Masuga Design, LLC

I’ve received quite a few emails from people in response to my search for part-time help. I haven’t really decided on anyone yet – or even answered most of the emails as I’ve been real busy working some things out lately that have to do with the growth of Masuga Design (and the details of which will be written about here, I can assure you). All the emails are flagged and marked as “to respond”, and I’ve (seriously) been trying to find the time to respond to some of them. Some, I say, because I need to clarify what I’m …More »

I finally got around to updating that kooky AJAX Star Rating script to verion 1.2.0. Head over there right now what the fuss is about and see why that page gets Dugg, miniajax‘ed, tutorialblogged, and everything else. The star rater page has the details of the update.

I’m a plumber with leaky faucets. I’m not eating my own dogfood. You might have noticed that both this site and masuga.com are buit on WordPress, even though I’ve more or less abandoned using it. In the coming months, I’ll be rebuilding masugadesign.com on a new CMS, as well as updating my portfolio. What? You thought I haven’t been working all these months? Not the case! I’ll have a number of things to add to my portfolio when I get around to fixing the issues I’m having under the hood.

Thanks to everyone for all their patience with me from November 2006 until now. I’ve never been this bombarded with things to get done – I’ve been at my wit’s end for weeks and I’m trying to work as quickly (with no loss of quality, of course…) as I can. I’m trying to accommodate everyone and admittedly, failing miserably in some instances. I have a ridiculous number of projects to ideally get done this month – and I’m sick as a dog. Weak. Feverish. Run down. Shivery. Makes getting up and working a lot of “not fun”. But I press …More »

Masuga Design is growing…um…FAST. Too fast. I need help (part-time, that is) and I need it yesterday. Are you a student looking for some real-world experience? Then please read my spiel: I’m a (really small) web design studio that develops useful and engaging websites for small to mid-sized businesses and individuals from one coast to another including various businesses right here in Grand Rapids. I design and develop websites that are lean, easily maintainable, user friendly, search-engine optimized, and adhere as close as possible to web standards. I am currently a one-person operation located in Grand Rapids, MI and have …More »

I’m not currently taking any new work. You can still drop me an email to discuss a project, but I’m pretty well booked through March/April and simply cannot take on any new projects outside of projects I have going on or for which I have provided a proposal. Thank you!

I was working on a project today that has gone way beyond the bounds of reason, so I thought it would be funny to set my iChat message to “Scope Creeper” and find a picture of the Creeper from Scooby-Doo, which I did. I kept typing creeper-like noises into the chat window (very productive, no?) and he mentioned that I needed a Creeper icon. This is when I knew my iChat was messed up. I asked him if he had an icon, and he said he did, although all I could see was the generic AIM yellow running man. And …More »

In the course of selling myself to a prospective client over the phone today, I was cut short when the client said, “You had me at Portfolio.” I thought that was pretty funny. Thanks for the call, and thank you for ultimately trusting your project to me.

I recently completed work on a website overhaul for Interior Concepts, a custom office furniture manufacturer located in West Michigan. The look was redone, the navigation was retooled, and the site was made much more search engine friendly. What’s more, due to the very robust content management system, they now have the ability to update almost every bit of content on the site in-house. You can see more on this project on the portfolio page, or you can see the real deal for yourself at www.interiorconcepts.com.

Does any TextMate user out there have an idea why (or where, rather) my HTML bundle has gone? I hadn’t upgraded TextMate in ages (should have known better than to try and fix something that wasn’t broken) and finally did so – which brought my version up to 1.5.4 (1324). I had a bundle that I used where the HTML was properly colored, and the PHP in the HTML was colored correctly as well. Now, if I select HTML, all my PHP is red. Everything. The variables, the single-quoted strings, you name it. Setting my bundle to PHP reverses this …More »