Helped the owner of Fluid Peak Films put a site up this week. It was fun working with something pretty for a change. These guys get out there to crazy locations and take insane footage of all sorts. I especially like the Cowboy outfitters video trailer they have up on You Tube at the moment. Click on the image to the right to trigger it.

Short on time to write much these days so I'm stealing the text from their about us page here:
"Fluid Peak Films is based in Swan Valley Idaho, in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. Amy and I started our media careers here in the valley with our love of the outdoors, hunting, fishing, climbing, rafting and other adventurous pursuits. It is rare to find one or both of us without a camera in our hands at all times. We have had the unique opportunity to travel the world to capture of client's trips of a lifetime. We spent 2011 on the road from the wilds of Namibia Africa to the wilderness of Wyoming in search of the perfect picture or the once in a lifetime film shot. It is our commitment to our clients to provide not only a documentary of your adventure, but the chance to see the raw emotion that you experience by living your passion.

Check out the site here: fluidpeakfilms.com

My children attend Lighthouse Montessori. All parents are encouraged to participate in the school and my contribution is creation and maintenance of their web site. For this, I decided the best approach was to utilize a content management system. This allows me to essentially set up the framework, styling and initial content and then enable the customer to particpate in enriching the content over time. This is essential as I am employing Agile development methodology and needed a simple, clean foundation to work with. The strategy seems to be paying off as the school gets to add more content as they are ready, in short, small iterations instead of waiting for every feature they want to be developed and that development taking months. For Lighthouse I chose Joomla. It is free, open source, and has a very active development group. So far, I couldn't be more pleased with the choice.

The school itself is perfect for us. I can't summarize their philosphy and style of teaching better than the web site, so I'll quote:

My wife and I struck up an acquaintance with Craig around twenty years ago. Even then he was a true artist and evinced an interest in helping people. Over the years each time we crossed paths we were greeted with the same warm smile and genuine kindness. The calm that Craig exudes is a gift to most that meet him or listen to his work. He continues to be a great teacher, composer, and guitarist.

Visit his new site and listen for a while.

Got my hands on an Owle for a bit while travelling in India recently. A peer of mine equipped an iPhone 4 with one and we used daily over a period of two weeks for photo and video. Very well built device that enhances the standard capabilities of a phone quite a bit with built in 37mm .45x wide-angle/macro combination lense as well as microphone.
Extra pros: Ability to attach SLR lenses and multiple tripod mounts.
Sturdy replacement for aggressive travel situations where you don't want to carry an extra camera.
Cons: It is a bit heavy. Requires an explanation at security checkpoints.

One of the guys I was travelling with, Dan, took the pictures that fade in. He has a particularly good eye. The fruit image was taken @ the Charminar in Hyderabad, India and the street shot is in Pune, India.

Utilizing "Simplest jQuery Slideshow" from Jonathon Snook on the right to fade between pictures. Insanely simple and lightweight. Kudos to him.

On the Kast technology page that I have been developing, I am utilizing a jQuery based video player called flowplayer. The ease of use is pretty impressive as is the small footprint. At the same site you can get into jQuery tools, which is basically a nice suite of tools to make things that used to be difficult very easy and lightweight. I do not really have a use for them on this site based on simple format I am using, but wanted to share as I think they are slick. Espeically like the overlay tool.

I used very simple implementation of flowplayer on sunset image of Teton Valley to the right. So, unlike normal pictures on this site that take you to another site for more information, this one should trigger video playback of my four year old on skis at Grand Taghee his second day. Rather than warp the video to fit the box, I left it kind of raw. But you should get the point of the flowplayer plugin. Very simple, clean, and lightweight. If you want a larger version of sunset image, click here.

I have the pleasure of occasionally travelling to Sydney, Australia for work. Obviously, the beaches in and around Sydney (Bondi, Manly, etc.), insane seafood, intense nightlife, and architecture are all fantastic and I could go on for hours about them. Sydney is truly a remarkable city and if I had to choose one place to live, this is it. But, I wanted to point out one little spot in particular, The Falconer. On Oxford, just a block away from Hyde park, this small gem stands out even in Sydney (where coffee quality and quantity in my opinion matches that of Seattle). They serve "The Golden Cobra" exclusively. The focus is on single origin, high quality, organic espresso beans and the taste is exquisite.

Each morning, the place opens up early selling their own fresh baked muffins as well as a full menu of different dishes made from locally available, again high quality, ingredients. The food is on par with their coffee, unbelievable. To make the place even more irresistable, music flows from open to close from old school turn-table (massive album colleciton). I think the bustle of this place only slows down a bit right before the place transforms into a bar at night. Yes, start your day there and finish it there.

Another great product coming out of Idaho is the Steelhead Glove. Superior construction and use of unique membrane enables use in extreme conditions. Perfect for hopper season on the South Fork. Watch the video on Kast's technology page for info on construction.

From kastgear.com: "Kast gear was conceived on the banks of the Salmon River in Central Idaho while Steelhead fishing in a snowstorm. Our passion for fishing and the outdoors has driven us to create superior products using state of the art textiles and technology."

These guys build exceptional drift boats. The engineering, design, and construction of the boats is remarkable. The company is based here in SE Idaho, so I've spent a lot of time in different models and all perform very well. DownRiver is operated by a professional guide and fisherman who has accounted for all of the little nuances you learn while behind the oars that you wish were different about your boat. Those are matched with solid design and insanely strong, yet super lightweight, materials. Every time I take one of these boats down the river people are asking a lot of questions.

downriverdesignco.com

I am bad with color. Typically, I'll go with black background, white text, and as neutral navigation as I can get. In my attempt to get over this, I've spent a bit of time looking over colourlovers.com. Well organized, ranked color palettes and a number of different download options. I would think this site would be worth visiting regardless of project you are taking on. There are thousands of colors to sift through out there and even tools to help you theme your social media sites like twitter.

At the time of this writing, I am using the "darkhearted teal" palette submitted by Skyblue2u. I presumed this dark palette would be easiest transition for me from my normal black and grey. Will keep looking.

Wanted to utilize this domain to share what I'm currently messing around with outside of work as well as a test area. This template is simple, clean and utilizes two technologies that have not been formally released yet, specifically HTML5 and CSS3. Although the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) HTML Working Group indicates final specifications for HTML5 will not be released until 2022, there are many features available today and browsers are starting to enable them. Take a look at the spec here.

For my first foray into HTML5 this lightweight template is perfect. I've added a few enhancements and will continue to use it as foundation for my R&D. Some new tags that make life a bit easier:

• header: wraps your page header
• footer: wraps your page footer
• section: groups content into sections (e.g. main area, sidebar etc)
• article: separates the individual articles from the rest of the page
• nav: contains your navigation menu
• figure: usually contains an image used as an illustration for your article

Experimenting with HTML5 and CSS3. To get a good start, I am utilizing HTML5 Boilerplate written by Paul Irish and Divya Manian. Visit their site. It is free and very customizable.

From html5boilerplate.com : "HTML5 Boilerplate is the professional badass's base HTML/CSS/JS template for a fast, robust and future-proof site.

After more than two years in iterative development, you get the best of the best practices baked in: cross-browser normalization, performance optimizations, even optional features like cross-domain Ajax and Flash. A starter apache .htaccess config file hooks you the eff up with caching rules and preps your site to serve HTML5 video, use @font-face, and get your gzip zipple on.

Boilerplate is not a framework, nor does it prescribe any philosophy of development, it''s just got some tricks to get your project off the ground quickly and right-footed."