Jess – Page 2 – Swamp Things

Of Fame and Infamy

Posted on September 7, 2011 by jess

I’m too busy for the paparazzi, so it took a while for me to get copies of this stuff to put on line. Apparently I’ve gotten my own little brush with fame in the most perfect of circumstances.

Jess's Article in Nicholls Viola Magazine

First, I had a nice article in Voilá written about my work as the Nicholls State University Website Manager. It’s pretty flattering and very cool, so I was pretty surprised. (disclaimer: I work around the folks who produce this work, but avoided reading it for the last couple of months. I really didn’t want to have any pre-published opinion and was curious about the results since I was a complete geek-as-always during my interview and photo sessions ) I extracted my single page of awesome into a PDF you can read from here: Jess’s Article in Nicholls Viola Magazine (pdf)

About two weeks before that I also got my picture in the local paper for planking. Totally Caidy’s idea to tell me to get up on the planks in Home Depot and assume the planking position. I know it’s stupid, but whats worse is that the writers completely missed the point. It should have been written as “Jess Planck planking on planks.” What the hell happened to irony? It wasn’t plywood either! Know what pine planks smell like.

Cover Blown

Posted on August 29, 2011 by jess

I’ve been discovered after years of being the “sweet tea” guy in our mall. I buy my wife a tea while she’s working at JCP so the Chick-fil-a folks see me a few times a week. It’s fast service when you are a super-regular.

Now one of them recognized me leaving late from my office at work with Caidy and Mardi. I was even sneaking out the back door.

Cover blown!

Lundi Gras is Bacon

Posted on March 7, 2011April 2, 2011 by jess

Lundi Gras is Bacon. Awesome first try with beef and bacon hickory smoke grilled burgers topped with bacon.

Free-range Chickens – K8 & Jess On the Road

Posted on October 15, 2010 by jess

I did warn her that it would end up on-line at some point.

Last year we rented a van to pick up stuff from Tioga and help my parents move. The van was one of those kidnapper models; big, noisy, and with a badly functioning radio. I have always loved conversations with Caidy, so on this trip I did one of those evil husband-friend things. I recorded our boring ride on my phone.

I was recently reminded of this part which takes place as we pass through Lafayette, Louisiana heading south on HWY 90 (I-49). If you don’t know, this is a busy urban road planned to be a future interstate going through a decent sized town. Not the sort of place where you would expect to see several chickens living the dream. Enjoy!

[audio:https://swampthings.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2010/10/on-the-road-w-jess-n-k8-001.mp3|titles=Free-rang Chickens – K8 & Jess On the Road]

Oil Barrels at Art for Arts’ Sake NOLA

Posted on October 4, 2010October 15, 2010 by jess

Caidy took this picture while we walked around Juilia St. for a couple of hours during Art for Arts’ Sake.

Logo for Phergie

Posted on May 26, 2010May 26, 2010 by jess

After I mentioned the logo I’m creating for Caidy, Matthew Turland casually mentioned that Phergie could use a logo. Phergie is open source IRC bot written in PHP (My non-technical friends’ eyes have glazed over about now). The important part is that is open source and a PHPWomen.org sponsored project, so worthy of more than the limited effort I could put into a logo project. A logo request that combines wildly complex software development and diversity? How could I say no?

Since my day job is to create huge monstrous websites, it was good exercise to work on the subtle intricacies of a logo. To practice things I actually went to college for. Because my last logo for a client was several years ago, this project gave me an opportunity to judge my time and process in logo development. Yes, I do take this stuff serious (so serious, I won’t be showing the embarrassing thumbnails for this project because they sucked).

This project took a little over a month to complete. Mostly because of a vacation and the pressures of work. Actual hourly logged time is around 10 hours including research and sketches. The typography for the logo uses the Midiet typeface by Yamaoka Yasuhiro of www.yoworks.com. I had plans for a hand-drawn logo-type, but Midiet fit the project so well and had an open use copyright. The face sketch is digitally drawn with my recently acquired Intuous4 Bluetooth tablet. I approached this project with a low budget, so I started with black and white versions that would still be legible when reversed.

Matt’s notes were very clear about the aspects of the project and it’s statements of diversity. Colors were examined that would relate to the branding for PHP and/or for PHPWomen. A screen of a color close the PHPWomen colors won out in the end.

Saints Superbowl XLIV Victory Parade in New Orleans

Posted on February 13, 2010May 6, 2010 by jess

A very busy week kept me from getting this uploaded sooner! We got some decent videos and good photo or two. Enjoy!

Caidy and I took off early Tuesday afternoon and after almost four hours (to go about 60 miles) we made it to the Quarter House in New Orleans to stay the night and see the Saints carry the Lombardi Trophy Mardi Gras style through the streets of New Orleans.

We stood with a friendly crowd at the intersection of Canal and Camp. It was cold, so we stayed warm with a not so nutritional combination of alcohol and funnel cakes. The parade was slow moving with a pretty long route, but it was fun. Continue reading “Saints Superbowl XLIV Victory Parade in New Orleans”