gonkulair

Seriously do it. Just download one song for $1 and help Bum Rush The Charts.

Gonna do it?

1) Go to iTunes Music Store in iTunes

2) Search for “Black Lab - Mine Again”

3) Buy it. ($0.99)

4) Done.

For more info go here: http://bumrushthecharts.blogspot.com/

Note: This is only valid March 22nd, 2007.

see pics of desk. Work computer with dual displays stacked on left. Uber workstation in center. Hard Drives stacked on speaker. So on and so forth.

Yep, that’s right. I’m having writers block right now. Not that I’m an author or well known blogger, but as of late, there just hasn’t been much worth updating people about. Oh! Here’s something, Jen and I got a new car. We bought a “Previously Owned” Audi A3 Sportback Sedan (Sportback is marketing talk for wagon, despite that it isn’t very wagonlike) I will post pictures as soon as I take some, my main camera lens is malfunctioning right now, so I only have my little camera. Also, I’m waiting for the ugly snow/sand/salt/mud to go away. I can tell you this though: It’s fast, fun to drive and has very good handling. The stereo is really good for a stock stereo and the whole roof (pretty much) is a moon roof called the “Open Sky System”. It has a lot of refinement in the areas necessary and it gets pretty good mileage. We bought used to get better value, and it was a $14k difference in price, quite worth it. My favorite feature: The lane change turn signal, it blinks for a minimum of 3 flashes with a quick “Lane Change” tap on the control lever. Love it. Almost forgot, it’s a 6 Speed Manual transmission, Jen and I are driving purists after all.

This video was shared by my friend Darby. It happened right here in Minneapolis, It’s pretty darn funny.

Drunk Squirrel

At least wipe the snow from all your lights, mirrors and windows on your car. The license plate is also a good idea. I can’t believe the number of cars I see with a foot of snow on the car everywhere except for 2 peep holes out the windshield. Laziness will hurt you on this one.

Thank You and don’t forget to tip your server.

I know this is aimed a little more at the technical folks out there, but here goes anyhow.

In my experience I’ve found a couple windows platform applications that aid me greatly in developing/designing web pages. I’ll also try and list the Mac OS X similar product, as I do actually work on both platforms.

HTML/PHP/Script editor:

Basically, this is a really fancy Text Editor. It has text coloring to help you find mistakes and to give a better feel for structure to your document. My money (or rather no money) goes to HTML-KIT for Windows. It allows you to work directly on your server via FTP integration which supports multiple modes. It basically gives you a wonderful server/folder/file list on the right side. When you double-click a file, it downloads and opens. When you click save after having opened this way, it will upload and overwrite the version on the server. The comparable product on the Mac OS X platform is TextWrangler. It’s very similar to HTML-Kit and the price is the same.

Image Manipulation:

In the commercial world, we would say Adobe Photoshop. But in the open-source/free world we say GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) Basically, it’s free photoshop, and it’s nearly as powerful. I have yet to find something I can’t do in GIMP that I can in Photoshop. It’s interface is a bit stark, in that most of the options are accessed via a right-click contextual menu. But it works the same, and after a very short time, most people become quite comfortable using it. It does require the GTK framework for Windows, but that’s available on the website along with GIMP.
Vector Graphics Studio:

Vector graphics are an important part of the design world and ultimately the web world. Vector graphics differ from standard or “Raster Based” graphics in that rather than being and actual Bit by Bit map of the image, they are a series of math and markup that “describes” the object in the image. This allows for infinite scaling in either direction, it also allows for easier skewing, dynamic resizing and so on. Basically images are created by using a combination of basic shapes, lines, colors and techniques such as masking, clipping, grouping, etc. Most logos are vector graphics that have been “exported” to raster types. For Vector image work, I recommend InkScape.

Both Inkscape and GIMP are available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux Operating Systems.

There are of course other tools I use, but most of them wouldn’t be of interest to the average “I wanna make a webpage” person. They are aimed more at the “I develop Web Applications” crowd. Those will come in another post later. But these three basic, yet powerful tools get the most use in Web Page and Web App Development on my machine(s).

Well, geek time is done, hope this helps someone.

Last night we had a surprise party for my friend Markus. It was real tricky. First we told him we were going bowling, and we even went to Elsie’s in Northeast Minneapolis. After we had sat down, gotten menus, beers and started chatting with Charlie, Steph and Elliot the news came. Markus’ roommate Kiara called and stated that water was leaking in the basement and it was more than she and Kendra could handle. Markus was quite furious, so we all decided to go with him to help fix the problem. Markus and Ryan went out to the car while Lee and I worried about paying the check. Actually, we finished our beers and just stood around, to give Charlie, Steph and Elliot time to hopefully beat us back to Markus’ House in very south and very east Minneapolis. After Lee and I had waited long enough for what we felt was almost the limit for Markus, we went out jumped in the car mumbling about the crappy cash machine. The ride to his house was normal, but not necessarily hurried, Markus was quiet and we all kept making jokes about how we would soon be wading through poop and sewage in Markus’ basement. He was definitely stewing. When we got to his house, Charlie was just heading downstairs and I had to quick block the window to hopefully keep Markus from seeing him. It worked perfectly. Markus was almost all the way into his laundry room before he realized there were 20 people in his basement wishing him Happy Birthday. We got him. The night was fun and everyone had a pretty good time. Jen and Molly showed up about 12:00am, and we hung out until 2am. Finally coming home to sleep, which we did until 11am. It was awesome. Happy Birthday again Markus!

This is what the snowfall amounted to at our house. Officially it was about 12″ with some of the southern suburbs get 17″-19″. Most of the people I work with are not driving in to work today, and I don’t have any meetings, so I’m working from home. That means that I’ll get a lot more done than usual. Yeah! Oh, and an extra blog post.

Here are the promised pictures.

Something is broken on my other one… I’ll use this one as it’s functional, until I can repair or find a new one.

I’m sitting here in my cube at corporate and I can barely see the other corporate buildings or the stores across the highway. We’re supposed to get a lot of snow and they might close the corporate campus tomorrow. They already issued a News Flash empowering leadership to establish whether their teams leave early and/or work tomorrow. Yeah! Here are some pictures.

As always, click them for larger versions.

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