I posted some photos on Flickr. Although, the photos did not turn out ideally, (what do you expect from an amateur at night?) you can still get some idea how incredible it was.

Of course, I am just one guy who is probably just jealous that his guinea pigs did not make it to the international news spotlight. But I am working on it.

On the bright side, talk of the Obama's future pet has pushed some of the "Dancing with the Stars" headlines out of the spotlight. Whew!

*Disclaimer: Don't let the sign fool you, I am an Obama-ite.

I'm pumped.

The Flying Steamshovel

I suppose I should begin by "thanking" Empire New Media (empire-newmedia.com *) for their apparent compliment to the design/programming abilities of Rene and myself. Yesterday, I was checking some web stats for Fisticuff Design Co. when I came across a site, which I had never heard of, that had links to us on several pages. I decided to navigate over to Flying Steamshovel to see what they had to say. I was quite surprised to see a blatant ripoff of the Fisticuff site. As I looked through the site, I realized that Empire not only took the background texture, various flourishes, and overall look of the site, but when I looked at the HTML source code, I realized that they copy and pasted the entire structure of our code, even the CSS file.

Fisticuff Design Co.

I am a firm believer that the most integral part of any successful design is research. I believe that learning from and gaining inspiration from one another is an integral part of how we grow as designers. I do not condone, nor will Fisticuff Design stand for, fraud, thievery, or other sorts of dishonest behavior.

To their credit (hint of sarcasm), Empire did take the time to change a class and id name here or there, (like "narrowcolumn" and "widecolumn" to "smallcolumn" and "bigcolumn), in some effort to cover up their deceit. However, the entire style sheet was left in the same order, the same format, the same font size values, etc. Really, almost everything. Feel free to view some side by side comparisons.

You may be asking yourself, "why would Empire steal your design concept, copy your code in its entirety, and then decide to provide a link to the Fisticuff site"? That is an excellent question, I immediately asked the very same thing. The brief answer is, they did not. Rather, they did not do so intentionally.

When examining their (our) code, I noticed in the footer of each page of flyingsteamshovel.com, Empire neglected to change an href tag from fisticuffdesign.com to flyingsteamshovel.com. See below.

Click to see larger image

Click to see larger image

Perhaps it is merely the price one pays for building a positive reputation through hard work, dedication, and truly believing in what one does. Or, on the other hand, is it more likely that Empire New Media are simply too lazy, and possibly incapable, of doing quality work of their own?

I have only one item left to add: Bad form, Empire New Media. Bad form indeed.
Authors Note: I deliberately left out the hyperlink to EmpireNewMedia.com. I see no reason to give them the benefit of a link-back. Does that make me petty?

New Projects

• That's Rentertainment Inflatables added to the portfolio
• Casa del Lago web site added to the portfolio
• Barfly Bar Catering updated in the portfolio (we completed the site redesign)

New Functionality

• Javacript updated to degrade a bit more gracefully
• Addition of slider for the portfolio thumbnails
• Added an AJAX project loader

More to come and we're still working out some of the kinks. Let me know if you come across any bugs.

Regards!

Anyway, I have uploaded the first batch of photos from the trip to my flickr account. Many more will follow.

Thanks for the recognition!

edit: 11/10/2007

A quick update of the list of sites promoting Fisticuff (some may have been mentioned in the past):

• CSS Mania
• CSS Design Yorkshire
• The Best Designs
• ScreenFluent.com
• CSS Artillery
• Fave Up
• Designcentre
• CSS Container
• CSS Beauty
• Stumble Upon
• Most Inspired
• Snap2Objects.com - Why Your Site Should Have Personality?
  
• Snap2Objects.com - How to Destroy the Web 2.0 Look
• Typo9
• The Daily Slurp

Not to mention, we just heard that Fisticuff Design will be featured in the next publication by the Web Design Index. They've been putting out an annual web design index since 2000. It is definitely an honor to make into the ranks!

Again, to all those giving us props, Rene and I appreciate the love!

So far so good. I think it will be a good fit. It's a fairly small, close knit team of talented individuals. Everyone was quite welcoming. Since Rene and I have been focusing on freelance work the last several months, I almost forogt what it was like to be apart of a group/company. I guess I'll have a bit of readjustment! I will say, however, that they made me feel appreciated and that certainly made the day.
It looks like I'll be doing a good variety of work, from xhtml/css to php and a hefty amount of Flash development (which if I'm being honest, I've not put as much focus into,recently, as I would have liked). For now, it's time to watch some Heroes, perhaps more reports will follow.

Tell me what you think.