Archive for February, 2005

Here are some more photos from this past Thursday night. The top two are the inside restaurant at Fountain Square, and then a building outside in the surrounding area.

The third photo is Print Resources in the Stutz Gallery downstairs where the AIGA gathering was held. Then the bottom two, are kind of unconnected. But right across the hallway from the stairwell we take to the office, they knocked out two walls, and are going to remove what we found out is an old “bailer” to make a new, small, car gallery area like there is on the second floor. We always see Stutz vehicles in this general area, and well as mercedes and other nice vehicles, and since this is kind of one of those spots you see when you first walk in, I think it is a cool idea.

It is just weird to think about them knocking out whole structure walls in the middle of the building, and that they are over a hundred years old.

We had a lazy Friday night, or I guess I should say, I was a lazy pa-tooo-tie, and Sarah went out to a conference. She was working at Wheeler mission this past summer and when one of their teachers was unable to attend this conference that they had paid for without possibility of refund, they called Sarah to see if she wanted to go in this girl’s stead. Of course she is going to go, and so she was there from 6:30-9:45 last night, and left at 8:30 today and may be back by 5:00.

So, I am all by my lonesome.

So last night, I talked on the phone for most of the night, to Christine, the Chapman’s and the Journay’s. In between I did a couple of things, and I watched more of the special effects from Sky Captain. I must say, I am severely disappointed at the extras so far, I hope they get better fast.

I also found out more this morning about the photo gallery. Chris and I were having problems this week with the script for the gallery. It came down to we were trying to change the permissions on a folder that we were writing the new thumbnail images into. Basically, the way any files are set up, they have permission ofwho can edit them, User, Group, and World. We had to change the ownership group to be able to write to that folder and create our thumbs.

My host got that taken care of today, so one more hurdle down.

So today, I added more photos from Friday. Also I wrote a small entry about a couple of different amazing things Google has released recently, so go and check that out for your own benefit, and I’ll talk to you tomorrow.

Sections Updated: Photo Diary, Windows | Computers

If you want to try this out, the beta version is at maps.google.com.

This is the best thing I have seen from Google since their browser. You can hold your mouse down and drag a map in any direction you want. It is fast at re-rendering that map.

When you search for a map, they are up to date. Unlike Yahoo and Mapquest, which will have outdated information.

The directions it lists on the side of the screen in an easy to use fashion, and if you click on each step, it will animated the map with a highlighted icon that is 3d and stands up.

You can zoom in any direction, much faster than yahoo maps. It will actually zoom in and show you the intersection so you can get a clear, clean, and uncongested idea of what you are doing at each interval.

So, go and check this out. It will make your destinations that much easier to achieve, and it is fun to play with!

I signed up, by invitation only, for Gmail late last fall. With great space, 1 GB, and a super fast interface, I thought that this was a cool product. But for the longest time it was in beta only, because Google wants to test before they actually release. Well, it is finally public. Here is the actual email I got regarding their release.

Thanks for signing up to be updated on the latest Gmail happenings. We hope it’s been worth the wait, because we’re excited to finally offer you an invitation to open a free Gmail account!

Since last April, we’ve been working hard to create the best email service possible. It already comes with 1,000 megabytes of free storage, powerful Google search technology to find any message you want instantly, and a new way of organizing email that saves you time and helps you make sense of all the information in your inbox. And here are just some of the things that we’ve added in the last few months: - Free POP access: Take your messages with you. Download them, read them offline, access them using Outlook, your Blackberry or a ny other device that supports POP - Gmail Notifier: Get new mail notifications and see the messages and their senders without having to open a browser - Better contacts management: Import your contacts from Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, Outlook, and others to Gmail in just a few clicks.

Add phone numbers, notes and more. Even use search to keep better track of it all. We also wanted to thank you. For showing us your support and for being so patient. And to those who have already signed up for Gmail, thank you for giving it a try and for helping us make it better. Our users are what have made this product great. So whether you’re just signing up for your account or you’ve been with us since the beginning, keep letting us know how we can build you the best email service around. That’s it for now. We hope you like Gmail and will share it with your friends. We’ve got lots of cool new stuff planned and we can’t wait for you to see our work in your Gmail accounts! Stay tuned… Thanks, The Gmail Team

So, there is no excuse to switch. Except that it could be a little work to update everyone that you know that you have changed your email. But that happens fairly frequently, right? The space and speed is more than worth it.

Plus, read on and you will see why Google is on a roll!

Free Google notifier for Gmail!

Notifier is kind of like having MSN, or AOL messenger on your desktop, but not annoying. This is little program that stores in your system tray that lets you know when you have new email on Gmail.com. Simple and easy to install, and like most of their programs, highly unobtrusive.

Here is an image of it, a tiny little envelope icon that signals that you are connected to your gmail.

Like I said, Fountain Square is a great old historical building with Duck Pin bowling upstairs, and downstairs had an old time cafe with all the old murals, illustrations, and Coke / Pepsi signs on the walls. Great place for some photography because you feel like you have stepped back in time.

I had a blast of a day!

I got to go to two seminars today. At 1:30 this afternoon I went to Fountain Square, which is in a historical part of town with the Fountain Square Theater. Upstairs in that theater I got to attend another meeting of the Adobe CS Suite tour. The showing was put on by a local printer that I have contacts with, Mentzer, and there were only a few people there and they were giving away a full version of the suite valued at almost $1300.

Well, I didn’t get it go figure. But I was glad to go to that area of town and explore, and get some great photos. I uploaded just the one tonight.

While I am thinking of it, Thanks to my Aunt Pat. It is now 12:10 here, and I just remembered about www.woot.com. This is a site that sells overstock on all sorts of crazy stuff. It is a straight forward site, either say you want one and buy it, or don’t. But it has these outrageously funny captions and descriptions for the products.

Tonight it was a 3.2 Megapixel camera with docking station for only $99.00. Crazy!

Anyway. I have had a sore throat for two days now and need to get to bed.

While at the first conference, I heard from the guy who was the Adobe CS speaker that he was going to be doing a comparison type thing for Adobe Go Live vs. Macromedia Dreamweaver with a guy from Macromedia, tonight, at 6:30, for the AIGA at the Stutz building. My building!

I did some digging when I got back about the organization, to find out membership fees and stuff, and figured out that Chris and I could go at five bucks a pop. Our boss paid for it and we went from 6:30-8:30. So it was a long night. And the crappy thing was that the guy from Macromedia didn’t show up. We found out more stuff about Go Live (We both attended the CS Tour back in September when it came downtown, and heard all about the Suite in a half day seminar then), but don’t think it is feasible that we will just up and buy the CS suite and switch, it is too much of an investment turn around at this point.

But we were the only web guys there, so we were asking tons of questions while everyone else looked on blankly. And we got pizza. Questions and pizza. Fun.

Sections Updated: Photo Diary

Because I am a designer, I am able to read code, but I can’t read it when it is all on one line jammed together. Table tags running into table row tags, that run into the table data tags, and so on. So I spend a good deal of time formatting HTML code if it isn’t already from previous work at Esystems.

Alot of times I will delete whole lines and have blank spaces and have to drag my mouse and hit delete. This is a two step process that I do a ton and this tip will help cut that time down greatly.

To remove spaces in your code, just double-click in any of the spaces, and Dreamweaver will highlight that code and then just hit “delete” and it will take it out.

A small little nuance, but can save a ton of time if you are deleting spaces as much as I do. And in one day I may edit anywhere from 25-50 different web pages.

By complete accident in using shortcuts, the other day I figured out how to bold text in Dreamweaver using a shortcut in the Code View.Bascially all you have to do, is highlight the text, and press;

Ctrl + B

This will add the <strong> tags, which are the correct tags to use when bolding some text. The old tags, and the less semantic way to bold text using HTML are the <b></b> tags. When I say semantic, I mean using the markup to actual tell what kind of content they contain, mostly for the benefit of impaired users.

<b> tags don’t mean anything to an impaired user. Do they mean boy, ball, or bongo?. At least when you use <strong></strong> to surround text you know that the text inside inside is thicker in weight, or “stronger”.

I had always been aware that I could highlight text in “Design” view and click the “B” button in the Properties inspector, but I didn’t know I could use this shortcut in “Code” view.

We went to the movies last night and saw Shark Tale, go and check out what I had to say about that.

Also, I have a couple of Dreamweaver tips that I learned this week that I wanted to share with everyone.

Also, Last night I stayed up late so I could get the new site I just finished at esystems into my web design portfolio.

Odyssey Expositions puts on Recreational Vehicle shows all around the US. The site is really cool, so go to Rothecreations.com and the Web Design section to check it out.

Finally. I haven’t forgotten about the gallery, and have half of it done. I need some help from Chris to program the rest, and I will get that online.

Sections Updated: Rothecreations.com, Movies S-T, Dreamweaver