Blogs

I tripped across a nice review of the work we did on the ForkUnion.com website, published in a national blog back in 2008.

"We came across a school website that got us to stop and take a look the other day. The Fork Union Military Academy’s site makes the most use out of more web tools than any school site that I’ve seen in recent memory."

At first glance, I didn't see much in Google+ that was ALL that different from the way I do things in Facebook. Circles are cool concepts, but I already segregate my friends in lists on Facebook, so nothing new for me there.

BUT...you can add people to circles who have not added you to their circles.

This gives Google+ a very Twitter-like feel. It is possible to "follow" people, see their posts in your stream, and interact with those posts even if they do not add you to their circles.

Okay, I finally finagled an invite to Google+ and got through the "we don't have room for you" gatekeeper message. I am now part of the elite. The Inner Circle. I have a Google+ profile posted.

It's exciting to establish a homestead on fresh, untilled soil. If feels kind of like I'm "going west, young man." The only thing is, once I get there, I find that there's not much "there" there yet.

Oh I love it when a solution is so simple!

I recently created a new page and block using Views for my client (and day job employer) Fork Union Military Academy ( http://www.forkunion.com ) so we could add a "Senior Spotlight" block to the front page, highlighting the accomplishments of the school's honor graduates. The goal was to create a group of about 10 or 15 nodes, built using a custom content type that includes fields for a photo and an audio file for a student interview.

Watching the birth of your baby is one of life's great events, and witnessing the launch of a client's website is perhaps a similar experience....although with less blood and grunting, usually.

We recently launched, and then re-launched, one of our client's websites. The Carmel School at Ruther Glen (http://thecarmelschool.org) was originally launched in March, 2010 using the school's former name (Carmel Christian Academy), but shortly thereafter, the school was renamed and the site updated to reflect the new brand.

Aw, I've gone all crass, commercial, mercenary now...

As you may know, I help produce the radio show "The Passing Game with Coach Fletcher Arritt" that airs Saturday mornings on sports radio stations in Richmond and the Tidewater area of Virginia. I also developed http://www.thepassinggame.com for the show's executive producer Phil Wall to use for archiving the radio shows and putting up news about his documentary film on Coach Arritt.

In return for all this hard work and sweat, Phil agreed to run some radio spots during the show promoting Bluestone Thompson Multimedia.

Not being one to pass up an opportunity for self-promotion, I recorded the following radio spot. Hope it inspires you to hire me!

Listen:

You'd think I'd learn something once and then remember that lesson the next time. But nooooo....

Once again, just this evening, I was bitten by the problem of colors in my image files not quite matching the background color I set using the CSS background-color tag. I'd designed a lovely navy blue header for a client's website with their logo and a nice picture placed in <div> layers on top, and it looked just fine in Firefox. But when viewed in Internet Explorer, a lighter blue line appeared between the logo and the photo...