Have you ever heard of Young Life?  if( yes() );  {skip_2_sentences}   else ( no() ) ; {continue_reading} …. sorry nerdy php joke…

ANYWAY!  It’s basically a youth outreach that does all sorts of cool events and camps and what not.  ( If you live in the Myrtle Beach area, they actually just brought it down here. )  Well when I was in high school, one of the Young Life directors in my area was this super cool guy, Mike Hall.  Mike was a skateboarder, listened to punk rock, and was just an all around great guy.   I never got really close with Mike in high school, but I would attend some of the events he put on, he’d come see my band play shows and we’d talk every now and again.    After I graduated I think he moved down to the Jersey Shore to be on some tv show or something where he gained the nickname “Mizza”…. lol, just kidding.  But he did move to the Jersey Shore.

Well at random, in late 2010, I get a Facebook message from Mike that said he was on vacation in my area and wanted to grab some coffee and breakfast.  So we caught up and had some awesome conversation and parted ways.  Well I got another random message a few weeks ago, this time he wanted to talk shop and get himself a fancy interwebs site.

Mike is embarking on a similar path I recently took, he is going into business full time for himself.  With the exception he’s going to be a public/motivational speaker…. anyone that knows me, knows that I’m not a very good speaker in general, let alone a public speaker.   Mizza on the other hand, is well equipped for the task.  The dude is really good with youth, maybe partly because he still looks like a teenager?? haha.  Just playin’ Mike.

After talking it over for a few hours we had a pretty clear vision for what he wanted to accomplish.  Mike has some pretty big dreams for this site as we move through time, so be on the look out for some really cool features in the future.   We also built him a custom Facebook landing page with all the bells and whistles.  Pretty stylish.

Check out Mike “Mizza” Halls new website.

Anyone that knows my family knows we are completely enamored with our iPad.  Daiden is an iPad wizard, Mason could (and has) literally wasted an entire afternoon playing Angry Birds, and I have WAY too many hours into World of Goo.  So naturally when Shane at TCGeeks (TC = Tablet Computer) approached me about redesigning his blog there was no way I could say no.

One of my favorite parts of my job is getting to become friends with my clients, and Shane is no exception.   This project was a lot of fun. Despite living on opposite sides of the country, we found plenty of ways to waste time chatting and goofing around on Skype.   I can’t tell you how many times we would start off talking about the project, then an hour or two later we realize we’ve been talking about Home Made Enchiladas or Hell’s Kitchen, for the last couple hours.

Shane wanted something simple, eye catching, not “too techy”, plenty of room for ads, and something that would speak to a larger community of tablet users, which is about to grow much wider than just the iPad. I think we did a good job allowing for the future expansion of more tablets as they are released. We even came up with a nifty coming soon graphic for the footer.

There are a lot of great articles on this site, if you have an iPad or are looking at buying one of the many tablets about to come out then following this blog will be a great resource for you.

Enjoy.

http://tcgeeks.com

-Nick.

Welcome to my first cooking blog post! Hopefully there will be many more to come after this.

Let me first tell you a little bit about why I am starting this. I grew up watching and helping my grandmother cook.  It was a great passion in her life, and to me she was one of the greatest chefs on the planet.   I never really got into cooking as a teenager or when I was a single adult.  But lately as an adult, with a wife and three kids, I find myself cooking a great deal.  Some of it is to save money on fast food and pizza, the other is because I’ve found I really enjoy it.

The goal of this blog is to take you through my cooking experience, as well as give me a place to make a pseudo cookbook.   I am not a trained chef, I’ve never been to culinary school, I don’t even remember taking a cooking class in high school.  Even though I’m pretty sure I had to… I don’t have mad knife skills and I am not a wealth of knowledge, I will probably tell you some things that I think are right and upon further research will probably be completely wrong.

I plan to share recipes that I know my family and I love to eat.  That includes my uber picky 2 year old Daiden,

Enough history, let’s talk about some food.

Panko Encrusted Meatballs with Alfredo Florentine Penne

Daiden and I make meatballs all the time, tonight we decided to make them with a Panko crust.  We had some Panko left over from cordon bleu, so we figured… Those would be great on meatballs too!

One of my things not being a trained cook, I don’t usually measure things, so giving you exacts to go off of will be difficult.  I’ll give you rough estimates… And in some cases odd measuring methods… I apologize in advance… It’s just how I roll.

Panko Encrusted Meatballs

• 2 lbs ground beef
• 1 cup milk
• 3 or 4 slices bread (we had 2 pieces of Texas toast left over from French toast)
• 2 cloves garlic – Sliced
• 3 seconds of olive oil (what? I counted to three while pouring, it’s probably about 2 cups)
• 3 tablespoons Oregano
• 3 tablespoons Basil – Chopped
• A handful flat leaf parsley – Chopped
• 1 large egg
• 1 cup Panko bread crumbs
• 1 cup plain bread crumbs
• Salt and Pepper
• 3/4 cup parmesan cheese

We’ll start with the meatballs because they’ll take the longest.  We’re going to fry and bake our meatballs.   Doing both gives the meatball a nice crunch as well as helps seal a lot of the moisture in, similar to how you sear a good piece of steak.

Preheat your oven to 375.

In a large pan pour your oil, but don’t turn on the heat yet, we’re going to infuse our oil with the garlic.  Peel and slice your garlic nice a thin.  Then drop it in the cold oil and turn your heat to medium high.  By keeping the temp low and increasing it slowly, the oil will extract the flavor from the garlic.  Opposed to starting with high heat, which will just fry the garlic and seal the flavor within. You’ll want to extract the garlic before it starts to burn, burnt garlic is not a tasty treat.  Don’t throw these tidbits away we have big plans for it!

Chop bread into small cubes and place in a large mixing bowl with the milk and let them soak up the milk.   Then add your ground beef, oregano, cheese, parsley, basil, egg, a good bit salt and some pepper.  Grab those left over bits of garlic chop ‘em real fine and toss those in the mix as well.  You’ll be tempted to just eat them… I ate one, they were delicious… like mini bagel crisps.

Once you have a ingredients in the bowl, remove all rings… You don’t want want anyone eating your wedding promise now do ya?

Mix the ingredients together with your hands, don’t use a machine to do this… a mixer will destroy the consistency.  The meat should be pretty moist, definitely not dry and not too wet.  Just wet enough that it holds it shape you start forming the balls.

Pour your Panko into a small bowl.  Form your meatball and then dip it in the panko.  Normally you would use some sort of binder like egg to wash the meat first so the panko will stick… well there is already egg in the mixture and your meat should be moist enough that the panko will stick without any extra wash.

When forming the balls, don’t pack them too tight, they should be loosely packed.  You pack them too tight they’ll wind up really tough.  Not a tasty treat.

Make sure your oil is hot, if it’s not hot enough the panko will soak up the oil while it cooks.  Drop the balls into the oil for about 1 – 2 minutes per side.  Remember, we’re not cooking them we’re just sealing them and getting that garlic flavor into the panko.  Don’t crowd the pan either, let those puppies breathe!

Remove the balls and place them on a baking tray and pop in the oven for 15 – 20 minutes.  That time is really going to depend on how big you make the balls.

Alfredo Florentine Penne

Ok I cheated a bit on this… I like to make sauces, but I haven’t made Alfredo yet…. Shame. Next time I promise I will.

• 1 jar Classico Alfredo (so much shame.)
• 1 cup spinach
• 1/2 cup parmesan cheese
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 2 cups penne
• some salt

My kids hate spinach… at least they think they do.  They actually love it, they just don’t like it in a big sloppy pile on the plate, or even large chunks of it in the sauce.  This is a easy way to disguise the spinach and make a pretty sauce at the same time.

Drop your spinach into a food processor and give it a few pulses.  Then mix that into the saucepan with your sauce, cheese and heavy cream.  Leave that on low heat just to heat up while the meatballs are cooking.

I didn’t tell you to do this, but you should already have a nice big pot of water boiling… yeah?  Please make sure you add the salt to the water.  My grandmother always said it should taste like the ocean.

Boil your pasta according to the instructions.  Usually about 9 – 11 minutes.  Mid way through add a tablespoon or two to the sauce.  That’ll help the marriage process of the pasta to the sauce.  A romantic thought…

When the pasta is just about al dente, strain but DO NOT RINSE the pasta and add immediately to the sauce to let it finish cooking.  If you have good wrist action, do this in a decent pan and flip that stuff around.  It’ll help aerate the sauce as well as combine it with the pasta.

Once your finished all that, you can begin plating.  Believe it or not, I like to plate our food at home.  It just adds something special to the meal.  My wife makes fun of me sometimes, but it’s ok.

There you have it.  I hope you enjoy them as much as we did.  I’d love to hear your feedback if you tried this recipe out or if you altered it in anyway.

When it comes to branding your blog or website, there are many things in the default wp that can really hinder the flow of that brand you worked so hard to design and develop. One of them is the horrendous avatars that come in the stock version of wordpress comments.  There is always leaving it up to Gravatar, but most people who aren’t bloggers have no idea who or what a Gravatar is.  So instead, lets make sure the default looks good.

In this tutorial I’ll teach you how to change the default avatar to a custom one in 5 simple steps.

The Tutorial

Step 1: Create a png 48px by 48px and upload it to your theme directory. In this case I’m making mine part of the Studio412 logo.

Step 2: Add this code to your functions.php

Step 3: Change the required capitalized pieces to fit your site. You must provide a full quality domain name.

Step 4: In the WP-admin navigate to Settings > Discussion

Step 5: Change the default avatar to your custom one and you’re good!

Fin

It’s that simple… Comment on this post to give a try.

Cheers.

I’ve had my own business now for almost a year… I started this company out of a passion for design and had hopes that I could help local businesses reach new heights through print and web.  Well over the last few months I’ve acquired some larger than life opportunities being a freelance designer for other marketing companies.  One of the jobs I was given was to design and develop a new website for ESPN Anchor and Author, Linda Cohn.

Linda, although a Rangers fan …. (coughcoughFlyerscoughcough) …. is considered one of Americas most successful female sports anchors.  She is a regular anchor on ESPN’s Sportscenter and is the author of the book Cohn-Head, in which she tells her story of a no-holds-barred account of breaking into the boys’ club.

I had a lot of fun designing this website and revamping the cover of her book.   A big thanks to Jeff over at Ascendworks for thinking of me when it came time to pick a designer for the project.  :)

Ladies and gentlemen, LindaCohn.net

One of the best parts of the internet these days is the ability to stay connected with people you grew up with, went to school with, or even met at a social function.  The power of Facebook and many other technologies like it are making that so much easier and much more dynamic.

Well, for me as a web designer, it gives me opportunities to do work for people that I normally would not have the chance to.  In this case, my client turned out to be Michael McManus, a graduate of Clearview Regional High School, Go Pioneers!  Michael and I went to school together from middle school through high school, we didn’t talk much as I was a band geek/musician and he was more of an art club kid.  Regardless of that fact, 10 years later, Facebook’s brilliance has reunited us; this time with a commonality of photography.

When my wife and I discussed her becoming a full time photographer, Michael and his wife Melissa were one of the first pro photographers to reach out and help her get started.  For that we have been very thankful.

A few months ago, M2 (Michael & Melissa, get it? very clever… I guess Eminem and M&M were taken… lol.) asked if I would be interested in helping them revamp their website.  After a quick Skype meeting to discuss details, we got started.  It’s been a fun month or so putting the project together.  I think Michael and Melissa are pretty happy with their new site and I am very proud to be releasing it to my online portfolio.

Without further ado, (yes, I looked it up to make sure I was saying it properly… I Google everything.) I give you M2-Photography.net

I’ve been a “professional” graphic designer for about 6 years now, and some how in that time frame, I’ve manage to not make a single newspaper ad.   How is that possible?  Well I guess you could say this post is me checking that off my list of things I do.

As most of you know, I do a lot of work for Jud Kuhn Chevy (I developed that site) and his team.  What you may not know is that I’m also somewhat involved in Jud’s hunting team (more to come on that later).  I’m not actually a hunter, I just happen to be the go to graphics and video guy.  Jud, however, is a hunting and outdoor enthusiast and is passionate about passing that heritage down the next generation.  He is actually holding an event, sponsored by Horry County Ducks Unlimited,  at his dealership for anyone under 17 called Green Wings Day.http://studio412design.com/

If you are into outdoors stuff like atvs, archery, guns, hunting dogs, country music and mullets or if you just like free food and a good time, this event should be right up your alley.

So this post is actually about the ad…. It’s below… enjoy.

Jud Kuhn Chevrolet is busting into the social media game; they now have a Facebook Fan Page, a Twitter handle and a You Tube channel!

Jud’s team approached us about making a landing page for their Facebook profile.  They wanted to greet first time visitors with something new a fresh that would make them stand out from the crowd.  It also serves as a launch pad to their other social profiles as well as to their website.

Of course, Jud Kuhn sells vehicles… so we added a Facebook Exclusive  Specials area, that highlight some of the great deals he has on cars, trucks, bikes, boats, whatever it is they’re selling.  We have made it a simple table that is easily readable by the public and super easy for the staff to add new vehicles - which means shorter turn around time when the listed vehicle sells and you need to post a new one.

.

Interested in having Studio412 develop a Facebook landing page for you?  Click here to get a quote!

Jud Kuhn Chevy has once again commissioned us to design a logo for a promotional project he is doing with the Outdoor Channel.  This was a fun project, Jud put a high emphasis on making it hip and trendy while still retaining the color scheme of his logo which is red, black, and yellow.  So I used some circles and drips which are pretty popular right now as well as a grungy background with yellow cars.

Be on the look out for some more cool stuff coming from Jud in the near future, that dude is always coming up with great ideas.  It feels good to be the one he calls with his crazy ideas.

Enjoy!

Reading that title some people might have thought of tattoos; I am a huge fan of tattoos.  I personally have 5, a giant drumset on my right calf, a bleeding blue rose on my left arm, a logo from a band I was in on the inside of my left arm, a nautical star on my right elbow, and a smaller star on my right forearm.  Maybe I’ll throw some pictures up one day.   However, I said all that to say that this post is not about tattoos.  It’s actually about branding my business.

Once a week, for the last 3 months Whitney has been asking me to design an actual logo/branding package for us. We’ve gone through many temporary logos, I even designed some business cards to hold us over until I had time to design a real logo.  I kept pushing it off for months, claiming to not have enough time, in reality I just didn’t know what to do.  How is it that I can think of a million tattoos I’d love to get, but can’t come up with a simple logo for my company?

I mentioned this in the post about the business cards, but it’s really tough designing for yourself.   As a designer/creative it’s like you’re expected to have the coolest logo or the best website, but I find it hard to spend a lot of time designing materials for our company.  I’d much rather spend that time building into my clients brand or sites, doing research on new tools, or playing with my boys.

So a few days ago, Whitney finally pushed me to really figure out what we’re doing.  She purchased some really fantastic marketing tools for her photography that she wants to get out as soon as possible.  And the awesome folks at The Sign Station have been asking me to make a rack card to showcase my web design to some of their clients.  So I figured it’s time to knock this out.

So over the next few days, I’ll be making business cards, post cards, rack cards, and a few minor changes on our websites.  Below are a few of the items I’ve created already, I’d love to hear your feedback!

Logo Full Color

Logo Black and White

Logo Horizontal

Business Cards

Rack Cards