Johnny Robot - Episode 1 - The Beginning and End

It was Christmas 1973, and boy did I love being a kid. Waking up Christmas morning, seeing all of the presents out under the tree, spilling halfway across the living room. Of course there were six kids, two parents, a grandma and uncle there, so it was always deceiving. I never got as many gifts as I thought I was going to get, but I still loved coming around the corner and seeing all of the gifts. It was like I hit the jack pot.

Anyways, as we settled down and started opening gifts, I got the usual, hot wheels and underwear, just going through the motions waiting for that last gift, you know the one your parents kept til the end, the grand finale. Oh and it was a good size box, must have been two feet tall, at the time I wasn’t much taller then it, I knew it was going to be something good, and boy was I not disappointed. As soon as I pulled off the first corner of the paper I saw the word “Robot” and I knew I had scored. Pulling the rest of the paper off, there it stood, “Johnny Robot”, man was it cool looking, “over 18 inces tall” the box said, and back then, toys were still made out of metal, so he was cool looking, painted all red and blue.

To that point in my life, that was my greatest moment, then I started playing with it. Of course the first couple of weeks was a blast, I would have Johnny Robot destroying cities made of blocks, crushing my hot wheels and saving the day. After awhile though I slowly became disappointed in the fact that Johnny Robot didn’t do anything. In all reality it was just painted metal. Sure you could move his arms back and forth, but so could my 12” Bionic Man, and shoot the bionic man even had the roll away skin revealing his bionics, and the eye-pieced drilled in his head so I could pretend I was using his bionic eye. Johnny Robot didn’t do anything, his arms & legs moved, and his head moved back and forth, big deal.

Well that wasn’t going to work for me, no way. First modification I had to make was to give Johnny Robot a voice, so one day when my brother Jim was at softball practice I stole his Tandy tape recorder and took it apart. Cutting up my Johnny Robot wasn’t too hard, my dad had all the tools any boy could need. I of course placed the speaker in his head where his mouth should be, drilling a small hole so that the sound could get out, I then placed the tape compartment on his back where I could access it easily, but it was still out of the way visually. The buttons however, looked more like teeth, so I cut a notch on the bottom of Johnny Robot’s head and hung them there. I always thought it was cool the one red button for record, really gave Johnny Robot a menacing look.

I then of course recorded his first statements, always beginning with “beep, boop, beep”, and ending with another “beep”, because after all he was a robot, so he had to sound like a robot. “Beep, boop, beep, Hello Steve! beep” was the first thing Johnny Robot said. I could still hear him in my mind, it was so cool. Other cool sayings I gave him were, “beep, boop, beep, Johnny Robot, protector of the innocent, beep” and “beep, boop, beep, Laser Blast! beep”. As the days went on more and more sayings were added, however I noticed that when I cut the metal on his head for the buttons, that some of the paint where his eyes were had peeled back, and it seemed so fake, I mean, who has painted eyes?

Hmmm... Ok, so I know my Mom has a video recorder, and I know she never uses it, so she probably wouldn’t miss it. I also know we have a projector, that we rarely use, they both have lenses that wouldn’t be missed. So after sneaking both items out to the garage, surgery began, and it wasn’t long after that, that Johnny Robot now had two glass eyes, one was a little larger then the other, but that wasn’t a problem, it also shot light out of it, the one larger eye, it was sweet, Johnny Robot now has laser vision! There was already an antenna on his head, so I just put the toggle for the light on top of his head, and added some wire to it to make it look like a second antenna. Another cool thing that I didn’t think of, but worked out by chance, was when you turned the light on for his laser vision, the antenna was pointed forward, really giving Johnny Robot a menacing look. Johnny Robot was getting cooler and cooler by the day!

Well we played like this for a couple of months and we had a good time, but one weekend my dad was out front working on my mom’s ‘68 Cougar that had the automatic doors covering the lights. Well back then they were ran by a pneumatic vacuum from the motor, and one of them was sticking on my mom’s car so my dad was going over it, and boy did that give me an idea. So after talking to my dad a bit, and showing him what I wanted Johnny Robot to do, he acquired the right parts and I got to set-up Johnny Robot to have pneumatic arms and legs. We ran a couple of wires out of his back to a make shift remote allowing me to control him. It was pretty cool, we also hooked up a wire to control the light in his one eye as well as the tape recorder. I left the buttons on the front however because it was just cool looking.

With this new tech, we were buddies all over again... for awhile. It got kind of boring controlling him. I wanted a real buddy, someone who could follow me around and play with me. Well one day my brother Robert and I were playing down at an old empty field. Sometimes people would dump junk at this field and we’d go through it looking for anything worth something, when I found it. Someone was throwing away an old Mac Plus computer that had become outdated and too slow for whatever purpose they needed it for. So I told Robert I needed the computer for Johnny Robot and he helped me carry the thing home. Back in the garage I opened up Johnny Robot’s chest and started filling in the hollow innards with the computing power of this old computer. I then hooked the remote control pieces to the computer, allowing the computer to have full control of Johnny Robot’s limbs, eyes and speaker, and the best part? The Apple logo was illuminated, so I placed that right on Johnny Robot’s chest, like a crest all the super hero’s have. Again, it was sweet. Rob and I stood back and looked at him and were just thrilled over what we have created.

Then Robert asked, “What’s his super power?” and I quickly replied, “he shoots a laser out of one of his eyes, duh” and Robert said, it’s not a laser, it’s just a light that projects a picture. Hmmm... I started thinking again, knowing that Robert was right. “Doesn’t dad have an extra gun he never takes to work? (Dad was a Sheriff’s Deputy for Los Angeles County). Robert said, yeah he does, he hides it in his closet. So with Rob distracting mom for a short time I snuck into the room and got his extra .357 magnum and got it out to the garage. When Robert got there, he had seen I had already taken off the handle to the gun, then he asked, “what are you going to do with it?” That’s easy I said, I going to take off one of his arms, and the gun will replace it.

Johnny Robot was awesome, he stood there with his two different size eyes, one shining a light out of it, his tape recorder button teeth, and the oversize Apple logo on his chest. But yeah, the master piece was the .357 magnum right arm, and he could now think for himself. Johnny Robot would follow me around, constantly swinging the gun upwards in protect mode, just to see it’s a cat jumping a fence or something. I decided the best job for Johnny Robot was to protect the house, so that is what he did. Constantly circling the house, protecting it from intruders. I guess the only real problem was that we lived in a good area north of Los Angeles, and it was 1974, so crime wasn’t really out of control back then. So Johnny Robot spent most of his times just walking in circles. Until one day...

One day a car was coming down our street real slow. Johnny Robot went on alert not recognizing this car, and the fact that it was driving so slowly with the driver looking at all of the houses. Well in those days we lived on a cul-de-sac and the car, realizing that she was not where she was trying to get to decided to pull into our driveway to turn around. Well Johnny Robot didn’t know that, and since me and my brothers and sisters were out front playing, Johnny Robot needed to protect us, so he ran around real quick raising his magnum “beep, boop, beep, INTRUDER! beep” and shot out one of her tires. The lady screamed and pulled out of the driveway as fast as she could and drove down the street on her flat tire. In the mean time my mom and dad came running out of the house to see what the commotion was to see Johnny Robot’s smoking gun and the car driving off.

Boy was I in trouble. Dad sat me down and had a big long talk with me about what had happened. He also sat Johnny Robot down to and talked to him about the proper way of protecting us. My dad also replaced all of Johnny Robot’s bullets with rubber bullets so no one could get hurt. I had to pay back everyone for the equipment I stole and was grounded for a month. My dad let Johnny Robot live, and Johnny Robot continued to protect our house, however one day Johnny Robot decided we didn’t really need any protection and he took off. I haven’t seen or heard anything from him to this day. I search Facebook sometimes just to see if he’s set-up a page, but he hasn’t. Not yet anyways.

Walking the line between Print and Web

Finding a graphic designer who can truly create for all areas of your business can be difficult. Sure if you were to work with a design house they can handle all aspects, but is one person really designing for you, one person that you have a relationship with, or are you have a relationship with a salesman, and then they are passing the information onto the two different departments? Some of your info goes to the designers that design for print, while the others go to the designers that design for web. Or maybe there is only one designer, but unless that designer knows how to code for the web, there can be a number of changes that need to be made to your layout just to make it web safe.

Me, Steve Craig is thisHero Designs. I'm a one man shop, which means I do all the designing for both print and web. And once a design for your web is approved, I Steve Craig code your web site. I know through experience what can and cannot be done on the web. And while anything is possible with the web, is that anything possible while keeping your site optimized for any web browser, or any speed, or any search engine? These are all important factors to take into consideration when designing a page for your business. While sometimes flashy is called for, if no one sees it, what's the point.

Steve Craig - Graphic Designer for Print and Web.

NaNoWriMo

I'm participating in the NaNoWriMo, which stands for National Novel Writing Month, which challenges people to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. My book is a Science Fiction book which is a prequel to a short story I wrote years ago called "Your Source of Violence". This book, This Hero Has Dead Eyes, is the story of how the main characters meet, how the main character in YSOV, get's the abilities he gets, and set's the stage for YSOV. It's been really fun writing the story as I'm re-introducing the characters to myself and am building quite a background for it. I'm also seeing where the original needs to change a little because of what I'm doing now. I think the changes will be for the better, because it is just adding depth and complexity to the story. Anyways, I've added the badge for NaNoWriMo, as well as an image that ties the stories title into the story. It may not make sense right now, but once you read the book, it'll make perfect sense.

One more thing, as far as writing this 50,000 word book, I'll have the story completed by the end of the month, but believe me, it'll be a very rough draft.

Simple Freshness

I do most of the marketing advertising for Flooring Liquidators, an eight store chain in the central valley, and while he has a great logo and mascot, the pieces can get stale. So one thing that you can do to keep things fresh is by making slight non-permanent changes to the logo or marketing piece. In this example I had made a couple of slight changes to "Super Steve", the teeth and cape, that keeps his identity fresh, but not permanent. As soon as Halloween was over we went back to his normal logo. At least until Thanksgiving.
thisHero Designs... Keeping it real... keeping it fresh!

Navigation Icons

As I work on Flooring Liquidators, I've realized by the sheer scope of the site that the UI or User Interface needs to be much more user friendly then past static sites for doctors and construction companies. With all of the pages that can be navigated for find the product one is looking for or account pages, we needed a better system then simple text based links. Therefore I decided at one point that certain navigation buttons would include an icon incorporated into the button to 1. help with ease of use and 2. to show that its level of importance is greater then other buttons (not that they all aren't important.

Anyways, I've created quite a few of these icons, and for the most part am pretty pleased with them and I thought I'd share them with all of you. Now these are the buttons from the site, just the icons I've been incorporating into the buttons.

Enjoy, and we'll talk to you soon.

Steve

Understanding Twitter

For the past couple of weeks I have been trying to understand the importance of Twitter in running my own business, and while the results are still to come, some things have become obvious.

I read an article (and even tweeted about it) last week that talked about tweeting as "building relationships and building business". It talked about how you can not just tweet "10% off" or "this months special" but how tweeting is just like dealing with people in the real world. Sure you talk business, but you also talk about the nature of your business, tips and tricks and even your personal interests

So by building relationships on twitter, by replying to tweets, by re-tweeting and by tweeting myself, I do see my number of followers slowly increasing. Where these new followers come from I'm not sure but I definitely can see it more clearly as building relationships. For example, I replied to a tweet from some magazine, and actually got an @mention thanking me for a great comment (building a relationship). Well now my name is spread out to an even bigger audience, so maybe someone else agrees about what a great comment that is and decides to visit my twitter page and likes what I'm sending out in the form of tweets, then suddenly I've got a new follower.

Now I try to keep the business end, specials or announcements, to a minimum, but it's obvious I'm a graphic designer for print and web, but maybe, just maybe one of these new followers will need me someday, and that's when the time spent on tweeting and building relationships pay off. Additionally with the more followers I have, the better the chance one of them is going to say "I need a web designer" and there I am, waiting to serve them. This is of course all speculation at the moment, but I think it has some merit and as I continue this experiment, time will tell.

Secondly what I like about twitter is following people, I like reading about Apple news, I like reading about the automotive industry news, Sharks hockey news and local news, so I make sure these are the people and companies I follow. So now instead of having to go hit up different sites for all of this information, it is all sent to me on my computer or on my iPhone. I get the headlines and if I want to know more, I click the link and read the full story.

So these are my thoughts on twitter, not the strange new technology that was mis-understood, but a friend that can help me in the long run.

Shop truck is officially a rolling chasis

Well I finally made it over a giant hurdle, the camaro clip is done, it's been welded on, and it's square. I have pulled all the front end components and am in the process of rebuilding the front end and front brakes, which after what I've been through on the front clip seems pretty easy.

I'll post some pictures of the completed frame soon. All I can say now is that Daniel did an outstanding job of joining the two pieces together, it looks great, and looks strong. Now we can get back to the business of putting this thing back together again, adding parts, instead of taking parts off.