A meditation for success and a thank you message to all

No folks this isn’t a prayer ritual to hope that my 3 year old laptop keeps running Windows soundly… it’s actually a post on reflection and quietness.

I was very sick on Thursday and Friday of this week, so sick in fact that I went to the local hospital. Although I figured chances were slim, I felt like I was going to die. I was totally bed ridden and couldn’t move. I had a combination of kidney stones and strep throat, and so much nausea that even the thought of sitting up was overwhelming.

My wife was completely tied up at work  and couldn’t come home to rescue me, so a very good friend came and took me to the hospital for some much needed relief at the ER. After about 5 hours, it was reported to me that I had probably already passed 1 small kidney stone, which was why my system was so jacked up, and the CT scan showed another stone still in my left kidney. I also had strep throat. What an awesome combination… for total systematic annhilation of my will to live!

Thanks to the good people at Community South Hospital I received a variety of remedies by intravenous infusion that made me feel well enough to walk out that evening. I went home and went to bed and proceeded to sweat out a lot of the sick and negative energy that was really eating up my system.

When I came to on Saturday morning, I wasn’t totally well, but I felt some relief from all the back pain, nausea and sore throat, but I was informed by the doc at the ER that I could be contagious for another 24 hours… good idea to lay low and stay in bed.

That said, time doesn’t stand still when we get sick or when we have family emergencies or have to work late hours, and while I was feeling so sick on Thursday and Friday, and about as near to death as I think I’ve ever felt (yeah - you may say it’s overdramattic, but this is my website - so click off if you find this flavor isn’t for you!), I realized something. I realized that I don’t stop enough to thank all the great people who help me out and touch my life in various ways.

So this quiet time while I’m on the mend, I’m thinking of you, and I want to send you all a message of love and success in whatever you are doing. I will be the peaceful warrior who will continue to work hard to help you accomplish whatever your goals are.

Thank you all. Whether I’ve spoken to you in a year, or a month, or a week, or even in the last day or two… thank you!

Sometimes sticking your neck out pays off

I’ve been on a hot streak lately. Getting some breaks, getting lucky. Taking chances, making mistakes and growing. Sometimes sticking your neck out pays off.

There are some days I am rocking the web design world, doing good work and making all the customers happy so they’re singing my sweet tunes. There are some days when I am ready to surrender to my tiny little 1.8 year old daughter, as if to say, I give in, I give up. Throw some more bananas on the floor - see if I care!!

But then, after I fall and slip on the banana peel, hit my head… slowly regain consciousness… I wake up and things are all clear, and then I come up with a great idea for a client project, or the solution to something I’ve been churning around in my mind goes “DING!” and suddenly, I’ve got it.

These things only happen through perserverance and a willingness to fail. I love failing. I love the feeling of messing up. Out of that comes the chance to learn something new and grow. From that I become a better problem solver. After all, that’s what we’re in the business of - problem solving and creative thinking! Rock on you long necked spotted donkeys! Team Tupper is on a roll!! Here we come.

“I started thinking” - Promo video

The gang from Team Tupper recently got together to create a new marketing video to promote our brand. We knew we were going to be relaunching the website in February, and coming off a major hiatus in 2008, we knew the piece had to be something special. We wanted to  show off our updated logo, and give people a small taste of our capabilities. We enlisted the help of a long-time friend, Jim Key. Jim’s a fantastic artist that we have collaborated with in the past, so we enlisted him to recreate our logo on paper while we filmed it.

We shot it pretty plain, just Jim, a pencil, and a piece of paper. We lit the room with 1 big halogen light pointed up at the ceiling to bounce down on our scene, with a little support from his overhead kitchen light (100 watts). We then took the footage into Adobe After Effects and stripped it down to give it a really washed out look.

We then needed to find some music to put with it, and we sampled stuff for about an hour, everything from classical to surfer music, but we finally settled on a kind of world beat jazz track, by Aja West and friends called “The Getaway” from the album Total Recall 2012. The music is podsafe and licensed under the Creative Commons license. Big thanks to Aja for the use of this track. It really makes the piece work.

As you can see from the photo, we had a full color sample of our logo taped to the tripod just below our camera, the fabulous Sony V1U. We actually shot the video upside down, as shooting over Jim’s shoulder just wasn’t practical. It was a snap to flip the footage right side up when we edited it together with Adobe Premiere.

This project was the product of creative imagination and a little effort. But as you can see in the video, it’s a really simple concept, just reinforce the brand. But it looks great, and we are very proud of it.

Don’t forget - we can help you with all your project’s video needs! We can meet with you and discuss your ideas, develop concepts, and really make your projects shine! See our in depth creative services pages for more details, or contact us for questions. We’d love to hear from you!

On a final note… this video was the product of about 3-4 hours of work. We took 1 hour to shoot it and about 2-3 to edit it. We condensed 25 minutes of video footage into 30 seconds for the time elapsed effect.