So I saw Avatar in IMAX 3D a few days ago. Will definitely say, I was impressed. They did a spectacular job with the graphics and drawing you in to the world that they were trying to create. Sure the story was a bit cliche (I’m sure you’ve heard a bunch of Pocahontas/Dancing with Wolves/Starship Troopers jokes by now) but I was entertained by it.

And then last night I saw Fantastic Mr. Fox (At the dollar theater in town. Shows movies that came out a while ago at about $2).

Definitely not as high tech as Avatar. It was stop-motion instead of ridiculously realistic computer graphics.

Which did I like better? It wasn’t even close.

While Avatar will go on to make billions of dollars, Fantastic Mr. Fox will stand out to me as a film that tried to be different and clever. Sure, Avatar was different, but only in that it looked like everything else. It was almost like it blended in with real life too well. Sure the graphics were pretty, but in the end it was just the covering. A truly memorable movie to me is memorable because of the content. I have to say that Fantastic Mr. Fox was one of the cleverest movies I’ve seen in a while.

So while the billions of dollars may be stacked against me, I’m happy being part of the minority who enjoyed clever and slightly different more than bombastic and grandiose.

After all, I like indy music much better than top 40.

What are your thoughts? Have you seen either of these?

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Ok, so this was a bit of a ridiculous week for me.

Back a few months ago, one of my co-workers and I decided that Frontline, our ministry for Young Adults needed a new website.

Actually, let me back up even farther. Way back in May, Frontline Silver Spring needed a website. And they needed it quick, fast and in a hurry. Without the money to go outside, I build a serviceable website on Wordpress (actually, it was Wordpress MU because I was young and naive) using a pretty good template. I had some help from the awesome graphic designers on my previous team in creating some graphics, and then from there started learning WordPress and web design in general. Before that, I pretty much knew how to make text bold or link something with HTML, and that was about it. I’ve learned a ton since then, and I’m still trying to teach myself new stuff.

Back then I thought that site was pretty sweet. Looking at it now, I don’t think it’s all that great

Fast forward again to a few months ago. Frontline was getting ready to launch a new campus, and we needed a website. We decided that this would be the perfect time for a complete overhaul. Since we now had four physical campuses and an Internet Campus we decided we wanted a central site that connected all of the cross-campus information, and then we would need campus sites to show what was happening at each individual campus, as well as house campus specific information.

For our new central site (www.FrontlineDC.com, we went with our friends over at SiteOrganic, who did a great job designing the McLean Bible Church sites this past summer. We pretty much went with the same design (we are the same church, after all) with some different design elements. They were a huge help, especially in integrating the Internet Campus throughout the six websites. Big thanks! Probably some of the nicest people around too.

Having learned from some of our mistakes in the past we set about creating a site that was simple to navigate. To me as a communications major I am always looking to communicate as clearly as possible and with as little confusion as possible.

Now comes the fun part. The campus sites were all going to be WordPress. Designed by me. Coded by me. This was probably the biggest undertaking I had attempted yet. In fact, I went into it not really knowing how the heck I was going to pull it off. But luckily my google-fu is strong, and I was able to figure out enough CSS to put these wonderful sites together.

www.frontlinetysons.com
www.frontlinearlington.com
www.frontlineprincewilliam.com
www.frontlinesilverspring.com
www.frontlinelive.com

Check em out, let me know what you think. The goal was simplicity. Really we didn’t need the campus sites to be everything to everybody. We needed them to tell people:

a. About the campus.
b. What was going on at the campus.

…and that’s pretty much it.

Anyhow, let me know what you think of the sites.

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Welcome to my brand-new website!

As you can see, I’ve drastically changed the look of my site and moved it to being more of an all-around personal website, rather than just a blog.

You can see I’ve put up a fun “About Me” section as well as a place for me to showcase my work that I’ve been doing with websites the past year. In addition, I’ve moved the blog to http://ryanspilhaus.com/blog while making http://ryanspilhaus.com a more generic homepage, with an excerpt of the most recent blog post on the front.

I had a ton of fun doing it, and I hope you like it!

(Oh, and I’m especially proud of the Error 404 page. Yes. I am a dork)

Anyhow, leave a comment and let me know what you think

Note, if you’re viewing this in an email or feed reader, click here to check out my totally awesome new site!

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So I don’t really make New Years resolutions, but here’s one that I’m trying to do.

I’d really like to start reading more books and less blogs. I think that the shortened, super-condensed info found in the blogs I read helps give me a shorter attention span, and less of an ability to actually think on a higher level.

So I’ve gotten rid of pretty much all the blogs that either:

a. Aren’t of interest to me professionally (ie: web design, church communications)
b. Aren’t written by one of my friends/someone I know personally (so I probably haven’t gotten rid of your blog, since the only people who read my blog are people who know me )

Anyhow, I’ve got a bunch of books lined up…most of which I already owned but hadn’t had time/energy to read after the hour or so a day that I spent reading blogs.

Right now I’m reading “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell. It’s definitely an interesting book, with some pretty big implications for the church. It’s all about the way that ideas, trends and movements spread. Definitely a must-read for anyone who’s trying to start a movement.

After I finish that, I’m planning on reading “The Divine Commodity” followed by “Finally Alive“.

Anyhow, what books are you reading?

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How many balls now?
Maybe I should just say no.
I am juggling.

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