I worked a lot for “Bruder Zufall”, a Book about Donald Stellwag, an convicted bank robber who was unguilty in jail for 9 years. Since he always said he was unguily the justice system treated him like an outcast and he got very sick. 2 Weeks after he was released, they found the real guy who did it. He was only convicted because of the evidence brought in by an “expert” who identified him by comparing his ear to blurred pictures of an security camera. I think it´s scandalous. There was no evidence that he did it, the only thing that pointed to him was that he was tall and fat.

So They worked on this book for 3 years or so, but it seems like noone ever really cared about printing processes. My Father, who authored the book, said to me that we have to take a look at it before we send it to the printing house. I thought he meant to check the files and that he includes everything they need etc. I thought they had some kind of deal with them, but turns out that they just said they´re gonna send an pdf. My Dad, who is 68, has been a designer and artist almost his whole life, but he doesn´t really understand modern media processes. He basicly tried to design the book in his text processing software and applied many styles, fonts etc. So I had to layout the whole stuff (382 pages) within a day, edit the pictures in it and place them properly. To work with the file I had to remove most of the formatting etc and then put it back in again. He also used fonts only implemented in OpenOffice, but not (only through purchase) available for the system, which is a pain in the ass… Note to OOoDevs: This. Feature. Sucks. It´s not the fault of my father, he couldn´t know and I didn´t think of this before either.

Next day I went to the printing house and then they told me that they only do ringbooks and no real books. I really thought they were kidding. It just was so unreal to me that the contact between the client and printing house had obviously only been like “do you print books?” “yes.” “ok, we will bring you a pdf”. So I went home again, but my dad said that they planned on just printing it there and the bookbinding will take place somewhere else. I was pissed off. I spent my whole night with a layout and had 35 minutes of sleep. Why did nobody tell me? If I am the one making the order, somebody has to fucking tell me. So I went there again the next day. I hope everything went well now, but i´m glad that´s not up to me and the rest of the process is not in my hands. I didn´t get anything for it, i just did it because my father needed the help. I still have to edit some pictures and send them to the tv station, but that´s easy compared to the book itself.

It all had to happen in a hurry now because Donald Stellwag will be on one of the toprated television talkshows this week to promote the book. I can understand that this is important and of course I want this book to be a success, because it is important that people read this story and also because my father put so much work in it in the last years, but it´s always the same when I work with those guys. It has to happen in a hurry while they don´t even understand or ackknowledge the complexity of the process. I´m only doing it because of my dad.

Ah yeah, I also build the homepage for it, it´s german, so if you understand german you can catch it on http://www.bruder-zufall.de. I obviously used Justin Tadlock’s great Hybrid Theme as base and made very few changes, so it really went fast although the data I had to implement wasn´t easy to work with, not to say effed up. Unfortunatelly I couldn´t keep the link in the footer which I would really have loved too because I always fight that everybody gets the credit he deserves. (And I also fight against people taking credit they don´t deserve. Look out for a post on that in a couple of days because i´m pissed about something regarding that right in this very moment! #SaveJon)

I also worked a lot on the Homepage of the Sportsclub SV Simonshofen. Simonshofen is the place where i lived for 18 years of my life and we still often meet there. It was supposed to be live by now, but unfortunatelly I ran into some problems and you can´t call most Companies over easter. I´m very confident that we can get it online this week, as we also have a meeting where i´ll train them in general wordpress usage.

No, that´s not everything: I customized the Magazeen Theme from wefunction for my Girlfriend’s Blog. She´s a sucker for Makeup (and just made the 2nd place in a big make up contest, gz<3), makes very nice photos and also sells handcrafted cuddly toys, handbags etc. Site is live but there were a few problems with the domain since her last hoster went bankrupt and then the transfer to another hoster didn´t work out flawless. Her domain is now on denic but is supposed to be on all-inkl. So the actual URL pointing there is just temporary and not the real domain. You can still check it out and leave her a lot of comment love. @wefunction: You still haven´t resolved that readme-file desaster in the theme options ;)

The nonblogging period before my last blog post was dedicated tothe parish newsletter. There are 2 types of data we receive: MS Word files where people tried to style their article (they are not supposed to) or handwritten notes. Do. Not. Want. I don´t have Windows Vista nor the new ms word and this docx filetype really pisses me off. People send their ads in  docx and i´m supposed to keep the same layout. I can´t do that in every case. But the hard work i put into that was really worth it. Designwise, it´s one of the prettiest christian print-publications i´ve ever seen.

And yes, I was still working on my dayjob as web designer weekdays from 8 to 2.30, so this was basicly my sparetime I spent on those projects since i don´t do any traditional freelancing projects these days. I will start over again sometime this year but right now there´s too much other stuff going on.