We’ve just gotten back from a nice but short mini-vaction that we took with some good friends to my aunt’s condo in Perdido Key, Florida. It was a wonderful weekend of excess and we thoroughly enjoyed the time away. We enjoyed some fine dining at a few different establishments and even got a glimpse of Kid Rock and Rev Run who were apparently in town for the weekend as well. Of course any time in Orange Beach would not be complete without a trip to the infamous Florabama bar – in which we took in the local sites and flavors, having a blast gawking at the local party-goers and other assorted lounge lizards.

In other news, we’ve been been watching a few movies lately, and I am really getting psyched for a few upcoming movies, namely Indiana Jones and Batman. I saw some new publicity stills of Heath Ledger as Joker over at Slash Film and I am convinced that this movie is going to seriously kick ass. As for Indiana Jones, I’m starting to get nervous as I saw the most recent trailer and I noticed lots of stupid slapstick and painful comedic lines that were reminiscent of Temple of Doom which pretty much goes down in history as the worst movie ever. I am still holding out hope that they may revive the series without ruining it but honestly I am going to be going in with little hope and see what shakes out.

As for the boob tube, we’ve been watching a new series on Discovery called the “Alaskan Experiment” which pits four teams of ordinary folks having to survive in a very rugged Alaskan environment for 3 months with nothing but the very bare essentials. It has been a very interesting series to watch as I’ve been bantering about how they should do a Survivor show in some sort of cold setting as the typical tropical locations have gotten old and uninteresting anymore. Although there is no game show element or prize involved with this, the show seems much more real and the people involved are engaging enough to make you want to follow them without having to resort to petty squabbles and sex-laced scanters with bathing suited bimbos starving on a beach and fighting about who is sleeping with whom. It’s got us hooked and I encourage anyone to check it out.

Lastly, on the web front, I am deep in the middle of a much needed re-design of my new employers’ website. I also just launched the new City of D’Iberville website. Although it is still incomplete in several areas, their old site was so horrible that we just had to take this one live sooner that I had liked to. I’ve also got the City of Ocean Springs site in development which is going to be a rather large project. Both of these designs are taking local city websites into a new realm for the Mississippi coast. Historically, the Gulf Coast has been several years behind the rest of the country and in the case of the web, I’d venture closer to ten years behind at least. I’m trying to change that, one site at a time and while it’s slow going it has been pretty rewarding seeing old antiquated websites get a more modern refresh and use technologies and techniques that don’t seem to exist on any other websites in the region. We’re not only doing it better, but we’re doing it right in every instance that I can get away with. Sometimes it’s tough convincing our customers why things should be done that way since they’re not always the most informed or abreast of current styles and movements on the web.

Anyways, enough for now – I’ll post more, as I get more time.

CSS Naked Day is a day where participating websites remove the css used on their website resulting in a display of semantic markup and proper use of (x)html to help promote web standards.

So, if in a few days you notice my site missing graphics and not looking like its normal self, do not be alarmed.

For more information about CSS Naked Day, click here.

It may come as a shock to many of you, but I have sold my mac and replaced it with a kick-ass new Acer laptop. I know, I know what you’re thinking. “Why would Todd ever leave his Mac, he’s the biggest Apple fanboy that I know!”

After struggling with getting my Macbook Pro set up once again from a complete re-install, I started to truly question my work processes and the amount of money that I spend each year on Apple products. Sure, some of them are nice and I always like the look of their products, Apple just doesn’t get it anymore. I’m tired of the translucent menubars, gimmicky Time Machine, and lack of user interface themes.

Well, no more… My new Acer laptop arrived yesterday and within a few hours I had Ubuntu up and running and now I am learning the Gimp(Photoshop doesn’t run on Linux – bummer)

I can’t wait to see how much money I end up saving with this change of platform and I believe my web design will get better too, because I’ll finally be on the same platform as 90% of the rest of the world. That’s hard to beat, eh?

Anyways, stay tuned as I’ll be posting quite a bit of articles on my change back to the darkside as soon as I can figure out how to get an FTP client installed. I also need too find out how to install my printer – anyone know how to get a driver for an old Epson Stylus?

Because of their base clientele, I may not be able to demonstrate a lot of the work I will be doing but one site that I can guarantee you’ll see posted on here once I get into full-swing will be the AGJ website itself. It has not been updated in a very long time and it is long overdue for some TLC which I will be attending to shortly.

I am very excited to be involved with such a growing company and I expect great things from our new-found partnership.

Just found out the schedule for the next ALA event which will be held in my backyard, New Orleans! I went to the second An Event Apart which was held in Atlanta a few years ago and enjoyed it very, very much. The lineup for this year has twelve speakers including Jeff Veen, Dave Shea, Cameron Moll and Andy Clarke who I’ve always wanted to meet. And then of course there is the Three Amigos: Zeldman, Meyers and Santa Maria who are always a class act.

This thing is going to be a blast. I learned so much from last time and this time it is two days worth rather than just one which always did seem to short for something like this.

Anyways, I’ll see you in the Big Easy in April.

An Event Apart New Orleans

April 24–25

Read Jeffrey’s post about it