Turned 21

January 19th — So I started the year off by performing the amazing feat of becoming 21 years old. I put a lot of effort into this. Lots of sitting around and breathing was involved.

Appeared On the Radio

February 1st — My friend who liked my work on my podcast The Gazebo on the Go invited me to be on his radio program to promote the podcast and make jokes. I think I made people listen to the theme song from Spongebob Squarepants, but that may just be some cruel rumor.

Helped Jason Hackenwerth Make Balloon Art

February 24th — One of my college classes was asked to take part in helping the amazing Jason Hackenwerth make these gigantic two story balloon sculptures as an art exhibit at Tennessee Tech. It was an honor to help him and it was so much fun.

The 50th Episode of The Gazebo

March 14th — Three episodes of The Gazebo were made with my friend Allyn and I think they are some of my favorite episodes. I am extremely happy to make it to fifty episodes. The podcast has since been put on hiatus. It was fun to do, but I want to explore other things right now.

Launched Tellgram

March 21st — I started working on this in early January and coded an amazing amount of code based on designs I had started putting together in August of 2010. I am so happy that I got to build this thing and make it in to a solid product using web technologies that work on any modern platform. This is probably one of the things I am most proud of: building and launching a web property.

Jellyfish Wallpaper

March 29th — In the art class I was taking at Tennessee Tech we were drawing things and I decided to sketch an old photo that I took on my iPhone 3G back in early 2009 and I really liked how it came out. I then turned it in to a vector and made this wallpaper that I got to premier on my very own Tellgram.

Redesigned Jake Bilbrey.com

May 5th — I love my websites, if I did not I would not keep them around. It was hard for me to replace a design for a website that I really liked but I think I did it justice with this redesign. I made it without any images and with CSS3 giving it a nice touch and making it compatible with retina displays.

Art Accepted In Conan’s COCO MoCA

May 5th — On the same day that I released my redesign of Jake Bilbrey.com I got an email from Team Coco letting me know that the art that I made for my art class’s final exam got accepted in to Conan O’Brien’s Museum of Conan Art.

Premiered Mrs. Gisher’s Art on Tellgram

May 8th — During my work on The Gazebo I made friends with a man I call Gisher who provided a very unique form of comedy to the podcast. Through him I met his amazingly talented wife, Mrs. Gisher, who is a great artist. She shocked me with her sudden appearance on my website Tellgram posting these amazing watercolors and other forms of art. I am always blown away with what she posts on Tellgram and I love her so much for supporting Tellgram.

Relaunched ZicklePop.com and Discontinued Awesome Inc.tv

May 27th — This site used to be a rarely updated portfolio just of serious work that I had done. I had this Tumblr blog that I was updating with fun stuff and thought that I should merge the two. The old ZicklePop.com is probably one of my favorite web designs I ever made and it was hard to let it go. I like that in the blog post announcing this change I did not fully accept that The Gazebo was over. I also didn’t want to give away the name of the next thing I would be announcing.

Started Debonaire Co.

May 30th — As ZicklePop.com became more of a fun place for me to blog what I want to, I needed a home for my professional things. Tellgram’s footer changed from saying it was apart of ZicklePop Productions and now links to Debonaire Co. Yes, that logo is a bow tie. (Apologies to Jesse Thorn) The site took design lessons from Jake Bilbrey.com in that it uses no images and is all made in CSS3 to make it look nice on whatever retina display device Apple might announce.

Attended MaxFunCon

June 10th — This is probably one of the most life changing things I have ever done. MaxFunCon is a get together of people who are super nice and have a common interest in things that are awesome. Just like heaven, it is really hard to describe all the amazing things that go on at MaxFunCon. I took a class on improv with Jordan Morris and I attended Adam Lisagor’s moving lecture on how You Look Nice Today is made.

Did an Overheard on Stop Podcasting Yourself

June 12th — On the last day of MaxFunCon I got to appear on stage with Stop Podcasting Yourself’s Dave Shumka and Graham Clark to participate in their segment Overheards. Such an amazing honor and so much fun.

Premiered Disarmed’s New Single on Tellgram

June 28th — The band Disarmed had just made their first single in a long time. They were very proud of it and they really wanted to make sure when they linked to it from their Twitter and Facebook account that anyone could listen to it on any device in the quality that they wanted. It quickly became the most popular thing posted to Tellgram, getting thousands of views in the first day. Luckily for me, Tellgram was able to withstand all the traffic.

Launched Probably Fine

July 11th — At the You Look Nice Today talk by Adam Lisagor at MaxFunCon I learned how professionals edit audio and put together a story in a podcast. I took my lessons and wanted to make something I was really proud of. I asked one of the funnest guests to work with on The Gazebo to join me in this new project. Kyle Lahr and I worked on topics to improv separately and then I edited them for hours making the final product have the tone and pace that I thought worked well with our humor.

Probably Fine Photograph Wallpaper

July 11th — Well, of course, if you have a new podcast you have to have promotional shots for the media! Kyle and I got this amazing photo taken in my backyard and I designed a logo for the podcast. Together I think this photo is one of the greatest things ever.

Guest Starred on Pre-Recorded Late Night

July 18th — After I launched the teaser clip of Probably Fine, Jay Frosting, a great guy I met at MaxFunCon, asked me to join him as a guest on his podcast, Pre-Recorded Late Night. I always wanted to be a guest on a podcast! I jumped at the chance and was able to play the role of a writer talking about his new paleo diet book on his interview-style show. You know, as one does. It was great to improvise with people who actually know what they are doing, unlike myself.

Started Pretty Good, The Web Comic

August 13th — While I have this marked as something I did in August, I never really told anyone that I was doing it. It was part of a “what if I make something and never tell anyone” project. I think it was really fun and I hope to do more someday.

Started and Ended Theatronica

September 11th — Back in May I had quietly started this new web service, Theatronica. Theatron is the Greek word for theatre and ica means relating to. This site was born to scratch my own itch. I have read play books for things I would like to go see, but I have absolutely no idea how to tell when or where a play that I want to see is playing. The way things are now is you look at your local playhouse and you go see whatever is playing. That is fine and every time I have done that it has been amazing, but someday I would like to go see one of the plays from Almost an Evening by Ethan Coen. The site would allow people to go and find plays by actor, director, writer, playhouse, and location. The site would also allow you to find where a play you are interested in is playing. What is playing in my town? Theatronica would tell you. The plan was the launch it in my town and then expand it to middle Tennessee. The plan fell apart when the people I was dealing with were not taking the project seriously and I received information that most playhouses do not care to use the internet to get more attendees. It’s a shame. I would really like to revive this project.

Designed Potter and Pal’s Album Art

October 26th — I met this incredibly nice guy at MaxFunCon named Davin Pavlas. He took the same class on how You Look Nice Today is made by Adam Lisagor and we started work on our new podcasts about the same time. Davin and his friends talk about funny life stories every week for their podcast. The only problem is they said they would not submit their podcast to the iTunes Podcast directory until they had a logo. I decided to draw these stick figures on an index card just so they could finally get the benefits of being on iTunes. I decided to make Davin appear as a giant monster yelling at his friends just because I wanted to see what an angry Davin could possibly look like. This was probably one of the hardest things to imagine.

Drove a Scooter Like Larry Crowne

October 29th — My mother saw the movie Larry Crowne so she had to play the home game. That’s right, she rented us both a scooter to drive around a busy weekend in downtown Chattanooga. Neither of us had ever driven anything like that and looking back I cannot believe it went as well as it did.