Avalonstar

High School Friends

bryan@revyver.com (Bryan Veloso) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:16:13 PDT

This is the story of a guy and a theme. Said theme is reconnecting him with said guy’s high school friends on Facebook.

In one of the few IRC (yes IRC) rooms I still frequent, high school came up. It reminded me of some messages I got recently from my old Bridewater-Raritan classmates on Facebook.

So, in response:

My HS friends are starting to find my name, on the bottom of blogs that use ChaoticSoul.
>_>
And they’re like, “hey you! you’re on some cafe website.” And I think, “I wish I could describe to you what a theme is in terms that you’d get.”

Yes. Not to mention, my claim to fame is having the WordPress theme that graces the most porn blogs. Don’t believe me? You really don’t want to see my Mint stats then—I’ve stopped clicking my referrals.

o_O, You are Mine Again

bryan@revyver.com (Bryan Veloso) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 12:59:32 PDT

When I first joined Twitter back in 2007, I remember seeing that famed default avatar and frowning a bit. Part of me went:

“Oh sweet! Now everybody can use it!”

The other part of me went:

“Ew, bad padding. Ew, bad font. Ew, everybody’s going to use it.”

It’s a recurring feeling I’ve been getting lately, something that started right around when DDR became mainstream¹.

A few days ago, as you probably already know, they implemented a bird as the new default Twitter avatar. It’s a cute bird, but my happiness is in the fact that I can now personally, selfishly and deliriously feel like the “o_O” is mine again.

It was never mine to begin with, although I seem to use it in an alternating fashion in IMs, but it makes me happy. So thank you Doug, I’m going to credit you for this change. Happy Friday people, looks like I’ve started my weekend early. :D

Yes, there is going to be a US tournament sponsored by Konami. No, I’m not entering, I suck at it now. D: ↩

Free Lunches

bryan@revyver.com (Bryan Veloso) — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:49:31 PDT

This is a story about a guy and how there are no such things are free lunches… and how apparently said guy said that.

There was a day, way back when, when I got spambotted. But this wasn’t just any spam, hell I don’t even know if it was spam account but apparently said account retweeted the following:

RT @bryanveloso There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

Now I looked at “her” timeline and she wasn’t doing this to everybody, so it wasn’t a program (maybe). Yet, I never said that phrase in my life, let alone tweeted it, which was odd because usually bots need a trigger. But the minute I said something to that effect, a good set of Django friends, specifically the boys from the Pinax Project¹ took hold of it. The rest is history as the “retweet Bryan saying cliches he never said” running joke began.

Every now and then with seemingly no trigger, they’ll break out the dreaded lunch retweet from the past, like above, which they made sure to do before DjangoCon ended. And here I thought I could get away scot-free. ;)

To conclude, two points. First, the Django community rocks (well… I already knew that) and there is no shortage of running jokes (just ask #futurenewman). Second, in order to join the Revyver team in the future, you must be the blunt end of a running joke within 90 days of being hired.

And now… back to sprinting.

Oh, if you’re not following any of the guys above—follow them—even if you’re not a Django enthusiast. They’re all full of awesome. ↩

Hello! Party

bryan@revyver.com (Bryan Veloso) — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:35:38 PDT

This is the story of a guy, a girl and an event. Said event was a departure from events they held in the past and introduced them not only to a new world of attendees but a new way of dealing with the planning of parties altogether. Eyes are opened, friends are made and fun is had.

Let me start by saying that I live two lives.

I’m a designer who loves Japanese Pop music in one, and a Japanese Pop fanatic who happens to design in the other. You may think there’s overlap, but there is little. On one end, the number of designers I know who share my music tastes can be counted on one hand. On the other end, the number of J-pop fans who share my passion for design can also be counted on one hand. It’s a lonely, but enjoyable existence.

The “Bonnie and Clyde” of Events

Most of the people in the former group know that Jen and I have held three mildly-successful bowling events. But this July, we took a dive into holding an event for the latter group. Not only was it a challenge, it was quite the rewarding challenge. When our favorite idol group, Morning Musume announced that they would be choosing Anime Expo to make their American debut, Jen and I knew we had to do something to commemorate it. Jen always had the idea of holding an event that contained games that mimicked the games of a show called Hello! Morning. Our ulterior motive would be to use it as a vessel to market Revyver’s first product, Hello! Ranking, which you may or may not have heard of. Needless to say, you really couldn’t find a more perfect marketing opportunity. What did I do during the planning stages? Well, I designed a few things. Jen took point on everything else, including emceeing the event.

You would think that our experience with holding the bowling events would carry over to holding this one; in reality, not much did. The difficulty of finding sponsors for instance in a niche music community like this one made finding sponsors for web events look like money was literally being placed in your lap. For the first time, I felt powerless, as I was almost 100% sure that even the music-oriented of the sites in our industry would pay no mind to a party being held for such a niche audience. It was a truly a wake up call that consisted of miscommunicated promises and contractual hand-tieing.

The Part Where You Lose Sleep

Many times we were faced with the decision of canceling the party outright, but the community would have none of it. So many people wanted to see this party happen that they collectively donated to cover half of the party’s expenses¹. it was a shocking move that took both of us completely off-guard, but made throwing the party even more of an honor. I saw not only great friends, but also great evangelists. Quite humorous how it took an event for me to realize just how confident I should be in the product we’re building for them.

Cue a Sigh of Relief

The party itself was a blast. As I said above, Jen emceed while I tried my best to recall my A/V days and take care of the… A/V. We held five games, that ranged from people running to a running Jen holding a microphone to identify a song to a game that required people to play “[Telephone]” with drawings. We were able to record about 80% of the event and what prompted this post was the fact that I finally uploaded everything. ;)

So if you have a little time on your hands and would like a little view into “this life” of mine, here are the links (rather than a hell of a lot of ) to the videos (make sure to watch them in HD!).

Guess That Song
Trivia — Part 1 · Part 2 · Part 3 · Part 4
Karaoke Battle — Part 1 · Part 2
Telephone Drawing — Part 1 · Part 2

If you check out the playlist connected to these videos, you’ll be able to see videos recorded by the attendees. Be forewarned, some of them are a little… odd to any person who doesn’t know what’s going on.

We loved throwing Hello! Party and are eagerly starting to plan the next one. To the parties of interest out there, yes, it is happening. I’m already working on the teaser trailer. ;)

Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said for bowling. An event that charged $15 to bowl didn’t look so appealing to people who could also go to a free event sponsored by Facebook or Tumblr. It showed in the numbers, you just can’t compete against that. :/ Two people can’t take on entire companies with party budgets. ↩

iTunes

bryan@revyver.com (Bryan Veloso) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 18:08:02 PDT

This is the story of a guy and a rant. Rant subject, the new iTunes. All caps mode, on. Includes mentions of ninja suits.

So if you’re living under a rock, iTunes 9 came out today. To practice writing short posts, I only have two things to say:

To the iTunes UI Team

For the love of all that is holy, STOP DEVIATING FROM MAC OS X. Seriously guys, do you get off at making iTunes look different? What is this, plastic? Now you’ll have all the rumor mills saying that this’ll be what 10.7 will look like. I’m calling it, right now, some upstart on Wall Street is going to analyze and predict that 10.7 will look like iTunes 9.

To the Mac OS X UI Team

For the love of all that is holy, WILL YOU IMPLEMENT THE DAMN ITUNES SCROLLBARS AND LET AQUA DIE THE DEATH IT SHOULD HAVE DIED MILLIONS OF INTERNET YEARS AGO? Seriously. I’m sure the iTunes UI team is RIGHT NEXT DOOR. You could, you know, go in ninja attire one night and steal the NIBs from them. It’s THAT easy, and you’d be able to dress like NINJAS. WIN WIN AMIRITE?

(But in all seriousness, great job guys. The pros definitely outweigh the fashion faux pas.)

Dream Fighter

bryan@revyver.com (Bryan Veloso) — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 15:25:03 PDT

This is an "episode" of Avalonstar Radio, so visit the site and have your headphones on! ^_^

Get on the dance floor, it’s time. For this first foray into the new (finally) Avalonstar Radio, I’m proud to introduce you to one of the rising powers on the Japanese Pop charts—Perfume.

I was introduced to Perfume a couple of years ago through Jen; listening to their 3rd major single, Electro World. Their sound reminded me of the indie techno and house that I listened to as a student (more on that to come). More than that, it was something new for me to listen to amongst the awesome music I already had stuck in my head.

I admit, I haven’t listened to Perfume as much as I know I should have. It’s one of those cases where there’s always another song that wins my “repeat once” battle. This week though, that is not so. As I got my hands on their latest album, Triangle¹, I was reintroduced to Dream Fighter. I had watched the PV to it a few times (through Jen), but it didn’t stick until I had the headphones on.

Dream Fighter is a great sample of Perfume’s style. If this track can’t at least get your feet tapping, then you need to get checked.

Speaking of the PV, it’s quite awesome, here it is for your visual enjoyment:

Those of you who already know of Perfume will notice that I used Triangle’s album art rather than the single’s. You can chalk that up to two reasons. One, I don’t have the Dream Fighter single in my library (so it wouldn’t be an accurate representation). Two, I adore Triangle’s album cover. ↩

Batteries Not Included

bryan@revyver.com (Bryan Veloso) — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 19:35:20 PDT

This is the story of things that are unfinished…

… nor are a lot of other things.

For some reason, the site doesn’t seem to be all that incomplete. Sure, you can’t browse archives, post comments, see a home page or read about me—if anything, I did accomplish all three of the goals I had for this sprint¹.

Goal, the first.

I wanted to blog again. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of somebody not being able to blog because of an overwhelming design, but that’s exactly what version 25, Distortion, was for me. Not only did I feel obligated to write longer posts, I needed to write longer posts since shorter ones looked like complete crap. Valid reason? It was for me. So I departed from the sheer graphical mammoth that was Distortion with a design that was another challenge for me—one that was light, minimal and typographic (and chock full of HTML5 and CSS3).

Goal, the second.

Since I wrote about the second goal on the GitHub project page for what I code named the Phoneix Project, I’ll just go ahead and post that here:

One day, I forget when, I had a crazy idea. I wanted to put a blog on Revyver. “Oh hell no,” I said, “what about Avalonstar?” Well, Avalonstar is just sort of sitting there right now, but I really didn’t want to pile Revyver news on Avalonstar and force people to go to Avalonstar when all they wanted to see was Revyver-related bits and vice versa.

Then I thought, maybe a custom theme. Nah, it’d be too weird. People would be looking through archives on Avalonstar, only to see a Revyver story, click on it and then get transported to a post on the Avalonstar domain that looked like it should have been on Revyver. Confusing right? Well, even if it isn’t to you, it was to me.

Phoenix is the pony power behind Avalonstar, Revyver and the next version of Konokoi (Jen and my joint blog). It’ll hopefully allow me to a lot of nifty things with regards to sharing content between the sites. The engine is still very much a work in progress, but I’m as happy with this codebase as I am with Hello! Ranking‘s.

Goal, the third.

My third goal was one that I’ve had for a long time now, almost as old as Distortion. As I was converting selected posts to Markdown for Distortion, I wondered about context. When most people redesign, their old posts assume their new design—and they lose context. I wanted a way to not feel guilty about redesigning (read: I got at least 10 questions a year after I retired the egg rolls about when they were making a return).

So Redemption is not just one design, it’s one new design plus seven redesigns, or “memories,” of old versions. If you click the previous button a few times, you’ll see version 25, and so on, all the way back to version 19, Knighted. It’s what I consider the crown jewel of this version. As I go on to version 27, 28 and beyond, these designs will stay to forever give context to the articles that were posted during their tenure.

So there you have it. While I haven’t built everything in that you would come to expect a blog engine would have, I was able to accomplish my personal goals by building the blog first. In the coming days I’ll be fleshing out the rest of the site (since I still have Revyver to work on).

Special thanks go out to my partner in crime, Greg Newman and my good friend Chris Harrison for starting the idea of the SiteSprint. It was definitely what I needed to get off my ass and start re-imagining my family of sites².

I don’t go into extreme depth on any of these points, as I need to give myself more reasons to blog. :) I’m sure you understand. ↩
I’m still on the fence about whether or not I should bother adding comments back. While I adore conversing, I’m starting to really get annoyed at the “Smashing Magazine” grade of comment that’s starting to become prevalent. If you’d like to “comment” throw me an @reply on Twitter and/or use the hash tag #as244. ↩

Soft Launch

bryan@revyver.com (Bryan Veloso) — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 01:39:15 PDT

This is the story of a guy and a blog. After 153 days of utter silence, he’s out for redemption and is taking his beloved blog with him.

If you’re seeing this, then you’re getting a first look at what will be the next version of Avalonstar, number twenty-six, Redemption. It is, as of today, unfinished. But as they say, “release early, release often”.

Enjoy what you see, even though there’s not a lot of it. You can scrub back and forth between this and my 242 other posts. Hopefully you’ll scrub back far enough to see what I consider is the crown jewel of this reworking. Expect much explanation in the coming days…

… I just have, uh, a few more designs to finish off. :)

Bryan and Jen in Japan

bryan@revyver.com (Bryan Veloso) — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 04:17:22 PDT

This is the story of a guy, his future wife and a dream. The dream was to someday visit the country that serves as the source of a lot of happiness for the couple. This is the story of the beginning of their journey there, and how you can follow along — if you wish. :)

If you’ve been following along for a while, you’ll already know that I’m a big fan of Japan and Japanese culture. While I was a bit of a casual fan in years past, it wasn’t until I met Jen that my exposure to all things Japan suddenly spiked. The culmination of that happens today, as we wait at Vancouver Airport for Air Canada 001 bound for Tokyo.

We’ve been looking forward to this trip for a long time. For a while we weren’t even sure if it was going to happen, but a lot of hard work led to where we are now. For me, it’s my first non-family vacation ever. For Jen, it’s her first trip across the Pacific.

I’ve been a bit at a loss at what to feel, even now. It’s a sort of excitement, a feeling I equated to the moments passing as you’re getting lifted on a roller coaster. It’s a very real feeling, but it hasn’t hit me yet that our final destination is Japan. We were joking earlier that I’d all of a sudden come out of the plane at Narita Airport and proclaim, “Shit! This ain’t Austin!” (or something silly like that). Many things are going to be new to me this week, and the word “excited” can’t even begin to describe my anxiousness to get started.

But wait! There’s more!

We wanted to save and share our memories of this first trip, so with the help of Jen’s discerning eye, I took some time this week to skin a Tumblr for it. The domain it sits at, konokoi.com, is one I bought long ago when Jen and I first met. It’ll serves as a suitable spot for the blog before it gives way to our wedding site in the coming months. :)

If you’re interested in keeping up, by all means follow us through the Tumblr blog, RSS or my Flickr account. Other than updating the blog or Flickr, I’m going to (obviously) try and keep my Internetage to a minimum. With that said, see you on the other end! :D

Suit&tie

bryan@revyver.com (Bryan Veloso) — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 17:25:18 PDT

This is the story of a guy and a theme. It’s been quite a while since said guy worked on a theme for a certain blogging system. But a few guys approached him to create a theme suited for the business world. Challenged and renewed, said guy “presses” on.

A few months ago, word found its way to me that Adriaan Pienaar was looking for me to create a theme for his premium WordPress theme shop, WooThemes. To make a potentially long story short, it wasn’t until a few weeks ago that our paths finally aligned and I felt I was ready to take on the project.

Adii gave me the task of creating a business-style theme, which was a bit of a surprise since, to be honest, it took me a little bit of time to wrap my head around creating a “business-style” theme for a piece of “blogging software.” Granted we could get into an argument about that fact but the bottom line was that I had to steer my mind away from that line of thinking in order to comfortably progress.

He took a look at my portfolio and pointed to the design I did for Django Plugables as something that would make a good candidate for the theme. I didn’t mind since *cough* that design is on its way out anyway *cough* and I welcomed the chance to remix it a little. Remember, I designed the site in a day and coded it in four, so I didn’t really put as much thought into it as I normally would. It just worked. :)

So here’s “Suit&tie.”

More and more lately I’ve been a lot more open to using touches of translucency in designs. As always, I lean on more colorful assets such as photos and screenshots to provide the “pop” for the design. The jQuery carousel in the middle is obviously inspired from the Springboard on the iPhone (and I can’t wait to actually see that effect coded). Although I designed this from scratch without the Django Plugables design to work from, you can obviously see the elements I pulled from it—examples being the navigation and the content area.

Why the striped sock? Well, the theme was originally called “Suit&tie” until I started playing with some stripes and the obvious name of “Striped” took over (you can still see that name on the screenshots in the footer, whoops). The stripes ultimately didn’t make the cut, but the sock is there to mourn it.

Working with Adii and the WooThemes team was an absolute pleasure. The amount of breathing room I was given was very welcome and they provided just enough guidance throughout the process to provide that extra bit of refinement. Now I leave the theme in their able hands as it will surely see the light of day in the coming months. The initial reaction has been awesome so far and I hope that people will enjoy it when it does get released.

Zoomed

bryan@revyver.com (Bryan Veloso) — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 18:12:31 PST

This is the story of a guy and a shortcut key. Said shortcut key is supposed to be used for accessibility, but sometimes said guy actually likes working with the mode on. If you don’t easily get motion sick, take a look if you’re not keen on trying it yourself.

Now for something completely different.

I have an addiction to using ⌘ + 8.

For the non-Mac amongst you, command + 8 is used to zoom into the screen. It’s an accessibility feature, but on those “off” days of mine, I enjoy working with it. Any normal person would think that it’s a bit nuts, and I’d have to agree with them. But hell, it’s fun. :)

So a few months ago, I decided to record a session, I just never got around to blogging about it. So enjoy, if you’re not prone to motion sickness.

For those that are interested, the music is “Theme of Battle” from Motoi Sakuraba’s Tales of Series Battle Arrange Tracks.

"Geek" Motivation

bryan@revyver.com (Bryan Veloso) — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 13:45:15 PST

This is the story of a guy and motivation. It’s hard for him to find any outside of working (and a good number of times while working). However, after finding the motivation to diet and keep dieting for almost three months, he’s found that a source of motivation can come from satisfying some basic designer geek urges.

We designers and developers are a special breed of person. Like artists, we’re creative, overly pensive, and our best work comes in spurts. On the other hand, we’re like factory workers, day in and day out, we have to work hard to generate a (semi-)constant output for long periods of time. It gets tiring, obviously. So when it comes to motivation outside of work, it’s a bit scarce, especially for somebody like me who ~~has no life~~ pours all of it into work¹.

So what does this have to do with anything?

Well, let me give you an example. I’ve been “dieting” since November and for the first time in recent memory, I’ve been able to stay on it for more than two weeks. Like others with the same goal, I’ve tried so many different things. Colin Devroe had “The Diet”, his weekly weight loss blog that inspired people to do the same. I loved the idea, but un/fortunately, I’m not very comfortable with taking pictures of myself topless, especially my belly. Not that you had to do that… well, nevermind. Then there were the “web 2.0” services like Traineo. Traineo had pretty graphics, spots for exercise routines, even a motivator system. Apparently, I suck at being a fitness motivator since Traineo has been scolding me for not checking up on Anton lately.

Then came Weightbot, the highly-lickable, super-awesome weight tracking iPhone application by Tapbots—programmed by Paul Haddad and lovingly designed by Mark Jardine. I could go on for hours about how beautiful the application is, and that’s exactly why it worked for me. Now, I’ve written about my success with GTD using Things in the past. Weightbot is an example of how I found the motivation to want to lose weight, just like Things gave me the motivation to get organized.

Here’s my point (and your mileage may vary).

In order for something like GTD or a diet to stick, it needs to require an action that’s not completely foreign to my daily routine. In other words, it needs to adapt to me and my personality. It’s pretty obvious when I say it like that, but the adaptation requirements get pretty specific.

Let’s take Traineo. Even though it had a nice interface and was feature-rich, it was simply another website I had to check. I have trouble remembering what sites I check on a daily basis as it is, which is why, for example, I’m really bad at staying active on forums. On the other hand, an iPhone application is easily spotted on the springboard, so it easily triggers my memory. With that said, I seem to quickly forget about programs I download for Leopard if I don’t launch them immediately after doing so.

In addition, since I wouldn’t be ashamed of calling myself an “app snob,” in order for me to start using an application constantly, it has to satisfy my eye. A program could cook my breakfast for me, but if its icon isn’t very tasty² (and no replacement icons exist for it), I won’t use it. Likewise for the UI, I tend to prefer applications that sport native appearances and consistency to the overall UI. Hence “app snob.”

In Weightbot’s case, it touches an even deeper addiction of mine, stats. If I had to name one feature about Weightbot that completely sold me on it, it was the graph. I’ll wake up, grab my iPhone, check my email, weigh myself, input it into Weightbot, turn the phone to see the graph and then proceed to sigh or smile.

It’s another testament to the power that mobile applications have over me. But since I didn’t want to completely rehash my Things entry, I felt it was important to show that using an application that satisfies your design or general geek urges will more than likely lead to you using that application consistently for a longer period of time. Find applications that will adapt to you, not you to it.

Although, maybe this has been an obvious fact for a long time, I just tend to be a late bloomer. :)

Or a good Call of Duty game. :D ↩
To my defense, I’m not the only one that refrained using it because of its icon either. ↩

2009 Design Predictions

bryan@revyver.com (Bryan Veloso) — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 12:33:52 PST

This is the story of a guy and and the new year. The new year is treating said guy well, but he’d thought he’d take some time to give you some of his predictions on what the coming year might look like for design. Oh, and here take this sarcasm pill before you read it.

I don’t have any. Go figure. So, surprise me. I like leaving things open ended.

Well, we live in a world of speculators, people who love to try and beat the market before anything’s actually happened. My hope for this year is to be surprised, again and again. Surprise the speculators and send the rumor mills packing. Try something new, like Canvas. Break out of that shell. Thrown on some CSS3 with a sprinkle of HTML5. Leave IE6 behind for good.

Oh, I can make one prediction though, albeit personal. You’ll be seeing those eggrolls soon and a bunch more. I’m sure that’ll please certain eggroll addicts.

2009? Bring It.

bryan@revyver.com (Bryan Veloso) — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:00:00 PST

This is the story of a guy. A guy whose last 365 days could be equated to riding X for the first time at Six Flags Magic Mountain. It’s been hard, it’s been crazy and somehow it’s been fun. Now with 2009 around the corner, said guy can’t wait to see what’s in store.

It’s been a comeback year. It’s been a life-changing year. It’s been a historic year. It’s been a crazy year. It’s been a scary year.

Dan and I, during one of our many talks in the past, discussed the importance of this year and how next year will be even better. In some ways, it’s hard to tell that anything could be much better given our current global environment. In other ways, it’s already going to be better than the last.

But for Dan and I, we agreed that 2008 was a year spent setting up for 2009. Now 2009’s here. Bring it on. :)

Now with the formalities out of the way, I’ll start off with this. From Jen and I and our 5 felines, have a safe, joyous and very prosperous New Year. 今年もよろしくお願いします! (I hope for your favour again in the coming year!)

Archive for the Holidays

bryan@revyver.com (Bryan Veloso) — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 19:02:07 PST

This is the story of a guy and a tradition. Every year since 2004, said guy has released a few files from that year’s Photoshop archives for people to learn from. As 2008 starts coming to a close, it’s that time again to once again (albeit a little early) release an archive.

I was supposed to be on a plane today. That’ll mean I’ll miss spending Christmas with my family. But as one Elizabeth Gast said to me this morning,

[T]ime with family is always precious no matter what day you get there. Dec 25th is just a day - Christmas happens in the heart

There I sat after rescheduling my flight, stuck in the mindset that I should be on a plane. What usually happens when those moments occur is that I start working on things I wouldn’t normally work on. Too far removed to do any actual work, I thought, why not release the 2008 archive? Fortunately, that’s what you’re getting today. Think of it as my holiday present to you all (even though you were going to get it anyway. ;D).

What awaits you this year is 13 files containing over 425 megabytes of Photoshop goodness. Oddly enough, 13 isn’t as many as I’ve released in the past. This is mainly because I didn’t do as much side work this year as I have in the last few. Despite the low number, I’ve tried to focus on pieces that show off some of the techniques that I’ve tried to perfect. Another unused mockup from this version of Avalonstar awaits, as well as the first version of Django Plugables and a prototype of what was supposed to be the 3rd version of Revyver.

As usual, these files are released purely for educational purposes. But I’m sure after 4 of these you’d know that by now. :) I sincerely hope you enjoy it and please spread the word! You can find the 2008 archive alongside my other releases at Revyver Labs.

Happy holidays!

The First 30 Days

bryan@revyver.com (Bryan Veloso) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 12:43:56 PST

This is the story of a guy and a company. A month ago, (wow, really?) he announced the coming acquisition of his company. Since he thought it would be quite useless to open up a new blog for said company, he decided to write about things here.

I thought about starting a blog for Revyver for about, 5 minutes. After that I said “screw it,” it belongs here.

It’s been 30 days since the announcement I made about the future of Revyver. Congratulations have come and gone and it’s back to business as usual. Well, it’s a new business as usual. Even though I had already been working with Spectrum for a few months, it wasn’t until this past month that I felt that Revyver had truly gotten off the ground. Now for the news.

Let’s start with Spectrum.

On that end, I had been progressing towards a role that was a bit foreign to me, product development. Now sure, I’ve developed my own products, but they’re exactly that, my own. I had never done any serious product development outside of that. It was frightening for me to not only step out of my box, but to then step into another box that’s completely foreign and come up with compelling ideas. I’ll blame it on my relative inexperience. Well, actually, complete inexperience. But I’d like to think I learn quickly. The product is called PlanetTagger which will be a “geo-social-networking engine targeting specific interest groups.” Examples of said “interest groups” would be Seahawks fans (if they have any left) or your local Coworking group. There’s not much I can divulge at the moment, but that’ll be changing pretty soon.

The Addictionary has been gaining some traction as well. The Addictionary Proper has seen the front of a good number of startup sites and even some design blogs. Combine that with the new print-edition of the Addictionary, “Brave New Words”, and our recent deal with E!Online to create the Celebrity Addictionary, things are looking up for the dictionary that Silicon Slopes built.

Now for Revyver.

Our first project, Hello! Ranking has been progressing quite nicely. I’ve had a good amount of time in between the hours I do Spectrum work to hack on our little J-pop game. It’s been a lot of fun to see such a big idea of ours start to see the light and we’re hoping to invite a group of Jen’s peers to play around with it before the new year.

Probably the most exciting part of the process has been envisioning the potential popularity of the service. When we first came up with the idea earlier this year, we only saw maybe one or two blogs covering Hello! Project rank their favorite artists. Now we’re seeing many newer blogs post ranks as introductory posts and still others that keep their rankings up-to-date manually. The fact that we’ll be making all of this that much easier for them makes us extremely excited. For me, it’s been a validation of all the work we’ve already put into it.

Jen’s been hard at work on another project called J-ongaku, or literally “j-music.” It’s a wiki that is set out to appease the masses of Japanese, Korean and Chinese music fans who depended on a wiki called wiki.ThePPN. ThePPN recently suffered a DDoS attack and has been down for about a month because of database issues that they don’t wish to disclose. As an aside, I think it’s poppycock¹. It’s almost inexcusable for a site that a good number of people depend on (people have been literally “crying” about its absence) to be down for so long without any status other than, “it’s coming back.” I am by no means a system administrator, but I know enough about databases, MySQL and InnoDB to say that a month with that reasoning is a bit off.

If you or anybody you know is a J-music, K-music or C-music aficionado, she would graciously appreciate the help in either building out the wiki or spreading the word about its existence. It’s not much at the moment and it will be put on the back-burner if wiki.ThePPN ever does come back, but the odds of that now are pretty slim.

That’s a wrap folks.

The past few months have been a learning period for me. Playing a major role in two growing companies requires a lot of what I seemed to have trouble with in the past—balance. The hardest part about achieving balance is being able to switch gears on a dime; the ability to work on Hello! Ranking and then quickly turn to the Addictionary if there’s a problem there.

I’ve been struggling with what should have been one of the first lessons that came with being a freelancer. Apparently those pages had been ripped out of my used textbook. Unfortunately, with the economic climate, things are not about to get any easier on that front. But like I said, I’d like to think of myself as a quick learner. Overall, things are extremely exciting and even with the economic situation there’s little that could stop us now.

I’ve always wanted to use the word poppycock in sentence. Whether or not it actually fit in this sentence is up to you to decide. :D ↩

Revyver to be Acquired

bryan@revyver.com (Bryan Veloso) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 13:09:01 PST

This is the story of a guy, his company and a dream. Since its inception, said guy’s company has always steered towards a path that would make dreams come true. Today’s dream was to be able to work on his own products. Today’s dream has come true.

You’re never prepared to write things like this. Today the announcement has finally hit the airwaves. SpectrumDNA, the company from Park City, Utah is acquiring Revyver.

Needless to say, both Jen and I are ecstatic. If you’ve been following the story thus far, you’ll have a good sense of what I was trying to mold Revyver into. For those that don’t, our goal was to create an environment where Jen and I could focus our energies on making products for people in markets close to our hearts. When I started Revyver two years ago, I never would have planned a path like this. I’m sure if everything stayed constant, I wouldn’t have failed at freelancing. But going through it all I’ve realized that the risks, the hard times, were worth it. Gotta love hindsight.

Revyver and Spectrum have already proven themselves to be an awesome pair through the Addictionary project. My role will continue with them as a creative director (not just in title this time :O). I’ve been working with them as they’ve cut deals with Comedy Central’s Indecision 2008 with their Political Addictionary and NBC’s The Office with their Office Addictionary. Beyond that, time can only tell.

What changes? Nothing. Although Revyver will become a “label” of SpectrumDNA—which speaks to Jim’s history in the entertainment industry—we will continue to operate and market ourselves as the same company you’ve come to know—and hopefully—love. Revyver will stay Revyver. Only now, we have quite a growing force behind us.

We hope you share in our excitement, even though it’ll be brief. Work be damned! That said, we have some awesome things in store on both the Revyver and Spectrum ends. I know I still lack a comment form, but if you’d like to ask us anything please send me an email at bryanatrevyverdotcom or you can leave us a note at our super hot Get Satisfaction hub. :)

Change and Withdrawal

bryan@revyver.com (Bryan Veloso) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 22:58:28 PST

This is the story of a guy and the future president of the United States. While said guy is completely elated that his candidate for president has won, he can’t help but feel some emptiness at the fact that the campaign is now over. Said guy bids goodbye to one of his favorite identities, ever.

(I’m going to keep this short. I’m fading quickly. :D)

After 21 months, the people have spoken, the person I wanted for President of the Untied States has been elected. I’m clearly ecstatic. However, as a designer, I can’t help but feel a bit empty. If President-Elect Obama has done nothing else, his campaign has inspired countless designers, you and I alike. He has run one of the most beautiful campaigns in our country’s history with one of the strongest identities of any candidate in history.

Every site that has come out of the Obama campaign has been beautiful, from the main campaign site shown below to the “Fight the Smears” campaign. The level of detail and the amount of thought put into this has boggled my mind. Maybe my mind is easy to impress, but I’m sure most designers would tend to agree with me. :)

At least that’s what I think.

I will miss this. Wether or not you voted for Obama, the superiority of this identity will stand for years to come. I for one, really hope that the design team migrates to Washington and redesigns it. Start with the White House, then move on to say, the FBI and the FCC and beyond, they desperately need it. :)

Anyway, to those designers, you have my thanks and the thanks of designers all over the world.

"The Internet Revolution"

bryan@revyver.com (Bryan Veloso) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 17:24:24 PDT

This is the story of a guy and his past. Way back when, even before Avalonstar, he was a webmaster for the FBLA on the chapter and regional level. While looking through Google’s 10th anniversary index, he found an old article that he wrote about “the internet revolution,” and can’t keep himself from laughing at himself.

In honor of Google’s 10th birthday, Google released a mini-site containing their earliest index from 2001. Needless to say, it’s brought a lot of laughs and plenty of memories. I really encourage you to take a look at it if you haven’t.

Most of the results that came up for db237_distortion were ones related to my stint with the Future Business Leaders of America, or FBLA. From 1999 to 2001, I held the “office” of “Eastern Region Webmaster” (giggle), which pretty much entailed that I had the duty of overseeing the the online presences of each state in the region. I (believe I) did pretty well in that position, making sure that each state chapter made a point of getting a certain percentage of their chapters online while in office. When I assumed the position, I wrote the article below for the national mailing list.

I can’t help but laugh at all the buzzwords I used and I think you’ll get a good laugh out of it as well.

FBLA-Y2K, THE INTERNET REVOLUTION

by Bryan Veloso, National Eastern Region Webmaster

When was the last time you checked your e-mail? The last time that you talked to friends on AOL Instant Messenger or ICQ? How about the last time you surfed for fun? Well, everywhere we go these days, people cannot seem to get away without the power of the Internet. The Future Business Leaders of America is no exception to the rule. As a business organization, we have to keep up with technology. Well, there are a few people that have the skills to build web sites as well as surf through them, the name given to these individuals are webmasters. They are the heart and soul of what you see before you in FBLA-PBL sites, and the entire Internet for that fact. My job as webmaster is to push along and oversee the development of chapter web pages throughout the nine states of the Eastern Region. This is not an easy task and requires a lot of time taken out of an already busy FBLA schedule. The first and foremost priority of the position is the Eastern Region Web Site, in which I call the “portal” to the region. My other priorities are to oversee the constant development and updates of the nine state web sites: New Jersey, New York, New Hampshire, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and finally the local chapters within.

Officers are not officers without plans and projects and Webmasters are no different. So I have two projects that I would like to see developed during my term, the first of which is the “75% Plan.” It’s not very self explanatory, however it refers to the number of web sites in the Eastern Region. I am trying to help restart and develop sites for chapters that do not have them yet. At the end of my term, I would like to see either 75% of the whole Eastern Region on the Internet or 75% of the chapters in each of the nine states online. It sounds hard but anything can be done in the FBLA. […]

The second of the two projects is code-named “FBLA-Y2K.” This is an extra piece of work on my behalf to further connect the chapters of the Eastern Region and the Nation. This will be a portal parallel to the Regional web sites and will serve as a new information source and interaction network for the FBLA. A fellow Webmaster from the Southern Region, Dave Johnson, will be helping me with this endeavor so expect a new FBLA site to be coming up later this year.

So if you are in one of those chapters who have not seen the light of the Internet yet, please contact www.highwired.com or get in contact with me at my email address and give me the name of chapter. It will be my pleasure to help you make a presence on the Internet and in turn helping me lead the Eastern Region through the Year 2000.

If you can find something humorous about your internet past, feel free to comment, or write a post and link it here! Hell, I’m telling you to link to yourself! I’m really interested in seeing what you were all like back then. ;)

Belated Eighth

bryan@revyver.com (Bryan Veloso) — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 12:29:51 PDT

This is the story of a guy and his blog. Said blog turned eight a few days ago and said guy completely forgot. Well, this is making up for it, since said guy couldn’t just sit around and not write some odd thoughts about the event. At least the date still says September. :)

Would one consider the number eight important? Well, if this were China, I guess 8 would be pretty lucky. If that’s the case, then the year ahead holds a lot for this young child of a site.

Eight years. Besides say, DDR and Japanese RPGs, it’s one of the only things that I haven’t gotten tired of given the length of time I’ve been doing it. I’ve grown a lot and the site has grown just as much. Looking back, it really puts my cyclical nature into perspective. Rises and falls, peaks and troughs. Something I’m still trying to get back is the furor for blogging that I had back in 2006. It’s been getting there, but I’m not satisfied yet. Sure, one could say that blogging in our industry is rendered irrelevant by the use of Twitter and other micro-blogging services. I can’t let myself be happy with that.

I used to want Avalonstar to be like those great design blogs. I don’t anymore. As an aside, it’s sort of like how I’ve strayed the path of trying to be that great, intellectual speaker. Because I’ve realized not that. There are people in our industry who do that job exceptionally well. There are people who are masters of the written word and everybody will run to the well looking for more. That’s not me. But I digress. I’ve learned that Bryan Veloso doesn’t shine, Bryan Veloso’s work shines, the person’s just there to back it up. :)

If the 9th year ahead says anything, it’ll be quite the interesting one. Interesting—in the fact that I’ve come to a point where I can’t see the road ahead of me, but I know where I want to go; akin to me graduating from college. I think I’ve said every year for the last eight years that it’s been quite a journey and I’ve been thankful to have people that have wanted to take that journey with me. It’s been comforting to say the least. With all my insecurities, indecision and changes of path, I always know i have some place to come to.

So happy belated birthday Avalonstar. Hopefully you’ll forgive me for missing it. :)

Twenty Twenty Two

bryan@revyver.com (Bryan Veloso) — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 15:21:06 PDT

This is the story of a guy and a spec. The spec is something we’ve all been looking forward to, maybe, for a long time now. But a “long time” doesn’t even hold a candle to the “long time” we’ll be waiting for said spec to actually come out. If you don’t see the humor in all of this, get the stick out of your ass.

The issue. HTML5. Well, honestly it’s not an issue-issue. If you’ve read anything this past week (or if you’re just catching up like I have, damn naps), you’ve seen something like this regarding the “space-travel map” to HTML5.

First W3C Working Draft in October 2007.
Last Call Working Draft in October 2009.
Call for contributions for the test suite in 2011.
Candidate Recommendation in 2012.
First draft of test suite in 2012.
Second draft of test suite in 2015.
Final version of test suite in 2019.
Reissued Last Call Working Draft in 2020.
Proposed Recommendation in 2022.

Two-thousand-twenty-two. That’s 14 years from now. Can any of us think that far? Wouldn’t our robot overlords, whether you welcome them or not, have taken over by then? Will the internet even matter then? I want to hear some raw thoughts on this, because honestly, I’m still laughing. Maybe we should start putting HTML5 into Little Einstein videos, so by the time our children are of age, they’ll be able to use this. :)

The Web Framework for Ponies

bryan@revyver.com (Bryan Veloso) — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 02:02:06 PDT

This is the story of a guy and a conference. At said conference, he saw a keynote by some guy at Flickr. The keynote was about how Django sucked. But one thing caught said guy’s eye, the fact that Django needed a mascot. Read on to experience the ensuing pony-fest.

As many of you know, DjangoCon came to a close yesterday. Long story short, one of my favorite conferences ever. The laughs, memories, connections and available knowledge — endless. Soon, there’ll be videos of all the talks for all to enjoy, but I couldn’t help acting on one of my favorite talks of the first night, Cal Henderson’s keynote on why he hates Django.

In it, amongst other things, he talked about how Django needed a mascot. One that was awesome and had magical powers. Well, somewhere inside my head, I agreed. Since the pony seems to have much historical significance within the Django project, I give you the logo for “the web framework for ponies with magical powers.” Django is now awesome.

Wilson, I expect the redesign tomorrow. ;)

Update: Now in green by popular demand!

Update 2: To my amazement there is now a website dedicated the lovable pony. Once I find out who made it, I’ll be sure to talk to them about what my plan was for shirts. :)

Update 3: I think I found him.

Update 4: So the pony’s magic didn’t stay unexplained for long as investigators found out what really powers our beloved Django pony.

Update 5: Updated the post with the video of Cal’s keynote. Watch it, now.

"Smashed" into Apathy

bryan@revyver.com (Bryan Veloso) — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 14:06:05 PDT

This is the story about a guy and his psyche. Well, not really. While he has a lot of respect for what he calls, the “super blog,” he also is starting to feel his motivation “smashed” by the speed and power of said blogs. He’s wondering if anybody feels the same way or if it’s just him getting a bit apathetic.

This is just a quick thought I had to get out of my head. I have to admit my psyche has a bittersweet relationship with the design super blogs. Places like, Smashing Magazine, Design Reviver, the Envato Network and Web Designer Wall.

First of all, I have a lot of respect for places like this, because they dedicate their time to spreading awesome information through tutorials and articles. A lot of them are run by people who are immensely creative and run circles around me when it came to truly mastering Photoshop and the like.

But that’s the thing.

The other side of the coin shows the same issue, but when it concerns my motivation to write articles, tutorials, build themes and the like. The only thing I can compare it to at the moment is say, Walmart closing down the smaller mom-and-pop shops. It’s because these blogs have dedicated and creative staff. They’re also businesses running on that premise. They need to do this to make sure they stay afloat. In doing so, it gives me an odd feeling.

“What’s the use?” I’d say to myself, they’d probably be able to do it better. I’m sure this apathetic feeling is just me. While I’m bothered, I’m not. Because really, I can only offer so much. I only wonder if other people are finding it hard to want to write or create things because of the larger blogs doing the same. For example, Smashing Magazine and their numerous WordPress themes, seems like one a week these days.

To conclude, the only thing I do fear, is the spread of misinformation. Things like the second point of Smashing’s article on table designs shouldn’t be there. Because these destinations have such clout these days, they have to be extra careful. I fear they won’t be because it’s the nature and speed of the business, but for the sake of the people in our industry who have tirelessly taught standards, we can’t have the next generation of designers learning the wrong things.

Gotta Catch 'Em All

bryan@revyver.com (Bryan Veloso) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 15:10:31 PDT

This is the story of a guy and a large company. It seems whenever this company puts out products, said guy has to poke at least some fun at them. But come on, you know they ask for it. Maybe you’ll see what he sees in this one.

So you’re going see a lot of posts today about Google’s new browser, Chrome. Apparently it’s not finished, and if you’re viewing this site in it, I suggest you don’t, since it appears that they’ve exchanged text-shadow for text-shitify.

But we’re not going to talk about that. No, you’re not going to hear me go off about how it doesn’t fit with the OS or how it fails at rendering rounded corners. No, we’re going to talk about something much more substantial in the sprit of talking about Google on Avalonstar. Exhibit A please.

Discuss.

I Failed at Freelancing

bryan@revyver.com (Bryan Veloso) — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 23:27:35 PDT

This is the story of a guy and a part of his career. After hearing a talk by an up-and-coming freelancer about a “series of successful failures,” he comes to terms with the fact that his freelancing phase was less than successful. Freelancing is a state of mind, it just wasn’t right for said guy.

Freelance isn’t fun like cupcakes and farts. It’s fun like the Ironman.

That’s one of many phrases that I took to heart at tonight’s Refresh Seattle. Matt Brown from the aptly named, thingsthatarebrown, had a lot of great things to say tonight. Actually, I wondered to myself if those tips would have been useful after I had entered the world of freelancing. But you can only spend so much time wondering and only so much time thinking what could have been. I exchanged a few words with Matt Anderson after the talk.

I could see the gleam in his eyes, he wants to do this. He has the tenacity and the talent to make this work. I’d be very interested to see what he has to say in 14 months. Either way, I’m sure it’ll be different than what I had to say after my first 14.

We all enter freelance with around the same goals. But being a freelancer shows you who you really are. I don’t think you can say you’re right for freelancing until it has held nothing back. Then you have the people that have survived, the Keith Robinsons of the world—and the people who haven’t—people like me.

Just like how I joke that it took Facebook and Automattic to get me freelancing, it took freelancing to get where I am today. Obviously I have to take the hard way around every time until I’m slowly phased out of the internet for constantly missing the boat.

But seriously, just because one is good at something, doesn’t mean that they’re going to be good at selling it to others. I could make great Avalonstars, but I could never quite translate it to bring greatness to anything that I didn’t have a vested interest in. I didn’t have the basic discipline or the required patience to be a freelancer. Things that Matt was learning at 4 months in, I couldn’t learn. Or, maybe I was too stubborn to learn them. I wanted too much control. I didn’t want to be questioned. If a client couldn’t keep my interest, I could completely lose my motivation. The way I evolved my process over time was to look for projects that would allow me to bypass all of that.

That worked, for a time. But we all know the story. I couldn’t handle it anymore. I wasn’t made for this. That’s been my experience.

Obviously, freelancing is not for everybody and I’ve gained so much respect for people like Matt who have the strength, determination and perseverance to keep going. Just by looking at him speak tonight, I know he’ll do well. I can say without a doubt that people with the same attributes will do just as well if not better. But you either know this for a fact up front, or you find out after you try.

I did the latter and say that as I’m looking back at the door I’m about to close and look forward at the one I’m about to open. I failed at being a freelancer from the beginning because I jumped in blindly. I failed being a freelancer at the end because I didn’t have the will to go on. I couldn’t finish the Ironman.

In our world, we need those great examples and we need examples of what and what not to be. Well, I’ll happily take the place of the latter. I’m really beginning to subscribe to the fact that everything happens for a reason. It was great while it lasted and if I had another chance, I wouldn’t do it any differently.

Good luck to Matt and all the freelancers out there. You’re all so much stronger than I could have ever been.