Josh Byers

Wordpress Custom Admin Branding

I’ve updated this post and moved it to my new Wordpress Magazine, Pressing Pixels.

A Road Not Often Traversed

There are a lot of hobbies I wish I had more time for: guitar, cooking (no, really), and photography. And since I have one of the world’s most beautiful daughters photography is something I would really like to be good at. As life goes however everybody gets lucky. And in my case if I take 1000 pictures one should end up being pretty good.

So I would like to share with you this summer’s favorite shot. It was taken in Winter Park, Colorado just behind the condo we were staying in. I don’t know a lot about composition, but I’m told this photo has it good…or something like that.

Enjoy the stylized versions and check back in a few months after my next 1000 or so to find another good one. (if you click on them – they’ll get bigger!)

Fresh

Fresh is good. Fresh is fun. Fresh is clean. Fresh is re-freshing. I like fresh.

And so I bring you, my family, friends, and internet companions, a new and fresh joshbyers.com.

Enjoy it, read it, savor it.

Fresh is good. Because you’ll never hear anybody say – “Man, I wish this popcorn was a little more stale.”

Still Virbtacular

A few weeks ago I wrote about the new social networking site called Virb. I still think it’s the best social site in terms of what it allows the individual to do with their pages. You have full control over the CSS and even the html (which is rare and cool). This allows people to do some really cool things with their profile pages.

I worked on mine for a couple days and I think it ended up pretty nice. You can see it here. I was fortunate to get noticed a bit as well. My profile ended up being featured on the “Virb Is” page which is reserved to show newcomers to the site what the site is capable of. They tend to feature unique and cool profiles so being included was a big honor and pretty cool.

My profile also caught the eyes of several other sites that feature interesting profiles. Virbrocks.com and MyVirb.net have featured my profile.

Since designers and creative types have gravitated toward Virb I’ve met a lot of new interesting people. Hopefully I’ll be able to colaborate with some of them on future projects.

If you still don’t have a Virb profile what are you waiting for? Get over there, sign up and join in the frivolity!

Virbtacular

I’ve written about the nastiness of MySpace several times and the regular influx of provocative friend requests finally led to my divorce of “the largest social network on planet earth.”

So now where do I go for all my social goodness? It’s a question I’m really not that concerned with frankly but when I found out about Virb, I had a new home.

Mike Davidson introduced me to this glorious MySpace replacement that not only looks a million times better, it functions infinitely better.

What I like best is the ability to radically modify your profile page. You can see what I’ve done with mine here.

Check it out and create a profile for yourself.

The All Consuming Consultant

The folks over at Simply Youth Ministry put on a great podcast every week or so. Their tag line is “just enough youth ministry so you don’t feel guilty for listening.” The podcast is very informative and is a lot of fun as well.

One of the running bits is about Matt McGill (one of the one-air personalities) and his current job search. Two of the talents he has procured are that of consultant, and as we found out last week, he could be an “all consuming fire” to those kids who would disrespect their youth leaders.

Based on this I whipped up a business card for him to hand out to prospective employers.

Feed Me!

Every morning I have my routine. I get up (or I’m forced up by my wife), I shower, I buy some carmel and mocha cappucino from Kum and Go (mmmmm), I drive to work, and I read my rss news feeds. (I also get dressed and brush my teeth in case you had a really weird picture of me walking into work…)

But it’s the last item on my list that is important. I get so many ideas and random bits of knowledge from this time it makes it invaluable to me. So I thought I would share the links to my absolute favs. Maybe you’ve heard of them, maybe you haven’t but here we go. Note that the links are to the rss feeds not the actual sites themselves. If you’re not sure what rss is check out this article. I use the Sage Reader – a free extension for the Firefox browser.

By the way, we did have more than 10 people show up at our garage sale and we were able to get rid of some stuff – though nobody wanted my cute Taco Bell dog that says “Heeeere lizzard lizzard lizzard.” Strange…

Sports

• ESPN
• Bill Simmons – quite possibly the funniest sports writer ever…

Technology

• Make Magazine – This is a colection of DIY projects that range from insanely cool to insanely inane.
• Lifehacker - one of the best sites for useful everyday info

Random

• Woot - They sell one thing a day, normally for a crazy price.

Stuff for Ministry

• Church Beauty – a collection of the best church web site designs
• Church Marketing Sucks – great tips and articles on the failure of the church in communicating relevantly today.

Web and Graphic Design

• Netdiver - where I go for inspiration
• Cameron Moll’s Authentic Boredom – an “A List” designer with great insights and articles
• Netcocktail - A collection of cool color palletes and the sites they appear on

Leave a comment and let me know what your favorite RSS Feeds are.

Is that really Steve?

steve_hur_comb
Originally uploaded by Josh Byers.

Mike Davidson of mikeindustries.com has been hosting a contest for the past week and a half to see who could put Apple Icon Steve Jobs in a famous movie roll. There have been over 200 entries so far. The winner gets an iPod shuffle. I don’t expect to win but it was a lot of fun. Check out my four entries in the Flickr photoset…and by the way I haven’t forgetten about the year in review – Ted has made a few editorial changes and we are waiting for the revisions…

New Personal Portfolio

In my search for a full time job I have seen the need to create a personal portfolio. A resume just doesn’t cut it these days. Awhile ago I had the good fortune to acquire the domain joshbyers.com. My name isn’t as common as Bob Smith or something but I still thought it was pretty cool to be able to have my own name. So I snapped it up. I didn’t know really what to do with it until now.

I have created a personal portfolio highlighting my work done in print and web media. Hopefully this will give potential employers a good view of what I have done and what I am capable of. And it’s pretty cool too. Check it out at www.joshbyers.com

Sorry for those of you with dial-up, the site is graphic intense and 56k challenged…

Let me know what you think. I will look forward to your comments.