So why do I care what Chris Jacobs will think?  Well he’s a Mopar guy.  And Mopar guys really just want respect from other Mopar guys. I’d like to consider myself a Mopar guy.  I remember being about 5 years old, and my dad saying the car we should restore together would be an old 1969 Road Runner.  So I’ve always had a thing for the Mopars.  My first car was a 1989 Dodge Ramcharger, and it’s that car that Doan bought me that I’m working on customizing that I’m worried about what Chris Jacobs might think.

So here’s the deal.  Mopars (dodge) vehicles are known for having very hard to find parts, and pretty much no aftermarket parts.  What does this mean?  Well it means working on an older Dodge Ramcharger is pretty much impossible.  Even finding people to work on it can be a problem.  I went to Austin Speed Shop, but they only work on cars from 1963 and older.  I went to Killer Rides, but they didn’t know what to do with the truck either.  The only shop that’s had an idea for the Ramcharger is Hot Rod Jim’s who wants to put a whole Corvette rolling chassis under the truck. And here is where the “Chris may hate me” thing comes in. The only thing anyone can think of to make my truck the way I want it is to make it a frankenstein and put a ton of Chevrolet parts under the truck. Which a lot of Mopar people may want to shoot me out back for doing.

So there in lies my problem. They make so many aftermarket parts for Chevrolets.  Seriously I could just run to the store right now, and buy every part I need for my truck.  The only problem then is that it wont just fit cause it’s not made for dodge.  So even though I can buy a ton of parts, I’d still need someone to customize all the parts to fit on my truck. Which is why Hot Rod Jim’s idea of just replacing the whole chassis with a corvette one would make bolting all those easy to find chevrolet parts that much easier.

So I don’t know what to do.  Maybe you guys have some ideas.  Or maybe you know of a shop that could do the work for me.  Hell maybe you know Chris Jacobs and you can ask him if he’ll hate me if I frankenstein my truck. Here are all the things wrong with my truck and what the ultimate goal for it is.

So here’s what we’re starting with:

And this is what I’d like it to resemble (not exactly just “the look”)

But it’s not just about the look.  I want it to look like a 1989 Ramcharger but to drive like a 2009 Ramcharger (if that existed).  So a whole new front and rear suspension, engine, transmission, rear end, wheels, tires.  Basically all the modern parts just squashed into an older truck. I know it’s all about having a plan and not just buying a bunch of parts, so here’s what I’ve come up with.

Front Suspension – From Scott’s Hot Rods

Rear Suspension – Ride Tech

Intro Wheels

But even though these parts look like they’ll do the job.  They still aren’t mopar parts.  And I will still need a shop to customize all this so it fits in my truck.  So it’s a plan, but it may not be the best one.

I’m open to suggestions on the engine and transmission.  The goal for that is to have enough power to pull a trailer and a boat, but to still get the best MPG’s as possible.  Cause I want to drive this truck everyday.

So anyway…that’s my rant about my truck project.  It’s almost been a year since Doan bought me the truck, and I haven’t done anything with it yet. Mainly due to the lack of a plan.  So unless you guys have some suggestions or unless Chris Jacobs will want to kill me for doing the above.  I think I’m gonna go with the suspension above.  Then from there go to the body work.

Sorry Chris.

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Anyway, I’ve been using TwitterFox for some time now, and really like it. But I’ve never really liked the themes or lack of themes that it came with.  At first you just had the baby blue twitter-ish look.  Which was pretty damn ugly.  And now that they’ve been bought or partnered or whatever with EchoFon you have a grey and a black theme.  And I don’t want to sound like a dick but I really don’t like them either.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like they are bad, they are just kinda boring.

So rather than just bitching about it, I decided to do something about it.  After a couple glasses of wine last night, I decided to go ahead and design a couple of themes that I’d be happy to use.  I finished them up just a second ago, and sent them over to the guys at EchoFon.  I don’t know if they are gonna trash it or what, but it would be pretty damn cool to have some themes I did thrown into their extension.  -hint- -hint-

Anyway…here’s what they look like.  These aren’t anything crazy fancy either, cause I do realize there’s not much you can do with a box.  I just prefer a larger icon, larger font, brighter colors, and some clean backgrounds.  So that’s what I did. Let me know what you think.

Grey Theme 1 – “Gravy”

Blue Theme – We’ll call it “The Lazy River”

And the Grey Theme – AKA “McGruff”

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Since Live Counseling is a up and running company, we had to put the redesign on hold and bust out some new products.  One of the first was a free chat interface.

More to come soon…

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Pitch work

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Well as you probably saw, my site has been down for a couple of weeks.  This was due to some leak in Dreamhost where someone was able to inject spam links into all WordPress blogs.  Pretty much it sucked balls, and I had to hire someone to move all of my domains from Dreamhost over to Media Temple.  Oh and this wasn’t an easy process.  Not just because of the amount of stuff I have on the old server, but mainly because the Dreamhost server was so slow, that I couldn’t connect to it most of the time.  This made the process take forever.

But thank god, I’m finally on a blazing fast Media Temple Grid Server and I couldn’t be happier.  Thanks Tej for your hardwork.  And sorry to everyone that I host your site, or to you people that just wanted to see my pretty site :)

Hope this never happens again.  F&$^ Dreamhost!

The end.

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You might only be saving seconds each time, but throughout the day if you get as many emails as I do.  You’re saving a lot of time.

If there are any developers out there that would like to work with me on this project, please hit me up.

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So when I found this toy, I just had to put on the “must have” list.

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So since the wait was so long, we only got to play 2 games.  But it was still a good time.  Not as good as some people…Amber…but we can’t all be as amazing as her.  Below is a few pictures and a few videos.  Enjoy.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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First off…MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Just the other day, me and doan were talking about how she had never seen me without facial hair.  It got me thinking, and I’m pretty sure that 95% of my friends haven’t.  I mean unless you went to Poteet High School (the didn’t allow facial hair) with me then more than likely you haven’t seen it.  This all made me feel kinda weird.  I haven’t shaved my face in 10 years.  That’s just weird.

So I decided I’d start 2009 off clean.  I’m gonna eat better, not drink as much, stop drinking sodas, and I’m gonna start the year off clean shaven.  I was gonna shave my head, but I thought that might be pushing it.

Anyway happy 2009!  Comment and let me know what you think about the first time you saw me with no facial hair.

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What they say PasteBud is:

pastebud enables round-trip copy and paste on your iPhone or iPod Touch, between the two applications that matter the most: Mail and Safari. And through a clever combination of web services and bookmarklets, it does it without requiring a jailbreak or App Store download. Watch the demo, or hover or tap on each screenshot in the following flow for details.

Demo
PasteBud Demo – iPhone copy n paste

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Disney artists have referenced original comic drawings in bringing Scrooge McDuck to three-dimensional life in hand-crafted, hand-painted kiln-fired porcelain with additional ‘plussing’ elements including brass spectacle frames with acrylic lenses, metallic paint and hand-cast pewter components. This lively Scrooge statue sculpted by artist Bruce Lau stands 4

BackStory

“I dive around in it like a porpoise!”

Disney artists have referenced original comic drawings in bringing Scrooge McDuck to three-dimensional life in hand-crafted, hand-painted kiln-fired porcelain with additional ‘plussing’ elements including brass spectacle frames with acrylic lenses, metallic paint and hand-cast pewter components. This lively Scrooge statue sculpted by artist Bruce Lau stands 4 3/4″ high. The statue includes a gift box and Disney Certificate of Authenticity as well as a small format color litho of the Carl Barks’ comic, which inspired the statue.

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Gurutoy.com

About Gurutoy
The concept of Gurutoy emerged in December 2005. We wanted to construct a more organized way of searching that was fresh and new. The idea was to create a virtual art gallery of website links that would be searchable thru keywords and phrases. All content will be uploaded by users. You tell us what you like out there on the internet. Another intention was to promote creativity, uploaded pictures can be anything deemed meaningful for attracting someone to click on to the site link.

Become a member and search other user’s favorite websites that they’ve uploaded. With Gurutoy, you can discover websites you never knew existed or reference back to your favorites. Gurutoy is meant to be a fun, easy way to search for websites, powered by the people to give search back to the people.

Launch Website

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About Madskill

Madskill is a creative consulting firm dedicated to the cultivation and development of forward thinking ideas. We develop, create, and implement innovative ways to communicate. The most brilliant and profound message is useless if unheard, making the chosen media just as important as the message itself.

We understand that change is the only constant in every aspect of our world. This constant change is what drives us to transcend the norms and break all creative limitations. From fundamental tools to the most advanced technology, we view everything as a canvas to express our creativity.

Simply put, we MAKE THINGS HAPPEN… and we enjoy every bit of it.

Some of our Clients

Scion Hawaii
Smithsonian Institute
Turtle Bay Resort
Contemporary Museum of Hawaii
Hyatt Regency Waikiki Resort and Spa
McDonalds
DVS Shoe Company
Waikiki Shopping Plaza
Panasonic

Launch Website

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Text anonymous abuse information to your friends:  You simple put in your friends, parent, family members cell phone number, and we send a message with the subject “Abuse is not normal…you don’t have to deal with it”.  The message would contain the process of getting help, as well as contact information to call and get face to face help through the organization.

This project was fullfilling and I hope it helps a lot of teens in Hawaii.

Launch Site

Another aspect of the project was to create a cohesive flow between where the teens are to where the help information is.  So we created them a myspace profile page, that matched the design of the new site.

Launch Myspace

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Red was the color of choice by the client, and I created a very clean, web 2.0 ui. Below you can read a little bit more about Feedblendr.

FeedBlendr takes the feeds you give it, pulls the individual entries from each of them, attempts to sort them in date order (combined across all feeds) and then provides you with a new, blended feed of all entries. This system was written from the ground up using the programming language PHP. I’m also using MySQL to manage the feed information on the backend, and FeedBlendr is hosted on the wonderful DreamHost. Oh, and the subscribe page uses the icons from Feed Icons and OPML Icons. The blog, this page, Tips and Contact are all managed using the wonderful, open-source blogging engine WordPress.

In case you were wondering, my name (the guy who made this) is Beau Lebens. My main website is Dented Reality, and I do all sorts of projects like this one. This visual interface of this site was designed by my good friend Ray Hernandez and coded up by me in my spare time (around my day-job, which takes up way too many hours in the day).

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This WordPress plugin allows you to create sections of text in your post or page which expand/collapse when clicked on. You simply wrap the special tags around your text, and set the ‘expand link’ (the link visitors click on to show the text).

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