I’m no auto mechanic, but 30 minutes to replace a headlight lamp on my Volkswagen Golf is frikin’ ridiculous.

It’s bad enough that you have to completely remove the battery just to have room to open the back of the headlight casing. What really got to me was this flimsy little paperclip holding the actual bulb in place.

After removing the battery – and the other chunks of plastic between me and the headlight – I fiddled with this stupid paperclip and the wires wrapped around it until it finally popped out of place and dropped below the car. It took another 10 minutes to squeeze my hand in far enough to get the paperclip rigging back into its place.

Frustrating as hell!

I remember replacing the headlight in my old Nissan pickup took 5 minutes max. Just a simple twisting plastic lock.

Don’t get me wrong. There are plenty of things I love about my VW, but it is so typical of them to over-complicate something as simple as a lightbulb.

Busy Boy

Around June or so, my friend Scott Priddy had asked me to design the website for his new company, Honest Project. That turned into designing the software he and his partner had been working on.

In September, Scott hired me full-time and I’ve been doodling in Photoshop and coding HTML/CSS around the clock ever since.

What is Honest Project?

We make the home construction process less risky, and more efficient for all participants; lenders, home owners, builders, even sub-contractors and vendors. They will all have access to the software, bringing much needed transparency and clarity to the construction industry. I could go into more detail, but would rather show you pretty pictures.

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The home page was designed wanting to sell the fact that Honest Project’s objective is to serve the construction community, not just one particular part of it. We want all participants to find value in the solution.

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To further our commitment to community, I designed and developed the Honest Project Community site (built with Wordpress). All of our training  documents, release notes, as well as industry-related articles will be posted here. Eventually, the Community site will expand to include project portfolios, displaying information on Honest Project participants and projects they worked on.

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Finally, when users login to the actual software, they’ll find a clean and open layout that allows for a large amount of content without feeling cluttered.

We’re looking for lenders and builders, so if you know of anyone involved with home construction, please send them my way and I would be happy to demonstrate the software for them.

Wish me luck on the new job!

Independently owned and operated, CarpentryAustin.com needed a way to stand out among their competitors.

Carpenters aren’t exactly known for their marketing expertise, but CarpentryAustin.com owener, Les O’Rourke, has been a welcome contradiction to this assumption. I love having a client that shares ideas that actually are helpful and make sense. It was a perfect, open discussion on how to draw traffic to the website and turn that traffic into customers.

It started with a re-design of the CarpentryAustin.com logo, which I thought the client would immediately resist. On the contrary, he actually supplied the inspiration for the angle in the new logo. The more I worked with Les (no pun intended), the more I realized, instead of applying his creative eye used for his unique carpentry, he was now applying it to the web design discusions.

Take a look at the site and see just how creative a carpenter can be.

The original website I designed for Amplified Heat was received well, but the band didn’t have the time needed to maintain the website and edit their own HTML.

In addition to allowing the band to have a content management system through Wordpress, a hub has been created that brings the band’s fans together from different websites like Flickr and MySpace. Access was allowed not only to the band, but also to their publicists, allowing for up to the minute press releases.

The true benefit of the re-design will be determined by time and the client that now controls the content, but I feel that Wordpress will be a great tool to bring them closer to their fans.

If you have a family, business or band that you think could benefit from a stronger web-presence, contact me and I would be happy to discuss your options with you.

The kids had a big Christmas Eve at Grammy Joyce and Grandpa Mike’s house.

This morning, they woke up to their own kitchen. They love all of the doors and pots and pans and noise, “Oh the NOISE NOISE NOISE NOISE!” We all had a blast this morning.