free to ream me for being an idiot.

Basically I don’t feel like I have written a single piece of meaningful content here in a while. Hope I haven’t lost any reader cause of my post laziness.

To be completely honest I think I’ve been starring at my computer screen so much this last few weeks that my vision is starting to get all waked off jacked up… oops

Over the last two weeks I’ve been putting in painful hours getting a theme ready for a band called FEE. I hope it’s a typical feeling when I say, “I think I’ve been looking at it too long because now that it’s just about done I’m scared to look at it in fear I might want to change things.”

It’s probably something most designers go through. No matter what is being worked on, or what kind of a product you are designing, if you look at it too much all you see are the tiny, insignificant, 1 pixel mistakes that I will spend hours tweaking on. When in reality only a handful of people will ever notice that 1 pixel. (heck, why not strive for perfection)

Apart from 1 or 2 pixels here and there I can definitely say I am happy with it. It’s clean, easy to navigate and easy to read. It’s low contrast in the areas that count and I don’t think there is much visual competition going on. I feel most of the components are working well with each other.

Now all I have to do is re-work the CSS for Internet Explorer.

Oh, and out of curiosity, does anyone know where I can find some kind of list about what the differences are between IE, Safari and FireFox…?

(if this is the second time you’ve seen this post, that because its the second time i posted it. The first one was negative and after getting a few hours of sleep I realized I wanted Vertical Blogging to be ran over by semis not fee’s theme. In case you were wondering…)—(wait do I have to pay to say that last line???)

So here we go again. A few new things to look at and some things that are always around. I hope everyone doesn’t mind, but i like to use this place a sort of a testing ground for new ideas that i have. Design, Concepts, Form and Function.

There is a little bit of Visual Updates, I tried to keep things similar and build off what I already have. Most of the Update is in the background. I’ve been working diligently on organizing Functions and incorporating Standard Blogging Tools into my themes With out the need of Plugins.

Have fun and let me know if you find any Mistakes.

I would just like to announce that our Original Poster Boys ‘MercyMe‘ have had another revision of the their ever expanding Blog. This is one of my favorite parts of my job. Also, one of my favorite parts of the way web2.0 and blogging has redefined the way we view the web and its content.

With ever changing content and updates that roll in about every week, it seems like we are always having to find another little space to put a new item. With blogging type content you had better be prepared to add, add and add some more. I mean it when I say, ‘You had better be prepared‘. If you’re not, the next thing you know you’ll have a completely jumbled site with crap all over it. Your viewers wont be able to focus on much and you end up with people that only read the posts. At that point all your extras go to waste.

I think we accomplished most of our Goals with the latest revision of MercyMe. We’ve cleaned up the navigation and simplified it by putting it in a standard horizontal arangment. We took all the extras and condenced them into images that we placed in a single sidebar. There’s no explination need for what they have available, if you cant figure out what you’re clicking on than you may need glasses.

Bart has recently start Twitter, so we brought that in for you to check out. The MercyMe web crew, who is awesome by the way, has had a pretty killer audio player on the Official Website for a while now so we decided to add that for you’re listening pleasure. The Blog Roll seems to have expanded to a double column. (I swear those blog rolls are like rabbits) And finally we added a little section at the bottom for those who are curious about what has been going on in the past or just looking for something specific.

I hope you all enjoy what you see and if you have any suggestions or you just like to say nice things, I’m all ears.

Happy Blogging,

You really should go and check this out. It’s my latest work. A lot braincells were wasted on this project, but I have to say it’s one of the most well balanced sites and designs of 2008.