The site provides news and information to find service providers, apply for services and make donations. Color played an important role in the site, aimed at setting a relaxed, hopeful and tranquil mood.

Visit www.humantouchinitiative.org

Visit Mr-Baldwin.com

We Are Hunted
http://wearehunted.com/

Scours music from social sites to bring the 99 most popular and emerging songs and artists. I have found a lot of new artists and music from this site, like Phoenix. One of my favorite features is the Twitter chart.

Global Post
http://www.globalpost.com/

Hands down the best international news site I have come upon. It features top notch news from journalists within the region they are reporting on.  It doesn’t rely on sensationalism, reporting on things that matter, and other things that are just plain interesting and new.

Grist
http://www.grist.org/

Grist’s environmental news is biased, but I find it to be a good source to start with. They update regularly throughout the day and often have opinion-based pieces that spur some great conversation.

Here’s a slideshow from my trip:

http://www.facebook.com/ryankeiser

Or you can follow most of what I have to say on twitter

http://twitter.com/ryankeiser

Or you can follow most of what I do on friendfeed

http://friendfeed.com/ryankeiser

These are the only three services that I use on a regular basis.

I am not the perfection of health, but I have taken many steps over the past year to make better decisions about what I choose to eat and to be more active (I should say I never exercised before I turned 23). I have taken it slow to make it a permanent change in habit. I didn’t want to just go on this path and fall into the trap of returning to poor choices for myself.

Throughout the year I had seen enough Frontline reports and interviews to persuade me that my choices in food were still damaging to my health. There is billions spent every year on ways to make us eat more foods that are nutritionally neutral or damaging. Everything from packaging that makes us want to buy, to the precise amounts of sugar and fat needed to make us want to eat more than we need, and I was knowingly falling into the trap. Without any research to the long-term affects of new chemicals, poisons and additives to the food supply, I no longer wanted to knowingly take a chance.

The change

Switching to a vegetarian diet was easier than I expected. I chose to remove all meat, dairy and as many processed foods as I could.

Meat and seafood were simple to remove. I barely ate meat, and rarely ate red meat. Seafood I wasn’t so attached to. Out of everything, removing dairy from my diet was the hardest.  I had tried soy-based alternatives before, but I never liked the taste, so my options for replacing what I enjoyed (eggs, many baked goods, and yogurt) were far and few between. Finding filling and nutritional choices was difficult, but I was able to make some good decisions.

My diet now consists primarily of legumes (black beans, pinto beans), leafy greens, potatoes, bananas and apples. There are many other items, but these have become my staples for the first 30 days.

A small disclosure. I think meat that comes from grass-fed mammals is good. It is natural and they are usually happier animals. For me, I do not have easy or affordable access to these types of cuts, which is why removed meat all-together.

30 Days On

After 30 days I am feeling better, I am a little more attentive, and I have had few cravings for fatty foods (sugar is another). For the first couple weeks I was not eating enough calories throughout the day and was a little fatigued. I have increased my calories, protein and calcium with more legumes and leafy greens. These foods have some consequences, but my body is adjusting. I have introduced some organic dark chocolate (something I rarely ate) to fill any cravings for sugar.

I’m going to continue doing this for another 30 days and I am planning on sharing more about my diet and other effects of this diet, like my carbon footprint. I hope that this becomes part a lifelong comittment to better health.

I recommend reading The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite by David Kessler.

Color Blindness

Here are the results from the Color Blindness Check:

Deuteranopia

Tritanopia (A blue & yellow color blindness)

Protanopia

Color Contrast

Here are the results from the Colour Contrast Check:

I was born June 24 in Lewisburg, PA.

Photos from 1983

TIME’s Person of the Year Machine of the Year was the computer.

April 3, 1983
Space shuttle Challenger made its maiden voyage.

It was Return of the Jedi.

Photos were developed from film.

On November 2 Ronald Reagan signed a bill establishing a federal holiday for Martin Luther King, Jr. the third Monday of every January.

Video from 1983

The hit was Every Breath You Take by Police.

The clothes were colorful to say the least.

Dallas was the hit show and M*A*S*H aired its historic final episode.

Some Other Happenings

McDonald’s introduced the McNugget.
Thriller by Michael Jackson was first broadcast.

Where were you in 1983? I’ll try to get some additional family photos to share.

From 2002 to about a year ago my plan was to put everything I could under one brand – arkay. I thought creating something sounding like a business would bring clients in droves. After six years, I have learned that nothing is more powerful than my personal brand. It was me who was the driver, not some name I created.

With this change I focused more on increasing the value of my personal brand. I have mostly done this with social networking tools like facebook and twitter. I created my profiles, connected with friends, and have been regularly active. Nothing breakthrough and probably something any web professional should do. There was one thing that was missing and that was an updated site to help promote my brand and act as home base for all that I do.

Creating the experience

When starting this process I knew the first thing I needed to do was to create the content. I worked with a friend, a professional writer, to create some solid copy to explain very simply who I was and what I did.  I was also able to develop short headlines, quips and descriptions for portfolio pieces. By getting copy first I could better plan the importance of each element on the page.

Using color and paint to create texture and focus I put together a first comp of my new site.

Ryan Keiser - Version A

For the most part I was happy with this and felt it accomplished what I needed. I felt it expressed my personality, got a lot of great colors working together and had a large solid banner explaining clearly what I did. But, in the end I just was not feeling it completely. There were too many unnecessary sections.

I decided to aim for putting everything on one page. I couldn’t think of a reason why I needed multiple pages. I understand that many Web design and development businesses are focused on providing as much information as possible and provide an exhaustive description of services they offer. I didn’t need that.

I also felt it was time to abandon the sprout and ground to sky feel and focus solely on color. I also didn’t want to create something that was fun, hip or trendy. I needed it to truly reflect who I was as a designer and a person and it needed to be something that would reflect me for some time.

I then put together my second comp.

Ryan Keiser - Version B

I was getting somewhere. I tweaked the statement that I had used previously to make it even clearer what I did. I used, “I create usable, accessible and colorful experiences.” I also explored removing as much navigation as possible and bringing all the content on to this one page. I wasn’t quite there. There were some things that I wanted to differentiate (work pieces and play pieces), but couldn’t get it to work right.  I also wasn’t feeling the grid and wanted to break free as much as I could.

Using the previous comp, I expanded on it.

Ryan Keiser - Version C

There was a lot that I liked about this. I liked that it got everything moved to the front. I was able to separate the work and play content, but still treat them similarly. What got me excited the most was the color. I took a leap using color and shape to really express myself and differentiate me in the crowded pool.

Unfortunately the layout of the home page did not work well for a blog, so using the home page as a basis for look, I created a simple template that conveyed the same message, but made a blog usable and simple. Visiting http://ryankeiser.net/blog, you can see the difference.

I will cover the process of developing the Wordpress template in a later post. In all, this process took me about six months to complete. There were many hurdles along the way, but I think I have a solid foundation with which to build my personal brand.

What do you think of the new design? Be honest, I can take it.

The plot itself was straight forward. The acting was impressive for a sci-fi picture. Surprise cameos and chuckle-inducing comedy were welcomed. Even attention to sound effects, where in space there would be none, helped to make the movie feel complete.

The visuals and movie experience was somewhere I had never gone before. The use of light, color and CG effects were incredible. For me this sets a great standard to follow. Not once was I looking at something and thinking, “that looked very fake.” With enough creativity, attention to detail and money, great things can happen. I hope that more filmmakers are given the opportunity to create visually compelling realism like this more often, and I can’t wait to see what comes from Abrams next (including how LOST ends).

So far, this is my favorite movie for 2009.