Here We Are
For the past month I've been working on getting my portfolio website setup and launched out onto the world wide web. Leading up to that I spent countless hours trying to setup a Wordpress installation. With the shit hitting the fan right now in the United States I wanted to test out some Canadian hosting options and found one (Host Papa) that I thought might be a winning bet. Thing is, Host Papa turned out to be a very mediocre hosting platform that would constantly keep timing out my pages due to memory restrictions on a 'professional' tier plan that supposedly could support two full web pages.
With AI bots slamming Reddit with fake reviews and webpages on the topic chalked full of SEO drivel... It turns out it's very difficult to find a good Canadian hosting provider in the year of our lord: 2025. I only found this out after installing security plugins and editing dozens config files that it just wasn't worth the time and extra money to upgrade based on the feature set I was after. So I had to explore other options, and luckily I remembered one option from a project I was previously working on - mmm.page.
Critical Hit!
Months before I had planned to use a website called mmm.page to host a small but agile website for the legal cannabis startup I was working on with some friends - 'Critical Hit!'. It was a passion project we had going that was seemingly doomed from the start due to the current industry framework and climate of legal cannabis market in Canada.
Since the start of Critical Hit! I was very hands off, I had a lot of personal health related stuff going on and while it had always been a dream of mine to launch a brand with a well planned marketing deck and good product it was very difficult to balance everything. I left it up to my two very competent friends/partners and they honestly did their absolute best despite all the hurdles with the licensed producer that we had partnered with. It pained me every month during update calls that I couldn't be more hands on. I dreamed of creating lively videos, engaging print materials and organic marketing content for a brand that truly resonated with me as both a cannabis enthusiast and a video game enjoyer. I just didn't have the bandwidth... I never got to build that fun website on mmm.page but the thought of it always stuck with me.
Although we had secured white labeled product from a very established licensed producer, that LP was not great at communicating and it was clear that they wanted to go in a different direction than we had intended. I had worked with them in the past through a marketing agency but never worked with them more directly on the production end until this small venture. It was a good place to start still, we had product thanks to them, and it was good quality product! Getting new product on the market, especially fresh stuff is the hardest thing for a new company in the legal Canadian cannabis legal market, but we did it! For a little while at least. It was definitely not a money maker but I believe my friends/partners made a lot of good connections along the way, and there were definitely countless lessons that were learned as well.
Critical Hit! isn't dead though, just taking a little rest and honestly everyones lives on the team have also been very tumultuous since things started to slow down. They truely deserve some time to recuperate and rebuild. With 2026 around the corner, who knows what could happen next with Critical Hit!
Back to mmm.page
Getting back to the start here - I had planned on making a great hub for the 'Critical Hit!' brand through mmm.page but it never materialized. I thought though, 'hmm, maybe I can use this platform after all'. So with my renewed faith I started to play around with it. mmm.page was an easy website creation tool to pickup. I started to actually have fun building a live webpage. Of course, getting all my portfolio content optimized for web and organized well was a little bit of a pain in the ass but I found a couple nifty apps along the way. Clop quickly optimized my image assets and Droply made things transparent faster than running everything through Photoshop. This was the fastest I've ever been able to get through this section of the portfolio making process. I had, in previous years of unemployment, taken AGES to get to this stage. It still pains me to think about it. Every now and then I see my old 'Portfolio 2018' folder full of unoptimized images, old work from collage and poorly organized folder structures. I used it as an example of what 'not to do'.
So it's up now Aether & Ash Design is alive! There's still some work that needs to be done. The landing page is a work in progress but I have some fun ideas planned for it. I haven't secured a proper domain name for it yet but it's setup right now under my name: andrewcorrado.ca.
Many Projects Under Way
Another long overdue project is being revived after years on life support - Mister Dolphin Co. will become a little informal boutique design studio and merch drop wing of Aether & Ash Design. It's not going to be client facing, but rather it will become something more of a community piece eventually. I also have this blog on Bear Blog which I intend to update more regularly as a meditation on my work / life. Critical Hit! may come back into play in 2026 and outside of that stuff I might actually do some type of tutorial or tech lifestyle blog channel over on YouTube, we'll see. Planning to far ahead can really mess you up, you never know what life might throw your way...
All The Deaths
2024-2025 brought a lot of death for loved ones and people close to me, it's been a difficult time in that regard. All that I'll say on that is I hope it lets up for a while. I know things aren't the most stable right now but I think these past couple years have put a lot into perspective for me and others around me.
General Health Update
I'm doing well through all this considering everything, things are moving along at a good pace. I still have weird unexplained stomach/rib pains, general muscle pain, brain fog, thoracic outlet syndrome, costochondritis and I couple other things going on. On the plus side recent gastro testing resulted in mostly conclusive negative markers for the bad stuff (cancers, h.pylori, gluten intolerance) but the search is still on and I will continue to be my own health advocate.
While I still suspect long covid, some type of tissue disorder or an autoimmune disorder there is no concrete proof yet as to what the root cause of all this stuff popping off seemingly all at once is. Based on the Canadian medical system that proof may be a long time coming. At least my thyroid cancer markers have been cleared since the end of 2023. I'm under surveillance for the rest of my life for any re-occurrence but doctors have told me it will be rare based on all the interventions done (full thyroidectomy, RAI, pills). Synthroid and some supplements have been keeping things on that end a lot more calm, but not having a thyroid is always going to be weird.
I did recently have a very good visit with my ENT Doctor, he's retiring in October but was nice enough to potentially hook me up with a Immunologist with a research based background in my general area. I'm hopeful that will pan out and maybe I'll get some more answers.
Winter is Coming Already
Whew, that was a big post to start. I need a little palate cleanser.
#website #health #projects