So our big project for the first summer of home ownership is finally finished. Our Not-A-Garage is now a Garage-Once-More. To recap: the previous owners had converted the garage into an office space and computer repair shop. Things were pretty rough in there, broken shelving, plywood layered on the cement, and in a few places screwed in. The door opener was broken, we did not have any working clickers, the door tracks were gone, the spring was unmounted, and the door itself was beat up really bad.

About six or eight weeks ago Matt H came to looking for some help with a website design project. Matt is a fab coder, but self admits he all thumbs with design and CSS, so when he asked I was happy to help out a guy who's doing some seriously cool stuff. Matt is a huge fan of the Blues, and has always wanted to see a nice blues information and merch site. Thus was born Bluescentric.

I was out on my morning walk today and I stumbled across a playing card, face down, on the sidewalk in front of me. The card was one of those cheap decks of waxed paper, all curled and worn from rain and who knows how many feet. The back is printed in reflex blue ink, a simple pattern of crowns with a small shield that contains a roaring lion. Minor scroll work.

So, I have a dirty secret.

So last Thursday Andrea Phillips pinged me on Skype and asked if I was interested in helping her out with a project she was working on. It was very short notice, and I had some packing to do for a weekend of camping that started the next day, but I said sure. Out of that came the design for My Super First Day, a fun little website that pulls together blog posts about people's first day with a super power. Elements of the design have been picked up and ported over to a Ning community as well, though I had no hand in that other then passing on a PSD to Andrea. Looks pretty good, and it's nice to see it translated over to Ning fairly smoothly.

A Pain in the Choas

Most people just do not understand what it is like to have someone else give you your super power. I had no choice in the matter, I made a simple slip of the tongue, a small typo on my blog and before I knew it I had the full power of the Choas. I am told the Choas has the diversity of 'The Force' and the destructive power of the 'Kamayamaya.' I thought it was a simple typo, but I guess it has imbued me with untold powers that I have yet to fully discover.

It was an early spring day in Calgary, Alberta when the Choas was forced upon me. I was in the process of hunting down contract work, and was shaking my network of gamer, geek and artist friends to drum up something to help pay the bills. It was then that 'The Jessica' pointed out a short-coming on a blog post I had made nearly a year ago. A typo. A simple slip of the fingers that transformed C-H-A-O-S into C-H-O-A-S. A small, minor issue I thought at the time. Just go back and change the title of the blog post, and fix any spelling errors in the copy. No big. No worries... until HE discovered it. Known only to me as 'The Fernandes' he came at me over my Skype chats like an old testament prophet. No amount of banning could prevent his messages. He followed me through user name changes, across the gulf of chat applications to MSN and iChat. There was no escaping 'The Fernandes' or his prophetic ranting and raving.

It is he that forced the power of the Choas upon me, it is he who turned my life from that of a simple sub-urban technophile into that of a super-powered being of unknown abilities... Do you have any idea with it is like to make a pot of coffee with the power of the Choas? The first time I tried my coffee maker exploded, sending coffee grounds and scalding water all over the kitchen. Clean-up was no simple matter, I turned to grab a mop and the back door to my house changed into A Flock of Seagulls, Mike and Ali Score right there in the space between my house and the back yard, and both of them wanting something to eat and asking if I had any extra hair gel. My whole first day with the Choas was like this, a never ending nightmare of Lokian proportions.

I would go to cut a slice of bread, and my knife would turn into a chainsaw. I'd sit on the couch and a dozen mice would run out and start doing the Can-Can at my feet. I'd go for a walk and behind me in, my footprints, would appear all manner of things: lost car keys, small children, apples, oranges, a potted bonsai tree. In the time it took me to walk to the convenience store and back I got 5 tickets for littering, and 2 for having pets off-leash! On the up side I had enough houseplants to redecorate my living room, but what good is that when the mice are starting to build a miniature replica of the Globe Theatre out of your wood laminate flooring?

That first day was a nightmare.

And then, like nothing had happened, it all vanished. The weird things stopped happening around me, the mice abandoned their attempts to rebuild Victorian London, and my life returned to some semblance of normalcy. I know not when or if the Choas will return, I hope that it won't... but I dread that it will. So a word of warning to all you authors out there, professional and amateur alike, be wary of your typos lest you find yourself facing 'The Fernandes' and the Choas.

Two new samples on the website, one is the invite ( minus address! ) to the house-warming party Sarah and I are having. Stalkers not welcome, unless you bring us fancy tequila. The other is a map I am drawing for a *cough* Dungeons and Dragons *cough* world I am building.

So, I have been looking for full time work since the end of March. ( I also do freelancing graphic design, web design, logo design, wedding invitation design, design design, illustration, project management, community management, and will mop and fetch coffee. If you happen to, like, be looking... ) As part of this blitz on resume sending I have been on a blitz of cover letter writing. Cover letters are important, and I have always had the best results job hunting with witty cover letters. So, as part of my job hunting, I am going to start blogging my cover letters.

Please feel free to comment!

Here is one I am sending out today:

To Whom It May Concern,

Are you looking for over-educated tech-sector refugees? Want to bring on board an employee who's worked in start-up companies for the last four years and is tired of the long hours and poor pay? Do you want someone content to excel at his job, what ever it is, and to grow with a company? If so look no further, for I am your newest hire!

Currently I am working as a freelance graphic designer and consultant. My primary client is Shared Books Ltd, where I am working as a technology consultant and project manager on their children's e-book publishing website www.sharing-books.com. The focus of my work on the Sharing Books project has been website development, managing outsource contractors, and marketing efforts. I have worked closely with the management of the company and the growing community of users on the Sharing Books website to build new feature specs, quotes, and guide development of the website. My other clients include various web and graphic design contracts, as well as volunteer work for various community groups in Alberta.

Prior to working for Shared Books Ltd. I helped found a small video game and website development company, Verse Studios, where I was in charge of creative direction and hands-on branding and graphics creation. Starting a company was a hands-on experience that taught me a lot about myself and the nature of keeping a company running. It also pushed my creative and technical boundaries as I pushed into areas of design and project management that were new to me. Early in 2008, after two years of hard work, I left Verse Studios as the company changed directions and moved into a holding pattern.

In August of 2008 my wife and I moved back to Calgary, the city where we were both raised, from Vancouver. Since then I have been working as a freelance designer, and looking for a more stable work situation. I am interested in finding out more about what you are looking for with this position to see if I would be a potential fit. Though I have a lot of experience in the design world I am not afraid of starting at an introductory level in a company and growing over time. I absolutely love working, and I hope to hear from you soon.

Regards,

Marcus Riedner

So I finally read Animal Farm, unlike a lot of other school programs my public schooling did not include this Orwell classic. I bought it at a used book store on Wednesday after going out for sushi with people at Chaordix/Cambrian House. It is smaller then I expected, I've gotten used to the monolithic sized books that are common place these days, and a 115 page book seems so small. There are chapters in a Robert Jordan book that long. There is much to be said for a shorter book, about being succinct and to-the-point.

Unlike 1984 I did not come a way with such a bleak feeling, just a sort of ironic sense of the inevitable. Clearly I am most like Benjamin, so let it be written, I am an ass. Animal Farm was neat, I can see why it is such an important book for grade school classrooms. It points people to think about the world around them, though it does seem to have a certain defeatism to it. A notion that people will always end up in the same sort of bondage that they have always existed in, just under a different guise.

It certainly was a fitting book to read in these economic and political times, where we are bombarded with the ceaseless failures of the multinational corporations, and the steady shortfalls of open-ended capitalism and globalization. An age where our leadership hands out money like water to people who have shown they are not worthy of our trust. An age, in Canada at least, where our political leaders are incredibly weak and petty. One can see why Orwell's vision of dictatorships and despotism as an inevitability rings true.

I do know that Orwell intended this as a commentary on Communism, particularly the brands of Leninism and Stalinism that ruled in his day. But one can certainly begin to see the parallels with certain events in contemporary Democracy...

Anyhow, neat book, I'll have to read it again...

Music right now: Sinnerman - Felix da Housecat's Heavenly House Remix. Oh sinnerman, where you gonna run too?

Andrea Phillips, one of the people I hang out with in the Neogence technology syndicate, mentioned needing some new business cards, so I took a bit of time to crank out the designs below. I have changed all contact information except her website so all the lunatics who follow me around don't start stalking her as well.

The two tone green of the samples on the site do not fully capture the design, the scroll work is actually a spot varnish coat and should look uber snappy and subtle. Samples also on my design page.