Friday, May 18, 2007
Mmmmm....Cheese
Took a bit of an early night tonight and went down to Cleo's for a snack. If you're ever in our neighborhood I can't recommend a better place to spend an evening with friends. Good food, cold beer, a great outdoor area and friendly staff are among their better selling points but the best thing of all is the deep fried Cheddar Cheese Cubes....not on the menu, so consider this an insider tip!
Something in the Works
We've got something in the works...well, actually, a lot of things. But one main thing has me geeked out right now: I'm headlong into developing a new, improved online store for Rotofugi. I'm learning and cutting and pasting a lot of CSS and ASP right now and kinda loving it.
The new version should have lots of fancy new features like wish lists (save items for later), gift registries, product ranking/comments, sorting by lots of different criteria and more. But at the same time I'm also trying to keep the design simple and straight-forward. It's a challenge, but one that I'm enjoying.
So...if anyone out there has any great CSS or ASP resources that will blow my mind please forward them along. I'm definitely no programmer, but if I can cut it and paste it and somehow wrap my head around it I can make stuff work usually.
The new version should have lots of fancy new features like wish lists (save items for later), gift registries, product ranking/comments, sorting by lots of different criteria and more. But at the same time I'm also trying to keep the design simple and straight-forward. It's a challenge, but one that I'm enjoying.
So...if anyone out there has any great CSS or ASP resources that will blow my mind please forward them along. I'm definitely no programmer, but if I can cut it and paste it and somehow wrap my head around it I can make stuff work usually.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Upcoming Gallery Show or a Fortuitous Happening
One thing I might be using this new blog for is to talk about upcoming projects that maybe aren't quite ready for me to fully announce on our regular site. Sometimes I'm waiting for some info to be confirmed or maybe I just need a piece of artwork or a photo, but regardless of what it is I often have a tidbit or two in the works that isn't quite ready for a full post on our offical site or forums.
A good example of the above is the new show we've got planned for our gallery in June. We originally had Travis Lampe scheduled for June, but then he had something come up and we needed to move his show to December of this year. I'm actually kind of glad that the show got moved, it gives Travis some more time to work on awesome paintings of things like hot dogs (if you saw the show at 32nd and Urban you know what I mean). But it did leave a glaring gap in our gallery schedule.
I try not to panic when something like that happens...I usually have other things to worry about, and I had even started to relish the idea of maybe taking the month off from the gallery and perhaps squeezing in a vacation.
But then someone we know from the designer toy business just handed us a gimme, and a good one at that...so we've got a June show afterall! Friday, June 8 will be the opening for a new show in our gallery by Attaboy.... we couldn't be happier. Atta's done a lot in the designer toy genre that we like including the Axtrx figure plus he and Annie publish Hi-Fructose magazine and we just couldn't pass up the chance to work with them a little closer. We don't have the full details yet (like the flyer image and that sort of stuff) so we haven't officially announced the show yet, but I feel pretty confident that if you show up that Friday there will be some great new Attaboy art in the gallery and plenty of cold soda to drink.
So...thanks to Larry and Sarah of Fakture Gallery (formerly of Denver, now a traveling act) for helping us fill the June gap and get Attaboy into the Rotofugi Gallery. It's gonna be a fun night!
A good example of the above is the new show we've got planned for our gallery in June. We originally had Travis Lampe scheduled for June, but then he had something come up and we needed to move his show to December of this year. I'm actually kind of glad that the show got moved, it gives Travis some more time to work on awesome paintings of things like hot dogs (if you saw the show at 32nd and Urban you know what I mean). But it did leave a glaring gap in our gallery schedule.
I try not to panic when something like that happens...I usually have other things to worry about, and I had even started to relish the idea of maybe taking the month off from the gallery and perhaps squeezing in a vacation.
But then someone we know from the designer toy business just handed us a gimme, and a good one at that...so we've got a June show afterall! Friday, June 8 will be the opening for a new show in our gallery by Attaboy.... we couldn't be happier. Atta's done a lot in the designer toy genre that we like including the Axtrx figure plus he and Annie publish Hi-Fructose magazine and we just couldn't pass up the chance to work with them a little closer. We don't have the full details yet (like the flyer image and that sort of stuff) so we haven't officially announced the show yet, but I feel pretty confident that if you show up that Friday there will be some great new Attaboy art in the gallery and plenty of cold soda to drink.
So...thanks to Larry and Sarah of Fakture Gallery (formerly of Denver, now a traveling act) for helping us fill the June gap and get Attaboy into the Rotofugi Gallery. It's gonna be a fun night!
As If We Don't Have Enough to Do
Those of you that know us from buying toys from us at our website, rotofugi.com or visiting our store in Chicago may or may not know this, but our little store is just a bit time consuming. Whitney and I work, on average, 14 hours a day and pull more than our share of 16 hour days and the occasional overnighter.
Why in the world then would we be starting yet another website to keep up with? To be honest, I'm not entirely sure! I'm thinking I can use this spot to relate some of the things we've learned over the past three years, to "think outloud" about our business and the designer toy industry and maybe I'll post some more family related type stuff that really isn't appropriate on our regular site. I guess we'll just have to see.
Regardless, I'm hoping to get to the point where I post here on a fairly regular basis in one form or another, so this should be, at least, somewhat amusing. Until then, have a good night!
Why in the world then would we be starting yet another website to keep up with? To be honest, I'm not entirely sure! I'm thinking I can use this spot to relate some of the things we've learned over the past three years, to "think outloud" about our business and the designer toy industry and maybe I'll post some more family related type stuff that really isn't appropriate on our regular site. I guess we'll just have to see.
Regardless, I'm hoping to get to the point where I post here on a fairly regular basis in one form or another, so this should be, at least, somewhat amusing. Until then, have a good night!
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