A simple way to see it is to decide what is the most important: Fast, Cheap or Good? You can choose 1 or 2, but you cannot have all 3.

I always strive to do a good job with anything I work on, but it is equally important to stay within budget and meet the deadline. Good Fast work is my favorite. That is when I focus all of my attention on the project and get it working. I also appreciate clients who are low budget but give me a lot of time to get it done. In that case I can take on many projects and priorities them accordingly.

Update. The site has gone down as the organization is no longer putting on this festival. So I have moved a backup copy as an archive: www.Bulbmedia.com/oldsites/thewholebeingweekend.com

I also did some video work for them by interviewing some of the organizers and volunteers to make an introductory welcoming video:

Other video interviews are on their Youtube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpIfc702hEFcsy6V1TD09Cg

Click here to view the Whole Being Weekend Website 2015

NSI is the company that provides backup services as well as other IT services. NSI stands for Next Solutions Inc.

Responsive Design refers to a layout technique that adjusts to fit whatever browser size or mobile device you use to view it with. That means if you view this website on a tablet, or smart phone, the website will adjust to fit within that screen size. The image to the right is a demonstration of the responsive home page being viewed on a thin browser such as an android phone. Everything lines up vertically.

You can try it within your browser by going to the site: InstallationServicesOfSanDiego.com then re-size your browser to be smaller, and observe how the element shift places.

Installation Services of San Diego is a company that has a wide range of products they provide to their customers. The website needs to be flexible enough to portray this array of services, while also focusing on the services and products that sell the most. The site’s primary purpose is for lead generation and consumer confidence. When a company has an easy to use and informative website, it reflects on how the company operates and sets up a good first impression.

PostScript August 23rd 2013:

Green and Gold Color Re-Design:

During the time I was launching the site, a lot fo graphic design and branding changes were going on. I was also designing flyers and business cards. It was decided to change the companies colors to green and yellow. So I updated the website with the new colors, and shifted the design to accommodate this change:

PostScript February 19th 2016:

Installation Services of San Diego has changed their name to Discount Installation Services. The website has also gone through a color change from Green and Gold to Orange and Blue. I have a backup copy of the site I setup in green and gold. You can browse that site here:
http://www.bulbmedia.com/oldsites/installationservicesofsandiego.com/

To view the Discount Installation Services with the new color scheme, visit:
http://www.installationservicesofsandiego.com/

I setup a WordPress Content Management System, with a customized responsive design theme. This allows for an employee to login and update content without having any web development background. The responsive design allows for the website to change shape as the browser gets smaller, making it easily viewable in a smart phone or tablet. The website provided pricing information, and background about the company.

Digital Printing and Graphics requires a file transfer solution for receiving files from their customers. They already had an old in-house dedicated FTP server, but it had some bugs. I reloaded the server with Windows 7 on a new hard drive, and setup a web based FTP application called: CrushFTP. The new FTP server has a more user friendly web interface, allows multiple file uploads at once, and is reliably stable.

All this work took 30 hours to complete, and the website launched within 2 weeks from when I started. The customer is happy with the results. Since the site launched he has been adding new content and writing blog posts.  To view how the site looks today, go to: digitalprintingsd.com

After working with Digital Printing and Graphics I highly recommend them to anyone who is looking for a fast, friendly, and affordable printing solution in San Diego. They are ideal for things like Flyers, Poster, Business Cards and Brochures. When you speak to them, tell them what you think of their website. They would enjoy the feedback.

DreamHost is an all around good company. They are carbon neutral and allow you to show off your own site as being hosted carbon neutral with the button to the left. They offer free hosting to non-profit Organizations.

DreamHost has an affiliate program that rewards me for each person I refer to them. As an added incentive, I can share the reference money with you in the form of a discount to your service. Below is a link that gives me credit for referring you, and gives you $70 off per year. Which means you would only pay $50 per year for unlimited hosting. The usual cost for unlimited hosting is about $120 per year.

Here is a link to Dream Host with affiliate code and promotion already code included, all you have to do is sign up after clicking on this link:
http://www.dreamhost.com/r.cgi?456711|ripple
(Discount code: ripple.)

DreamHost has an entertaining E-mail newsletter, and a good office environment. They are located in Los Angeles California. Here is a video that is a Day at DreamHost:

Contact me if you have any questions about DreamHost that I can help you with. Or visit their website: www.dreamhost.com

The high end design firm is capable of doing beautiful cutting edge graphic design, as well as robust web application development. It is rare to find a company that is highly skilled in many aspects of web application development, graphic design, and search engine optimization. My specialty within the company is doing the HTML, CSS, JQuery, Ajax and light PHP programming. After one of the graphic designers has polished a website layout, and the customer has approved the style, the image file is then handed to me to turn into a website structure that can be viewed and interacted with in a web browser. Once I have finished, the files are then handed off to one of our PHP Programmers to add functionality and custom code.

As a project manager I am responsible for staying on top of several projects, testing recently completed code, and assigning specific tasks for the programmers to complete. I enjoy working with the programmers, overcoming unexpected problems and learning about their techniques for programming.

Postscript added Nov 2012:
The name of the company and pictures were removed from this blog post by request. After I wrote the blog post, they request that I do not make any reference to them. We are on good terms, it’s just their company policy.

My job for this website re-development was to re-built their old site to have a back end content management system and a new shopping cart that is integrated with their drop ship company API (Application Programming Interface). This means orders are processed and sent out to the customer automatically. I did not do the graphic design work or structural design for this site. I was asked to keep the site looking and functioning identical to the old style. So although the style of the site is old fashioned, the programming behind it is fresh, functionally and optimized.

I started with wordpress and a shopping cart plugin that was written in PHP. I then customized the site to match the old site and function the way the client specifically requested. I wrote the code for the the order processing in PHP and mySQL. When an order is placed, the information is validated, then securely sent to the drop ship company (using CURL). The credit card is processed by the drop-ship company. I also wrote a PHP script that checks the status of an order to update the wordpress shopping cart with the latest information so the client only needs to check one place to find out what is happening with the order.

There were or course many variables and unexpected issues that were resolved. Some had to do with limitations with the drop-shipping company. Other issues came up when manipulating the existing code to function the way the client requested. The order processing PHP ended up being about 700 lines of code with comments. Now that the site is launched there are still some minor bugs that are appearing, so I will continue to do updates until the site is running smoothly.

Visit the site StirlingEngine.com to view the products and learn more about Stirling Engines.

I wrote custom PHP code to interface with a manufacturers database API (Application programming interface) and retrieve product information to be imported into After Market Cycles Magento E-commerce website. I wrote the code so that entire sections from their catalog could be imported all at once. The project took some time to complete because there was so much data to organize. It was very satisfying to see the code work successfully.

I have setup a new website to present this information. It is called You Can Lucid Dream.com It centers around the idea that there are 3 things you need to have vivid and meaningful dreams in you life, and 7 things you need to know to have lucid dreams. I plan to develop the site further by adding videos and resources to help people with their dream practices.

To learn more about lucid dreaming visit the site: www.YouCanLucidDream.com

I am co-hosting a re-occurring event that has music and socializing. It features networking that is similar to speed dating but for creative projects. It is called a Time Merge. Each person will get to speak 1 on 1 with every other person who takes part, allowing 2 minutes each to pitch an idea and get feedback. The goal is to practice pitching ideas, getting feedback, and finding other creative people to potentially work with.

More about Time Merge:

Share your project or an idea one on one with each person in the group for feedback and to seek out other creative people to work with. Creators and thinkers from all walks of life are welcome to take part.

Time Merge participants pair up and share one on one about a creative project they are working on. It works similar to speed dating. 1 person gets to speak for a few minutes, the other person gives feed back and can highlight what skills or contributions they could make to the project. Make your pitch quick! Everyone will get a new partner every 5 minutes or so until everyone has spoken one on one with everyone else, and all of the projects have been shared.

During the break, participants can take part in the live music jam, or socialize.

Time Sharing:

If two people agree they want to collaborate on each other’s projects, they can work for a set period of time on one project, then rotate and work for the same amount of time on the other project. Collaborators can also come to any other arrangement they agree upon, such as meeting at a future time and location.

We decided to use audience participation, 3D animation, and formal interviews to make it as engaging and beneficial as possible. It was internally funded and supported by donations and volunteers, which gave us the freedom to take the project in any direction we wanted. It was an incredible experience that we learned a lot from. Our vision was larger than what we had made time for, so within the year we worked on it we only completed the first part of a three part script. Recently we have put the documentary on our website to be watched online for free. Hope you enjoy it.

Learn more about Qi, Breath work, and heart coherence, by clicking “Watch” from the main menu of the Vehicle for the Soul website: www.VehicleForTheSoul.com

The first time I attended was in 2004 when I was doing research and interviews for a documentary on Lucid Dreaming called: “Explorers of the Lucid Dream World“. After I completed the documentary I stayed in communication with the Lucidity Institute. In 2010 they invited me back as an assistant and a presenter. Since then I have attended 3 retreats, and am schedule to go in November. They have placed my picture and bio on the “Dreaming and Awakening” website.

If this event is something you are interested in going to, let me know. There are scholarships available for researchers and dreamers who may not be able to pay the full cost.

4 years have passed, and I have decided to re-design it to more accurately represent my web design ability. The new site launched September 14th 2011 and it is now the official Bulb Media Website. To see the old site visit the Old Bulb Media site

I did make 1 minor mistake that I will learn from: I launched the site by changing the host and DNS (Domain Name Servers). The website transitioned very smoothly, but my E-mail went down for 1 hour! I had to update the MX records on the new DNS servers to get it to work again. In the future I will only change DNS servers late at night, in case something like that goes wrong again.

Quote Lotus is the 2nd generation of a mirco-blog website called Link Lotus which I designed using custom PHP code and a flat file database in 2006. Quote Lotus instead uses WordPress as a content management system allows for a lot of additional features such as E-mail subscription to receive updates weekly.