One look at the dust on this blog and it’s obvious that I haven’t had a lot of spare time for personal projects. Over the last year, I’ve been a part of some incredible client jobs (such as version 2.0 of Projecturf), moved home and office, spent nearly every weekend at friends and family events, and recently became engaged to my fiancée. While I’ve had no shortage of new web ideas during this time, I just haven’t been able to work on them — until now.

Design Kindle is a personal project that I’ve wanted to get off the ground for some time now. The web design community is such a welcoming, sharing group of people and the idea behind Design Kindle is to give back. The site will offer a growing collection of handcrafted, premium quality design files absolutely free. You’ll be able to download files instantly without signing up, joining a membership, or paying a single penny. The initial file types available will be graphics, vectors, and coded websites, but other categories will likely be added in the future. All resources will be free for both personal and commercial use.

I’m very excited to see Design Kindle come to life and the list of free files will continue to expand. Development is nearly finished and the site will launch in early September. To thank those who support the project and help spread the word, there’s going to be an iPad giveaway. Check out Design Kindle for details on how to enter and be sure to follow on twitter for more updates. Also, stay tuned for more personal projects on the horizon.

Shifting Creations is no stranger to being ripped; the design has been stolen several times over the last four years. Surprisingly, the number one way I usually find out one of my sites has been copied is because the designers neglect to remove my contact details from either the contact form or the vcard. Note to website thieves: if you’re going to steal someone’s work, at least follow through with the job!

Usually, I don’t bother pointing out the infringing website and deal with the matter very quietly but since this seems to be a stubborn case, I figured I would outline some of the steps I take in case this happens to you. I start by sending the offending party a polite DMCA notice via e-mail (here is an example). The keyword here is polite. There is no reason to automatically assume the website owner knows they have stolen your work and, often, they are less likely to cooperate if you immediately start the conversation with an angry tone. I’ve heard all the excuses, everything from, “We didn’t know, our intern created it,” to, “I was just testing it out to learn from your site.” I rarely believe any of these stories but go along with it anyway and kindly ask that they take the site down as soon as possible.

If the matter continues and I have not received contact or a reason to believe the design will be removed, I do a quick WHOIS lookup to find out where the site is being hosted and then contact that company. To date, every host I’ve dealt with regarding a similar issue has been very understanding and quick to aid in taking down the stolen materials. GoDaddy, however, has decided to make the process even more of a hassle.

I’ve contacted their support multiple times now and, after supplying every bit of info I could think of, the only responses I’ve received have been the same robotic messages that don’t clearly explain what my claim is missing. I understand there need to be certain measures in ensuring my request is valid, but I’ve been amazed at how little GoDaddy is willing to help or even send a human response instead of copying and pasting. Regardless, I will continue to pursue the issue until the design of ArticleMS Skins has been removed. Until then, here are a couple highlights to check out before the site is down:

• The contact page clearly still has my contact details (duh!).
• I love the copy in the footer stating, “Skin Modified By ArticleMS Skins,” as if that makes it ok to steal a design.

The funniest part of it all is I’ve also been receiving e-mails from potential customers of ArticleMS Skins, asking me where to send payment. Evidently, stealing my work hasn’t paid off very well for them.

Update #1: GoDaddy has finally suspended ArticleMS Skins until the site owner indicates they are ready to remove the infringing content.

Update #2: ArticleMS Skins is back online with a new design (hopefully, this one is original).

The start of 2009 has already brought many changes. For starters, I am no longer full-time with Hatchling Studios and now work independently through Build Interactive (website still in progress). Working for myself has been a long time dream of mine and I’m ecstatic with how well the transition has been so far. While the state of the economy continues to trim jobs all over the country, the amount of available work for freelancers and small studios has skyrocketed, from what I’ve seen. Larger companies are more often choosing to outsource rather than continue paying for premium office space, equipment, employee health care, vacation time, and all the other expenses of running a company. I’ve taken this opportunity to really focus on lining up great projects and have been involved with some high-end, large-scale websites that I look forward to announcing on this site in the near future.

This year also marks the retirement of Shifting Creations, the previous incarnation of my online portfolio. Shifting Creations was the first site I ever developed and underwent several redesigns during its four year lifetime. One of the difficulties I eventually ran into was separating business from personal and the site was often conflicted between the two. The obvious solution was to create two sites: one strictly for business while the other remains dedicated to my writings and other biographical information. So far, the change has been well received.

A few notes about the process for creating this new portfolio site: I decided on WordPress as the CMS and chose to have the blog be the main focus. The Résumé page is a new addition, something Shifting Creations always lacked. This was also one of the few sites where I started building the page structures in HTML/CSS prior to finishing the designs in Photoshop because I knew exactly how I wanted the grid and certain elements to be laid out. It was an interesting experiment but I think the final design touches ultimately took longer to finish by developing this way. The actual coding was handled in Coda, my new favorite text editor (more info regarding this app and why I chose a Mac coming soon). Mint takes care of the stats and, even with Google’s decent free alternative, I still believe this is the way to go.

It’s the last week of school, seven great days full of unforgiving finals. What’s new? This blog theme for one. It’s called “K2″ and can be had at this site. It’s loaded to the gills with options and features, a tiny portion of them I’ve discovered tonight but do expect updates.

The portfolio end of this site is also undergoing a large transformation by, moi. The new layout boasts a liquid layout versus the current fixed edition, with some groovy new javascript including an implementation of the recently popular light box by Lokesh Dhakar. Also, expect much cleaner code, a beatiful thing all on its own.

As for the blog (picture a “you are here” sign), future plans include altering the appearance, of course, to match the soon-to-be new layout. Even more incredible, I’m going to get back to some good writing and (hopefully) consistent entries! Most will be updates to an upcoming internship and freelance work.

Speaking of which, I’ll be living on campus this summer, interning for XeniumGroup, focusing mainly on Colby-Sawyer College related projects and Ruby on Rails development. Word has it that if I do well, there could be a trip to the first Rails conference ever, hosted in Chicago, IL. (Rails Conference). Crossing my fingers.

Also, briefly mentioned before, I plan to maintain contact with all current clients and will be actively looking for more freelance work during the summer months. Campus living allows me high speed internet and the time to really work on a lot of things at once.

That’s all for now, it’s back to the grind and chiseling away at a handful of final projects.

While organizing some files tonight, I found the first few versions of Shifting Creations in all their retro glory. Feast your eyes upon these beaut’s! These were really my first attempts at web design, back when Photoshop was God for not only creating the graphics but also cutting, slicing, and exporting a completed, awesome website! Translation: excessive images with loads of garbage text, all strewn about a tangled mess of tables. Anyone else start off designing this way? I always thought you’d have to be like the Conan the Barbarian of web design to actually code by hand. ‘The riddle…of steel html.’

Anyway, onto the goods, almost two years old now. Not all links or files may work, but the majority is there. Enjoy!

Shifting Creations V.1:

Shifting Creations V.3 (I’m skipping 2 because it was so bad…):

Shifting Creations V.4:

Design Melt Down is a design resource I found today, via one of my morning visits, Design View. Melt Down discusses current trends in the web design world, along with some other useful information. Interestingly, I found Shifting Creations listed as an example of a site that utilizes “shiny stuff,” check it out here. Cool!

Shifting Creations welcomes, Easy Rider, who will also be authoring posts from time to time so keep en eye out!

I‘ve been extremely busy between school, web design, the gym, and that thing called life. Looking to unveil recent web projects on the portfolio side of Shifting Creations and introduce my latest clients in the near future. Proud to announce CNH Hosting and I have teamed together at the moment to offer complete web design services.

As a side note, I met an exceptionally talented graffiti artist who is in the process of creating a design to be applied to my shuttle xpc. You can check out some of her work at graffiti.org. Exciting stuff, can’t wait to see the finished product.

Happy Valentine’s Day; hope everyone successfully bought their way to true love.

Making the transition from the old blog to this one; picking a few posts that I think are worth returning and this is one of them, originally a 12/08/04 writing:

2004′s “Adrian is a momma’s boy” essay. A few things you have to know for it to make sense are:
-Amherst, NH is where we used to get up at 4 in the morning on every last Sunday of the month for a certain portion of the year to sell and buy at this enormous car swap. Lots of nice old cars, cool hot rod guys, and rare parts.
-A Timberjack is a kind of skidder (large machine used to haul logs) that I ran two winters ago working with my father.
-Cabela’s is a giant outdoorsmen store on the way to where one of my brothers has recently moved.
Here goes:

We don’t grow up; we grow near.

A nasty mix of rain and sleet is pelting my window right now, the heat works in my room, sometimes, and my roommate is upset again. The food at the café tonight looked like a first grader’s masterpiece, some wild concoction of cheese, hamburger and tater tots cooked as one, and I just found out I have a seven page paper due in less than twenty-four hours. I had a presentation the other day, one I had worried about for weeks, and as I opened up PowerPoint, my new worst enemy, I realized I was missing half my project. I’m sitting between two trash containers right now, both overflowing onto an already disgusting floor; someone’s used band aid is about to escape the Glad bag on my right, almost certain to be stepped on by me in the morning.

School can’t always be pretty, and unless being graded on how well you can read and regurgitate is your thing, it isn’t always fun either. It’s about 11:15pm right now; I’ve been doing work all night until just a moment ago when the phone rang. I pick it up; it’s Bob. Instantly, what wasn’t so clear before is plain as day, when rotting banana peels and gossip were all that I could see and hear, my goals suddenly became understandable. The solid foundation I’ll earn with 2 more years, the amount of learning I’ve done in the last 5 months or so, the mere fact that a kid who thinks of Amherst car swaps every early morning he laces his boots up can hold his own at the collegiate level, that’s what Bob reminded me of.

I wonder so often, why… why push a pencil all day, why stress over a test that doesn’t interest me? Well, I still can’t answer that, but I look at what it’s done for me so far and I suppose I can’t complain. I miss home; winter is here and I wish I were fiddling with Timberjack levers and helping dad but you know, if I were home right now, I probably wouldn’t be wishing that. Being away is not fun, but it makes all of us appreciate each other and enjoy the moments we do have together that much more. Had Bob called me in high school, I probably would’ve said, “Bob, hang up, quick, one of my many girlfriends are going to call!” That’s the point though: talking to Bob or anyone else in the family makes my night now, it’s one of the best things I have to look forward to. We get a little taller each year, hopefully put on a few more pounds from the gym, sometimes the miles between us increases as well, but we’re still family, we still love each other; it’s just more apparent now.

Merry Christmas, Mom. Forty minutes away or a twelve hour trip past Cabela’s, we all love you.