Rant and Rave | tj mapes

tjmapes — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 21:09:09 +0000

I have a t-shirt that will be sold for one day only, tomorrow, Friday September 11th at the daily graphic t-shirt site RIPT Apparel for only $10. $10 bucks people! Come celebrate with me and pick one up. It is cheap and awesome! And should be delivered pretty fast as well, just in tim for a wonderful Fall night ahead!

Rant and Rave | tj mapes

tjmapes — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 22:20:31 +0000

My amazingly talented girlfriend Erin designed this cute owl tshirt for us at ript. It will be available Wednesday, July 29th for one day only for $10! She did such a great job on this design. I really love it and can’t wait to buy one! Here’s what it looks like!

Rant and Rave | tj mapes

tjmapes — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 20:18:38 +0000

I want to tell you about a new venture I’ve started called RIPT Apparel. RIPT is a new online retailer that sells one of a kind t-shirts for a limited time of 24 hours, then they “rest in peace” forever.

Over the past few months, 2 good friends of mine and I have been meeting weekly, discussing the necessary things to tackle in order to get RIPT off the ground. We’ve collectively built the business using our unique skills and talents and surged forward to produce what lives now at riptapparel.com!

We launched the site Monday, June 8th and have heard such wonderful praises and responses from people all over the globe!

One of our main missions at RIPT is to provide a unique outlet for up and coming artists to promote and sell their art. We feel we’ve provided just the place for this!

One of the ways we’ve done this is we built a community right through the website. Anyone can sign up and join in on the conversations happening everyday! Since Monday’s launch, we’ve had over 400 people join so far, and the number keeps on climbing!

We have also been running a promotion all week, giving away a free shirt for a random new member of the RIPT community as well as a twitter promotion for 50% off their next purchase.

Some of the wonderful artists and their shirts that we’ve collaborated with this week include

I just want to thank everyone for the support and for going to the site and even more for the people who picked up shirts in the first week! You are all absolutely amazing! There will be many more updates on the on-goings of RIPT so check back soon.

And don’t forget to stop by the website and say hi in the comments! Also feel free to follow us on Twitter too!

Rant and Rave | tj mapes

tjmapes — Wed, 06 May 2009 14:35:54 +0000

I bet kids these days are eating this shit up.

Rant and Rave | tj mapes

tjmapes — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 16:16:55 +0000

So last night when I got home from a meeting I noticed there was an awful amount of water in the garden in front and out back of my apartment. My roommate and I rushed inside and grabbed plungers and strainers and headed out side. When I opened the slider door in the garden, the water was so high due to the drain being clogged that water started rushing inside the apartment. We quickly removed the grate and started cleaning up leaves and plunging the shit out the drain. We repeated the process out back and eventually the water went down.

Then I got a call from Erin saying she went through a huge puddle on her way to my house and her check engine light came on, then her car eventually stalled once she parked and sat idle for a while waiting for it to hopefully dry out. So after I showered the shit-water off my skin, I then walked west on Division to meet her to check on her and her car. We decided to leave it over night to thaw.

I had the day off today so I was going to go try and start it up, see if the check engine light was still on and then hit autozone for a diagnostics test. When I walked down to the car I noticed it wasn’t there anymore. I remember reading the signs around where we parked it last night and thought we were good to leave it. Today though, I read them again and noticed that it said “No Parking 3am – 7am OR No Parking when snow is over 2″ deep”. Ironically it was actually snowing when I initially left this morning too. I failed to notice the “OR” in the sign. Plus the freaking sign had a huge SNOWFLAKE on top of it indicating to me that it was a No Parking for snow removal sign and even with the snow today, it was way less than 2 inches.

What the hell. Why do they combine 2 different signs. Granted I know it was my fault in the end, but jesus. Could they make it any more confusing? All I want to do is finish this post with swear words about the city and life itself, so I’ll stop now. Here is a picture of what I thought the sign said, assholes.

Rant and Rave | tj mapes

tjmapes — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 16:57:33 +0000

Well, last night Erin and I went over to City North 14 to see Coraline (3D), the new full length stop motion, animated featured directed by Henry Selick (who worked with Tim Burton on my favorite movie of all time The Nightmare Before Christmas).

When we arrived at the theater the box office attendants were shouting “the 7PM showing of Coraline has just sold out!” Luckily we got our tickets online through Fandango just before the show. Wow that sounded like a commercial.

It was so packed Erin waited in line for the popcorn while I went to secure some seats. I snagged some 3D glasses on the way in and sat down by the guard rails of the first row of the good section (not the first 5 rows next to the screen, those are horrible for your neck).

Then just as the movie was about to start and some other people were trying to take my saved seat, Erin showed up with 2 popcorn bags as big as her head. Supposedly they were mediums.

The previews started and the popcorn inhaling began ( I ate 3/4 of the bag). On a side note, I got to see a trailer on the big screen for Tim Burton’s upcoming movie “9“. It was epic.

Alright getting on to the review part, I enjoyed the movie. I wouldn’t say that I’d go see it again right away, I’d probably even wait for DVD before seeing it again. I really REALLY loved the fact that the movie was in 3D. The last thing I have seen in 3D was ‘Honey I Shrunk the Kids” at Disney World when I was a kid.

The visual effects, 3D glory and the wonderful colors in this movie were absolutely sublime. The only things I think I can gripe about were the plot and the music. I know this is no Nightmare Before Christmas but I found myself anxiously awaiting the end of the movie when there was still about 30 minutes left.

All I’ll say about the music since I’m a bit biased is it was sub-par and they should have talked to Danny.

Over all, I’d recommend seeing it just for the fact that it is in 3D and is beautiful visually. Don’t go in expecting some mind-blowing plot or a thinker of any sorts, granted it is geared towards children and age ranges I no longer fall in to. Go into it to experience the 3D wonders and the beauty of the lost art that is stop motion animation.

Rant and Rave | tj mapes

tjmapes — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:38:30 +0000

I saw today that Max Bemis from the band Say Anything has opened his “song shop” again. The basic idea is you email him your thoughts and feelings and he will write you a personalized song for only $150.00 and send it to you.

At first this comes off to me as another brilliant idea I wish I thought of. Then after thinking for a few minutes, it seems like he is using his fame to exploit fans and make money. If that makes sense. He is making $150 from each song. I haven’t heard any of the songs, or their quality levels but I’m guessing they are acoustic and pretty basic.

I suppose if you really like the band, it is a dream come true. If one of my favorite bands did this, I guess I might consider it even.

What do you think? Good or evil?

Rant and Rave | tj mapes

tjmapes — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 22:04:27 +0000

So after much deliberation, and certain announcements I finally purchased an Xbox360. I bought the package that came with a 60gig HD, and 2 games, Kung Fu Panda and Lego Indiana Jones. Erin and I played the Lego one for a while the first night and it was pretty entertaining. I had previously played Lego Star Wars on Playstation 2 and loved it.

We also tried hooking it up to the internet for about 2 hours so I could join Xbox Live but had no luck. So the next day I purchased the wifi adapter and I’m up and running now. I absolutely LOVE it.

Another main reason I wanted to get it was because I loved the game Fable on the original Xbox. So I picked up Fable 2 and haven’t stopped playing it. The graphics and scenery are amazing. The gameplay is great, the voice overs are great and it even received a 5 out of 5 from XPlay. I highly recommend it.

Hands down the best part of owning an Xbox 360 is the Netflix integration. Erin and I watched The Illusionist last night and it never stopped for buffering once.

All in all, a smart purchase on my part. More to come as I get more involved with more games and experiences on the 360.

Rant and Rave | tj mapes

tjmapes — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:58:16 +0000

Now since launching CSS Scoop, I haven’t had the chance to do any sort of recap on which sites stand out above the rest so I bring you this “Best of” post.

I’d love to add every design in this list because frankly, I love everything that gets added to CSS Scoop, but doing that wouldn’t make too much sense because you can just go view them all yourselves, but if you wanted a little taste of the quality of work that gets submitted and excepted to CSS Scoop, here ya go (organized by category).

Rant and Rave | tj mapes

tjmapes — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 17:14:03 +0000

I was delighted to get an email from Lee Munroe about being included in his recent post “Web Design Trends: Cityscapes, Landscapes and Seascapes“.

Then I received a google alert telling me that I was featured over on Online Graphic’s “Most beautiful websites of 2008“! Which is just awesome when you look at the other sites featured. I’m definitely in some great company and feel honored to be included side by side with them.

I have been lucky enough to be featured in a few other sites this year including Smashing Magazine’s “50 beautiful websites” which was just an awesome honor.

With that said, I sadly haven’t been posting as much as I’d like to, which leads to my new years resolution… I’m going to try and post more!!! I’ve been so busy with the band, and Css Scoop right now, I have neglected my own blog.

Thanks for the mentions everyone, I really appreciate it.