The Workshop

Kicking off Patti LuPone’s new mailing list with a contest!

amelia — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 14:25:31 +0000

It’s time to celebrate the publication of Patti’s new memoir with a giveaway of bound, autographed sneak-peek excerpts provided by Crown Books.

Anyone who signs up for Patti’s new mailing list in the next month is automatically entered for a chance to win:

http://www.pattilupone.net/contest.html

I’m trying out MailChimp’s service to administer the new mailing list. Feature-wise, it seemed pretty comparable to Constant Contact, and I found MailChimp’s service more appealing. And only partially because of the chimp.

New site (re)launch!

amelia — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 19:46:23 +0000

The latest project here at the Workshop has been the re-launch of the site for Montclair State University’s performing arts program Peak Performances with performance and artist data for the 2010-2011 season.

The site was originally developed with an older release of Ruby on Rails + MySQL, so when I took over development getting all the versions and plugins of this and that to play nicely on the sandbox site was the usual Rails fun and games, haha. But it all came together in the end, and I’m looking forward to further developments in the Rails arena!

Marginal Media ad supporting Peter and the Wolf

amelia — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:11:21 +0000

Here’s the half-page ad we placed in the program for Hampton Ballet Theatre School’s production of Peter and the Wolf, performing with the Hampton Chamber Orchestra tonight at the Children’s Museum of the East End (CMEE) in Bridgehampton, and Thursday night right here in Montauk at the Montauk Playhouse.

We’re so proud of Maggie (who’s playing her first featured role as the cat in Montauk) and Emily (our brave little huntress) and all the wonderful, hard-working kids at HBTS. Hats off to Sara Jo Strickland for putting together another wonderful production.

Patti LuPone publicity video features Web site

amelia — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 20:04:29 +0000

Crown Books has released a short video of Patti LuPone discussing her upcoming memoir. We at the Workshop were pleased as punch to see Patti’s site mentioned and pictured, with Patti describing the Ramblings From the Road feature as a training ground for sharing her thoughts.

Watch it right here!

Postcard for FamilyFest at MPCCF

amelia — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 17:07:10 +0000

Donated design of a quick postcard listing the sponsors of the FamilyFest series of all-ages entertainment programs at the Montauk Playhouse, running 4 successive Thursdays from July 22 – August 12. It looks like a really terrific slate of events!

Patti LuPone’s Memoir Naming Contest hits the NY Times

amelia — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 19:42:15 +0000

Marginal Media client Patti LuPone’s online contest to name her upcoming memoir got written up in the New York Times Arts Beat section:

“I’m Ready for My Close-Up.”

“Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina.”

“Put Your Camera Away!”

These are just three possible titles for the actress Patti LuPone’s forthcoming book about her life in the theater, offered in the spirit of a new contest that Ms. LuPone — a two-time Tony Award winner for “Evita” and “Gypsy” — is running on her official Web site.

Patti came up with the idea for the contest because she was stuck for a title. Why not throw it out for participation from her fans? Because we wanted to get up and running quickly, I kept the entry format to a relatively low-tech email form for this application—sometimes simpler is better! The contest ran for a month and was a huge success, generating over 1,000 possible titles for Patti to choose from. The winner receives an autographed copy of the book, two tickets to Patti’s next major show, and a meet-up with Patti at the performance.

Not exactly off to the races!

amelia — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 18:54:21 +0000

Set up a blog, then promptly get swamped with projects why don’t I?

Still many things in the works here and I’m starting to organize some of my zillions of Web development and tech bookmarks on a delicious account which I will link from here. I heart delicious, although holy cow it can be a time waster extraordinaire once you start surfing other people’s link collections…

Can you hear me now?

amelia — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 21:41:15 +0000

Welcome to The Workshop! I’m Amelia Ryan, the chief cook and bottle washer at Marginal Media, and I plan for this blog to be a record of my various travels through the wild and wooly worlds of design and development on the Web. Okay, maybe ‘wild and wooly’ is a bit of an exaggeration, but hey, I amuse easily.

Hopefully this will turn into a useful repository of resources, and also serve as a testing ground for trying out new tools and toys. Areas of interest include (in no particular order): graphic design, information design, XHTML, Ruby on Rails, CSS, javascript, Ajax, Ruby on Rails, e-commerce, open source, Linux, Apple’s OS X and mobile platforms, Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Acrobat) goodies, digital photography, digital video (editing and production), print design, color theory, typography, and social media.

Haha, it looks like a lot listed out like that, but once you start down this road, one thing does tend to lead to another—especially if you’re an insatiable tinkerer. Anyway, that’s enough blather about purpose… I need to go monkey around with this default template.