It’s been a long time since I’ve posted an actual article on here, and I haven’t posted any articles on website design. I’ve been designing websites for seven years. Actually, I’ve been designing websites for longer than that, but I started learning to program ColdFusion seven years ago, so we’ll just say seven years.

In my years developing websites I’ve discovered something of immense importance that surely an seasoned website designer should already know. The root of all of the greatest websites. Where they all start. Before cracking open Photoshop, before coding a stylesheet, all websites should be planned on paper.

I know paper and pencil is pretty old school, but there’s no other way to vomit all of your ideas on to a sheet of paper quickly.

Before starting to design I make a very rough sketch of what I want the website to look like, sometimes with the client’s help. I never make it detailed. I draw a small box on the paper that has roughly the same proportions of a monitor, and then I put a few boxes in it, some scribbles representing text, etc. It takes all of two minutes. You can do it while you’re on the crapper (yes, I have done this before).

Why would you do this? It streamlines the entire design process. It ensures that before you begin designing the website you know where the links will be, how the content will be placed, what the banners will look like, and more. If you start designing the website outright you won’t have this stuff in mind ahead of time, and the result could be incredibly messy and unorganized.

When I’m writing a paper or a story I never plan anything. I’m not a big planner. But I plan every single website I make on paper before making anything digital. The finished website hardly ever looks like the piece of paper, but it has the same general layout. I’m not sure how to explain exactly how it works, but if you try it, you will see for yourself how benificial it is.

 So for now I’m going to say try it for yourself and see. I may rewrite this later with a better conclusion, but for now it’s time to head out.Â

P.S. I HATE VALENTINE’S DAY.

 

Jake,

The website is incredible, it far surpassed all my expectations. I will be referring you to all my business associates for their web work and design. This will be an important tool for my business. I look forward to working with you in the future.

Sincerely,

Bill Green (Bill Green Custom Woodworking bgcwky.com)

View the site by clicking the image below.

It’s been three months since I’ve posted anything new, so I thought I should do that. I’ve been collecting a few testimonials about my website design over the past couple of days and I wanted to post them. I’ll post more on here as I get them, just look in the “Testimonials” category.

“Jake’s designs are a thing of beauty and wonder. I have used Jake for 2 projects and I been more than pleased every time. Whatever you need in this area Jake Ensor is the guy to go to.”
    - Jusin Miller (Magician, Creator, Lecturer)

“Jake is great at what he does. He designed a website from scratch for me, and I had no idea what I wanted. Jake worked with me and helped me to sculpt the perfect site, which I was very pleased with. He also has helped me with other websites I run, and is very good value for money. I highly recommend Jake’s services.”
    - Edd Withers (Founder/Admin of TheMagicWoods.co.uk)

“Jake’s design has helped my site attain a professional look and quality. I couldn’t be more satisfied with the great design he’s created.”
    - Mitchell Stafiej (MagicForDarfur.org)

“On behalf of Victory Haven Training Center, I would like to thank Jacob Ensor for his time invested, exceptional web-design skills, professional manner, and most importantly the final product (www.victoryhaventraining.com). We couldn’t be more satisfied!”
    - Brian McMahan (Victory Haven Training Center)

“We have had the pleasure of being acquainted with Jacob Ensor and his work for a number of years. He is very talented, articulate and extremely creative in his programming and designing skills. We highly recommend his services to anyone that has an upcoming project, large or small. You will look back on the experience for years to come knowing you made the right decision to hire one of the best.”
    - Kevin Rodenhofer (President/CEO, Hostopolis)

That’s it for now, folks. These are all from past clients. I’m going to start making it a habbit to ask for a quote from my clients so we’ll see what we get.

Since I just put up something serious I figured I’d better try to keep the balance, soooo, another stupid picture!

I was at High Bridge for a wedding. There were many wonderful sights.

The newlyweds.

The memories.

My parents. And…

SPARTAN URINAL CAKES!

Who woulda thunk it? They fight immortals, AND urine stank. Leave it to the Spartans to create the most badass urinal cake since… dove! Has dove ever made a urinal cake? Yeah I have no clue where I’m going with this, but I mean, what is there to say? It’s a Spartan urinal cake!

 Pictures aren’t the best of quality. Seriously, it’s a urinal cake, how good can you make it look? That and I didn’t want to risk anybody walking in to the bathroom while I was holding my cellphone inside a urinal.

COMMENTS PEOPLE! COMMENTS!

I was cleaning off my mess of a desk the other day and came across a scrap piece of paper. It asked “Does knowledge limit our creativity?”. I’d written this down several months ago and wanted to give myself some time to ponder it. Not surprisingly it soon got lost amongst the cesspool of papers, books, and magazines. I want to do some open thinking on it here.

Does knowledge limit our creativity? How exactly could it? Creative people are often thought of as intelligent, or knowledgable. This wouldn’t be something we would assume when considering creativity. I think that knowledge is certainly a handicap to imagination.

Allow me to use magic to explain my logic, though this certainly applies to all applications of creativity. When I was a child I remember watching The Magician, a cartoon wherein a magician (named Ace, how fitting) would fight crime with the aid of his abilities. After the show I’d run around the house acting like I could cause cards to appear from absolutely nowhere and toss them at enemies like throwing knives. I dreamed up all kinds of stuff that in reality was, of course, undeniably impossible. My imagination ran rampant.

Now, inventing unique magic is a sort of struggle. It’s so difficult to look past the knowledge of the methods of all of these effects and come up with something that is completely unique, something that, before I created it, was considered undeniably impossible. We need to try condition ourselves to believe is that nothing is impossible. No matter how absurd an effect may sound, there is a way of accomplishing it. We must find that way.

Writing this reminds me of a thread on the old iR Forums (Imperfect Reality). Chase Hubler, who passed away last October, was and still is a huge inspiration of mine. He was incredibly creative and invented some truly remarkable magic. He’s greatly missed. Chase strongly believed that nothing was impossible. There was a conversation where some magicians were trying to find a method to bend a glass (here). Magicians do metal bending, why not glass? Somebody popped in with the statement, “Come on guys, lets come back down to earth.”.

Chase’s response was unforgettable. “What the hell is he talking about? ‘Back down to Earth?’ I never left, sir.” In the end of the conversation he stated that this was his “next project”. Sadly, he died nine days later.

I feel like I’m sort of beating around the bush… I’m choking up a bit over here, thinking about Chase. Basically what I’m getting at is that when trying to think of an effect to work on, we often blow off some of the best possibilities because we think they’re too far-fetched. Back when we were kids, before we learned the basics of magic’s workings, anything seemed possible.  Now, we limit ourselves, without even realizing it.

We all need to adapt to the belief that nothing is impossible. We need to believe in it as strongly as Chase did. If we could do that, we’d have one hell of an art at our disposal.

OH MY GOD! HOW DO I FIND THESE THINGS?!

I’m sure you all have seen the “LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!” video starring Chris Crocker, the now-famous flamboyantly gay drag queen with strong opinions he isn’t afraid to share. If you haven’t, pull your head out of your ass and watch it below.

 

This video has definitely made it’s rounds. It’s been featured on TV shows such as The Soup, Jimmy Kimmel Live, and even Maury, where Chris makes a short appearance. There are so many parodies of it you can’t find the originally posted video by typing “LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!” any more. When you do find it, you see that there it has over eleven million views. The popularity of it… is insane.

 So why am I talking about it here? Well, about a week ago I was going to visit some family. I stopped in a gas station, and of course, there was a condom dispenser. The picture of the chick on the condom label looked SCARY similar to Chris Crocker. I dubbed these condoms the nickname Crocker Condoms. So fitting. They must work really well, because Chris hasn’t had a baby yet (and I’m not seeing one in his future)!

Check out the pictures below. They aren’t perfect, there was a line outside I had to make it snappy. 

 
CLICK FOR FULL SCALE

CLICK FOR FULL SCALE

So a few weeks ago a relative was hospitalized near me. We weren’t very close, but my mother and I, being the generous, caring people that we are, dropped some pizza off for them. On our way out of the parking lot my mother pointed out this van. I immediately yelled, “STOP!”. She stopped. I ran. I took a picture. It was amazing.

CLICK FOR FULL SCALE

I wonder how much it would cost to get Chuck Norris to protect my car… If anybody has any details on this service, please give me a heads up.

Justin Miller contacted me in regards to redesigning his X Marks the Spot and Time and Space DVD covers. I gladly accepted the job and just recently finished them up. Check ‘em out!

CLICK TO VIEW

CLICK TO VIEW

 Justin is refilming the entirety of both of these DVDs, keep a look out for them. Let me know what you think!

This is fascinating and I had to share it. I may also be putting this in the “everything else” section of the site to see some non-magic related discussion on it.

 VIEW THE VIDEO HERE

If nothing else this will make for some incredibly interesting patter. Let’s try to look at it a bit more in depth from the magician’s perspective. I’ll note two things:

First, look at how easily decieved people can be. I mean, the dowser rod? People of authority in high schools fell for this $900 scam.  How can we, as magician’s, use the vulnerability for good rather than evil? “Remember Peter, with great power comes great responsibility.” -and with that, we change topics.

Two, why are people so decieved? There are many reasons, but one that he discusses is the fact that they want to see something amazing. They want to see a UFO or an unexplainable appearance of the Virgin Mary. Also, they are told to see a UFO or a Virgin Mary. That’s what he was getting at with the songs. You couldn’t make out but one or two words of the reversed song, but after the “lyrics” of the reversal are on the screen you hear every word. This is definitely a possible explanation of why restating what has happened in the middle of an effect can enhance it’s reactions. Also, let’s think about the tilt. You’re telling them they are seeing the card go in to the middle of the deck. If you were telling them you were placing it underneath the top card it wouldn’t be nearly as effective, would it?

Alright, that’s all I got for 2.35 in the morning. Enjoy that clip, good stuff in there. Up next, an article on the Invisible Pass.

This can, without question, be tied back in to my last article. This, however, is thinking along completely different lines. It seems to me that some magicians can’t stand to be amazed by anything any more. Why?

When was the last time you were truly amazed by something? Let’s think strictly magic-wise for now. Maybe you saw a video on Youtube or some other website. Did you watch it again, and if so, with what intent? You were probably intending to watch much closer than you had the first time. After all, now you know what to expect (ever wonder why we aren’t suppose to do the same effect twice?). In many cases you can figure out the method with some picking around, and then what? Did you even try to perform it yourself? If you did, that’s rather unethical of you, but I’m guessing you didn’t. So why did you just have to know how the effect was produced?

It makes no sense to me. We, as magicians, should know the best that after you know how something is done, it’s no longer amazing. It looses all sense of mystery. So why did you try so hard to figure out what was going on backstage? Do you not like being amazed?

If that’s the case, I’m again at a loss of understanding. What sparked your interest in magic? I’m guessing it was a family member doing a trick to you or the sight of a magician on TV. You liked the wonder. You liked the mystery. Chances are you gained interest in magic because you were amazed Now you perform to inflict that wonder and amazement on your spectators. Why would you inflict something upon them which you don’t like yourself?

Back before you started magic you’d be in shock as you sat through an ambitious card routine. Now you don’t see magic, you see a double lift here and a pass there. At times, I get aggravated because I can’t not see a double lift. I want to be able to sit in the spectator’s shoes from time to time. But then there are so many other magicians that go flipping through books and searching the web just to figure out how something was done.

Sit down the books. Get off of the computer. Just soak in the sweet nectar that is bewilderment.