Dan's Blog

Version 2.0 Complete!

November 20th, 2006

After 75 Days of Brainstorming, Designing, Programming, and Debugging, mixed with the start of a freshman year in college, I have finally completed version 2.0 of Dan Lev Designs & Photography. I’m really excited about this. First of all, I’m going to give a rundown of the new features & changes:

  • My Blog - Redesigned, added archives for old entries, and added a RSS feed
  • My Portfolio - Completely Redesigned, Added aWeb section for websites I design.
  • Stuff - Completely redesigned and reprogrammed. A new AJAX (What is AJAX?) search-as-you-type feature was added that I am really excited about.
  • Past 24 - A completely new feature. This displays the past 24 hours of activity within the site, including new comments, blog articles, links, and stuff.
  • Links - The links page was changed around a bit. Added a “Must-See Links” section as well as a new feature called the Links Sandbox where users can submit their own links.

And that’s not all that’s changed! Be sure to check everything out! I’ve also added links on the bottom of every page to add the current page to your http://del.icio.us bookmarks. Del.icio.us is a website where you can submit, organize, and share your bookmarks with the world.

Please let me know if you have any questions or comments! I’d love to hear everyone’s feedback!

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Stoked.

July 1st, 2006

Okay, so, I’m stoked. I chose to attend Rochester Institute of Technology, and major in Information Technology & New Media. And now I’m really excited because I’ve met a whole bunch of people who are also attending, and they all rock. An online friend that I’ve known for about two years from Massachusetts also got accepted, and we’ve decided to be roomates. So that’s pretty exciting as well, I’ll get to be roomates with someone I already know well.

And I was also playing around with PHP Graphics Draw, because I’ve always wanted to learn it, and I created a little countdown timer out of boredom.

rit countdown timer

I’m also working on an exciting new feature for my website, and it should increase the interactivity on the site by alot.

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Why are people like this?

May 2nd, 2006

Okay well. This is the final straw. Once again, I got ripped off by a client. I’ve spent so many hours that went wasted and unpaid. I thought I would be nice about payments and have it done easily. Nope. Not anymore. From now on, every job will be paid upfront. If the client has a problem with this, he or she will sign a PAPER contract. I don’t care if you’re a minor, you’ll get your parents signature as well.

It really upsets me that I have to do this for small jobs and everything, but it needs to be done. I’m loosing business this way.

“Dan, this is just one of those things in life where you’re going to have to let go, and be more careful next time” -My last client’s mother, after I talked to her son about the payment he didn’t make.

Canon Lens

By the way, check out the NEW Photoshoots section!

Moving on to the brighter side of things. This weekend I ordered a Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Lens. My amazing new photographer friend, Elias Tahan, recommended the lens to me. Being marveled at his talent, I had to buy it. I’m pretty excited. Should be in next week. :)

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I’m in a Pickle!

March 29th, 2006

Okay so I’m in a pickle. I got accepted to all 3 of the colleges I applied to:

Champlain is out of the question. I’m going to major in web design. RIT is a more well known school.

The way I look at it is this: NEIA is an art school, RIT is a technology school. Web & Multimedia Design involves both.

RITDon’t get me wrong, but you can’t learn art. You’re either born with it, or you’re not. I think a technology school would be better than a art school for web design. I know a moderate amount of web design now, and I don’t think NEIA would have enough that I could learn. I want a school that’s more open ended, so If I want I can move from web programming to basic computer programming. That’s what I think RIT has over NEIA.

I wanted to go to Boston [NEIA], because it’d be a great experience. But then again, I come from a city with a population of just over 10,000. It’d be a big jump and I don’t know if I’d be able to stand a city like Boston to live in.

My 4 Years at RIT would cost about half as much as NEIA. A better school for less. Hmm? But now, the disadvantages. RIT is 8 hours away. Compared to 4 hours away at NEIA. Ehhh….It’s funny - the more I talk about this the more RIT sounds better.

I’ve realized that my blog has been getting spammed lately by bots. For this reason I created a Anti-Spam System to block BBCode from my comments. So, don’t use BBCode! Only bot’s use BBCode!

I’m getting some other really weird comments still though, I’m not sure what’s up with it - if it’s a bot or someone’s trying to mess with me. I’ll wait it off and see if they keep coming.

As you can see I reformatted the front page, less tables, more CSS. I’m trying to use more XHTML/CSS - always a good thing as a web designer.

I’m always looking for models to photograph. If you’re interested let me know.

I’m now working at a local printing company as a graphic designer. It’s really awesome. How many high school students get a job in the field they’re going to be working in? My freelance work is slowing down a bit, but I’m still working on it, and I’m gonna be trying to post more blog entries, gotta get around to a bunch of back-end programming of dan-lev.com.

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Busy with Jobs

January 14th, 2006

Well I’ve been pretty busy and I haven’t been writing lately. I’ve got a whole bunch of design jobs working on. I’ve added the chat, and the stats/mailing list at the top of this page. Everyone be sure to sign up for the mailing list!

Recently work:

I was the project manager & programmer of R Simard Paper, which was a project my high school’s web design class did for the art teacher. Check out the site! He has some really great work!

I’ve got some more websites and designs that I’ve been working on for different companies and individuals and they should be up soon.

I’ve been doing alot of back end work for the administration panel of my site. I’ve done so much work on this site. If I was designing this site for someone it would definantly be worth over $2,000.

Well, I’m going to get ready for the semi formal dance.

tags:
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The iPod is here!

November 1st, 2005

So I get home Sunday from New York, and sitting on my computer desk is a package from Gratis Internet in Missouri. I open it up and see a black tee shirt, and a small box containing a brand new 30GB 7500 song iPod at a retail value of 300 US Dollars.

How much did I pay?

$0.00

…and no one believed I would get it!

What did I have to do?

Well, I signed up for Real Rhapsody, a music service. It costed me $0.99 for the first month, and I just canceled it before I had to pay anymore. During that time I advertised the hell out of the offer, trying to get at least 5 people to sign up. After a month or so, I managed to get 6 people to sign up AND complete an offer like I did. In less than a week, I had my brand new iPod along with a iPod shirt.

Choose an iPod referall:Heather -   Josh -   Brad

By choosing one of these people, you will help them get their ipod. They all need 5 in all. DO NOT sign up for a free iPod without clicking one of those links!


New York

I went on my Senior Class trip with my class to New York City. It was so much fun. I took a bunch of photos, Check them out!

Here are a few photos I took in the museum of wax:

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Rant & Camera

October 25th, 2005

I’m really sick of getting screwed over. This makes twice in the past few weeks where I get a GOOD design job request that I was happy about. I end up spending hours upon hours talking to clients about their website design, and finally, when payment discussion comes up, I loose a client. First example - A client requests that I be paid about $100 for the job, when I should be paid at least $400. Example Two - The client and I agree on a fair price. I tell the client that (s)he must choose to do one of the following:

  1. I send you a paper contract/agreement, you sign it and send it back to me
  2. You make a payment before the website is started, and the rest of the payment once it is completed.

The client had a problem with both of these REASONABLE choices. The last two clients have wasted about 6 hours of my life. But I have definantly learnt something from it.

Moving on:

I recent purchased a brand new Canon Digital Rebel XT. 8 Megapixels! Eleven Hundred Dollars. It’s worth it. Check out the new photos I took with it. (1, 2)

Also… be sure to check out my gnome project at www.THEGNOME.tk

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Free Ipods?

September 25th, 2005

Everyone has seen those ads “Swat the fly and get a free iPod!” “Shoot Osama and get a free iPod!” “Take a picture of Brad Pitt and get a free iPod!”

First word that comes to your head: “Scam”. Well, guess what? It’s not.

What’s the catch? It can’t be free!

Well that’s true. There’s no such thing as free, I’ll say that. A company can’t just give away free ipods that cost over $300. They’re making profits out of it. Before I get into the details, I’m going to explain what YOU do to get a free ipod. First, you must make a free account on freepay.com. Freepay has many different “free sites” such as freeipods, freeipodnanos, freedigitalcameras, freedesktoppc… ect. USE A JUNK EMAIL ADRESS. THE EMAIL ADRESS YOU USE WILL GET SPAMMED. Once you make an account on one of these “sites” You have to do two things in order to receive your ipod.

1. Complete an offer from one of their partners.

This is where the money comes in. You have to sign up with one of their partners and complete an offer. Skip down to see instructions on the different options for completing offers. (It can take up to a few days for the offer completion to appear on your account) It may cost you a few dollars, it may cost you 10$, and it may cost you nothing. It depends on how you do it. Make sure you read everything about the offer. When you are signing up for the offer, YOU MUST READ THE TERMS OF SERVICE. Make sure you completely understand the offer you are doing. Another thing that makes people weary is the fact that you must use a credit card to do this.

2. Refer 5 friends.

This part is probably the hardest. You need to get 5 other people to sign up for a free ipod as well, and complete an offer. You can do this by posting bulletiens about it, posting it on blogs, journals, or just plain telling a friend.

I signed up for “RealRhapsody” and It costed me 99 cents for the first month, and $9.99 after that. Once the first month is up, I’m going to cancel my subscription to RealRhapsody, and not be charged more than 99 cents.

How can they do this?

Exponents and the Pyramid system. The first person who signs up for a free ipod is at the top of the pyramid. He can easily find 5 people to sign up as well. Those 5 people will do the same, and have no trouble. so now it’s at 25 people. Those 25 people will find 5 more people each and then it will be at 125 people. As the pyramid gets larger, There will be “dead ends” in the pyramid. There are tons of people at the bottom of the pyramid who completed an offer, but can’t find 5 people. And the amount of people at the bottom, compared to the rest of the pyramid, is huge. Anyway, more and more dead ends will appear.

How can you tell that this isn’t a scam?

  • eBay, AOL, Ancestry.com, PetcareRX, Columbia House, Real, Blockbuster and many other famous companies have a partnership with them. Would a high profile company just create a partnership with any scammer? No. These companies are paying huge bucks to keep their name and offers on freepay.com. Every time someone visits freepay.com, these companies PAY freepay.com.
  • The parent site that runs freepay is Gratis Internet. They have several email addresses and phone/fax numbers on their site, which is professionally done. Freepay.com has been registered with the BBB for several years.
  • They have been on NBC, CNN, New York Times, The Boston Globe, Check them out here.
  • There are many photos and videos proving that this offer is true.
  • And the one thing that really convinced me personally is that people I know have done it, and received a free ipod. This is what made me decide to do it.
So, If I’ve convinced you…
Choose a referall:   Heather’s Referall Josh’s Referall Brad’s Referall Nick’s Referall

Everyone who clicks that link, and completes an offer, contact me with your name and email adress, and I will post your referall links on my links page, and help you get 5 people as well.

If you’re still unsure about the offer, feel free to contact me with any questions you have, or go to www.freeipodguide.com and they might be able to convince you.

New Drawing

September 13th, 2005

gnome!

Well the school year has started. I have a very artistic schedule:

  • Graphic Arts
  • Drawing
  • Web Design

I have a total of 17 classmates. Drawing is the only class I have homework in. So I might be uploading alot of drawings in the few weeks. My homework assignment tonight was to draw a self portrait in a refelctive object. So I decided to draw myself in a goblet-type thing. You can check it out here, or in my Drawings Gallery.

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Flaw

September 7th, 2005

FirefoxMy brother just recently told me that there was a problem viewing the front page using Internet Explorer. I checked, and for some strange reason, there was a script tag on the page. This means Internet Explorer was reading the rest of the page as Javascript. Firefox, on the other hand, closes useless tags.

Firefox wins again. So, If you’re using Internet Explorer, PLEASE, switch. Click the logo on the right.

  Update: Ever wonder what your uvula looks like? I didn’t even think it was photographable! I was amazed at the way this photo came out! I just decided to add it to my Photography Gallery. I took it a while ago. Check it out!
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