tag:monsterboxpro.com,2008:mephisto/ Mephisto Noh-Varr 2008-09-01T19:59:49Z Andrew tag:monsterboxpro.com,2008-09-01:34 2008-09-01T19:33:00Z 2008-09-01T19:59:49Z <p>I was sent a few days ago to proof an advertisement that was getting published on a phone book cover. I think the advertising company put the ad together but I was flabbergasted by the amount of design mistakes.</p> <p><img src="http://monsterboxpro.com/assets/2008/9/1/pcmad0.jpg" alt="" /></p> <p>I threw together a new ad in less than 10 minutes and sent it off for replacement.</p> <p><img src="http://monsterboxpro.com/assets/2008/9/1/pcmad1.jpg" alt="" /></p> <p>I’m surprised again and again how these companies make money with half-assed products.</p> Andrew tag:monsterboxpro.com,2008-08-28:33 2008-08-28T20:30:00Z 2008-08-28T20:50:18Z <p>I found something just as worthy as getting the iPhone.</p> <p><img src="http://monsterboxpro.com/assets/2008/8/28/koodo.jpg" alt="" /></p> <p>I’m back to using a cellphone and if it was anything but Koodo I’d still be cellphone-less. Koodo Mobile has no System Access Fee and no 911 fee. Per-second billing, call forwarding, call waiting, and conference calling included. My phone was $70 but I don’t pay anything. I put it on my ‘koodo tab’ and every month they take 10% of your payment towards your tab. If you ever want to leave Koodo you just pay the remaining balance on your tab. The reception is Tbaytel.</p> <h3>Where to get it?</h3> <p>Future Shop and Wall-Mart are the only two places in Thunder Bay where you grab them. I first went to Future Shop but they ran out of phones quickly and only had a pink Motorola, so I trotted over to Wall-Mart and got it there. Now if only someone opened a store to sell and services these things…</p> Andrew tag:monsterboxpro.com,2008-07-29:29 2008-07-29T20:47:00Z 2008-07-29T20:50:17Z <p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jill_Bolte_Taylor">Jill Taylor</a> is a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroanatomy">neuroanatomist</a> who specializes in the postmortem investigation of the human brain. I was watching Moblogic interviewing her and also her speaking at <span class="caps">TED</span> and I thought the concepts she talked about people worrying about the past and the future was a dead ringer for the practices taught in a book by <a href="http://www.eckharttolle.com/">Eckhart Tolle</a> called <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Practicing-Power-Now-Essential-Meditations/dp/1577311957">Practicing The Power of Now</a> If your stressed, or trying to find more time in your work day than knowing how to think about the now is very useful in making your day productive.</p> <p><img src="http://monsterboxpro.com/assets/2008/7/29/ppon.jpg" alt="" /></p> &lt;object height="288" width="437">&lt;param />&lt;param />&lt;param />&lt;embed src="http://www.viddler.com/player/8913a48f/" height="288" width="437">&lt;/embed>&lt;/object> &lt;object height="285" width="437">&lt;param />&lt;param />&lt;param />&lt;embed src="http://www.viddler.com/player/1c10305f/" height="285" width="437">&lt;/embed>&lt;/object> Andrew tag:monsterboxpro.com,2008-07-21:28 2008-07-21T23:54:00Z 2008-07-21T23:56:12Z <p>I’ve <a href="http://trigonometry.learnhub.com/lesson/page/2266-how-much-distance-will-affect-joyce-and-harrys-love">published my new Trigonometry Lesson exclusively via Learnhub</a>. Its been a couple of months since my last lesson. I took a different direction with the humor, but hopefully its as effective as previous lessons. Any feedback or ideas of future lessons are appreciated as always.</p> <p><img src="http://monsterboxpro.com/assets/2008/7/21/trig_04_01.jpg" alt="" /> <img src="http://monsterboxpro.com/assets/2008/7/21/trig_04_02.jpg" alt="" /></p> Andrew tag:monsterboxpro.com,2008-06-17:27 2008-06-17T21:33:00Z 2008-06-17T21:34:17Z <p>Awesome, I’m on the front page.</p> <p><img src="http://monsterboxpro.com/assets/2008/6/17/featured_math_masters.jpg" alt="" /></p> <p>We already have another Math Video underway. Watch out for it!</p> Andrew tag:monsterboxpro.com,2008-02-29:23 2008-02-29T05:20:00Z 2008-02-29T05:21:56Z <p>I finally got a piece of rail to go along with my ruby. With the assistance of my friend Andrew who has the better camera lens we did some test shots. A Flickr set will shortly follow with a CC License that let you use the photos however you wish.</p> <p><img src="http://monsterboxpro.com/assets/2008/2/29/ror.jpg" alt="" /></p> <p>Am I taking this Ruby on Rails things too far?</p> Andrew tag:monsterboxpro.com,2008-02-28:22 2008-02-28T10:21:00Z 2008-02-28T16:36:42Z <p>What an interesting discovery Brian found.</p> <p><img src="http://monsterboxpro.com/assets/2008/2/28/tollfree_google.jpg" alt="" /></p> <p>The only or first place in Thunder Bay was my business address.</p> Andrew tag:monsterboxpro.com,2008-02-12:21 2008-02-12T21:17:00Z 2008-02-12T21:17:38Z <p>I’m a huge fan of Stratego and I came across a game called <a href="http://snagtheflag.com/">Snag the Flag</a> made by <a href="http://www.workingwithrails.com/person/5337-josh-goebel">Josh Goebel</a></p> <p><img src="http://monsterboxpro.com/assets/2008/2/12/snag_the_flag.jpg" alt="" /></p> <p>If anyone is on-line and wants to play IM or <a href="mailto:andrew@monsterboxpro.com">e-mail me</a>.</p> Andrew tag:monsterboxpro.com,2008-02-09:19 2008-02-09T22:12:00Z 2008-02-10T15:15:17Z <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/64239589@N00/2255151682/in/photostream/"><img src="http://monsterboxpro.com/assets/2008/2/9/thumb_diy_lightbox_item.jpg" alt="" /></a></p> <p>I bought a brand new Nikon <span class="caps">D80</span> because I’m shooting an entire product line for an on-line shopping cart. I also bought a $70 light box from WalMart and the results were poor so I returned it and built my own light box. The results were dramastically^{<a href="#fn1">1</a>} better.</p> <p>It costed around the same amount of money but I didn’t go bargain hunting since I have a-lot work ahead of me. The best part is that the lights are florescent so no hot lights.</p> Materials: <ul> <li>1.5 meters of cheap white fabric</li> <li>three clip lights</li> <li>three 40 watts florescent light bulbs (2,600 lumens)</li> <li>big plastic rubbermaid container</li> <li>white bristle board</li> </ul> <p>I’m no master of photography but I’m happy with the results.</p> <p><a href="http://monsterboxpro.com/assets/2008/2/9/diy_lightbox.jpg"><img src="http://monsterboxpro.com/assets/2008/2/9/thumb_diy_lightbox.jpg" alt="" /></a> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/64239589@N00/2255151568/in/photostream/"><img src="http://monsterboxpro.com/assets/2008/2/9/thumb_diy_lightbox_2.jpg" alt="" /></a></p> <p>¹ A word I unknowingly fumbled together one day: dramatic + drastic = dramastic</p> Andrew tag:monsterboxpro.com,2008-01-24:18 2008-01-24T16:56:00Z 2008-01-24T16:56:32Z <p>Last week I started adding my web apps into Fluid. Think of having a web-browser dedicated to a specific app.</p> <p><img src="http://monsterboxpro.com/assets/2008/1/24/fluid.jpg" alt="" /></p> <h2>Why put Web Apps into their own browser?</h2> <p>Show the difference between regular web-sites and web apps. It has its own icon on the desktop or the dockbar instead of before where users would</p> <ul> <li>forget the link</li> <li>loose the bookmark</li> <li>delete the email</li> </ul> <p>Lets say you send you web app demo on cd to a client for review. Instead of them opening it in there browser that you can’t predict, they can open it in Prism or Fluid.</p> <p>There are many more reason why to use it. But enough jabber, where do you get it from?</p> <h2>Grab it here!</h2> <table> <tr> <td> <a href="http://fluidapp.com">Fluid</a> </td> <td> only for mac os x </td> </tr> <tr> <td> <a href="http://labs.mozilla.com/2007/10/prism/">Prism</a> </td> <td> windows, mac os x, linux </td> </tr> </table> Andrew tag:monsterboxpro.com,2007-12-22:16 2007-12-22T23:00:00Z 2008-02-07T06:08:41Z

<p>I purchased and read the ebook <a href="http://freelanceswitch.com/book">How to Be a Rockstar Freelancer</a> and here are my after thoughts.</p> <p><img src="http://monsterboxpro.com/assets/2007/12/22/rockstar_review.jpg" alt="" /></p>

<p>I purchased and read the ebook <a href="http://freelanceswitch.com/book">How to Be a Rockstar Freelancer</a> and here are my after thoughts.</p> <p><img src="http://monsterboxpro.com/assets/2007/12/22/rockstar_review.jpg" alt="" /></p> <h2>Purchasing Process (lightbox kills context)</h2> <p>I was thrown off when I clicked the buy button and a lightbox popped up. 37 signals posted about <a href="http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/592-been-lightboxed-lately">lightboxes</a> killing context and now I’m thinking they do. Also entering the discount code didn’t work smoothly in the box. I think shopping carts belong on their own page.</p> <p>After you purchase the ebook you get an e-mail with a link to the download but it expires after 72 hours or downloading the book 5 times. It was a discouraging thought because other books and videos I’ve purchased on-line let me come back anytime to download.</p> <h2>The Testimonials</h2> <p>When I got the discount e-mail they had two testimonials, the first and only ones I’ve seen so far were:</p> <ul> <li>Jon from <a href="http://freelancefolder.com">FreelanceFolder.com</a></li> <li>Leo from <a href="http://zenhabits.net">ZenHabits.net</a></li> </ul> <p>At first glance, I felt tricked by these testimonial web-sites because they looked like <a href="http://freelanceswitch.com/">FreeLanceSwitch</a>. It made me think its the own authors testimonial. That isn’t the case, but if you haven’t seen these testimonial web-sites before you might think so.</p> <h2>Needs Real Examples (Show instead of Tell)</h2> <p>They have an example of an estimate and for the description of work they put: (the work I did). If they placed real text in such as: “Constructed a simple one page web-site” It then would have <strong>shown</strong> what a real estimate looked like.</p> <p>In there logo chapter they could have shown or at least mentioned an example of a good logo. eg. “Take a look at the FedEx logo, focus on letters e and x, do you see the arrow?”.</p> <p>I think showing is more effective method of teaching the telling.</p> <h2>Quotes (Prove it true)</h2> <p>Once in a while a quote would appear in the book to go along with the chapter. Quotes are great because it proves the content is correct and researching a quote will help you learn more about the chapter. The book only had 16 quotes and I would have liked to seen more.</p> <h2>Typesetting needs to be rethought (Clarity over Cleverness)</h2> <p>I ended up copying the book into a word processor to change the font and layout. The body font was a dark grey and I need it to be readable not fancy. The quote boxes in the book took up half of the page and were dark grey boxes that distracted due to space and contrast.</p> <h2>Generic Information</h2> <p>I thought at one point I was reading something that I read somewhere before, word for word. The information wasn’t new to me but thats not why I’ll buy a book. I’ll buy to validate that I’m on the right track because I’ll feel confidence in what I’m doing.</p> <h2>The bible for Freelancers?</h2> <p>‘Getting Real’ is my bible to productivity. ‘The Portable Film School’ is my bible to storytelling. ‘Practicing the Power of Now’ is my bible to spirituality ‘eqi.org’ is my bible to emotional intelligence</p> <p>This book isn’t, but could be the bible to freelancing. It just needs some work, but thats what second editions are for right?</p> <h2>Conclusion</h2> <p>On a scale to 1 to 5 I would rate this book a 2. Its better than the other stuff out there on freelancing but I think its too pricey for what you get (unless you got the $10 discount code). This book is better if you haven’t started freelancing.</p> Andrew tag:monsterboxpro.com,2007-12-22:14 2007-12-22T00:16:00Z 2007-12-22T00:16:43Z <p>I received my <a href="http://peepcode.com/">PeepCode t-shirt</a> from the wonderful <a href="http://topfunky.com/">TopFunky Corporation</a>.</p> <p><img src="http://monsterboxpro.com/assets/2007/12/22/peep_code.png" alt="" /></p> Andrew tag:monsterboxpro.com,2007-12-15:15 2007-12-15T17:20:00Z 2007-12-22T00:28:19Z <p>You Know you’re a programmer when..</p> <p><img src="http://monsterboxpro.com/assets/2007/12/22/control_enter.jpg" alt="" /></p> Andrew tag:monsterboxpro.com,2007-11-23:12 2007-11-23T08:22:00Z 2007-11-23T08:24:32Z <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/77604720@N00/272629298/"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/98/272629298_0c5f56faac.jpg?v=0" alt="" /></a> I thought it was funny</p> Andrew tag:monsterboxpro.com,2007-11-19:11 2007-11-19T07:58:00Z 2007-11-19T08:12:21Z <p>Ever pick up subtle hints that some kind of change is on its way?</p> <p>I’ve heard about the version control system Git three times this week:</p> <ul> <li>RSpec Mailing List (moving source)</li> <li>Rails Envy (podcast)</li> <li>Peepcode (screen cast on how to use it)</li> </ul> <p>It seems I have something new to learn on my list.</p> <p><a href="http://www.viratics.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.39">Git Vs Subversion</a></p>