Category: personal

Can you keep a secret?

vitamin-d design inc. and MODx

Posted on by david

My wife is a interior designer who specializes on corporate interiors. She’s been holding off creating a website believing that a poorly done or incomplete website (i.e: “under construction”) was worse than none at all. She and her partners recently decided rebranded the business and figured that now would be a good time to make that web thing happen.

Given that I am the de facto tech support professional around these parts, and I know a little bit about this thing we call the internets, I was pressed into service making it happen. Align/Codeferous has a CMS built in WebObjects that we use for our larger customers, but it would have been overkill for this project.

I decided to go with an open-source CMS called MODx which I’ve used a couple of times before and have grown to like quite a bit. The really nice thing about MODx is that it is very easy to slice up an existing design and get it deployed quickly. It took me about 4 hours to go from PDF mockups to completed design deployed in the CMS. It took longer to populate and tweak the content, but that’s always the way it goes.

So, here it is, the new name and home of the design firm previously known as Logue & Associates Inc:

vitamin-d.gif

Happy Birthday… to me.

Posted on by david

Yup, that time of year again. This year I am officially the answer.

For the entire year. I hope that works out for me.

In more amazing news, Al’s parents sent me a great gift. They tracked down a copy of The Buffy-Porson – A car you can build and drive (the book I talked about in this post).

buffy_porson_book.jpg

It was very cool to flip through the pages and have the memories flood back. I remember many of the steps in the construction as if it were yesterday.

Have I ever mentioned how amazing I think my in-laws are?

That’s right. Hit the tree.

Posted on by david

We’re getting our first snowfall for the year (nothing really significant around here, much worse if you’re north of the city). Anyway, it reminds me of a story.

I was tobogganing with a friend from school. It had been snowing hard and there was a rare (for Toronto) deep layer of white fluffy snow covering everything. The day had that "winter wonderland" quality to it.

The hill we were on was terraced and dipped into a small gully before the main stretch. At the bottom was a field planted with a few (carefully arranged) trees.

We’d taken our run and wiped out in the gully. From there we couldn’t see the bottom of the hill, only the top of some of the larger trees. As we were dusting ourselves off, another kid tore past us, easily making it over the little lip and headed at breakneck speed down the remainder of the hill.

After he’d passed, we heard his sister watching from the top of the hill say – "That’s right. Hit the tree." We turned, there was a short pause, a dull thud, and a FWUMP! as the crown of one of the larger trees shuddered and dropped it’s load of snow.

I think not seeing the actual impact made it that much funnier.