The idea for DateDesigner.com formulated when I got a divorce about 3 years ago.  I got back in to the dating game, and found that I’d end up taking different women on the same dates, so I set off on the internet to find better date ideas.

Turns out, there are plenty of sites on the internet that offer great date ideas, however, they didn’t link the great date ideas to venues local to me, and from there, the idea for DateDesigner.com came to me.  

People that go on dates, whether married, single, or attached to a boyfriend/girlfriend constantly ask the question “what do you want to do today/tonight?”.  The idea was to take great ideas for dates from various users across the world and give them a tool to build these dates similar to building a vehicle on Chevrolet.com or VW.com.  The users could then save those dates and allow other users to see their idea and use it, or customize it further to create their own unique experience.

PodCast - GangPlank Studios - DateDesigner.com

GangPlank HQ Blog - DateDesigner.com (1)

GangPlank HQ Blog - DateDesigner.com (2)

Well, 3 years later, I released the first alpha launch of DateDesigner.com in about 20 days thanks to the good people at GangPlank HQ.  The beta will be out shortly after we do some polishing up of the alpha versions.  

Sign up for the beta at DateDesigner.com!

This year will actually be my first time attending PodCampAZ.  Last year they had quite the showing for the first year, and this year, its expected to be even bigger!  So instead of doing something else that is far less cool than hanging out with a bunch of other people that share the same interests as you, come play with the cool kids at PodCampAZ on November 1st & 2nd of 2008 - you’ll be glad that you did!

Oh yeah, go register for PodCampAZ 2.0 - successful planning can’t happen without participant registration…

Audi A4 Challenge iPhone Driving Game

Heck - Audi even has a sweet iPhone based site for your viewing pleasure…of course on your iPhone…

Kudos Audi…you “get it”…mostly…now make your cars perform as well as your competitors - they look pretty enough!

Love, peace, and hair grease peeps…

Any who…@tysoncrosbie of Tyson Crosbie Photography in Phoenix, AZ did the shoot about a week ago.  He asks you 3 words to describe what you want your avatar to represent…I chose “funny”, “strong”, and “thinker”.  What he then does is he goes clickity click with his camera from various different angles, takes your money, and you go on your merry way until he chooses 15 of the photos that best represents your words at his discretion, then he posts them on Flickr and has the community comment on the images to vote on the best one!

View Beau Frusetta’s Avatar Photo Shoot

So…go to the set…comment up…and tell Tyson and myself what ya think…

I recommend you go get it.  Kthxbye.  Oh, and check BeauHLF out on Skitch…

Today we had another eruption at the place where Dom spends his afternoon’s after his summer camp/class thing.  Well, it was a big enough issue to where his teachers approached me as I walked in and said “we’ve got bad news”…ugh.  Today, Dom’s sister hauled off and kicked him square in the stomach, and as a retaliation tactic (which is understandable, but he’s getting busted for it) was to haul off and punch her.  War broke out…

Alexis - my ex-step-daughter/daughter - has had behavioral issues since she was little.  I’m willing to put money on the fact that the only consistent thing in her 7 years has been change that has caused all of this.  I know it’s the 21st century and all, and divorce rates are through the roof, and major life changes are more apparent now than ever before, but there’s got to be a solution to the madness.

Its obvious that we can’t separate them, as they are brother and sister, and they need to deal with it and learn to be around each other, but how the hell am I supposed to get that through to them?  I know they are going to fight sometimes…I fought with my older sister when I was a little boy…but it was never like this.

As of right now, I’ve completely taken all of Dom’s toys away from him.  He’s got the option to write, draw, or god forbid…play outside like I did when I was a kid!  His TV time is also taken away, and I’ve informed him that if the TV is on and Chuck or myself is watching it, he’s to go to another room as he’s not allowed to watch TV until he earns it back by acting properly.

I don’t know - am I being too rough or not rough enough?  Am I possibly not involved enough or something?  Ugh…I hate grounding him…I hate being 100% disciplinarian…I want to have fun and play video games and all that fun stuff.

I’m also having a call tonight with his mother and getting Lexi’s dad on the phone to setup a pow wow between all of us to figure all of this out as both of the kids are equally to blame for all the madness at the afterschool program.  Suggestions are welcome from seasoned parents!

With one client I’m working with, I’m forced to use image only nav’s on all their sites, but on hover states, I have always been getting that little “flicker” before showing the hover state image.  Well, that’s because the image has to load into the browser cache.  So my next thought was to just put in a JS image pre-loader - and step violently back in to the 90’s…grrr…but it “works”.  I have been searching for a better way to do it, and found it today!

Basically, you use 1 image for the image you are going to apply a hover state on, like this:

Make sure you setup your CSS to only show the top half of the image, and then on hover, set the background-position to a negative value to shift it.  For instance, on this item’s hover state, you’d set “background-position:0 -30px;”.

*EDIT* - Actually, instead of moving the background positioning by pixels, as of lately, I’ve really been just setting up the images so they are equal heights to take advantage of “background-position:top OR bottom;” accordingly as Martin suggested below.

This way…both of the “images” are loaded when the page is loaded, the hover state is just hidden until you put your cursor over it.  Thanks to the 3twenty3.com site’s code for helpin’ a brotha out!

AND…I just found a blog post about this here as well -> http://www.webdesignerwall.com/tutorials/advanced-css-menu/

So…today…I was at Target picking up a few things for my buddies wedding tonight, and noticed they have a nice little $50 gift card special with the purchase of the PS3.  Well, I just about pulled the trigger until I found out I had to buy 2 Blu-Ray movies (from a list of movies of which I’d probably only buy 1).  Ugh…yet another foiled attempt at buying the PS3.  Hell, when Forza 2 came out for 360, I went and blew about $700 getting the Xbox 360 Elite (the black one with HDMI), the wireless racing wheel, Forza 2, and Gears of War…like it was nothing…why can’t I just pull the trigger already and get the PS3???  I have a 1080p 24″ monitor to hook it up to…so it’s not like I’m waiting on my new TV purchase.  

Ugh…do want… 

Hi everyone (feedburner says there’s 8, but I know there’s more!)!  Just wanted to kinda fill everyone in on what’s been goin’ down at the HLF lately.  First off…business for the months of May and June - off the charts!  I really don’t know how all that came to be all of a sudden, but I must be doing something right.  I say thanks to my clients for that…so um…thanks clients!

I’ve been working on a lot of random stuff lately, mostly really exercising my skills developing hotel web sites.  I’m really starting to love cutting up PSD’s and putting them in to valid XHTML and CSS - thanks to Martin and Chuck for “lurnin’ me” on how to do it the RIGHT way.  Basically, I’ve kinda thrown a wrench into the company I’m working with, as their previous developers appear to have coded something right out of 1995…eh.  I’ve really been hammering in the concept of clean & valid code to them, and they seem to be coming around, that and I’ve had to recode a lot of existing pages - oh well, job security, right?  It works for me, it keeps a constant stream of cash coming in, and I enjoy doing it - all good stuff in my book!

I’ve also been trying to keep up with my daily dose of social media on Twitter, Plurk, Facebook, and *gasp* MySpace.  It really is working out for me, because I’ve done absolutely no advertising, just networking, and I’ve secured both personal & business relationships with the folks over at WebMediaRx (ok, so he’s my roommate), GangPlank, DrawBackwards, Synergy, and other random jobs here and there.  I’m still trying to work my way through the ranks, but I think I’ve done a pretty good job at putting myself out there and further branding myself & “the little flame“.  I try to make it out to all the social events going on (there’s actually a lot more than I thought there were late last year), but it is difficult sometimes, as I have to juggle Dom’s schedule with mine, and he gets to veto daddy going to an event if he wants to!

Other things going on…still single…SHOCKER! LOL  Per my “MySpace Status”, I’m “Chronically Single” - meh, it’s probably better that way, as I’m too busy to throw a chick in the middle of my life right now anyway.  I also quit smoking as of March 1st this year.  Thanks for that goes out to my nieces, my son, Chuck, and everyone else who bugged me enough to say “dude, seriously, you really gotta quit”.  Well…I did…I quit…and I have the extra 25lbs to show for it thank you very much!

Which brings me to another point, and another goal…getting back in to the gym on a CONSISTENT basis!  I shopped for a few days a few months back for a gym that was super cheap, yet still gave me everything I needed.  I chose Bally’s, and I went for about 2 weeks…then ran in to a few personal speed bumps…fell off the wagon I had just hopped on…and here I am…several weeks later…no results.  So here we go, just like with the no smoking thing, I’m going to set another goal.  My 29th birthday is on June 25th - the day after is when I start back to the gym - full bore - and get back to my pre-wife/pre-kid/pre-divorce weight of 225lbs (hey - I’m 6′4″ - that’s Brad Pitt hawt right there!).  By 30, I want to be in shape - REALLY good shape.  Hell, I can’t have my buddy Clay pickin’ off all the chicks when we go out all the time!  Just because he’s good looking, in shape, and is a plastic surgeon is no match for my computer n3rd, non-smoking, and rather smooth persona…ok…shut it!!!

Ok…back to work…back to the gym…BeauHLF 2.0…coming soon!  Good night!