So, I had a break between projects that I had planned and decided to renovate the entryway to my townhouse. The place was built over 30 years ago and that’s obvious to see especially in the entry way. I had pre-ordered some tiles for this very occasion and I finally got the chance to get them in. So I scraped the popcorn off the ceilings, patched up the walls where they needed it, painting the ceiling and walls, layed the tiles in the entry way and down the stairs to the basement, installed new baseboards and trim and even a new exterior door to the garage. I even installed a shoe rack and hat rack from ikea in the closet that I had to re-engineer to make fit properly. Here are some pics of the old and new versions of the entryway. Hope you like.

So, over the weekend I decided to get some new office furniture. I found a great deal on a Tornado – Storm foosball table that had its ball feeding tubes missing. With a little help from home depot and a some elbow grease its as good as new. Now I can work on my foosball skills in my down time.

Recently I had been toying with the idea of getting my own server because I hate being limited to whatever my shared host allows. I wanted to be able to load whatever software I wanted on it, load up as many websites/domains as I wanted, handle as many ftp accounts as I wanted and install any media streaming software I wanted. Email wasn’t really an issue since I think it makes more sense to route it all through a google apps account. I had a bit of experience (just a bit) working with servers since I have a mac-mini setup in my living room running MAMP that has all my movies on it and actually has a domain pointed to it (via zoneedit.com) to present client work.

After a bit of research I came accross macminicolo.net. They simply allow you to send them your mini, or you can buy one off them, and they hook it up to their network allowing you to access it through vpn, vnc, ssh or however else you choose. One might question its speed but I have already put a couple database heavy sites on it, including this website, and they load immediately.

I ended up buying a mini locally here and installing a faster, larger hard drive and loaded up the ram in it, installed all the necessary software and sent it off to them. They are in Las Vegas and there seems to be a fairly good pipeline to the internet down there. I’m very pleased with the server and the speed of my sites, I feel sort of free now because I am not under the yoke of being on the same server as a dozen or so other people; *barf*. So I can do whatever I want with it without having to ask if a specific port is open, or if php has a specific setting activated. I even ended up buying OSX Server. It has a bit of a learning curve for a server newbie like me but I feel pretty comfortable using it now. I didn’t have to worry about setting up a mail server or dns info which kept things simple. Setting up an ftp server on it was a bit tricky but I managed to get that working with pureFTPD and I even managed to get a few cron-jobs running on one of my sites.

Anyways, my hat is off to the fella’s at macminicolo.net for making my life a bit more easy.

I have written previously about the free shipping website that my brother created. To help merchants and shoppers he’s created a new shopping day. It’s called Free Shipping Day and it is today. Over 250 participating merchants will be offering free shipping with delivery by Christmas. Luke says that merchants really like the idea of this holiday and some very big brands have contacting him to let him know that they will be participating. You can find a list of all the merchants that will be taking part in the first Free Shipping Day at his website.

As for every other day of the year you can find coupon codes for free shipping at FreeShipping.org. Some of the new merchants that are on the website include Victoria’s Secret, J Crew, Saks Fifth Avenue and Crutchfield.

Happy Free Shipping Day!

I am happy to announce that our company Kinoli just launched Free Shipping.org. The web site is an online shopping resource with a list of over 600 stores with free shipping coupons and promotion codes. By the end of 2008, we expect to have over 1000 free shipping coupons on the site. The site also has a list of last minute shipping dates for many of the most popular stores.

Some of the featured deals will get you Target free shipping , or free shipping at Kohls, Macys, Sierra Trading Post, Dell, Shutterfly, Snapfish, Lands End or JCPenney free shipping. You can shop by brand or category. The toys free shipping category is one of the most popular on the site.

Anyways, we hope you can get some use out of it this holiday season.

We’re super excited about FreeShiping.org and would love your feedback.

About 3 months ago I wouldn’t have dreamed about writing an article like this. But it is true. I really did make a complete switch to Apple. It has honestly been a lot less painful than I thought it would be. Here’s the reason and the results of my conversion.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve spent the past few weeks developing a new section (New Rolex Creations) for the new Rolex site. It was a site showcasing Rolex’s newest breed of watches (apparently they haven’t had any new watches for about 50 years). So it was a tightly guarded project which I was sworn to secrecy for the duration of the project. The section I worked on features some amazing photography, animation and design. It runs on the most advanced CMS I’ve ever worked with and runs in 5 different languages.

You can view the section here.

So I went to the oral surgeon today because my dentist thinks I need to get my wisdom teeth pulled. I think its a form of Nazi torture but what the heck its normal in this world now, so why not. Here’s an xray of my teeth, I thought it looked pretty cool and know most people are interested in seeing my teeth, so here they are. Wish me luck with the extraction.

Another web site that I finished back in December finally launched this week. It’s a site for a condominium complex being built in Fort Lauderdale.

A couple of web sites that I was a part of over the last few months finally launched today. A new Rolex.com redesign which actually won an Adobe site of the day award and a mini-site for Mercedes Benz Fashion Week.