pyrosarco

Good People Day 2008 is an idea from Gary Vaynerchuk–whom most of you know, I have been following–that recognizes good people and what they have done.  There have been a lot of good people in my life, so here is a shout out to them:

My girlfriend:  Awesome girl.  Smart, fun, intelligent, outgoing, huge brained, kind, clever, patient, witty, good looking, everything you want in a girlfriend.  Thanks for putting up with me.

Alex Hillman:  Thanks for being a mentor to me and continuing to be in the future.  Thank you for helping me delve further into the web and inspiring me to do what I am passionate about.  You are dangerously awesome.

Bart Mroz: Thanks for your input the day Alex and I were talking about where I was going.

Gary Vaynerchuk:  Awesome person for all the ideas you throw at me via your videos.  After all it is you that has me doing this, and you probably haven’t even looked at my blog.

Felipe Tofani, Thiago Santana, Fabio Sasso, Johnny Bilotta, and anyone else who has inspired me or taken a few minutes out of their day to get back to me on design questions.

My parents: For being supportive and patient with me.  For helping me follow my dreams.

Mario Leone:  For being super cool by coming and knocking on my door the first day of college.  Man we had some good times that first week haning out meeting all the peeps.  Thanks for all the help you gave me with the filming and what not.  Thanks for all the cool events you got us into at the Franklin Institute.  Man good times.  Hey do you have a sauce recipie that I can get?

Bethany Shumaker:  Thanks for putting up with my complaining at school when I really had nothing to complain about.  Thanks for missing me and stuff.  Leave the cup on the fridge, I might come back and have to use it.

Courtney D’Entremont: Thanks for those fun times we had staying up late and talking about religion.  That one night we were up until 6 am and then Hershey Park four hours later.

Karin Tsai: For all those cool times we had in high school and should still be having if you weren’t too busy with your new friends.  I HATE YOU! Just kidding.  Please call me, I miss seeing you and yeah.  We definately need to have some good conversations again.  Thanks for being there for me.

Kevin Brodbeck: Yeah, you’re becoming a bit more evil and mellow, but that’s how everyone likes you.  It’s a good thing.  Thanks for all the math help you gave me in Calculus 2 and all the cool times we had wandering around Penn.

Cory Blasdell: We definitely need that camping trip this summer to hang out some more.  Listen to some good music, drink some, uh water, because I don’t drink and neither do you.  Maybe some Sobe’s if were feeling risky.  Thanks for all the good times with the movies and just chilling with everybody.

Dan Zimmerman: Everybody do the! Do the Barracuda!  Need I say more?  I miss you man.

Gunnar Benediktsson: My one professor who I had Honors 200 with.  Thanks for the interesting readings on Transcendentalism, I really enjoyed learning from you.  Here’s hoping that this comes up someday when you Google your name.

Pavel Grinfeld: Linear Algebra professor. Thanks for being patient and helping me out when I was really confused.

Everyone else such as: Brian Stacy, Sarah Strickler, Cameron Spurlock, Abbie Heller, Becky Atland, George Stolakis, Jared Stiffler, Ian Hoffman, Dylan Rutter, my sister, Colette Smyser, Michelle Renn, my old roommates, Poonam Sharma, everyone at Drexel.

So heres to all the good people out there that I havent met.  Keep on making the world go round and you will be recognized too.

For years now I have been mooching off of the online world.  Just taking, taking, taking and never thinking of giving back.  Well now, I have made a step in the right direction.  I finally purchased some webspace and intend to begin learning like I should.

I have always blamed the fact that I have used post to hosts as my inability to or desire not to, try and create something good, or to learn more about the web, applications, and the design process.   In case you don’t know, post to hosts are sites like http://core-fusion.net that offer webspace to people who meet a monthly post requirement on their forums.  While it is good for people who just want to play around, develope small things, and teach their kids, it has been my experience that they are unstable and slow to respond to your problems.  Core-fusion was one of the better ones that I have used and would recommend it if you just want some free space.  Post to hosts like Roxr.com are now gone, probably due to legality issues.  I think Roxr was run by the same people who manage Rapidshare.

A few weeks ago, I had already promised myself that I was going to do this as soon as possible.  After a meeting with Alex Hillman and Bart Mroz, two of the three founding partners of Round3Media, I was even more excited and compelled to do so. They mentioned that I should be blogging like crazy, which I already realized, but I was having trouble adjusting to the fact that I would have to use some known CMS rather than something I whipped together myself.  I did, and still do recognize the fact that I am, at this moment in time, not capable of writing something flexible, manageable, automated, and secure enough that I wouldn’t have to use a CMS like WordPress.

With that in mind, and already having used WordPress before, I set out with that option.  So here I am.

What I want to do:

First and foremost, I want to learn.  Learn everything that I can.  I guess this leans on the side of take, take, take, again, but at this point it is necessary.

Secondly, I want to share.  Share things I find, what I am doing, where I am going, who I have met, what has been discussed, all so that the world can progress and grow around me and through others.

Finally, I want to give back.  I want to be able to mentor and/or be able to help people with furthering their learning and developing of ideas.  However, there are no promises in this category for the time being.

What I am most interested in learning about:

Graphic Design - color theory, typography, Photoshop, etc.
Web Design - Why pages are laid out a certain way, why the code works the way it does (I have experience in HTML and some CSS), best practice
Web Development - Writing applications for the web (this is probably furthest out on my timeline)
Photography - self explanatory

If you have resources, please share them with me through commenting.  That way others will be just as able to benefit from them.