Five Years

Time really flies...

posted at 10:00 AM |  | 2 Comments

 Déjà Vu

Alone again, naturally...

posted at 12:39 AM |  |

 Ninjas & Turtles

posted at 9:45 AM |  |

 Empire Strikes Back

Just when I thought I would be safe from Internet Explorer by completely ignoring it's existence, came a note via Facebook from one of my cousins asking if I had shut down my weblog. After a quick glance of the blog (via Firefox) to make sure it was up and running, I quickly fired off a reply, confident that the site was indeed up and running and that was that. Then came a second notification from another cousin, this time more specifically stating that the blog was inaccessible -- via Internet Explorer 7. I launched VMWare to check the site on IE via the installed Windows XP system and saw the site was still accessible, but I was viewing it on IE 8, rolling back to IE 7 and bam, there it was, an error message saying the site could not be found. The same results were yielded by rolling back even further to IE 6. "Crap!" I thought to myself, as I scratched my head wondering what could be causing the problem and why only IE? Could it be a poorly written HTTP Access file? Nope. A PHP include gone awry? Nope. JavaScript? A-ha! Now we're onto something. After completely turning off all the JavaScript code on the page, the site was accessible again on all versions of IE, a double check on Firefox just to confirm it wasn't producing anymore unwanted side effects and then it was off to the tedious task of turning back on each script line by line until the error came back. The error definitely came back as soon as I turned on Lightbox v.2 (Lokesh Dhakar's link at http://lokeshdhakar.com/projects/lightbox2/ seems to be unavailable as well) with the Scriptaculous effect. So now what? I am leaving the aforementioned effect on that page off for now until I have time to figure out which parts of the script was specifically causing the errors, the images that gets affected still work when clicked on although now sans the nice popup effect that Lightbox provides. What is baffling to me is that the same scripts work on other parts of the site, although admittedly, the weblog page is saddled with more scripts than necessary, a cleanup and a complete redesign is inevitable one of these days, but for now, lights off for Lightbox.

PS. Thanks for letting me know 'te Anna, and thanks for the headsup John.

posted at 7:56 AM |  |

 Stuff

I've always been a gear-a-holic, and any type of bag/luggage that proposes to make my carrying and traveling life easier are always a welcome addition to my ever growing stable of laptop and travel gear. When I found Tom Bihn via a comment from one of the Mac forums I frequent, I felt that my search for the perfect laptop bag was fully addressed by this company. I won't be going into details about how great the products are or how awesome their customer service is whenever you call or email for whatever reason, no I won't go into that, instead, what I'll recommend is that you visit their website and explore the forums and blogs and you'll get a sense of why this company has such a strong cult following much like Apple and it's fanboy-like devotees. But I digress, I wanted to post this blog as a reminder for myself that Tom Bihn has recently put several new products out on the market today, items that are sure to put a lot of Tom Bihn fans (including myself) into a world of hurt and dilemma. The three new products that I know I want myself are as follows:

The Tri-Star: Check!

The Side Effect: Roger that!

3D Clear Organizer Cube: Make mine in triplicates...

Of course there's more on their online catalog that I want such as the various pouch organizers and travel cubes, but those three mentioned above are on the immediate hit list. Damn you Tom! And stop smiling Darcy, you too!

posted at 7:05 AM |  |

 How To Kill A Graphic Designer

I glimpse into our world, and this ain't no April Fool's joke, so read on...

I'm sorry but could you also change on the site plan I sent you just now the color of the vacancy boxes to Bright Pink and have black bold lettering instead. Also put bold black lines around each box of each logo. If I need to do it and send you another copy let me know.

The picture looks good, very bright and clean. However, I do want the 'photo' and address to stand out more--the lettering is just too light. If you can make it bolder that would be better. The same for the spaces available for lease section, I don't think it needs to be as big as it is, maybe make it just a bit smaller but the white lettering definitely needs to stand out more. If there is no way to make the white bolder, maybe make the background coloring a little lighter. Also if you could change it to read Lease Space Available instead.

Next, completely cut out the floor plans and the come join these tenants because the new attachment has the site plan with it reading "come join our tenants" and the floor plans are now underneath the site plan with a line showing the vacancies from the site plan which makes them pop. Now if we are going over two pages when printed with the floor plans, either make the floor plans smaller to fit or possibly move the contact information underneath the Lease Space Available section.

I think that should do it and it will look good.

This was taken verbatim from the client's job notes, I kid you not. And as comical as it sounds, these are the kind of things that can literally bring a designer to the brink of a meltdown. Also, this eerily reminds me of something I came across awhile back: 10 things a web designer would never tell you.

posted at 4:11 PM |  |

 Catching Up

Everyday life has been so busy as of late that I have completely neglected my blog (but not entirely). Twitter was partly to blame for this since it was so much easier to write one-liners as opposed to longer diatribes such as this. But hey, sometimes that 140-character limit warrants a longer blog post so here it is...

Aside from stating the obvious that I was too busy to get my head on straight and write something coherent, what actually kept me busy was a mixture of a number of things. There's work of course, and by that I mean my day job as a web monkey. There's also work outside of work, several side projects have come my way as of late ranging from web designs, to tackling WordPress themes and the occasional sprinkling of logo and print jobs. And mix in what's left of my personal time with the wife and there's little left for anything else. And oh, we had guests upon guests coming and going which made our lives a lot more busier than it usually is but all in good fun. Despite what people might think, we actually enjoy having people around and taking them around, it makes us feel special that friends and family always consider us as a destination point whenever they visit Vegas. Awww... we love you folks!

Okay. What else? Ah yes Twitter. It's like a new found drug that I can't stop using at the moment. I am sure the novelty will wear off soon (just as it always has with every new toy I've had) and my 'tweeting' will lessen to a minimum as opposed to my current knee-jerk reaction of twittering everything under the sun including my thoughts while pooping in the john. Sorry, sorry, TMI, I know. Anyways, apart from Twitter, having an iPhone with an app (Yay Tweetie!) that allows instant access to Twitter 24-7 is just too easy.

Then there's that blimey AppStore. I don't know what it is, but I seem to be downloading more apps than music or movie content these days for my phone. It started with a simple enough game like Labyrinth and now has grown into a hefty-sized app library ranging from games all the way to Kindle books and tip calculators. So far my faves are Metal Gear Solid Touch, Scrabble (yes you read that right, Scrabble!), Cooking Mama (woo!), Wheel of Fortune, ExZeus, iPhone Kindle (the app for the iPhone and not the device) and of course the most heavily abused thingamabob — Tweetie. I won't bother posting links to the other apps from the iTunes AppStore I mentioned here (I'm lazy), either just Google it or search for it on iTunes by name.

So there we have it, my self-obligartory blog post fulfilled. And yeah, still busy as heck so if you want to hear more from me (and I am crossing my fingers that some of you still do), follow me on Twitter, it's lesser reading than this. I promise.

posted at 6:38 AM |  |

	Back to the top?