We're working hard to spread the word of What If. We believe there is real value in an easy system for collecting ideas and connecting people with similar ideas. A big goal for 2013 is to get more cities, organizations and companies using an improved What If system. Anyone who could see the value in something like this, let's talk. Anyone who uses the term, "ideas are cheap" as a pejorative then we should talk too. I've got a theory on that line of thinking.
Now, I'm off track. Back to the cover at hand. It was a very nice surprise to see this morning. Thanks to Lori Coon and everyone over at GBM for the support.
After six years on Stone Avenue we've moved to Main Street. There are couple of different reasons we're moving, but the main one is that when you're the only people in the room you're both the smartest and dumbest people in the room. We don't want to be either. The space we've moved to is called the The Forge and is part of the larger Iron Yard project. It's a space made up of artist, programmers, startups, videographers, photographers, architects, designers, successful long-term business people, and plywood. Here's to not being the smartest people in the room.
PS: We took the OrangeCoat sign off our building and have been trying to build anagrams ever since.
We need more brave bearded men (and women) in office and fewer plastic department store clothing mannequins. Let’s face it, figuring out the solutions to the terrible unemployment numbers and the potential meltdown of the Euro is hard work. Even the smartest and most skilled politician might not be able to solve these problems.2 Nonetheless, we are sure a President who thinks while stroking his beard stands a much better chance.
Darwin, Einstein, and Santa Claus all prove that substantial facial hair leads to true genius. Barack, Mitt, and Newt: if you want our vote, throw the razor away and embrace the beard.3
What’s the Big Idea
For the month of February, the month of Presidents’ Day, we celebrate the bearded and bald Presidents of the United States. Roxy Koranda and Evan Tishuk took turns creating 10 minute4 pieces of art inspired by the 16 Presidents who were bald, bearded, moustached, sideburneded, mulleted, or any combination of those. We’ve shared these drawings here and on Dribbble. If anyone else wants to join in with their own art, we encourage you to do so.
Which Presidents Make the Cut
George Washington by Roxy
George Washington didn’t have a beard. Nor did he have a moustache. Some people claim he was bald and wore a wig, but others claim that he let his natural hair flow freely. Either way, sideburns are present in most depictions of Washington that I’ve seen, and that’s the reason he made the cut. Sure, some images show fuzzier sideburns than others, but they really don’t get enough credit. Even though his teeth weren’t real, knowing he had noteable sideburns should’ve given George something to smile about.
John Adams by Evan
It's pretty clear to rise high in the Freemasons you need to grow facial hair. Is it a coincidence that many of the founding fathers also had mighty facial hair? Maybe. What is clear is John Adams hits a trifecta with sideburns, a mullet and a substantial bald spot. Freemasons don't give damn. Not that he is a Freemason. Maybe.
John Quincy Adams by Roxy
John Quincy Adams had mutton chops, a pet alligator, and swam naked in the Potomac River every day.
Martin Van Buren by Evan
Let’s be honest. We’ve all asked ourselves, “What would it look like if Doc Brown was President?” Thanks to 1.21 gigawatts and a little artistic license we now know. On a side note, the most exciting thing about the Martin Van Buren presidency was his hair. Good for him.
James K. Polk by Roxy
James K. Polk: the first president with a mullet. He was all ready for the 1980s more than a century early.
Zachary Taylor by Evan
Zachary Taylor was easily one of the most disheveled-looking American presidents. Just look at one of his more famous mug shots. It's day three of one of his epic whiskey benders somewhere on the frontier, which might be close to the truth because he died only 16 months into his term. His official cause of death is "bilious diarrhea," so perhaps we should cut him some slack.
Some interesting side-notes:
Abraham Lincoln by Roxy
Aside from holding séances in the White House and shooting lasers out of his eyes, Lincoln also had a beard.
Ulysses Grant by Evan
Grant was, by most accounts, a bad president that happened to have a thick beard and a full head of hair
Evidently there are many people here in the South that will not accept $50.00 bills to this day. So I made him a cartoon demon-zombie
Rutherford Hayes by Roxy
Rutherford B. Hayes really liked guns and croquet. More notably, he had the longest beard of all the presidents, and it looks pretty good recreated in wool
James Garfield by Evan
Chester Arthur by Roxy
Chester A. Arthur had expensive taste when it came to clothing and furniture, and he rarely went to bed before 2 a.m. because he enjoyed nightclubs and late-night walks. Like many other presidents, he also enjoyed ham.
Benjamin Harrison by Roxy
Benjamin Harrison was the last president with a beard. Though he was the one who decided to have electricity installed in the White House, he had the staff operate all light switches for him because was terrified of being electrocuted.
Back in 2001 I worked in politics. Bob Peeler was running for governor. At one big event, someone came up to me and said, “I’ll never vote for Bob Peeler. He has mustache and men with facial hair have something to hide.” (Back)
That’s a lie. The jobs one is easy. Educate our damn workforce to be able to handle work at modern jobs. Now, figuring out how to pay for the education, that’s a little tougher.(Back)
Newt still probably won’t get our vote. Colonies on the moon are cool and all, but we can’t pull the lever for a man name Newt. (Back)
So far, they’ve all taken longer than 10 minutes, but we use our whole ass here at OrangeCoat and sometimes that takes longer than one would like. (Back)
5 Comments
Kevin C ~
February 06, 2012
Both Abe Simpson and I are deeply sadded to see Grover Cleveland listed only once.
Carp ~
February 29, 2012
As follow up, you guys should draw each of the presidential candidates with a beard or balding and provide a small bio on how much cooler they would be because of the modification.
Mark Schweizer ~
April 19, 2012
In the golden days of history no public figure in his right mind would venture out into the world without a beard at least the size and shape of a beer barrel and that made up at least a quarter of his total body weight. A beard was a status symbol, something to be cherished by all the family. Not only that but a really enviable face-bush was also an indication of intelligence and respectability, even heroism and genius. In Victorian London there were clubs for which to gain entry a member was expected to sport a beard of length reaching at least to mid-chest level. During some periods of history it was popularly said that a man was not truly a gentleman if his beard was not of a size capable of concealing at least a medium sized turkey.
Kudos to Roxy for the artwork and most of the words written (especially the word "plague" a word she apparently loves more than life itself) and Rick for the coding of the page. Good work by both of y'all.
Have you ever applauded a perfectly cooked cut of meat? Stood up and cheered the look, aroma, and taste of a wonderful, locally sourced pig, cow, lamb or goat.
Me neither, but damn it, that sounds lovely. Let's see if we can't achieve this zen like level of bliss while also enjoying some delightful, non-meat sides and a pecan pie cheese cake dessert this Sunday at the Lazy Goat.
Slow Food Upstate is putting on a tasting event this Sunday that includes six different locally sourced meats as both the main course and tasting menu.
Why: Meat tasting- the tasting of meats. I'm not sure I need to explain more. In case I do, part of the ticket price goes to help fund Slow Food Upstate programs. The rest goes to paying for the wonderful food.
Some folks also got a Facebook message from me on this subject. I'm sorry for the spammy nature of sending two similar notes a day apart, but honestly Facebook is crap. I needed to write more about the meat tasting than Facebook would allow. Besides spam is a meat too. Sort of.
Caprese salad with fresh mozzarella, basil and Cherokee purple-bruschetta with striped German.
Course 2
Roasted polenta squares topped with gold cherry tomatoes sauce, in house cured crispy pancetta and shaved Cacio Cavallo.
Course 3
Rigatoni with San Marzano tomatoes sauce with basil and Parmiggiano Reggiano cheese.
Course 4
Roasted Paragon tomatoes (whole) filled with sea scallops, topped with shrimp.
Course 5
Golden Rave tomato mousse topped with Thai Pink jam served in genoise mini cake.
The sold event was really well received and we hope to team up with Slow Foods Upstate for more tastings in the future.
If you're interested in learning more fan OrangeCoat or Slow Foods Upstate or both on Facebook or subscribe to the OrangeCoat email list found on our tasting page.
1 Comments
Janette Wesley ~
August 01, 2010
Hey Adam, Great Photos!
Thank you SO much for the beautiful work you and your staff did for the event.
All in all, a "Sensational" event!
Janette Wesley www.slowfoodupstate.com
Aaron, Susan (et al) WOW what an amazing night. Greenville is an incredible community because of people like you.... The best part of the whole night for my husband and I was when our 11 year old said..." I want to do this when I grow up. I want to make my City be together like this ."
You changed our future -not only through the creation and implementation of Google on Main- but by inspiring every person who was a part of it to do more...now and for future generations. THANK YOU
The ideas and plans for the 2010 tastings are beginning to bubble up. Beer, olive oil, bourbon, cheese, chocolate, and maybe even wine are being considered.
We'd love to hear your ideas on what would be a good, unique tasting topic and if you're interested in getting an invite to the next event drop us a line.
To see more about what these events are about, check out our Tasting section.
1 Comments
C-Town ~
February 14, 2010
About about....peppers...hot sauce....salt(?)....root beer....
Add me to the invite list.
I believe you are re-gifting some stollen merchandise. Those Laptec C-324 headphones and mic actually belong to me. Someone, and I won't mention names but their name rhymes with Bevan, borrowed those from me. Those were a gift from my dear old mum for the purpose of playing Counter Strike back in aught-aught (I will admit that my key for CS/half life was stolen but I am not trying to re-gift it). My only hope is that because he stole them from me that they have caused a lot of pain. That was the plan originally.
Tucker ~
December 23, 2009
I will be unable to come by the office until after the new year, but I would like to lay claim to the potted green brain thing.
Happy to provide a customized cargo strap as a token of my gratitude to the Orangecoat member responsible for reserving this beautiful peice of mother nature.
Merry Christmas!!!!
Jim ~
December 25, 2009
My lady friend is also interested in the brain plant and has placed a bid of 10 cents.
OrangeCoat's World Headquarters is a renovated service station located on Stone Avenue in Greenville, South Carolina. Like most service stations of a certain time, there are two big garage doors covering a large portion of our building. From now until All Saints Day, these two doors have transformed into a canvas for some scary Halloween art.
IE be used, Nevermore
Internet Explorer 6 is a super villain robot-zombie Freddie Kruger styled monstrosity. It needs to die. Even though Internet Explorer is now on version 8, over-worked IT departments and unknowing web users have not updated their copies of IE. Still having to code for IE6 causes the web development world to howl with pain and spew cursed words. IE6 is an old browser. It's old technology and it needs to die—today1
Change Your Evil Ways
If you use Internet Explorer please update immediately.
Wow, sorry about that rant. We tend to go into a bit of a trance of anger when we speak of IE6. But the window display is supposed to be scary or cool or scary-cool on levels. The IE gravestone is clearly the star of the show, but it is not the entire show. It's a complete graveyard replete with bats, gravestones, and skulls—oh my.
Please drive on by if you're in the neighborhood. We'll have the lights on from 7:10 to 2:10 every night until November First.
For more photos, including a couple of behind-the-scenes and making-of shots, check out our Facebook page.
Oh and by the way, Happy Halloween.
Footnotes and other various sundries
IE was released in 2001. How many people still have the same cell phone, TV, or even car they had in 2001? (back)
I feel that it should be noted that not only does your wonderful Holiday decoration speak levels to the dislike of IE6, but the sheer length of this post is quite a comment in and of itself.
I don't know if you've written a blog post this long since you blogged about bacon wrapped corn brats. Cheers to you sir and your anti-IE6 sentiments.
Best Halloween decoration this year. Perhaps you can write off the work as a charitable donation to the cause of humanity and over stressed web designers (in specific).
The picture is great, but there's nothing like seeing it in person. Thanks again for using your prime real estate spot responsibly. Keep up the great work...and positive propaganda.
I am working a contract at GE, and every new computer comes with a fresh copy of IE6. If my code works on that I know I'm set. I LOVE your images...very cool lighting. How did you print it/paint it?
Visitor ~
October 30, 2009
Great window. Great point about IE6. Gotta put a plug in for Apple's Safari, though. Pretty great, too, IMHO. The live mini-previews are quite nice.
At OrangeCoat the bane of our business life is the line “I don't know what like but I'll know when I see it." In an attempt to remove this phrase from the arsenal of regular business cliches, we are putting together a series of food and drink tastings. We want to help everyone better and more definitively describe their individual tastes in business and design by having them learn tried and true tasting techniques.
You Say Tomato
We started this experiment with a very well received coffee cupping. Here are some photos & a blog post from the cupping. The tomato tasting grew from the suggestion of one of the coffee cupping attendees, Nicole Johnson.
In our mind, there are few better South Carolina summer tasting possibilities. The thought of learning more about the complex flavors found in locally grown heirloom tomatoes is, well, mouth-watering. And so, the tasting event is set and we'd like to personally invite you to attend.
On August 25th at 4pm at the Lazy Goat in downtown Greenville OrangeCoat is putting on one of, if not the first, tomato tasting in South Carolina. Helping with the event is Chef Rodney Freidank the Corporate Chef of the Table 301 Restaurants and Jeff Isbell of Iszy’s Heirlooms.
This event is going to be a blast. The agenda includes the tasting of four different locally grown heirloom tomatoes with the goal of learning about the key aromas, flavors, and textures that comprise the different tomato types. We hope that's enough to entice you to come but, if that's not enough, each tasting participant will receive a $25 gift card to any Table 301 restaurant and a gift card for 2 pounds of locally grown heirloom tomatoes.
The Rundown
What: A Tomato Tasting
When: August 25th at 4pm
Where: The Lazy Goat, 170 River Place Greenville, SC 29601 (Map)
Cost: Free
We have a limited number of seats for this event still available.
We are proud to announce TypeSelect, our first open source web project. TypeSelect is based on Typeface.js which is a JavaScript-based rendering script for displaying non-standard typefaces on the web. But wait, there's more! With TypeSelect you can now select the text allowing for copying and pasting.
Like Ron Burgundy, this is kind of a big deal. There are several solutions out there that allow browsers to display different fonts. However, only some patchy @font-face support and a wonky Flash-based option called SIFR actually allow for any sort of text-selection. TypeSelect achieves these features while only using JavaScript and CSS.
Why do this?
Having an easy-to-manage and robust solution for displaying unique typefaces online is one of our white whales. It's a constant pain to compromise a design by using an inappropriate typeface and it's just as irksome for visitors to not be able to copy and paste text.
Call me TypeSelect
The hunt began several months ago when Evan cracked open Typeface.js and started to overlay HTML proving the basic concept behind TypeSelect. Huzzah, the concept worked and the hunt was on and running at full-speed.
Over the next couple of weeks the project grew and changed. Several wrong turns and road blocks changed the direction and ultimately created a much better result.
Here are a few of the highlights, as to not bore you with all the gory details
Figuring out which works best, printing the entire word or individual letters (full words won the day)
Selection irregularities between browsers (still haven't sorted all that out yet)
Getting the kerning to work correctly (an issue that almost sunk the ship)
It's not perfect. We understand this, but we've put a good deal of time and brain power into TypeSelect and now we want to see how others can help improve the technology.
This is why we are open sourcing the entire offering. We want others to be involved, make it better, and help TypeSelect solve a problem that has vexed most web professionals.
So, please visit TypeSelect.org. If you like what you see, help spread the word
If you're inspired by this project, let us know. We're looking for people who can help carry the torch and solve some riddles.
End Notes
1. Dear IE, "from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee" (Back)
7 Comments
Michael Allen ~
July 23, 2009
So, when does ye olde orangecoat.com get some TypeSelect love? I see you're still using the sIFR that was originally implemented, and I'm curious how TypeSelect would perform given the number of replacements it would have to do on this site. Would make for a compelling use-case.
Our performance tests show that TypeSelect doesn't really hit a wall until it starts rendering about 100 words. I think it would do fine on this site -- probably faster actually. The reason we didn't integrate it here was because we've been too busy with other work. We're planning on doing some refresh/maintenance soon, and it will definitely make it into the newer design.
The typeselect homepage has a misspelling in the following paragraph:
By leveraging typeface.js, jQuery, the canvas, toDataURL, CSS background properties and real overlayed text, Type Select is able to combine custom fonts with your browser's native text selection funcationality. You can now interact with beautifully rendered typefaces just like you do with normal text.
We all like to taste good things, but we rarely know why we like something or how to describe it. We see this same problem when talking about design and business in general.
It starts with a Coffee Cupping
Our first tasting is going to be a coffee cupping held at Liquid Highway's Corporate Headquarters.
We are starting with a coffee cupping because, simply put, the world loves coffee. It's the second most traded commodity behind oil. Also, it's going to be first in a series of tasting (yes, a wine tasting is in the works) and we felt there was no better way to start the series than with the drink most people start their day with. Not to mention, coffee has a far more complex flavor profile than many other popular drinks including wine.
Basically, we want to start with something that stimulates the taste buds and caffeinates* the mind. Coffee is pretty perfect for all these criteria.
Interested in Attending?
We've got a couple spots open for the coffee cupping OrangeCoat is sponsoring and we wanted to extend the offer to our blog readers.
The owner of Liquid Highway, Dwain Waller and the Master Roaster, Reed Wilson will be putting on an entertaining and informative coffee cupping.
When: July 8th at 9am
Where: Liquid Highway's Corporate Headquarters Located off of Butler Road at 48 Brookfield Oaks Drive, Suite F Greenville SC 29607 (Map)
Why: To experience coffee in a whole new light
Cost: Free
RSVP, Please
Spots for this event are limited. If you are interested please email me (adam@orangecoat.com) an RSVP ASAP.
*It appears caffeinates is not a word but I like that sentence too much to change the wording. Hi Ho.
I think this is an excellent idea to help us slow down and be more discerning about what we often rush through. I am glad I just got confirmation and I'm on the list.
Glad you can make it as well. Looking forward to seeing you there.
Nicole P. Johnson ~
July 06, 2009
I love the concept, and think this is very "ahead of the curve" glad to be apart of it!
.n
Susan Sebotnick ~
July 07, 2009
I think Caffeinate is a word... It may be "slang", but it is a recognized word.
Caffeinate: to caffeinate (third-person singular simple present caffeinates, present participle caffeinating, simple past and past participle caffeinated)
I'm looking forward to the Coffee Cupping tomorrow!
Six or so years ago at a Clemson tailgate I introduced the group to my idea of replacing the hotdog in a corndog with bratwurst. Mike New, your friend and mine, quickly moved this idea from good to genius by suggesting wrapping the entire thing in bacon before the deep fry. To this day I'm not sure if Mike New was making fun of my love of unhealthy foods or if he legitimately thought it was a good idea. Truthfully, it doesn't matter to me. I always take the idea of wrapping food in bacon seriously.1
This idea sat in my brain for six years. I mentioned it to friends. They laughed. I used it as a pickup line. I remained single. Finally, after six years of thinking and dreaming it was go time.
The ingredients:
Bratwurst- I used three different types: Regular, Cheddar, and BBQ Chicken
Corndog batter
Bacon
Beer
Jalapenos
Pickles (for a deep fried side dish)
Potatoes (for another deep fried side dish)
A bunch of once used peanut oil
Step one: Fry some potatoes
This helps put the friends involved at ease. It's like getting into a cold pool a toe at time. Everyone has eaten fried potatoes of some sort before. This helps condition folks to the extremes of deep frying that are coming soon.
If you are more of a jump into the deep end type of guy feel free to skip this step.
Step Two: Make the batter
I used this recipe. There are hundreds of similar recipes out there, go with one you feel will work. My batter was uber thick and I would have probably thinned it out a bit if it wasn't for the lone vegetarian of the group continually suggesting to thin out the batter. Basically, I kept the batter thick out of spite. The batter worked fine.
Step Three: Parboil the brats in beer
The cheddarwurst were pre-cooked and didn't need this step. The other two wurst needed as much cooking as possible before the deep fry so I boiled the brats in beer (picture of the boil). The beer used for boiling was Miller Lite. The good beers were saved for dinner.
Step Four: Impale the brats, wrap with bacon, and bake on high
As the brats need a little pre-cooking so does the bacon. This will take longer than you could possibly imagine. You are almost at the deep frying step and all you want to do is take your bacon wrapped brats out of the oven and deep fry the bastards. Patience, walk away, drink beer, talk about none bacon wrapped topics. The longer you wait the better.(2)
Step Five: Dip in batter and deep fry
How long do you deep fry? Until they are done. Not a minute longer
The Verdict
Overload. A bacon wrapped cornwurst is a lot of food and almost too much for the mind, tongue, and stomach to fully grasp. They were tasty, but not wonderful. (3)
This is the lukewarm type review that ruins even the greatest of experiments. When experimenting, it's certainly better to fail or succeed in fantastic format. We did neither. If I were to do this again I'd use a sweeter batter recipe to fight the salt of the bacon and I'd cook the bacon in the oven longer. I'd also make the cornwurst bite size so it's not such a daunting task to eat one.
Footnotes
I'm pretty sure Mike New was serious in his suggestion. I just really wanted to write the line "I always take the idea of wrapping food in bacon seriously." (Back)
It took all my will not make that line "I'm serious as a heart attack when it comes to wrapping foods in bacon."
I didn't use that line because I felt it cheapened my true love of wrapping foods in bacon. Seriously.
While I survived the ordeal of one and a half bacon wrapped cornwurst my stomach let me know that it greatly disapproved of the decision. I agree that they represented only mediocre success in the end, possibly because they came to close to unraveling the very fabric of space and time.
Fried pickle spears by the way, way better than the little chips.
1 - After boiling the brats, brown them up a bit either in a skillet, on the grill, or perhaps under the broiler.
2 - Pre-cook the bacon before wrapping it around the brats. Cook it enough that it's done but still flexible, and maybe even a little crisp. And I'm thinking something like a panini press for cooking the bacon the rest of the way, if necessary, rather than the oven.
Or, perhaps you can make your own wurst with the bacon included.
Carp ~
May 01, 2009
I almost wept tears of joy when I heard that this experiment was coming to fruition. Now I weap tears of sorrow for not bringing the family and being a part of this momentous occasion.
You sir are a gentleman and a scholar. May the pork be with you.
@nobrainer Phil gave the same browning technique suggestion on Facebook. It seems like a good suggestion. That way I could also bring another fat into the cooking process as well. Browned in butter before wrapped in bacon.
For the pre-cooking of the bacon, I thought about that but didn't go with it as I really wanted the brats to marinate in the bacon during the cooking the process.
@Carp it really would have been fun for the whole family.
moni ~
May 01, 2009
oh, the love for bacon. this sounds actually pretty good if one follows your suggestion for a 'bite size' cut for deep frying. Oso, eres maravilloso! long live bacon!
@Moni - you are turning into a fine carnivore. Proud of you.
@Nate - A nice shot of bacon vodka would have been a good end to this meal. Also, American Grocery in Greenvillle (https://www.americangr.com/) has a bacon infused bourbon that I must try.
Frying food that comes out with 2 inches of breading all around and looking extraordinarily unattractive due to overly thick batter is ridiculous. Drop the spite and thin the batter next time. You won't be sorry, and an additional plus, it'll be easier to eat off a stick.
@Moni - You're killing me darling, truly killing me.
Fuzzy ~
May 20, 2009
OMG! This might be the greatest thing ever! If I were to eat too many of these I would likely get as big around as I am tall.
reason #139 you are so damn fly. smdh. praps #bratonova2012?
EMT ~
January 17, 2013
I think I'm going to try with a few changes. I'm going to wrap the raw brats with bacon and then grill, or smoke them. Then dip in a thinner batter and fry.
We'd also like to thank the USA Today for writing a paragraph that sums up this project better than anyone involved could do
Shanin, and a small group of Internet entrepreneurs based in Greenville, S.C., are donating their efforts and skills to create a Web-based fundraising campaign for a group of health care providers who want to build a hospital boat on the Amazon in Peru.
We made several pounds of fresh pasta last weekend. Here are some photos of the process. Honestly, pasta is not that hard to make if you always use more
We made several pounds of fresh pasta last weekend. Here are some photos of the process. Honestly, pasta is not that hard to make if you always use more eggs than the recipe tells you to use. Our magic number was 1.5 eggs per cup of flour.
1 Comments
Susan ~
March 07, 2009
I would help my mom roll out pasta when I was a kid - she always enjoyed the lasagna noodles, while I felt nothing could ever top homemade spaghetti with her mom's meatball recipe, and sauce made with tomatoes fresh from our garden. She wasn't ever big on garlic, and this was before my love affair with mushrooms or finding out that parmesan cheese that did not have to come in a green cardboard cylinder, but it was still amazing. Looks like you guys (and gal) had fun!
I think 'presentation' could also be comfortably placed in the center somewhere near style as well. Being able to visually see how it's going to look and interact with the users helps me before I start I any PHP. Also, was there a reason you used the colors that you did?
I wish Bear would update his Flickr photo to reflect the more recent changes.
I think the former version is valid if you look at "presentation" as the main touch-point between the visitor and the site/application. But within the context of a process, it doesn't make as much sense.
Take a look at the PDF version I uploaded, and you'll see I moved it back into the spheres of style and development.
Maybe I'm biased as someone who forsook a career as a web programmer, but I would make "development" circle smaller. I view technology as somewhat of a commodity (unless it is a prohibitively expensive one to implement, like building stealth fighter planes). I would argue that content and design, in that order, contribute more to the user experience than the platform or technology that the site is built upon.
(I just hope Jimmy C doesn't hunt me down, now...)
Perhaps I was being diplomatic with the area allotted for development. On the other hand, if you go by the proportion of dollars typically spent on development versus design, I think a couple things become apparent. Firstly, it seems as though clients feel more comfortable investing in nuts-and-bolts development work. Perhaps this is because it's viewed more as an asset, more concrete, more scalable. Secondly, there also seems to be a general proclivity amongst the uninitiated to developing first and "making it pretty" afterward. In other words, building without a blueprint because it's cheaper in the short term and can be improved later with a more significant re-investment. This approach is like nails on a chalkboard to me. But it demonstrates why the development circle is similar in size to design: many projects are not well-thought-out and hence require a lot of clean-up re-development on the back end. And we all know that clean-up projects (much like your local Superfund site) are ugly, expensive and not much fun to work on.
I think this is a nice way to look at the overall project from a web developer point of view. But one thing that seems to be missing is what action(s) is the website looking for visitors to take?
e-commerce
lead generation
subscriptions
communicate
personalize
customer service
This may be covered in planning. But all the rest is just a method of achieving those goals. From the movie Ronin. "What's your favorite weapon? Its just a toolbox, pick the right tools for the job."
Good point. In my efforts to be general, I didn't give enough weight to the importance of setting goals. I will add something to the research / planning phases that addresses this. Or perhaps a broader arrow to illustrate how the process should flow on a stream of goal(s). What do you think?
Yea, that development bubble is going to vary A LOT based on the project. If a client is looking to use a website to automate most of their business process, then development is going to be 90% of the project (just because the project is going to grow a lot).
If you look at the cost saved in people that you don't have to hire anymore though, it usually pays for itself pretty quick.
For New Year's Eve this year, I decided I wanted crab bisque. I don't know why. But I wanted to make something I knew was going to be laborious and worth
Ingredients
4 pounds snow crab clusters (legs)
4 quarts water (16 cups)
1 small onion, chopped
1 1/2 stalks celery, chopped
2 cloves garlic, quartered
2 potatoes, peeled and chopped
1/4 cup fresh chopped Italian parsley
2 teaspoons mustard seed
1 tablespoon chopped pimento (I used roasted red pepper)
1/2 teaspoon coarse ground pepper
2 bay leaves
1/3 cup tomato sauce (I used 2 tbsps of tomato paste and a tbsp ketchup)
2 tablespoons half and half (I used about 1/4 cup of whole milk)
1/4 cup unsalted butter
1/4 teaspoon thyme
1/8 teaspoon basil
1/8 teaspoon marjoram
Process
First you have to steam the crab legs for 7-8 minutes and then let them cool. I used a large stock pot and steamer to accommodate the surprisingly large quantity of legs. After the meat was cooked, I saved the steam juices (about 2 cups) to add to the stock.
Remove all the crab meat from the shells and set it aside. With two people, this took 75 minutes and made a pretty big mess. I think if you are particularly talented at removing crab meat, you could save some time here, but not much. It's also very hard to avoid nibbling on a few pieces. Make sure you had a big brunch so that you're not as tempted.
Put half of the shells (I used about 3/4) into a large pot with 4 quarts of water over high heat. Add onion, 1 stalk of chopped celery, and garlic, then bring mixture to a boil. Continue to boil for 1 hour, stirring occasionally (The white part of the shells will start to become transparent), then strain stock. Discard the shells, onion, celery and garlic, keeping only the stock. (Perhaps it was the celery, but I was surprised to find that the stock was an electric green color.
Measure 3 quarts (12 cups) of the stock into a large sauce pan or cooking pot. If you don't have enough stock, add enough water to make 3 quarts.
Add potatoes, bring mixture to a boil, then add 1/2 of the crab and the remaining ingredients to the pot and bring it back to boiling. Reduce heat and simmer for 4 hours, uncovered until it reduces by about half and starts to thicken. Add the remaining crab and simmer for another hour until the soup is very thick
Other Notes
I didn't have enough time to allow for the full simmer, so I added a tablespoon or so of flour to thicken it up and hopefully make it stretch a little further. It provided about 8 servings. But everyone wanted seconds, so next time I will double the portions. I hope the Soup Nazi doesn't hunt me down for deviating from the original recipe.
That was the best seafood bisque I've ever had, and I've had many.
Meg ~
January 02, 2008
Maybe next year, and I do think there should be more next year, you could have a protocol sign that must be followed in order to receive a bowl, such as "while cooking, the chef must be supplied with a fresh beverage of his/her choice whenever current beverage runs out" and "you may not cut in line for the soup or knock anyone down on your way for seconds". The first rule is particularly important as this whole process is in the 5 to 6 hour range.
That's a good idea. Any time someone steps up to the plate and prepares a bona fide Soup Nazi recipe, they have executive privileges for the day -- kinda like being the president in a game of asshole.
As a secondary note, I always find the recipe direction of salt and pepper to taste as funny one. (Notice Evan provided exact pepper measurements).
My thought is everything in a recipe should be to taste, so if you aren't going to provide measurements for salt and pepper you might as well not provide measurements for any of it.
To that point, I wouldn't be opposed to that type of cookbook either. Just a general idea of ingredients and cooking style needed and the rest is just- Have at it. People who follow every direction in a cookbook to tee scare me.
The thing is that with seafood bisque you already have a brine from the shells. And you want to be careful not to over-season and destroy the delicate flavor. I'd be less apt to follow the peppering instructions if it was something like clam chowder.
One of the ingredients for a baguette is water. What you may not know (and no cookbook states this) is that the water must be French tap water. Preferably from Paris. Failure to use Parisian tap water will cause your baguette to taste different from the stuff you would get from a real boulangerie even if you follow the recipe to the letter.
Sea salt also tastes different based on where it's from.
I stumbled upon this while browsing my RSS feeds. Holy shit now I'm hungry. It's not just general hunger pangs either. No, I'm going to have to find some kind of expensive dining establishment that serves foo foo cuisine which probably won't even approach how awesome this food sounds. Gah.
Just got back from a few days in Charleston, SC and had Blue Crab Bisque at Magnolias on E. Bay St. Wonderful idea! I will think about doing the same next year :-)
ugh ~
December 08, 2010
what if I can't find Italian parsley?
Visitor ~
September 05, 2011
italian parsley is in any produce section.
Uturnia Quagmore ~
May 04, 2011
For me the realization that crab shells are what you need to make crab bisque is life changing! I am trying this recipe for the first time, but I find I can't discard the crab shells after only one hour. Why boil the crab shells for only one hour and the rest of the soup for 4? Why not boil the crab shells for 4, until all of them have become transparent? I had a Bengali friend who cooked chicken curry with the bones until the bones dissolved. I feel like the same principal would apply to crabs???
I just saw this Seinfeld episode yesterday (for the 1,000th time) and now I'm craving this soup. They just make it seem so good on the show, so I must try it! It sounds delicious and your picture proves that it must have been amazing. Thanks for the recipe!
for white people and their friends of any color
(emily says this sounds a bit racist, I meant no offense)
by Bobby McCormick
(with a little help from his friends) Inspiration and original concepts are due to R. Thompson, no credit due. he's got lots of credit at lots of banks and places like that) 2
good advice: read this recipe through entirely before starting. All things don't happen on the same day or at the same time on any given day. don't call me if you get screwed up. that's the way chili goes. and best of luck. enjoy.
get yourself some good CD music, Hank or Clapton or Buffet or Leon Redbone or thereabouts and put the music on the CD playing machine (not the stove). (This chili will not set if you listen to long haired kind of music when cooking it.) If a Braves game is not on you can not watch that in lieu of the music.
OK now you are ready assuming that you have all the necessary ingredients. (of course nobody knows what all the necessary ingredients are since we just use what we have in the frigidaire what some people call the ice box)
BEAN PART, PART 1
Go to the store one day ahead atime and buy some dry white beans if you don't already have some from your garden. Say about 2 pounds if you want a lot of chili. Just one pound if you don't have many friends coming for dinner. Put the beans in a grand sized cooking pot (or a large ceramic bowl) and cover with clean cold water. Make sure that water is at least 1-2 inches above the top of the beans. They will swell like a dead dog in summer heat. Set aside until first thing tomorrow morning. do whatever you want to until tomorrow. Personally, I like kissing up side my wife, but you do whatever you need to. I wasn't willing to wait another day for chili so I tried to quick soak the beans. It didn't work great. The beans stayed pretty al dente. If you've got a day to soak, let 'em soak.
BEAN PART, PART 2 (happens on the second day)
On the morning of the meal, when you are getting up and eating your donuts/grits, bring the beans to a boil.3 Instantly, turn the heat to low. Add a half a cup or so of chicken bullion powder (cubes are ok too). Add some Worcestershire (good bit) tiny bit of soy is ok if you like that sort of stuff. Add a lot of garlic, 3-4 segments, whole or sliced. Add a good bit (1/4 cup or so) white ground pepper. Stir frequently, cooking as low as possible, with a boiling bubble every minute or so. After about 5-6 hours of cooking like this, we will introduce the beans to the chicken. Remember to stir frequently and keep the boil as slow as possible. you can cook the beans covered for the first 2 hours or so, but let the lid off from halftime on. I went with chicken stock instead of bullion. I was happy.
THE CHICKEN PART OF THE RECIPE (this stuff all happens on the second day too)
Go to the store and get a big skillet if you don't already have one. Put that big skillet on your wood stove or cook top whatever. Turn it on saute temperature and put some olive oil in the pan. just cover the bottom of the pan good. not too much. Dice, but not too small, two bunches of green onions putting in too a good bit of the green stalk part. Don't let the skillet get too hot, it disturbs the onions. Now dice up two or three regular (or better yet, vidalia sweet) onions and put them too into the skillet. make sure that the heat is not too hot. you want the onions to turn translucent. Dice up two green bell peppers and add to the skillet. You can use a red bell pepper if you want. Dice some carrots or grate them. 4 or 5 will be enough. Add them to skillet. Add some garlic cloves or minced garlic. I like a lot but you be the judge. Saute these vegetables for a while, about 10 minutes maybe a bit longer. You decide when it looks really good and ready to eat, then add 2-4 pounds of cut up skinless, boneless chicken breasts. I like to cut the breast meat into cubes about twice the size of a sugar cube or maybe a little bit bigger, but you do what you want. This is where I improved a little. Instead of using olive oil, I fried up some bacon and used the bacon grease to saute up the veggies. I also reserved all the bacon. Some made it into the chili and some was added as a topper.
Add 5-6 (small) cans of el paso green chilies. It doesn't matter whether you get the diced or whole type. Some people think that the more chilies the better. I have never heard people complain about too many chilies. So find the crease. Put 10 cans if you want. If it turns out good call me, and say so. If not, eat in restaurants more often. Rinse the chilies out of the cans with a little clean water and put the water into the skillet. A long and a long, you can add clean water to make the chili the consistency that you desire. I don't usually cook with green chilies, but I'm glad I did. It provided some heat and unique flavor to the dish.
Now is the time to spice the dish. This is the tough part since I never measure anything. What I do is guess, wait a while, taste, and adjust. Start with a tablespoon or two of white ground pepper. At least a tablespoon of cumin Cumin is the most important chili spice ever. Don't skimp, not even a little bit.. Try some ground red pepper.Grind your own if you can. Pure ground chili is so much better than what they sell in the bottle as "chili spice". Do you like thyme and rosemary? put them if you do, but don't use much of these last two.
Put the beans and the chicken together and cook slowly for 2-4 more hours. The longer the better. Again, as slow a boil as possible. The dish is truly ready when the liquor takes the thickness of very runny mud, a chalky consistency.
Stir frequently. The brew will stick to the bottom of the pot if left too long between stirrings.
Taste at least once per hour, checking for adequate salt and a lingering pleasant after taste. If toward serving time your are missing the aftertaste, add some more pepper. Retaste in 30 minutes. Towards the end, you can tell that the chili is about to come if it sticks to the pot between stirrings, even when you are stirring it every couple of minutes or so. Turn off the heat at this point and get the table set.
SERVE IN BOWLS OR ON PLATES WITH RICE AND PABST. A lot of people like white bread on the side for dipping and taking the heat off the lips. I'm a proud beer snob, but Pabst for a meal like this is proper and tasty.
Pick you own music, but Leon Russell is my favorite. The Wedding Album featuring Leon and Mary is hard to beat. In virtually all cases, something from Tejas is almost required. If Leon isn't available, try Jerry Jeff. Bob Wills? Hank Williams?
I don't like writing papers without at least two footnotes, so this satisfies that requirement. Additional thanks go to two semi-great americans, rcc and e d who inspired the written encryption of these silly words. (Back)
There is a great bean controversy whether you should cook the beans in the soaking water or drain and replenish. Good arguments are made on both sides, but after some experimentation and much laziness, I have adopted the "dance with the one that brung you" approach. Cook em in the soaking water. (Back)
This was my first run at white chili and it turned out okay. Next time the beans are soaking overnight for sure and I'll probably make less. I've got tons of leftovers. That being said, I was happy I added the bacon and next time more might be added.
At my convenience, hopefully in the next week or two, I'll cook a batch, freeze it, pack it in dry ice, and overnight it to Orange Coat World Headquarters.
Merry Christmas to all and to all a good year As we finish up our fifth year in business we'd like to thank all our clients, friends and family who
It was acceptable in the '80's
Designers usually take inspiration from great pieces of art, literature and movies. Not OrangeCoat, we consider Olan Mills our muse.
What? You don't remember the greatness of Olan Mills photos from the 1980's? Here's the evidence.
Of course, our hands aren't exactly clean when it comes to Olan Mills photo shoots (as I imagine yours aren't either). Here are some pictures of future OrangeCoaters wearing their Sunday best in the early '80's.
More Funny Photos and Outtakes
We had a blast during the photo shoot for this card. So much so, we took 87 photos, went through 3 wardrobe changes, and countless ridiculous poses. Here are a couple of outtakes and behind the scenes shots from our photo shoot.
We've received a couple complaints that this Flickr slideshow sucks, so here's the raw Flickr set.
Stalk us, please.
Keep in mind, there are plenty of ways to keep in touch with us.
PS: Wonder who the fourth person in the photo is? Subscribe to one of our feeds or check back to the blog later this week. It will be explained.
PPS: All thanks to our friend Paivi for taking the pictures.
PPPS: It is impossible to find a white turtle neck at either Target or Wal-Mart. We blame Steve Jobs and his love of the mock turtleneck for the near death of the real turtleneck.
The photoshopping was time-consuming but relatively straightforward. I had the opportunity to employ a really useful masking technique for hair -- something I don't usually get to do on my own photos.
But I have to give a ton of credit to Jimmy C for (1) having the perfect dazed Dumb and Dumber look (2) putting his hand on Adam's causing everyone to immediately explode laughing (3) coming up with "Hoping Yule Log onto..." Jimmy is totally the MVP.
tina phelps ~
December 17, 2008
The christmas card set is just perfect! I chuckled the whole way through ... they were all great photos! You all are just too hilarious!
slusser ~
December 17, 2008
I can not even tell how awesome these pictures are, the best part is the fabric elephant that is in the background of the first few pictures. I wondered what happened to it.
We tried to take some photos with the pups but they all came out pretty silly looking and we aren't prepared to make ourselves look silly. After all, we are professionals.
In some of the outtakes you can see the dogs running around in the background.
Clemson-Mom ~
December 18, 2008
As the mother of one of you handsome young men, I must say that I never saw my son looking like such a NERD! I can only pray that women will still find him attractive!!!!
YIKES!!!!!!! Seriously - I think the picture is great.
We're pretty sure my sweater was a woman's. It was in the men's section at Safe Harbor's Hope Chest Store and I grabbed it off the rack right before they closed. It was oh so comfortable with those shoulder pads.
Totally bad ass! Good stuff. Merry Christmas guys. Hope all is well for you back home. I always expect the best from you guys and you always deliver. Cool cats with good tech....and humor.
I am laughing so hard I have no words! Evan, if I knew you were looking for some historical pics from your past I have plenty. You hang on our walls in all your 1980's splendor. Thanks for the comedic relief!
You all are scary. Very Very scary. Please consider drinking more.
W ~
December 23, 2008
After all of the plain business "Holiday" cards I have received over the past couple of weeks... Nay, over the past few years... This is the most creative one I can remember. Great work guys. This deserves to go viral!
I went through the outtakes and it's perfect that Adam worked in (wearing) the brand reference. Nice touch.
I can't wait to see the next Olan Mills inspired holiday photos.
Very Olan Mills but with out the "copy restriction" or being forced to crop or or clone out the Olan Mills sig! ;) (Don't tell the Olan Mill's Police I said that) Personally I was reminded of the Monty Python Troupe.
A little over a week ago the design for OrangeCoat's 404 error screen made it to the front page of Digg. Over the last week, the number of diggs has grown to over 2,000. From the initial Digg-frenzy to the steady increase to 2,021, it was a unique experience that helped us to get a better grasp of how Digg effects web traffic, servers and our own internet popularity.
Time line of the first 24 hours:
6:00pm: A quick after-dinner check of Twitter included a tweet from CDMwebs:
"Sweet," I say. And off to the races we go. About halfway down Digg's home page is our 404 page with the simple headline, "Interesting 404 Page: The Flowchart [PIC]". The story has a couple hundred diggs and I'm pretty pumped just to be on the home page for any amount of time.
6:05pm: I send an email off to Evan, Jim, and Matthew. After all, it isn't our 404 page that got dugg, Matthew's wonderfully helpful and popular website, PatternTap, is where our 404 page was found and the PatternTap page is what is being linked via Digg.
6:10pm: I tweet:
Thanks to @patterntap OC's 404 page got to the front page of digg this afternoon. https://tinyurl.com/5alj69 & thanks to @cdmwebs for tweetin
From there, we received a couple emails, text messages, and IM's from friends congratulating us. It's very cool and a little strange to get the congratulations. After all, we didn't submit the link or even pub it on our blog. The design is something Evan dreamed up, designed and wrote in an afternoon during OCHFWD back in February. We hadn't thought much about the page since. I mean, the goal is for people NOT to find a 404 page. Still, it's the most feedback we've ever received from a piece of OrangeCoat press and we're happy people are noticing.
Even more encouraging are some of the comments left on the Digg page.
After looking through their site, I think I found the company to send my next design job to. Although it probably would have been more useful to link some of those flowchart steps to places on the site.
It's nice to see people leaving the 404 page heading to important pages like the portfolio page and enjoying the work they see.
7:30pm: Happy with the 390 Diggs, an hour on the home page, and some great comments a couple of us headed off to Pineapple Express. When I got home, the diggs have more than doubled and we are still on the home page. This time in the upper right for "Top in All Topics." Rock on.
11:30pm: When I go to sleep it's over 1,000 Diggs.
The Digg Effect
What did all these Diggs mean in terms of traffic? In the first 24 hours we got a fair amount. Over 11,000 unique IP's and over 27,000 page views. However, these traffic numbers pale in comparison to PatternTap's.
As tweeted by Matthew:
Pattern Tap has been seriously DUGG. And yet, we stand! Yesterday almost 50,000 unique IPs. Cuckoo!
And how did the OrangeCoat site handle this spike in traffic? Pretty darn well.
Jimmy C.'s take:
Kudos to Drupal's built-in caching and CSS aggregation. Add gzip compression and some other performance best practices and a 256 MB VPS can really hold its own. Even still, the OC server will become more capable as we continue sprinkling in advanced optimization methods across the LAMP stack.
The rise from 1000 to 2000
Over the next week the Diggs continued to grow and links to our 404 page design started getting mentioned on other blogs, tweets and the like. Here are a couple items of note.
The traffic on our site has stayed above average over the entire week and by a fairly large margin. We are between twice and three times our normal traffic for the entire week.
I haven't asked every sales lead from the last week, but I'm certain some of them found us through Digg.
404. How fitting.
We do our best to focus on the details that go unnoticed 99% of the time. Even if it doesn't make a difference to the client, it makes a difference to us. It's rewarding, maybe a little vindicating, to be noticed for something that generally goes ignored.
When my ship comes in I'll have a giant smoker that proudly barbecues ribs, whole shoulders, multiple boston butts or full pigs at any given time. Unfortunately,I'm not much of a stickler for measuring. Percentages are somewhat important but size is always relative and hence exact measurements are not important at all. So here are the ingredients I use, with a general idea of amounts. I believe every ingredient should include the warning most often reserved for salt and pepper-- season to taste.
It's hard to beat a good boston butt when it comes to indoor barbecue. It's the perfect taste, size and price. I usually try to hunt down a 4 or 5 pound boston butt season the thing heavily with a simple dry rub and then cook it low and slow in a 225 degree oven until the core hits a 160 degrees. That usually last four or five hours.
The dry rub. You need to cover this entire butt thoroughly.
3 parts paprika
2 parts salt
2 parts freshly ground pepper
1.5 part garlic powder
1.5 part freshly toasted and ground fennel seeds. I've never actually found a BBQ recipe that has roasted, ground fennel seeds as part of the dry rub. As I recall, I saw Mario Batali once say he loved the pairing of toasted fennel seeds and pork. So years ago I decided to make that part of my next barbecue dry rub. I liked it a great deal and decided to keep it in the mix. It gives a unique, subtle, sweet flavor to the pig. I like the idea of having a flavor that is hard to place in traditional meal. Keeps the folks on their toes.
In my younger years, I cursed those that used vinegar based sauce. This was what we call a youthful indiscretion. As I've gotten older I realized that vinegar is a wonderful way to keep your pig both moist and seasoned. This is not to say putting some extra, tomato based sauce on top of some pulled pork is bad. It is in fact very, very good. But vinegar gives the base pig a wonderful and needed spice.
The wet sauce, I mix all the ingredients together over a low heat on the stove. I have no idea if the heat versus mixing all this stuff together cold changes things in any way. It just seems right to me so it is done. I try to coat butt every hour during cooking with the wet sauce and then again after everything has been cooked, chopped up, and is ready to eat.
1 part apple cider vinegar
1 part white wine vinegar
A good bit of red pepper flakes and freshly ground black pepper
Salt
A couple of squeezes of ketchup
A bit of sugar
I've had mixed results with cooking a butt in the oven when it comes to pulling the pig apart with forks in the traditional manner. It works sometimes, but sometimes you've got to go in with a knife chop that bad boy up. Of course, that's not ideal but it really isn't that bad. I like the texture and flavor of barbecue nuggets. (BBQ nuggets is a registered trademark of OrangeCoat, all rights reserved)
Depending on your taste you might not need any more sauce to top or maybe just some more vinegar sauce. However, I do like a little more tomato based sauce to top things off.
Not only very informative, but also one of the longest posts I ever seen you put up.
Further, the butt you cooked up this past weekend was lip-smacking delightful.
Courtney ~
June 27, 2008
Mmmm ... I am hungry reading this - thanks for posting the recipe. I don't personally understand your affection for tomato based BBQ sauce, but your post seems to give proper deference to vinegar, so I guess that's okay.
And thanks for the NPR link - I've been (mis)quoting Jason Sheehan, without even giving him credit, on my facebook page for years now - will fix that.
Wouldn't today be better if a Dixie Pig BBQ sandwich, onion rings and vanilla coke came wandering into your office? Mine sure would be. The only BBQ in Missoula got shut down by the Health Department ... sniffle.
It's been a long time in the making. We hired two new team members (doubling the size of the company), moved to a new office, (tripling the size of our office space), launched a bunch of websites, (quintupling the size of our portfolio) all since the last redesign of our own website. Finally, OrangeCoat's fourth website, OC4, has launched.
We knew our old site was a bit out of date and didn't show the full potential of OrangeCoat. We made jokes about cobblers and excuses about being busy. Photoshop mock ups were passed around -- changed and tweaked. Changed and tweaked. Whiteboard upon whiteboards were filled with ideas and specs. We created flow charts and outlines. We did everything but...
Everything but create the actual website. Well, we are the cobblers kids no more.
During this process of doing we discovered some wonderful things. Ideas sparked and the site improved. We hit on a theme we liked "Gourmet Web Design" and we infused the site with this theme. We liked the word of gourmet for countless reasons but chief among them was the idea that good web work, like good cooking, cannot be mass produced and commoditized. Both still required a craftsman's touch and a passion for doing great work.
In many ways, redoing our own site was great company therapy. It made it easier for us to pinpoint our company's simple philosophy, "Do quality work with quality people". It helped us to think about why and how we all work at OrangeCoat.
To create OC4 was both an extreme pleasure and a mighty pain. The end product helped to show our growth as a company. It was something that could not have been possible without Michael and Jim on the team.
OC4 is powerful and flexible. Simple and complex. Dynamic and timeless. It is OrangeCoat and thank goodness it's live.
We are going to be writing a bunch more about this project in the coming days and tweaking and improving on the site over the coming months. But right now, Cinco de Mayo needs be celebrated. Negra Modelos need to be cracked and we need to enjoy the small victory of launching OC4.
*A couple of notes about the photo in this post. It was taken by fellow Clemson grad and friend of OC Jim Ferguson. It's of Mac's Drive In, the greatest gourmet hamburger joint in all the world. OrangeCoat could only wish to run such a successful business for such a long period of time.
Dave, Alan and Olivier, please notice that you're all included in our friends page. Thanks for all the support, we really appreciate it. We realize that the collective wisdom of our super-smart friends outweighs what we can muster in our little office, so if anyone notices things that are out-of-whack please don't hesitate to raise your hand.
Beautiful new home, guys. The leap from OC3 to OC4 is far and vast. I've heard design is in the details, and you've shown that here.
Courtney ~
May 06, 2008
Gorgeous details! I especially love how the links are all in orange, against the b&w -
Good work, y'all.
However, I am against the math problem solving throughout the new site - 1 + 3 is one thing, but this page has 5 + 12, which I actually had to stop and think about. Could be unfriendly to English majors and other arithmophobiacs.
Hey guys, looks great. Maybe I'll be motivated to develop my own small plot of Internet real estate so I can have a link on the friends page. Assuming we're friends, of course.
I'm not sure I know what you mean. There are supposed to be two distinct contour glows to distinguish the logo area and the navigation menu. If you want to take a gander at the whole CSS file it's right here.
I was simply trying to point out that your two header images don't fade out into your background color (#1e1303) and its a bit of an eye sore at medium to high resolutions. Although it seems to the naked eye that the designer took the time to match these two gradients on the left and right sides of the header images the developer failed to make an x-repeating 1 x 200 px image for the background instead of using a base color. This was obviously a huge project and during a launch of this size its easy to overlook aesthetic issues like this. Otherwise the site looks fantastic, congrats.
I'm really enjoying the new look guys. Everything is fluid and fits well together. Looks like you guys have come a long way and am glad to hear you guys have expanded your business and upgraded to OC4. If you guys are still having that summer internship I look forward to applying for it. :-]
People will no longer ask what company is in Jackie Mauldin's old garage. Instead, they'll just ask what OrangeCoat does. So be it.
PS: The sign company that did this sign was Gimme-A-Sign and they did a great job. Jim's dad has a sign company called Sign Me Up. I believe the number of sign puns for sign companies is infinite.
PPS: This last picture has nothing to do with the office sign but I found it on the camera. Lord wrote this original "list of things that are awesome" a while back (here is his blog post on it). This was before I explained to him about the terror that are robots.
note that on my list of things that are not awesome are listed both hostile and friendly robot take-overs. I'm generally pretty cool with robots as long as they are obeying Asimov's laws and not doing the whole "DESTROY ALL HUMANS!" thing.
Sign looks great against the dark brick. Very nice.
C-Spin ~
November 07, 2007
The boys are all growed up!
Mike Gowan ~
November 07, 2007
It's such a pleasure to drive by that logo every day.
Susan ~
November 07, 2007
I wish I could drive by it every day, but it'd be one heck of a commute. The whole building looks great. I'm just so tickled for you guys - was good to see you (and meet Lord too)!
What If on the Cover of Greenville Business Magazine
We're working hard to spread the word of What If. We believe there is real value in an easy system for collecting ideas and connecting people with similar ideas. A big goal for 2013 is to get more cities, organizations and companies using an improved What If system. Anyone who could see the value in something like this, let's talk. Anyone who uses the term, "ideas are cheap" as a pejorative then we should talk too. I've got a theory on that line of thinking.
Now, I'm off track. Back to the cover at hand. It was a very nice surprise to see this morning. Thanks to Lori Coon and everyone over at GBM for the support.
Some previews from our Dribbble account for the What If Greenville Quarterly Report
Movin'
After six years on Stone Avenue we've moved to Main Street. There are couple of different reasons we're moving, but the main one is that when you're the only people in the room you're both the smartest and dumbest people in the room. We don't want to be either. The space we've moved to is called the The Forge and is part of the larger Iron Yard project. It's a space made up of artist, programmers, startups, videographers, photographers, architects, designers, successful long-term business people, and plywood. Here's to not being the smartest people in the room.
PS: We took the OrangeCoat sign off our building and have been trying to build anagrams ever since.
7 Comments
Taco On Gear
Get A Corona
Get a Corona ....for @thebrandbuilder by @allella twitter.com/agautsc/status…— Adam Gautsch (@agautsc) March 2, 2013
Racoon Gate
No Toga Race
At Goon Race
groat canoe- definition could be a canoe that carries groats.
The Bald and The Beardiful: A Celebration of Presidents
We need more brave bearded men (and women) in office and fewer plastic department store clothing mannequins. Let’s face it, figuring out the solutions to the terrible unemployment numbers and the potential meltdown of the Euro is hard work. Even the smartest and most skilled politician might not be able to solve these problems.2 Nonetheless, we are sure a President who thinks while stroking his beard stands a much better chance.
Darwin, Einstein, and Santa Claus all prove that substantial facial hair leads to true genius. Barack, Mitt, and Newt: if you want our vote, throw the razor away and embrace the beard.3
What’s the Big Idea
For the month of February, the month of Presidents’ Day, we celebrate the bearded and bald Presidents of the United States. Roxy Koranda and Evan Tishuk took turns creating 10 minute4 pieces of art inspired by the 16 Presidents who were bald, bearded, moustached, sideburneded, mulleted, or any combination of those. We’ve shared these drawings here and on Dribbble. If anyone else wants to join in with their own art, we encourage you to do so.
Which Presidents Make the Cut
George Washington by Roxy
George Washington didn’t have a beard. Nor did he have a moustache. Some people claim he was bald and wore a wig, but others claim that he let his natural hair flow freely. Either way, sideburns are present in most depictions of Washington that I’ve seen, and that’s the reason he made the cut. Sure, some images show fuzzier sideburns than others, but they really don’t get enough credit. Even though his teeth weren’t real, knowing he had noteable sideburns should’ve given George something to smile about.
John Adams by Evan
It's pretty clear to rise high in the Freemasons you need to grow facial hair. Is it a coincidence that many of the founding fathers also had mighty facial hair? Maybe. What is clear is John Adams hits a trifecta with sideburns, a mullet and a substantial bald spot. Freemasons don't give damn. Not that he is a Freemason. Maybe.
John Quincy Adams by Roxy
John Quincy Adams had mutton chops, a pet alligator, and swam naked in the Potomac River every day.
Martin Van Buren by Evan
Let’s be honest. We’ve all asked ourselves, “What would it look like if Doc Brown was President?” Thanks to 1.21 gigawatts and a little artistic license we now know. On a side note, the most exciting thing about the Martin Van Buren presidency was his hair. Good for him.
James K. Polk by Roxy
James K. Polk: the first president with a mullet. He was all ready for the 1980s more than a century early.
Zachary Taylor by Evan
Zachary Taylor was easily one of the most disheveled-looking American presidents. Just look at one of his more famous mug shots. It's day three of one of his epic whiskey benders somewhere on the frontier, which might be close to the truth because he died only 16 months into his term. His official cause of death is "bilious diarrhea," so perhaps we should cut him some slack.
Some interesting side-notes:
Abraham Lincoln by Roxy
Aside from holding séances in the White House and shooting lasers out of his eyes, Lincoln also had a beard.
Ulysses Grant by Evan
Grant was, by most accounts, a bad president that happened to have a thick beard and a full head of hair
Evidently there are many people here in the South that will not accept $50.00 bills to this day. So I made him a cartoon demon-zombie
Rutherford Hayes by Roxy
Rutherford B. Hayes really liked guns and croquet. More notably, he had the longest beard of all the presidents, and it looks pretty good recreated in wool
James Garfield by Evan
Chester Arthur by Roxy
Chester A. Arthur had expensive taste when it came to clothing and furniture, and he rarely went to bed before 2 a.m. because he enjoyed nightclubs and late-night walks. Like many other presidents, he also enjoyed ham.
Benjamin Harrison by Roxy
Benjamin Harrison was the last president with a beard. Though he was the one who decided to have electricity installed in the White House, he had the staff operate all light switches for him because was terrified of being electrocuted.
William Howard Taft by Roxy
Taft was the last president with facial hair. He also was the last president to ride a water buffalo.
Honorable Mention
Footnotes:
5 Comments
Both Abe Simpson and I are deeply sadded to see Grover Cleveland listed only once.
As follow up, you guys should draw each of the presidential candidates with a beard or balding and provide a small bio on how much cooler they would be because of the modification.
In the golden days of history no public figure in his right mind would venture out into the world without a beard at least the size and shape of a beer barrel and that made up at least a quarter of his total body weight. A beard was a status symbol, something to be cherished by all the family. Not only that but a really enviable face-bush was also an indication of intelligence and respectability, even heroism and genius. In Victorian London there were clubs for which to gain entry a member was expected to sport a beard of length reaching at least to mid-chest level. During some periods of history it was popularly said that a man was not truly a gentleman if his beard was not of a size capable of concealing at least a medium sized turkey.
These are sweet. I teach government at community college - any chance you'd let me paste these into the slides I use for class presentations?
Of course. Just remember, when you speak of us-- be kind.
Happy Halloween and RIP IE 7
It’s becoming a Halloween tradition that OrangeCoat writes a love letter to an out-of-date yet still widely used version of the Internet Explorer. This year, we were inspired by Mad Magazine and modern browser technology when creating our eulogy to Internet Explorer 7. Hope you enjoy. Happy Halloween.
3 Comments
I love the Bell's Palsy
Kudos to Roxy for the artwork and most of the words written (especially the word "plague" a word she apparently loves more than life itself) and Rick for the coding of the page. Good work by both of y'all.
Very creative implementation. The way the pumpkin turns into the IE logo and how the text was cleverly crafted. Love it.
Happy Halloween from the Vampire Koalas and OrangeCoat
1 Comments
Looks like Kirby! Evan did y'all use her as inspiration? If so, she is due royalties. lol.
An Invitation to Meat with Friends
Have you ever applauded a perfectly cooked cut of meat? Stood up and cheered the look, aroma, and taste of a wonderful, locally sourced pig, cow, lamb or goat.
Me neither, but damn it, that sounds lovely. Let's see if we can't achieve this zen like level of bliss while also enjoying some delightful, non-meat sides and a pecan pie cheese cake dessert this Sunday at the Lazy Goat.
Slow Food Upstate is putting on a tasting event this Sunday that includes six different locally sourced meats as both the main course and tasting menu.
For the full menu and to register to attend ($40 a person)
If you can't make it, but know someone that could then please pass the word along.
So, to recap:
Notes and various sundries:
Tomato Tasting Two: This Time It's Dinner
The event was held at Ristorante Bergamo where Chef Nello put together an amazing five course dinner menu.
The Menu
Course 1
Caprese salad with fresh mozzarella, basil and Cherokee purple-bruschetta with striped German.
Course 2
Roasted polenta squares topped with gold cherry tomatoes sauce, in house cured crispy pancetta and shaved Cacio Cavallo.
Course 3
Rigatoni with San Marzano tomatoes sauce with basil and Parmiggiano Reggiano cheese.
Course 4
Roasted Paragon tomatoes (whole) filled with sea scallops, topped with shrimp.
Course 5
Golden Rave tomato mousse topped with Thai Pink jam served in genoise mini cake.
The sold event was really well received and we hope to team up with Slow Foods Upstate for more tastings in the future.
If you're interested in learning more fan OrangeCoat or Slow Foods Upstate or both on Facebook or subscribe to the OrangeCoat email list found on our tasting page.
1 Comments
Hey Adam, Great Photos!
Thank you SO much for the beautiful work you and your staff did for the event.
All in all, a "Sensational" event!
Janette Wesley
www.slowfoodupstate.com
Photos from the OrangeCoat Beer Tasting
We recently had our third tasting in a series of food and beverage tastings aimed at improving communications by learning to speak a common language.
Here are some photos from the event.
Thanks again to Brian "Untamed Beer" Cendrowski for running the tasting. He did a fantastic job.
We Are Feeling Lucky
-Kym Petrie
The Taste of the Web
The ideas and plans for the 2010 tastings are beginning to bubble up. Beer, olive oil, bourbon, cheese, chocolate, and maybe even wine are being considered.
We'd love to hear your ideas on what would be a good, unique tasting topic and if you're interested in getting an invite to the next event drop us a line.
To see more about what these events are about, check out our Tasting section.
1 Comments
About about....peppers...hot sauce....salt(?)....root beer....
Add me to the invite list.
OrangeCoat Christmas Give-a-way
We're getting into the Christmas spirit here at OrangeCoat. A bunch of ripe jolly old elves we all are. In fact, we're giving away a couple of one-of-a-kind Christmas gifts this year. Click on over to our microsite and see what the Orange Santa has to offer.
4 Comments
I believe you are re-gifting some stollen merchandise. Those Laptec C-324 headphones and mic actually belong to me. Someone, and I won't mention names but their name rhymes with Bevan, borrowed those from me. Those were a gift from my dear old mum for the purpose of playing Counter Strike back in aught-aught (I will admit that my key for CS/half life was stolen but I am not trying to re-gift it). My only hope is that because he stole them from me that they have caused a lot of pain. That was the plan originally.
I will be unable to come by the office until after the new year, but I would like to lay claim to the potted green brain thing.
Happy to provide a customized cargo strap as a token of my gratitude to the Orangecoat member responsible for reserving this beautiful peice of mother nature.
Merry Christmas!!!!
My lady friend is also interested in the brain plant and has placed a bid of 10 cents.
I would like to know if the brain on Evan's desk is still available...
HAPPY HALLOWEEN and RIP IE
OrangeCoat's World Headquarters is a renovated service station located on Stone Avenue in Greenville, South Carolina. Like most service stations of a certain time, there are two big garage doors covering a large portion of our building. From now until All Saints Day, these two doors have transformed into a canvas for some scary Halloween art.
IE be used, Nevermore
Internet Explorer 6 is a super villain robot-zombie Freddie Kruger styled monstrosity. It needs to die. Even though Internet Explorer is now on version 8, over-worked IT departments and unknowing web users have not updated their copies of IE. Still having to code for IE6 causes the web development world to howl with pain and spew cursed words. IE6 is an old browser. It's old technology and it needs to die—today1
Change Your Evil Ways
If you use Internet Explorer please update immediately.
If you work in an IT department, be kind to your company and the internet in general and update to IE8.
If you really love the web community and yourself, try a new browser
Either browser is a treat to use. They're fast, stable, and secure. Give 'em a shot, and let us know what you think.
Still need more convincing? Don't take our word, let the internet help ring the death knell
Back to The Window
Wow, sorry about that rant. We tend to go into a bit of a trance of anger when we speak of IE6. But the window display is supposed to be scary or cool or scary-cool on levels. The IE gravestone is clearly the star of the show, but it is not the entire show. It's a complete graveyard replete with bats, gravestones, and skulls—oh my.
Please drive on by if you're in the neighborhood. We'll have the lights on from 7:10 to 2:10 every night until November First.
For more photos, including a couple of behind-the-scenes and making-of shots, check out our Facebook page.
Oh and by the way, Happy Halloween.
Footnotes and other various sundries
14 Comments
Very nice. I shall not mourn IE6's passing.
I feel that it should be noted that not only does your wonderful Holiday decoration speak levels to the dislike of IE6, but the sheer length of this post is quite a comment in and of itself.
I don't know if you've written a blog post this long since you blogged about bacon wrapped corn brats. Cheers to you sir and your anti-IE6 sentiments.
Let it be known that I wrote twice as much about IE but edited down to maintain a PG rating.
Wow, really outdone yourselves this time. Awesome work.
Brilliant concept. Brilliant execution. Death to IE6 and Happy Halloween!
You guys are awesome.
Best Halloween decoration this year. Perhaps you can write off the work as a charitable donation to the cause of humanity and over stressed web designers (in specific).
The picture is great, but there's nothing like seeing it in person. Thanks again for using your prime real estate spot responsibly. Keep up the great work...and positive propaganda.
lol nerd rage
R.I.P. IE.
LONG LIVE FIREFOX!
Amazing. IE doesn't deserve to "RIP" though.
DEATH TO IE6!!
I am working a contract at GE, and every new computer comes with a fresh copy of IE6. If my code works on that I know I'm set. I LOVE your images...very cool lighting. How did you print it/paint it?
Great window. Great point about IE6. Gotta put a plug in for Apple's Safari, though. Pretty great, too, IMHO. The live mini-previews are quite nice.
beautiful work on your 404.
O
You Say Tomato
Why Are We Doing This?
At OrangeCoat the bane of our business life is the line “I don't know what like but I'll know when I see it." In an attempt to remove this phrase from the arsenal of regular business cliches, we are putting together a series of food and drink tastings. We want to help everyone better and more definitively describe their individual tastes in business and design by having them learn tried and true tasting techniques.
You Say Tomato
We started this experiment with a very well received coffee cupping. Here are some photos & a blog post from the cupping. The tomato tasting grew from the suggestion of one of the coffee cupping attendees, Nicole Johnson.
In our mind, there are few better South Carolina summer tasting possibilities. The thought of learning more about the complex flavors found in locally grown heirloom tomatoes is, well, mouth-watering. And so, the tasting event is set and we'd like to personally invite you to attend.
On August 25th at 4pm at the Lazy Goat in downtown Greenville OrangeCoat is putting on one of, if not the first, tomato tasting in South Carolina. Helping with the event is Chef Rodney Freidank the Corporate Chef of the Table 301 Restaurants and Jeff Isbell of Iszy’s Heirlooms.
This event is going to be a blast. The agenda includes the tasting of four different locally grown heirloom tomatoes with the goal of learning about the key aromas, flavors, and textures that comprise the different tomato types. We hope that's enough to entice you to come but, if that's not enough, each tasting participant will receive a $25 gift card to any Table 301 restaurant and a gift card for 2 pounds of locally grown heirloom tomatoes.
The Rundown
We have a limited number of seats for this event still available.
3 Comments
So jealous I missed out on this. I miss you guys.
I wrote a short blog post on the experience today.
https://www.spinningsilkmultimedia.com/have-you-tasted-the-tomatos-really/
mmm looks awesome! nothing like that south carolina sun!
TypeSelect: OrangeCoat's First Open Source Project
We are proud to announce TypeSelect, our first open source web project. TypeSelect is based on Typeface.js which is a JavaScript-based rendering script for displaying non-standard typefaces on the web. But wait, there's more! With TypeSelect you can now select the text allowing for copying and pasting.
Like Ron Burgundy, this is kind of a big deal. There are several solutions out there that allow browsers to display different fonts. However, only some patchy @font-face support and a wonky Flash-based option called SIFR actually allow for any sort of text-selection. TypeSelect achieves these features while only using JavaScript and CSS.
Why do this?
Having an easy-to-manage and robust solution for displaying unique typefaces online is one of our white whales. It's a constant pain to compromise a design by using an inappropriate typeface and it's just as irksome for visitors to not be able to copy and paste text.
Call me TypeSelect
The hunt began several months ago when Evan cracked open Typeface.js and started to overlay HTML proving the basic concept behind TypeSelect. Huzzah, the concept worked and the hunt was on and running at full-speed.
Over the next couple of weeks the project grew and changed. Several wrong turns and road blocks changed the direction and ultimately created a much better result.
Here are a few of the highlights, as to not bore you with all the gory details
These issues were attacked by Evan and Intern Rick with single-minded determination. The result is the current release we pushed live a few days ago.
It's not perfect. We understand this, but we've put a good deal of time and brain power into TypeSelect and now we want to see how others can help improve the technology.
This is why we are open sourcing the entire offering. We want others to be involved, make it better, and help TypeSelect solve a problem that has vexed most web professionals.
So, please visit TypeSelect.org. If you like what you see, help spread the word
If you're inspired by this project, let us know. We're looking for people who can help carry the torch and solve some riddles.
End Notes
1. Dear IE, "from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee" (Back)
7 Comments
So, when does ye olde orangecoat.com get some TypeSelect love? I see you're still using the sIFR that was originally implemented, and I'm curious how TypeSelect would perform given the number of replacements it would have to do on this site. Would make for a compelling use-case.
Our performance tests show that TypeSelect doesn't really hit a wall until it starts rendering about 100 words. I think it would do fine on this site -- probably faster actually. The reason we didn't integrate it here was because we've been too busy with other work. We're planning on doing some refresh/maintenance soon, and it will definitely make it into the newer design.
The typeselect homepage has a misspelling in the following paragraph:
By leveraging typeface.js, jQuery, the canvas, toDataURL, CSS background properties and real overlayed text, Type Select is able to combine custom fonts with your browser's native text selection funcationality. You can now interact with beautifully rendered typefaces just like you do with normal text.
funcationality == functionality
I'm not sure how I feel about this, but it is certainly better than resorting to flash! Downloading fonts should make your site slower though.
We have tested an implementation on https://civiccenter.fountaininn.org. So far so good. It loads up pretty fast for us.
Looks great Keith. Thanks for sharing the link.
I love it! Great that you can do stuff like this without flash!
The OrangeCoat Coffee Cupping
We all like to taste good things, but we rarely know why we like something or how to describe it. We see this same problem when talking about design and business in general.
It starts with a Coffee Cupping
Our first tasting is going to be a coffee cupping held at Liquid Highway's Corporate Headquarters.
We are starting with a coffee cupping because, simply put, the world loves coffee. It's the second most traded commodity behind oil. Also, it's going to be first in a series of tasting (yes, a wine tasting is in the works) and we felt there was no better way to start the series than with the drink most people start their day with. Not to mention, coffee has a far more complex flavor profile than many other popular drinks including wine.
Basically, we want to start with something that stimulates the taste buds and caffeinates* the mind. Coffee is pretty perfect for all these criteria.
Interested in Attending?
We've got a couple spots open for the coffee cupping OrangeCoat is sponsoring and we wanted to extend the offer to our blog readers.
The owner of Liquid Highway, Dwain Waller and the Master Roaster, Reed Wilson will be putting on an entertaining and informative coffee cupping.
RSVP, Please
Spots for this event are limited. If you are interested please email me (adam@orangecoat.com) an RSVP ASAP.
*It appears caffeinates is not a word but I like that sentence too much to change the wording. Hi Ho.
5 Comments
I think this is an excellent idea to help us slow down and be more discerning about what we often rush through. I am glad I just got confirmation and I'm on the list.
Glad you can make it as well. Looking forward to seeing you there.
I love the concept, and think this is very "ahead of the curve" glad to be apart of it!
.n
I think Caffeinate is a word... It may be "slang", but it is a recognized word.
Caffeinate: to caffeinate (third-person singular simple present caffeinates, present participle caffeinating, simple past and past participle caffeinated)
I'm looking forward to the Coffee Cupping tomorrow!
S.
Great "cupping" this morning - learned a lot including how coffee can taste like a green bell pepper and yet still taste good...
Thanks again!
Bacon Wrapped Cornwurst: An Experiment in Bacon, Brats, Beer, and Grease
A brief history
Six or so years ago at a Clemson tailgate I introduced the group to my idea of replacing the hotdog in a corndog with bratwurst. Mike New, your friend and mine, quickly moved this idea from good to genius by suggesting wrapping the entire thing in bacon before the deep fry. To this day I'm not sure if Mike New was making fun of my love of unhealthy foods or if he legitimately thought it was a good idea. Truthfully, it doesn't matter to me. I always take the idea of wrapping food in bacon seriously.1
This idea sat in my brain for six years. I mentioned it to friends. They laughed. I used it as a pickup line. I remained single. Finally, after six years of thinking and dreaming it was go time.
The ingredients:
Step one: Fry some potatoes
This helps put the friends involved at ease. It's like getting into a cold pool a toe at time. Everyone has eaten fried potatoes of some sort before. This helps condition folks to the extremes of deep frying that are coming soon.
If you are more of a jump into the deep end type of guy feel free to skip this step.
Step Two: Make the batter
I used this recipe. There are hundreds of similar recipes out there, go with one you feel will work. My batter was uber thick and I would have probably thinned it out a bit if it wasn't for the lone vegetarian of the group continually suggesting to thin out the batter. Basically, I kept the batter thick out of spite. The batter worked fine.
Step Three: Parboil the brats in beer
The cheddarwurst were pre-cooked and didn't need this step. The other two wurst needed as much cooking as possible before the deep fry so I boiled the brats in beer (picture of the boil). The beer used for boiling was Miller Lite. The good beers were saved for dinner.
Step Four: Impale the brats, wrap with bacon, and bake on high
As the brats need a little pre-cooking so does the bacon. This will take longer than you could possibly imagine. You are almost at the deep frying step and all you want to do is take your bacon wrapped brats out of the oven and deep fry the bastards. Patience, walk away, drink beer, talk about none bacon wrapped topics. The longer you wait the better.(2)
Step Five: Dip in batter and deep fry
How long do you deep fry? Until they are done. Not a minute longer
The Verdict
Overload. A bacon wrapped cornwurst is a lot of food and almost too much for the mind, tongue, and stomach to fully grasp. They were tasty, but not wonderful. (3)
This is the lukewarm type review that ruins even the greatest of experiments. When experimenting, it's certainly better to fail or succeed in fantastic format. We did neither. If I were to do this again I'd use a sweeter batter recipe to fight the salt of the bacon and I'd cook the bacon in the oven longer. I'd also make the cornwurst bite size so it's not such a daunting task to eat one.
Footnotes
PS's, notes, FAQ's and various other sundries
12 Comments
While I survived the ordeal of one and a half bacon wrapped cornwurst my stomach let me know that it greatly disapproved of the decision. I agree that they represented only mediocre success in the end, possibly because they came to close to unraveling the very fabric of space and time.
Fried pickle spears by the way, way better than the little chips.
I have some suggestions for improvements:
1 - After boiling the brats, brown them up a bit either in a skillet, on the grill, or perhaps under the broiler.
2 - Pre-cook the bacon before wrapping it around the brats. Cook it enough that it's done but still flexible, and maybe even a little crisp. And I'm thinking something like a panini press for cooking the bacon the rest of the way, if necessary, rather than the oven.
Or, perhaps you can make your own wurst with the bacon included.
I almost wept tears of joy when I heard that this experiment was coming to fruition. Now I weap tears of sorrow for not bringing the family and being a part of this momentous occasion.
You sir are a gentleman and a scholar. May the pork be with you.
@nobrainer Phil gave the same browning technique suggestion on Facebook. It seems like a good suggestion. That way I could also bring another fat into the cooking process as well. Browned in butter before wrapped in bacon.
For the pre-cooking of the bacon, I thought about that but didn't go with it as I really wanted the brats to marinate in the bacon during the cooking the process.
@Carp it really would have been fun for the whole family.
oh, the love for bacon. this sounds actually pretty good if one follows your suggestion for a 'bite size' cut for deep frying. Oso, eres maravilloso! long live bacon!
A good day for men everywhere
https://www.bakonvodka.com/
You guys are true pioneers. Some would say heros. I would be among the group calling you that.
I trust you've seen the website https://thisiswhyyourefat.com they will totally post this marvelous idea.
@Moni - you are turning into a fine carnivore. Proud of you.
@Nate - A nice shot of bacon vodka would have been a good end to this meal. Also, American Grocery in Greenvillle (https://www.americangr.com/) has a bacon infused bourbon that I must try.
@Fatass - One can only hope we get on https://thisiswhyyourefat.com
Frying food that comes out with 2 inches of breading all around and looking extraordinarily unattractive due to overly thick batter is ridiculous. Drop the spite and thin the batter next time. You won't be sorry, and an additional plus, it'll be easier to eat off a stick.
@Moni - You're killing me darling, truly killing me.
OMG! This might be the greatest thing ever! If I were to eat too many of these I would likely get as big around as I am tall.
reason #139 you are so damn fly. smdh. praps #bratonova2012?
I think I'm going to try with a few changes. I'm going to wrap the raw brats with bacon and then grill, or smoke them. Then dip in a thinner batter and fry.
Project Amazonas Featured in USA Today
Very exciting news and great article all around.
We'd also like to thank the USA Today for writing a paragraph that sums up this project better than anyone involved could do
For more information on Project Amazonas please visit the site.
You can also read some of our past blog post on the subject.
2 Comments
And, if you'd prefer to read the article in the Greenville News, you can do that too.
Nice job guys.
And so we made pasta
We made several pounds of fresh pasta last weekend. Here are some photos of the process. Honestly, pasta is not that hard to make if you always use more
We made several pounds of fresh pasta last weekend. Here are some photos of the process. Honestly, pasta is not that hard to make if you always use more eggs than the recipe tells you to use. Our magic number was 1.5 eggs per cup of flour.
1 Comments
I would help my mom roll out pasta when I was a kid - she always enjoyed the lasagna noodles, while I felt nothing could ever top homemade spaghetti with her mom's meatball recipe, and sauce made with tomatoes fresh from our garden. She wasn't ever big on garlic, and this was before my love affair with mushrooms or finding out that parmesan cheese that did not have to come in a green cardboard cylinder, but it was still amazing. Looks like you guys (and gal) had fun!
Thoughts on Web Projects- UPDATED
Evan put together this nice little digram on his thoughts on a how a web project should flow. I thought I'd share and see if anyone has any other thoughts or ideas on his digram.
8 Comments
Here's the updated full PDF version of the above graphic. I'd like to know if this resembles how other people think of web projects.
I think 'presentation' could also be comfortably placed in the center somewhere near style as well. Being able to visually see how it's going to look and interact with the users helps me before I start I any PHP. Also, was there a reason you used the colors that you did?
I wish Bear would update his Flickr photo to reflect the more recent changes.
I think the former version is valid if you look at "presentation" as the main touch-point between the visitor and the site/application. But within the context of a process, it doesn't make as much sense.
Take a look at the PDF version I uploaded, and you'll see I moved it back into the spheres of style and development.
Maybe I'm biased as someone who forsook a career as a web programmer, but I would make "development" circle smaller. I view technology as somewhat of a commodity (unless it is a prohibitively expensive one to implement, like building stealth fighter planes). I would argue that content and design, in that order, contribute more to the user experience than the platform or technology that the site is built upon.
(I just hope Jimmy C doesn't hunt me down, now...)
Perhaps I was being diplomatic with the area allotted for development. On the other hand, if you go by the proportion of dollars typically spent on development versus design, I think a couple things become apparent. Firstly, it seems as though clients feel more comfortable investing in nuts-and-bolts development work. Perhaps this is because it's viewed more as an asset, more concrete, more scalable. Secondly, there also seems to be a general proclivity amongst the uninitiated to developing first and "making it pretty" afterward. In other words, building without a blueprint because it's cheaper in the short term and can be improved later with a more significant re-investment. This approach is like nails on a chalkboard to me. But it demonstrates why the development circle is similar in size to design: many projects are not well-thought-out and hence require a lot of clean-up re-development on the back end. And we all know that clean-up projects (much like your local Superfund site) are ugly, expensive and not much fun to work on.
I think this is a nice way to look at the overall project from a web developer point of view. But one thing that seems to be missing is what action(s) is the website looking for visitors to take?
This may be covered in planning. But all the rest is just a method of achieving those goals. From the movie Ronin. "What's your favorite weapon? Its just a toolbox, pick the right tools for the job."
Good point. In my efforts to be general, I didn't give enough weight to the importance of setting goals. I will add something to the research / planning phases that addresses this. Or perhaps a broader arrow to illustrate how the process should flow on a stream of goal(s). What do you think?
Yea, that development bubble is going to vary A LOT based on the project. If a client is looking to use a website to automate most of their business process, then development is going to be 90% of the project (just because the project is going to grow a lot).
If you look at the cost saved in people that you don't have to hire anymore though, it usually pays for itself pretty quick.
The Soup Nazi's Crab Bisque
For New Year's Eve this year, I decided I wanted crab bisque. I don't know why. But I wanted to make something I knew was going to be laborious and worth
Ingredients
Process
First you have to steam the crab legs for 7-8 minutes and then let them cool. I used a large stock pot and steamer to accommodate the surprisingly large quantity of legs. After the meat was cooked, I saved the steam juices (about 2 cups) to add to the stock.
Remove all the crab meat from the shells and set it aside. With two people, this took 75 minutes and made a pretty big mess. I think if you are particularly talented at removing crab meat, you could save some time here, but not much. It's also very hard to avoid nibbling on a few pieces. Make sure you had a big brunch so that you're not as tempted.
Put half of the shells (I used about 3/4) into a large pot with 4 quarts of water over high heat. Add onion, 1 stalk of chopped celery, and garlic, then bring mixture to a boil. Continue to boil for 1 hour, stirring occasionally (The white part of the shells will start to become transparent), then strain stock. Discard the shells, onion, celery and garlic, keeping only the stock. (Perhaps it was the celery, but I was surprised to find that the stock was an electric green color.
Measure 3 quarts (12 cups) of the stock into a large sauce pan or cooking pot. If you don't have enough stock, add enough water to make 3 quarts.
Add potatoes, bring mixture to a boil, then add 1/2 of the crab and the remaining ingredients to the pot and bring it back to boiling. Reduce heat and simmer for 4 hours, uncovered until it reduces by about half and starts to thicken. Add the remaining crab and simmer for another hour until the soup is very thick
Other Notes
I didn't have enough time to allow for the full simmer, so I added a tablespoon or so of flour to thicken it up and hopefully make it stretch a little further. It provided about 8 servings. But everyone wanted seconds, so next time I will double the portions. I hope the Soup Nazi doesn't hunt me down for deviating from the original recipe.
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That was the best seafood bisque I've ever had, and I've had many.
Maybe next year, and I do think there should be more next year, you could have a protocol sign that must be followed in order to receive a bowl, such as "while cooking, the chef must be supplied with a fresh beverage of his/her choice whenever current beverage runs out" and "you may not cut in line for the soup or knock anyone down on your way for seconds". The first rule is particularly important as this whole process is in the 5 to 6 hour range.
That's a good idea. Any time someone steps up to the plate and prepares a bona fide Soup Nazi recipe, they have executive privileges for the day -- kinda like being the president in a game of asshole.
I second the greatest crab bisque ever.
As a secondary note, I always find the recipe direction of salt and pepper to taste as funny one. (Notice Evan provided exact pepper measurements).
My thought is everything in a recipe should be to taste, so if you aren't going to provide measurements for salt and pepper you might as well not provide measurements for any of it.
To that point, I wouldn't be opposed to that type of cookbook either. Just a general idea of ingredients and cooking style needed and the rest is just- Have at it. People who follow every direction in a cookbook to tee scare me.
The thing is that with seafood bisque you already have a brine from the shells. And you want to be careful not to over-season and destroy the delicate flavor. I'd be less apt to follow the peppering instructions if it was something like clam chowder.
One of the ingredients for a baguette is water. What you may not know (and no cookbook states this) is that the water must be French tap water. Preferably from Paris. Failure to use Parisian tap water will cause your baguette to taste different from the stuff you would get from a real boulangerie even if you follow the recipe to the letter.
Sea salt also tastes different based on where it's from.
True story.
oh, the bisque! (which, btw I kept pronouncing /bis/ /ké/).
I drove away to Florida expecting to find the sun, and instead I faced an uncanny cold weather, not felt in southern Florida since the mid 1800's. 'Well this is completely irrelevant to the Mevan's Bisque', you might say, but it is not!
Looking for some comfort, the last night of my stat in Mickey's land I went to a restaurant called Chefs de France, at Epcot. When I opened the menu my eyes immediately jumped to no other place than the 'Bisque de homard' (Lobster Bisque) and I promptly ordered it. I need to add here that Mevan's Crab Bisque, was the FIRST anything Bisque I had ever had... needless to say, my disappointment was such that I couldn't finish the darn thing. I paid $7.oo for this soul-less, lacking-in-character bowl of soup. . . and I could not stop thinking of the Mevan Bisque... the most amazing 6-hour endeavor I've ever tasted!
Oh, but to lift the spirits of my new French friend, I must say that the wine was exceptional and the Noix de Saint Jacques et gambas sautees (avec flan d'epinards et sauce a l'oseille) were awesome! ooh! and I even tried Orangina -that was cute-.
The End.
Oh my god, french dishes. Just reading about them is making me drool.
I stumbled upon this while browsing my RSS feeds. Holy shit now I'm hungry. It's not just general hunger pangs either. No, I'm going to have to find some kind of expensive dining establishment that serves foo foo cuisine which probably won't even approach how awesome this food sounds. Gah.
Just got back from a few days in Charleston, SC and had Blue Crab Bisque at Magnolias on E. Bay St. Wonderful idea! I will think about doing the same next year :-)
what if I can't find Italian parsley?
italian parsley is in any produce section.
For me the realization that crab shells are what you need to make crab bisque is life changing! I am trying this recipe for the first time, but I find I can't discard the crab shells after only one hour. Why boil the crab shells for only one hour and the rest of the soup for 4? Why not boil the crab shells for 4, until all of them have become transparent? I had a Bengali friend who cooked chicken curry with the bones until the bones dissolved. I feel like the same principal would apply to crabs???
I just saw this Seinfeld episode yesterday (for the 1,000th time) and now I'm craving this soup. They just make it seem so good on the show, so I must try it! It sounds delicious and your picture proves that it must have been amazing. Thanks for the recipe!
White Chili a la Bobby
Looking for a good winter weekend meal to cook? May I suggest white chili. Friend of OrangeCoat, Bobby McCormick provides a great recipe and one that
WHITE CHILI 1
for white people and their friends of any color
(emily says this sounds a bit racist, I meant no offense)
by Bobby McCormick
(with a little help from his friends) Inspiration and original concepts are due to R. Thompson, no credit due. he's got lots of credit at lots of banks and places like that) 2
good advice: read this recipe through entirely before starting. All things don't happen on the same day or at the same time on any given day. don't call me if you get screwed up. that's the way chili goes. and best of luck. enjoy.
BEAN PART, PART 1
BEAN PART, PART 2 (happens on the second day)
THE CHICKEN PART OF THE RECIPE (this stuff all happens on the second day too)
PUT THE TWO PARTS TOGETHER
FOOTNOTES
This was my first run at white chili and it turned out okay. Next time the beans are soaking overnight for sure and I'll probably make less. I've got tons of leftovers. That being said, I was happy I added the bacon and next time more might be added.
7 Comments
I posted a white chili recipe nearly three years ago. Although my post suggests otherwise, I follow that recipe every time.
It's not as drawn out or complicated as Bobby's recipe, but you can add the Hank (or I suggest Hank III, as I'm a bit of a fan) and PBR as necessary.
Perhaps we need a white chili contest?
I've got absolutely no choice but to concur. A cookoff is indeed in order, since the weather is so uncharacteristically warm. ]
I'm intrigued. How do we have a virtual chili cook off?
At my convenience, hopefully in the next week or two, I'll cook a batch, freeze it, pack it in dry ice, and overnight it to Orange Coat World Headquarters.
I just made this tonight and oh my god.
Glad you enjoyed. We need photo evidence. Maybe start a white chili Flickr group.
https://dl.getdropbox.com/u/109063/whitechilliftw.jpg
I agree, a white chilli group is in order.
An Orange Christmas Circa 1983
Merry Christmas to all and to all a good year As we finish up our fifth year in business we'd like to thank all our clients, friends and family who
It was acceptable in the '80's
Designers usually take inspiration from great pieces of art, literature and movies. Not OrangeCoat, we consider Olan Mills our muse.
What? You don't remember the greatness of Olan Mills photos from the 1980's? Here's the evidence.
Of course, our hands aren't exactly clean when it comes to Olan Mills photo shoots (as I imagine yours aren't either). Here are some pictures of future OrangeCoaters wearing their Sunday best in the early '80's.
More Funny Photos and Outtakes
We had a blast during the photo shoot for this card. So much so, we took 87 photos, went through 3 wardrobe changes, and countless ridiculous poses. Here are a couple of outtakes and behind the scenes shots from our photo shoot.
We've received a couple complaints that this Flickr slideshow sucks, so here's the raw Flickr set.
Stalk us, please.
Keep in mind, there are plenty of ways to keep in touch with us.
PS: Wonder who the fourth person in the photo is? Subscribe to one of our feeds or check back to the blog later this week. It will be explained.
PPS: All thanks to our friend Paivi for taking the pictures.
PPPS: It is impossible to find a white turtle neck at either Target or Wal-Mart. We blame Steve Jobs and his love of the mock turtleneck for the near death of the real turtleneck.
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I can't take my eyes off this thing. It's so brilliant I have no words. :D
The photoshopping was time-consuming but relatively straightforward. I had the opportunity to employ a really useful masking technique for hair -- something I don't usually get to do on my own photos.
But I have to give a ton of credit to Jimmy C for (1) having the perfect dazed Dumb and Dumber look (2) putting his hand on Adam's causing everyone to immediately explode laughing (3) coming up with "Hoping Yule Log onto..." Jimmy is totally the MVP.
The christmas card set is just perfect! I chuckled the whole way through ... they were all great photos! You all are just too hilarious!
I can not even tell how awesome these pictures are, the best part is the fabric elephant that is in the background of the first few pictures. I wondered what happened to it.
Jim's matted down hair and facial expression is perfection. Teh win.
Unnamed Man #4's matching hat and scarf are pretty fantastic as well.
This is incredible. Bear + Blazer + Turtle Neck + Tinted Aviators = Win. Great thing to open up the RSS to after a week of Intertron hiatus.
Also, New York sends it's love to the OC family.
Too funny! You guys are great!
All I can say is AWESOME!!!!!
TOTALLY AWESOME. WICKED COOL. GNARLY. BITCHIN.
You raised the bar on this one.
This is hilarious!
Adam- the red sweater w/ turtleneck makes it look like a neck brace. Very funny!
You guys need to dress like this all the time. I especially love Jim's Cosby sweater.
I totally laughed out loud at the third one from the end, in the out-takes.
Evan = not sure yet
Bear = Robert Goulet
Lord = Tiny Tim
Jimmy = Lloyd Christmas or my Uncle Mike
Absolutely brilliant ... but where's your dog?
We tried to take some photos with the pups but they all came out pretty silly looking and we aren't prepared to make ourselves look silly. After all, we are professionals.
In some of the outtakes you can see the dogs running around in the background.
As the mother of one of you handsome young men, I must say that I never saw my son looking like such a NERD! I can only pray that women will still find him attractive!!!!
YIKES!!!!!!! Seriously - I think the picture is great.
If it makes you feel any better, Jim was quoted often in the work life balance article in the Greenville Magazine.
I laughed so hard when I opened this link, ... so hard. I'm still laughing.
It's simply hilarious.
miss you bunches, kids...
We're pretty sure my sweater was a woman's. It was in the men's section at Safe Harbor's Hope Chest Store and I grabbed it off the rack right before they closed. It was oh so comfortable with those shoulder pads.
Totally bad ass! Good stuff. Merry Christmas guys. Hope all is well for you back home. I always expect the best from you guys and you always deliver. Cool cats with good tech....and humor.
I am laughing so hard I have no words! Evan, if I knew you were looking for some historical pics from your past I have plenty. You hang on our walls in all your 1980's splendor. Thanks for the comedic relief!
It's not too late Sharon. Any '80's Evan photos you'd like to scan and email to me, please do so.
So now we know what Santa's elves would look like if he wore all orange instead of all red. Good job guys!
These are so Olan Mills pix! You guys did a fabulous job with the shoot!! Love the Christmas Card!
You all are scary. Very Very scary. Please consider drinking more.
After all of the plain business "Holiday" cards I have received over the past couple of weeks... Nay, over the past few years... This is the most creative one I can remember. Great work guys. This deserves to go viral!
I went through the outtakes and it's perfect that Adam worked in (wearing) the brand reference. Nice touch.
I can't wait to see the next Olan Mills inspired holiday photos.
Very Olan Mills but with out the "copy restriction" or being forced to crop or or clone out the Olan Mills sig! ;) (Don't tell the Olan Mill's Police I said that) Personally I was reminded of the Monty Python Troupe.
And now for something completely different....
Epilogue to Getting Dugg
A little over a week ago the design for OrangeCoat's 404 error screen made it to the front page of Digg. Over the last week, the number of diggs has grown to over 2,000. From the initial Digg-frenzy to the steady increase to 2,021, it was a unique experience that helped us to get a better grasp of how Digg effects web traffic, servers and our own internet popularity.
Time line of the first 24 hours:
6:00pm: A quick after-dinner check of Twitter included a tweet from CDMwebs:
"Sweet," I say. And off to the races we go. About halfway down Digg's home page is our 404 page with the simple headline, "Interesting 404 Page: The Flowchart [PIC]". The story has a couple hundred diggs and I'm pretty pumped just to be on the home page for any amount of time.
6:05pm: I send an email off to Evan, Jim, and Matthew. After all, it isn't our 404 page that got dugg, Matthew's wonderfully helpful and popular website, PatternTap, is where our 404 page was found and the PatternTap page is what is being linked via Digg.
6:10pm: I tweet:
From there, we received a couple emails, text messages, and IM's from friends congratulating us. It's very cool and a little strange to get the congratulations. After all, we didn't submit the link or even pub it on our blog. The design is something Evan dreamed up, designed and wrote in an afternoon during OCHFWD back in February. We hadn't thought much about the page since. I mean, the goal is for people NOT to find a 404 page. Still, it's the most feedback we've ever received from a piece of OrangeCoat press and we're happy people are noticing.
Even more encouraging are some of the comments left on the Digg page.
Nouman6 posts:
and MalDON posted:
It's nice to see people leaving the 404 page heading to important pages like the portfolio page and enjoying the work they see.
7:30pm: Happy with the 390 Diggs, an hour on the home page, and some great comments a couple of us headed off to Pineapple Express. When I got home, the diggs have more than doubled and we are still on the home page. This time in the upper right for "Top in All Topics." Rock on.
11:30pm: When I go to sleep it's over 1,000 Diggs.
The Digg Effect
What did all these Diggs mean in terms of traffic? In the first 24 hours we got a fair amount. Over 11,000 unique IP's and over 27,000 page views. However, these traffic numbers pale in comparison to PatternTap's.
As tweeted by Matthew:
And how did the OrangeCoat site handle this spike in traffic? Pretty darn well.
Jimmy C.'s take:
The rise from 1000 to 2000
Over the next week the Diggs continued to grow and links to our 404 page design started getting mentioned on other blogs, tweets and the like. Here are a couple items of note.
404. How fitting.
We do our best to focus on the details that go unnoticed 99% of the time. Even if it doesn't make a difference to the client, it makes a difference to us. It's rewarding, maybe a little vindicating, to be noticed for something that generally goes ignored.
4 Comments
Thank god for Jimmy C's database tweak. Way to go.
This might be of interest to you all as well
https://sim.plified.com/2008/08/17/pattern-tap-we-dig-jay-because-we-got-...
nicely done..that page deserved some recognition!
I saw something good; commented it :) thanks for taking notice
You guys deserve it!
A Butt in the Oven
When my ship comes in I'll have a giant smoker that proudly barbecues ribs, whole shoulders, multiple boston butts or full pigs at any given time. Unfortunately,I'm not much of a stickler for measuring. Percentages are somewhat important but size is always relative and hence exact measurements are not important at all. So here are the ingredients I use, with a general idea of amounts. I believe every ingredient should include the warning most often reserved for salt and pepper-- season to taste.
It's hard to beat a good boston butt when it comes to indoor barbecue. It's the perfect taste, size and price. I usually try to hunt down a 4 or 5 pound boston butt season the thing heavily with a simple dry rub and then cook it low and slow in a 225 degree oven until the core hits a 160 degrees. That usually last four or five hours.
The dry rub. You need to cover this entire butt thoroughly.
In my younger years, I cursed those that used vinegar based sauce. This was what we call a youthful indiscretion. As I've gotten older I realized that vinegar is a wonderful way to keep your pig both moist and seasoned. This is not to say putting some extra, tomato based sauce on top of some pulled pork is bad. It is in fact very, very good. But vinegar gives the base pig a wonderful and needed spice.
The wet sauce, I mix all the ingredients together over a low heat on the stove. I have no idea if the heat versus mixing all this stuff together cold changes things in any way. It just seems right to me so it is done. I try to coat butt every hour during cooking with the wet sauce and then again after everything has been cooked, chopped up, and is ready to eat.
I've had mixed results with cooking a butt in the oven when it comes to pulling the pig apart with forks in the traditional manner. It works sometimes, but sometimes you've got to go in with a knife chop that bad boy up. Of course, that's not ideal but it really isn't that bad. I like the texture and flavor of barbecue nuggets. (BBQ nuggets is a registered trademark of OrangeCoat, all rights reserved)
Depending on your taste you might not need any more sauce to top or maybe just some more vinegar sauce. However, I do like a little more tomato based sauce to top things off.
Some side notes on why I love BBQ
I wrote a brief letter to my nephew on my love of barbecue. This little excerpt pretty much explains why I love barbecue.
And on NPR, Jason Sheehan does it better than I can on explaining the genius of BBQ.
2 Comments
Not only very informative, but also one of the longest posts I ever seen you put up.
Further, the butt you cooked up this past weekend was lip-smacking delightful.
Mmmm ... I am hungry reading this - thanks for posting the recipe. I don't personally understand your affection for tomato based BBQ sauce, but your post seems to give proper deference to vinegar, so I guess that's okay.
And thanks for the NPR link - I've been (mis)quoting Jason Sheehan, without even giving him credit, on my facebook page for years now - will fix that.
Wouldn't today be better if a Dixie Pig BBQ sandwich, onion rings and vanilla coke came wandering into your office? Mine sure would be. The only BBQ in Missoula got shut down by the Health Department ... sniffle.
Gourmet
It's been a long time in the making. We hired two new team members (doubling the size of the company), moved to a new office, (tripling the size of our office space), launched a bunch of websites, (quintupling the size of our portfolio) all since the last redesign of our own website. Finally, OrangeCoat's fourth website, OC4, has launched.
We knew our old site was a bit out of date and didn't show the full potential of OrangeCoat. We made jokes about cobblers and excuses about being busy. Photoshop mock ups were passed around -- changed and tweaked. Changed and tweaked. Whiteboard upon whiteboards were filled with ideas and specs. We created flow charts and outlines. We did everything but...
Everything but create the actual website. Well, we are the cobblers kids no more.
We quit talking. We quit tweaking and changing. We cut our specs in half. We focused our Friday energy on creating a website that shows off our personality and our expertise. We started designing pages, coding specs, and writing copy. In short, we started doing.
During this process of doing we discovered some wonderful things. Ideas sparked and the site improved. We hit on a theme we liked "Gourmet Web Design" and we infused the site with this theme. We liked the word of gourmet for countless reasons but chief among them was the idea that good web work, like good cooking, cannot be mass produced and commoditized. Both still required a craftsman's touch and a passion for doing great work.
In many ways, redoing our own site was great company therapy. It made it easier for us to pinpoint our company's simple philosophy, "Do quality work with quality people". It helped us to think about why and how we all work at OrangeCoat.
To create OC4 was both an extreme pleasure and a mighty pain. The end product helped to show our growth as a company. It was something that could not have been possible without Michael and Jim on the team.
OC4 is powerful and flexible. Simple and complex. Dynamic and timeless. It is OrangeCoat and thank goodness it's live.
We are going to be writing a bunch more about this project in the coming days and tweaking and improving on the site over the coming months. But right now, Cinco de Mayo needs be celebrated. Negra Modelos need to be cracked and we need to enjoy the small victory of launching OC4.
*A couple of notes about the photo in this post. It was taken by fellow Clemson grad and friend of OC Jim Ferguson. It's of Mac's Drive In, the greatest gourmet hamburger joint in all the world. OrangeCoat could only wish to run such a successful business for such a long period of time.
18 Comments
I'm giggling with madness and pride. I'm proud of you guys.
I've been watching all along as you've worked on the site, and I have to say I'm impressed with the new design. Great work!
Thanks for the kind words my late night internet friends.
Dave, Alan and Olivier, please notice that you're all included in our friends page. Thanks for all the support, we really appreciate it. We realize that the collective wisdom of our super-smart friends outweighs what we can muster in our little office, so if anyone notices things that are out-of-whack please don't hesitate to raise your hand.
Awesome work fellas, as usual.
Like you said, Mac's is a hamburger joint. Do not ever confuse it as a milkshake joint. It would be a decision that you would surely regret.
Lookin' good guys! Keep up the good work!
Beautiful new home, guys. The leap from OC3 to OC4 is far and vast. I've heard design is in the details, and you've shown that here.
Gorgeous details! I especially love how the links are all in orange, against the b&w -
Good work, y'all.
However, I am against the math problem solving throughout the new site - 1 + 3 is one thing, but this page has 5 + 12, which I actually had to stop and think about. Could be unfriendly to English majors and other arithmophobiacs.
Everyone,
Thanks again for the kind words.
Courtney,
Maybe we should offer an English major CAPTCHA too. Something like Moby Dick's author is __________ .
My remark is Ha! Sweet! Freakin A Man (said like that dude in Office Space),
Well done fellas. I like the tone, and my favorite is the orange coat hover surprise. Reminds me of foamee.
Talk to you more soon!
Matthew
Hey guys, looks great. Maybe I'll be motivated to develop my own small plot of Internet real estate so I can have a link on the friends page. Assuming we're friends, of course.
#header {
background: url(skin/header_bkg.jpg) repeat-x 0% 0%;
}
Mr. Up, I am a fluent speaker of CSS but our site has neither a "skin" folder or a file named "header_bkg.jpg." Is this some sort of secret code?
Yep. If you decrypt it you can figure out how to make your header gradient fade in when your users monitor is larger than a postage stamp.
I'm not sure I know what you mean. There are supposed to be two distinct contour glows to distinguish the logo area and the navigation menu. If you want to take a gander at the whole CSS file it's right here.
#hd { height:240px; width:100%; background:#1e1303 url('../graphics/hd-bg.jpg') 50% 0 no-repeat; text-align:left; }I was simply trying to point out that your two header images don't fade out into your background color (#1e1303) and its a bit of an eye sore at medium to high resolutions. Although it seems to the naked eye that the designer took the time to match these two gradients on the left and right sides of the header images the developer failed to make an x-repeating 1 x 200 px image for the background instead of using a base color. This was obviously a huge project and during a launch of this size its easy to overlook aesthetic issues like this. Otherwise the site looks fantastic, congrats.
I'm really enjoying the new look guys. Everything is fluid and fits well together. Looks like you guys have come a long way and am glad to hear you guys have expanded your business and upgraded to OC4. If you guys are still having that summer internship I look forward to applying for it. :-]
Oh snap, threaded discussions??
+10 awesome.
Signed
People will no longer ask what company is in Jackie Mauldin's old garage. Instead, they'll just ask what OrangeCoat does. So be it.
PS: The sign company that did this sign was Gimme-A-Sign and they did a great job. Jim's dad has a sign company called Sign Me Up. I believe the number of sign puns for sign companies is infinite.
PPS: This last picture has nothing to do with the office sign but I found it on the camera. Lord wrote this original "list of things that are awesome" a while back (here is his blog post on it). This was before I explained to him about the terror that are robots.
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note that on my list of things that are not awesome are listed both hostile and friendly robot take-overs. I'm generally pretty cool with robots as long as they are obeying Asimov's laws and not doing the whole "DESTROY ALL HUMANS!" thing.
Well it's about time! JK. It looks good.
I can't wait to find out how many women start stopping by your office every week wondering if you sell coats.
I'm thinking elderly-ish.
Looks pretty damn good though. Melikes.
The sign looks great. I'm so proud of you guys... from a dry erase board in Evan's room, to that, it's really awesome. Keep up the good work.
noticed this while driving home the other day. looks good. :-)
Sign looks great against the dark brick. Very nice.
The boys are all growed up!
It's such a pleasure to drive by that logo every day.
I wish I could drive by it every day, but it'd be one heck of a commute. The whole building looks great. I'm just so tickled for you guys - was good to see you (and meet Lord too)!
looks good boys.
-(the other) ET
Elyse, oh sister of mine, I was the first ET. ;) Thanks for the comment.
I finally saw it yesterday (post "Other Side") and it looks so good, I almost had a tear in my eye. Pretty sweet, guys. I dig it.